<$Wednesday, January 30, 2008$>
This is why I love the internets.
| In the same vein as yesterday's post about free online image editors, there's a great post at Gather Little By Little that lists free open source software--both web based and free downloadable programs. When we get our computer, I don't plan to pay extra for Microsoft Office. With all of the open source programs available these days that are as easy to use as and compatible with MS programs, there's just no reason to. I already do the majority of my writing in Google Docs. I might not even download any programs to my hard drive--I might just save space by using web based programs! Labels: finance+blogs, freebies, frugality, resources, tools |
Net Worth Update
| As you can see from my shiny new widget over there on the sidebar, my net worth has steadily improved since I started this blog. That's pretty awesome right there. Even though it's still in the negative thousands, I'm still encouraged. When I started tracking it last March, it was under negative $10,000. From that to negative $4,000 in less than a year ain't too shabby. At this rate, I ought to make it to zero net worth by the end of the year. Yeah, it's pretty sad that "zero net worth" is something we're striving for. But that's just a sign post. It's not the final destination. Labels: net worth |
Because free money beats borrowed money any day.
| As helpful as Husband's student loan checks are, it would be nice if he could find scholarships that he's eligible for. With his grades (straight As!), I wouldn't think that would be hard. Add in his disability and his bout with cancer, and you'd think there would be organizations out there that would throw free college money at him. We haven't found any so far, though. Even so, I plan to keep looking. Like I said, the loans are a help, but we're only delaying having to pay his tuition by a few years. It would be really nice to get some financial aid that didn't have to be paid back. Labels: disclosure, education, loans |
Festively frugal
| The 110th Festival of Frugality went up yesterday at Mrs. Micah. There's plenty of good stuff in there. I especially appreciated Bean Sprout's alternatives to Freecycle. I've never actually used Freecycle, but I am subscribed to the local group. I had to opt out of having posts e-mailed to me because they were so frequent, and it seemed that half of them were the mods scolding and nitpicking the users. That really turned me off, and I haven't been back to check it since. Other articles I enjoyed include this post at Frugal Parents on reusing greeting cards to make bookmarks and gift tags. File this under "concepts so obvious I feel like a moron for never having thought of it." I hate to throw out greeting cards, but after a while they just become clutter. Now I've got some good idea for making them serve a purpose other than soothing my inner sentimental packrat. There are plenty of other great reads over there, so go check 'em out! Labels: carnivals |
Do sacrifices alter your personal style?
| I used to love to wear jewelry. Costume jewelry, mainly--I've never been in a position to afford or be gifted with much of the real stuff. In my younger days working in retail, I usually ended up working in the jewelry department, surrounded by cute baubles that I couldn't resist. My jewelry was a big part of my personal style. The old me would have adored some of this wholesale fashion jewelry. But that was back in the days when I didn't think much about my spending, or about putting shiny things on a credit card. The new me hardly wears any jewelry. Other than my wedding ring and a necklace my husband let me pick out for my birthday last year, all I usually wear are a few pairs of inexpensive discount store earrings that I rotate, and often I don't even bother with those. I'm not sure when or why I stopped being a costume jewelry ho. It happened pretty gradually, although I'm sure lack of funds had something to do with it. Being forced into frugal habits had a major impact on my personal style, but I'm sure getting older (and busier) also had something to do with it. Where I used to love trendy outfits, now I wear more classic clothes that won't go out of style. I still have girly phases where I love to dress up and put on makeup, but for the most part I've got a pretty basic beauty routine that lets me get ready for work in fifteen minutes. These things cost less to maintain, too. A lot of jewelry just doesn't fit into that equation. Sometimes, this makes me sad, and I wish I could go back to my girly-girl days of yore. Mostly, though, I'm proud of myself for scaling down and figuring out how to look feminine and stylish while saving a lot of time and money. My new personal style fits in a lot better with my new lifestyle. There's no room here for the old, fashion-conscious, spendy me. Labels: bargains, disclosure, frugality, personal, shopping |
To transfer or not to transfer?
| Currently, I'm carrying balances on two credit cards. The first is the one I'm about to knock below $4,000. The other is a gas rewards card with a $2,500 limit that I originally obtained for the sole purpose of buying and saving money on gasoline, which with my work commute is one of our major expenses. We didn't use it as planned, though, and maxed it out to pay for part of our honeymoon. I haven't been too concerned about paying this one off because it's 0% interest. Currently, I'm paying the minimum monthly payment on the larger balance, plus any "snowflakes" I amass each week. This is working pretty good as far as paying it down. Recently, this card increased my credit limit by $3,000, and is currently offering me a balance transfer deal that guarantees 0% interest on transfers until August. As for the gas card: since I haven't minded carrying an interest-free balance while I work on paying off the other card, each month I make a payment in the amount that I expect to spend on gasoline. This usually runs between $200 and $250. Now I'm wondering whether it would be smarter to transfer this card's balance to the other card. Pros, as far as I can think of them: I'd still have no interest charges on that $2,500 portion of my balance. All of my credit debt would be in one place, and I'd be down to only one card that carries a balance, and one credit card bill to worry about each month, which I think can only be good for my credit score. Also, since my gas card would have no balance, I'd be able to use it as originally intended, and each month pay off what I actually spent on fuel instead of trying to guess how much I'll need to spend in the future. Cons: That $2,500 would only have 0% interest until August, then it would jump higher. How much higher, I don't know (my other option is to transfer it at 5.99% until February, 2009). I'd still be paying both bills each month if I keep using the gas card to buy fuel (and at 5% cash back on all gasoline purchases, why wouldn't I?), so I wouldn't really end up with more money in the bank each month. Other things to consider: once we move closer to my workplace, which we hope and pray will happen within the next six months (it will happen, one way or another; we've got a deadline to move by this summer so my mom/landlady can sell her house. Worst case scenario, we end up in an apartment for a while; but we'll still be closer to my work), our fuel costs will probably be cut by two-thirds. I'll probably go from spending $200/month on gas to $50/month. Also, my minimum payment on the big balance would go up considerably, and it's already pretty high. I think as far as how much I pay in bills each month, it would come out a wash. So the big question is, which would be better for my credit score: taking the transfer offer, or leaving everything as is? I have no idea. Thankfully, I've got a month to figure out the answer before the offer expires. Labels: credit cards, debt consolidation, debt reduction |
<$Tuesday, January 29, 2008$>
Real estate can still be a great investment.
| I've mentioned that my husband and I are considering buying a duplex so that we can rent one half out while we live in the other. This isn't the first time we've talked about eventually getting into real estate. On our honeymoon, during our stop in Grand Cayman, we loved the place so much that we pretty much made plans then and there to buy a vacation house there someday that we can rent out to tourists when we're not using it. We've even discussed making that our retirement home, but first we need to build enough wealth to retire on. I think it would be great if we could get into the real estate market, especially coastal properties that we can rent out to vacationers. Florida would be a great market for this. So would Wilmington, NC Real Estate. Of course, with the threat of hurricanes, our profits would be undermined by the cost of really good insurance; but considering we live in tornado alley, that's something we're prepared to shell out for no matter what. At any rate, this is definitely something we'll probably end up doing down the line. Labels: disclosure, dreaming, extra income, investing |
Growing Up is growing up (part 2)
| You might have noticed a little link up there in the logo banner to a little something called "the Growing Up Network." This is because I'm currently in the process of turning Growing Up into a network of three blogs: This one, renamed Growing Money; Growing Healthy, my health and fitness blog; and introducing Growing a Home, where I'll blog about my journey to buy a house and turn it into a home. These blogs are all connected via a new home page. My next step will be to set it up with its own domain, but that won't happen until after payday. I'm pretty pleased with how the home page turned out. My biggest limitation toward designing my own web pages since my computer died was the loss of my Photoshop program. I did the majority of my designing in there, and then just futzed around with the HTML until the finished project came as close as I could get it to the Photoshop design. I know all about GIMP, and once we replace our computer, I'm sure it will take care of all my web design needs. In the mean time, though, since I'm primarily stuck using borrowed computers for all my online business, anything that has to be downloaded and installed is out of the question. Thankfully, the internets have caught up to my needs by providing free web based image editors, and they have come a long way. I started out using Picture2life (aka editmypicture.com), and while they've grown a lot in their functionality since I first started using them, they have an unfortunate tendency to crash or freeze up in the middle of editing my pictures. I recently discovered Picnik. It appears to be more reliable and user-friendly than Picture2life, but the free version is fairly limited if you want to use it in a design capacity. The paid version has a lot more functionality, and I thought $24.95 a year was a pretty reasonable price to pay for those extra functions. Still, I decided to keep looking. Yesterday I found Phixr, which turns out to be almost exactly what I wanted. It's very close to Photoshop in both function and form, and I was really impressed with how much I could do with it. The only drawback I could see was that it doesn't have a great selection of fonts to choose from. I got around this by combining it with the other two programs mentioned above. Between the three of them, I could accomplish pretty much everything I needed. In a pinch, there's also always Big Huge Labs' Flickr toys, with their motivational poster generator, ID badge maker, picture framer, and more. I used their magazine cover generator to create the home page for JMBauhaus.com. This one is a lot of fun to play with. With all of the web based applications available these days, you could easily get away with not even having any office-type software on your computer. I'm sure Microsoft is just loving that. I know I sure am. |
Dreaming is (also) free.
| I mentioned earlier that we're expecting another check from my husband's student loans to arrive soon. What I didn't mention is that we're feeling very tempted to use part of it to take a vacation. I can only bring myself to feel a little guilty about that. We haven't been anywhere since our honeymoon, and while neither of us are used to going on a trip either year, we do both work hard, and we're feeling a little burned out. Last year, all of our attempts to plan short weekend getaways fell through. Even an overnight trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the town where we got married, would be a nice change of pace. The check, though, will be large enough to finance a really nice vacation, if we chose to go that route. Of course we won't--we have too many other things to pay for that take priority, and the knowledge that we'll be able to afford to travel once in a while after our debts are eliminated is enough to help us hang in there and do the responsible thing. Still, that doesn't keep me from checking flights to Canada, where there are two different online friends I'd love to meet, or to California, where I've got another friend I haven't seen in years and where my husband spent his formative years. He's dying to take me back there and show me his old stomping grounds. Those trips are probably still out of our reach for the time being. We're better off keeping our heads out of the clouds and our tires on the ground, looking at destinations within driving distance. Of course, that conveniently includes a few major cities and a port of departure for relatively inexpensive cruises to the Yucatan. THIS is where temptation has the best chance of ensnaring us. Most likely, we'll be responsible with our loan money. It could knock a huge dent in our credit debt, plus we need to have some expensive tests done to our dog, we still need a computer, and I'm sure any extra money we have will come in really handy once the time comes to move into our own house. Even so, I'm about three Corona commercials away from booking a stateroom bound for Cozumel. Labels: disclosure, dreaming, extra income, travel |
Snowflakes
| No, it's not just what's in the weather forecast for later this week. It turns out it's how I've been paying down my credit card balances. I've heard of -- and practiced -- the debt snowball, but when things got tight I had to cut back on the fixed amount I was paying to my creditors each month. Instead, I've been snowflaking--that is, paying a little here and there, whatever extra I bring in or come across, toward my highest balance in addition to my regular monthly payments. I've Paid For This Twice Already has a primer on the debt snowflake method that not only details exactly how it works, but also provides ideas for obtaining snowflakes to add to your snowball: I take surveys online, I sell possessions on craigslist and ebay, I have yard sales, and any money I get from these endeavors goes directly to my debt. I also keep a very strict accounting of all the money that comes in every month and what I spend and everything left over at the end of the month not earmarked for future expenses also goes directly to debt. These are my snowflakes. I've done most of those myself. Just this morning I fired off a $50 snowflake to the credit card company made up entirely of referral bonuses from my INGDirect savings account. Extra money's not that difficult to come by if you know where to look, and it constantly amazes me how quickly seemingly insignificant amounts of money add up to something big. Labels: credit cards, debt reduction |
Nature is free.
| *Sponsored post* I used to love to go hiking. I grew up in a wooded area, near some cliffs that surrounded a lake. When I was a kid, my friends and I had all kinds of adventures climbing the rocks, hiking through the woods, building forts and swimming in the lake. I live in that same neighborhood now, but as an adult, I never have the time to revisit all of my childhood hiking trails. Even if I did, the area is so much more developed now than it was then that even if I could find a place to go hiking nearby, I'd probably end up trespassing on somebody's property. It's a shame, because there are a lot of benefits to hiking. It's fun, it provides a great workout, it's a great way to get fresh air and sunshine and get away from the hecticity of twenty-first century life once in a while...and it's free. As I mentioned in yesterday's post on all of my frugal habits, I tend to reuse things for as long as I can. Both my and my husband's school backpacks have been used as overnight bags, carry-on luggage, purses, pet carriers, grocery bags, briefcases, gym bags...you get the idea. One thing they sadly haven't been used for is to tote hiking gear, despite the fact that they're ideal for the task. Whether I just want to tote a bottle of water and a light snack for a long walk, a blanket and picnic supplies for an afternoon hike down to the lake, or a sleeping bag and light camping gear for an extended hike, we've got an old backpack that's up to the task. I have no excuses. Once the weather warms up, I think I'm going to pack myself a picnic, head down to the lake and get reacquainted with my childhood pastime. An entire day's worth of activity and entertainment is almost literally right outside my back door--and it won't cost a thing other than the price of the food I take. You can't beat that with a stick. Labels: disclosure, frugality, healthy living, hobbies, recycling |
<$Monday, January 28, 2008$>
Slowly but surely...but not as slowly as I thought!
| A while back, I mentioned that I had gotten my biggest credit card balance below $4,500, and I wanted to try to get it below $4,000 by the end of the year. That didn't happen, but I got close. As of my next payment, I'll break the $4,000 mark, making my previous goal only a little more than a month off target. This blog has been a huge help toward paying off my debts. Since I got back into a routine in the last couple of weeks, I've already earned about $150 through ad blogging alone. That's all going straight to the credit card. If I can keep up that raste of earning, I'll be able to get that card very close to paid off by the end of this year. That's pretty awesome. I'm working on setting up and establishing a couple more blogs to help increase my earnings. Ideally, that income will also go directly to my credit cards to help pay them down even faster, but of course, I don't yet know how moving into our own house will affect our budget. As I've said, it all looks doable on paper, but I can't shake the fear that I've missed somethig or forgotten to take something into account. So it will give me peace of mind to know I've got a way to earn extra if we need it to live on. This blogging has basically become my second job. Done right, it takes about as much of my time as a part time job would, and it pays a lot better than minimum wage. It's also something I enjoy doing. Maybe someday, if I can keep growing my blog network, it will bring in enough to allow me to quit my job and do this full time; but that's getting way ahead of myself. For now, it's helping me learn about finances as it simultaneously provides me with the means to get out from under debt. There are definitely worse things I could be doing with my spare time. Labels: debt reduction, extra income, PPP |
Trading debt for debt via student loans
| *Sponsored post* My husband's student loans have turned out to be a big help to us. We knew that things would be tight going to a single income while he finished school, and we budget as if my full-time job is the only income we have. I expected his loans to cover his tuition, books, and other school-related costs, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how much is usually left over once all of those things are paid for. We've been treating his loan checks as windfalls, using them to beef up our savings, put big dents in our credit card debt, and buying things we can't normally afford (like a computer that actually works). We're expecting another loan check next month; as we wait, we're trying to decide the best way to use it to help us get ahead. As helpful as his loans have proven to be, it's tempting to consider obtaining more. Student loan debt tends to be preferable to credit card debt; if we got enough in student loans to pay them off, we would then have until after he graduates to build up a lot of savings before we have to start paying them back. Of course, there are drawbacks to that plan. For one thing, we'd just be trading one debt for another instead of getting rid of debt. I'm not sure I trust the private student loan companies I keep seeing commercials for--I suspect their interest rates are too high to make them a smart option. I don't know whether he can apply for more Federal Direct Loans, or if he's gotten all he can get going that route. My own student loans are currently in forebearance, and I'll have to start paying on them again this summer. So we'll wait and see how far we can make this next loan check stretch, and how well we're making ends meet after we move. Right now, I don't believe more student loans are the answer; but it's comforting to know that the option is there if we need it. Labels: disclosure, loans |
What we're doing right
| My husband and I try to live pretty frugally as we work on digging ourselves out of debt. Sometimes, though, it doesn't feel like enough, and I start to feel guilty for not sacrificing more in our journey to be debt free. Every now and then I need to step back and look at all of the things we are doing to save money. I could keep going, but I think I've made my case. The only area we have left that we could stand to cut back on is our groceries, and that's a work in progress. I am working on it, though, and as I look over this list, I feel pretty good about the steps we've taken to reduce our spending and live below our means. Labels: debt reduction, frugality |
<$Friday, January 25, 2008$>
Choose your host!
| *Sponsored Post* ETA: I just used it to run a search for hosts that cost under $10 with no set-up fee and at least 25MB of disk space, and came up with 637 options. With that much competition, a tool that helps you narrow it down will definitely come in handy. Labels: disclosure, extra income, resources, tools |
Link Roundup: Tax Rebate Edition
| Look, I have an edition! With the tentative announcement that a lot of Americans will be getting tax rebates this year intended to stimulate the economy by getting us all to get spendy, you can be sure the PF blogosphere had plenty to say about the matter. The general consensus: the rebates are a lot more likely to be saved than spent by this particular community. Personally, I intend to throw mine at my credit card debt, but I'm guessing that still goes against the government's intent. Although, the more quickly I can get rid of my debt, the more able and willing I'll be to spend a little on extras now and then. So I guess it will all even out. Watch My Moneymaker lists Ten Things To Do With Your Economic Stimulus Rebate that the Government Won't Like. Interestingly, "pay credit card debt" is on his list. But I'm doing it anyway, 'cause I'm all rebellious like that. ;) Free Money Finance has a similar list that he picked up from MSNBC. A lot of good discussion in the comment thread there. My Dollar Plan also talks about why the Economic Stimulus Plan Fails at [Their] House. They plan to channel their rebate directly into their investments. Finally, Living Almost Large questions the wisdom of the Revised Tax Rebate. I question it, too, for the reasons stated there. What good will it really do to further increase the Federal deficit to give people money (that they'll probably have to pay taxes on again, if the last big rebate is any indication) to encourage the type of spending that got us into this mess in the first place? Not that I'm complaining about the windfall, but there does seem to be some bass-ackwards logic at work here. Labels: debt reduction, extra income, finance+blogs, free money |
Real Estate Investing 101
| *Sponsored Post* At any rate, real estate is definitely an investment that we'd like to make someday. I don't know if we want to make careers out of it, but it would definitely be a nice source of supplemental income. So I'm wondering about the benefits of Nouveau Riche University. They were recently featured in the magazine Your Business At Home, which lends them a sense of legitimacy in a field that seems to be pretty rife with get rich quick scams. From what I understand from reading the articles, they are an accredited university, developing distance learning program, and what you get for the fee that they charge looks like a pretty good value. I don't think we're prepared to go as far as going back to college to learn about real estate investing just yet, but we are pretty clueless about what all it entails and exactly what opportunities are available. So it's nice to know that resources like this exist. I'd like to hear your opinions on whether a program like this would be a good investment of time and money. Labels: disclosure, education, investing, resources |
The simplicity of the Post-it
 There's more money in my checking account than is reflected on my debit tracking Post-it. Hmmm.I need to go over my receipts and bill payments again before I get too excited. I know that part of that amount is my husband's spending stipend which I haven't yet moved over to his bank. There's a lot more than that in there, though... there must be something outstanding that I'm just not remembering right now. This is why I've reverted to my Post-it system. I tried to get all fancy and high-tech by tracking my spending in a spreadsheet, but that just got me into trouble. It's an ADD thing, I guess--the more trouble something is to access, the less likely I am to use it. I could only conveniently access the spreadsheet from my work computer, which means any spending I did wouldn't get subtracted from my available funds until I came to work, added up my receipts, and then signed in to Google docs to enter the amount into my spreadsheet. Sure, the spreadsheet did the math for me, which is always nice, but it felt cumbersome, like a big chore, and also something I had to work to remember to do. My Post-it system, on the other hand, is always with me. It's as simple to use as picking up a pen and doing a little elementary subtraction. If I want to know how much money we still have, I just have to look at the Post-it pad in my wallet. If there are any receipts stuffed behind it, I know I still need to subtract those. It's pretty much the same as keeping a checkbook register, except without all the extra spaces and categories that make me feel like I fail at finances and at life. And it works; with the spreadsheet system, I had an overdraft a few weeks ago. As long as I've used my trusty Post-it system, that hasn't happened once. Sometimes low-tech is the best way to go. It may not be for everybody, but for me, the simplest method is usually the best. The more accessible and in plain view something is, the more likely I am to remember to use it, and the fewer steps needed, the less likely I am to put it off until later. It may seem inelegant, but the Post-it method is the most ADD-friendly system for tracking my spending that I've yet to find. Labels: ADD, money management, spending |
Furnishing my dream house
 I'm once again hypothetically shopping for my hypothetical future house. I know I really shouldn't, since it will only lead to temptation to get spendy after we move. Really, we plan to make the most of the furniture we've already got, and fill any gaps with Craigslist and thrift shop finds. I consider myself to be fairly creative, and once I get a sewing machine, between that and knitting and borrowed ingenuity from Curbly and other web sources, I'm pretty confident I'll be able to make our new house look like a cozy home without breaking the bank.One thing we do need to replace, though, is our bed. Our bed--actually, our entire fashion bed group, is a matching set of antique hand-me-ups that came to me only after a few years of rough treatment at the hands of my then teenage sister. It's all pretty battered, and not in that stylishly distressed way. I never use the vanity table, anyway, since when I'm not getting dressed at the gym I usually do so in the bathroom, and the chest-of-drawers isn't big enough for the two of us. Neither, really, is my full-size bed, with its broken foot board and aging mattress. So one thing I keep shopping around for to get an idea of how much money I need to save up is a quality bed. I figure once we get a new bed, we'll have it for at least a decade, so to me it's well worth it to shell out for something as sturdy and durable as it is comfortable. I really like the looks of these platform beds; right now they're on sale at prices that wouldn't kill us. It's doubtful that they still will be when we move, but we're not in a huge hurry. We can wait until they go on sale again, even if we have to sleep on our mattress on the floor for a while. Actually, a lot of the prices at Home and Bedroom look pretty reasonable. I'm going to have to bookmark this site for the future and remember to come back to it when we're ready to actually buy new furniture. Their Hillsdale Furniture collections include some gorgeous beds that I might consider if we decide to go with a more traditional look, and those prices aren't making me cringe, either. Once we get our 2007 taxes done, we'll finish our mortgage application and, hopefully, start shopping for a house. Our goal is to be in our own place by this summer. The thought of it is both scary and exhilarating, and despite the scary, I can't wait. This sort of web-window-shopping for good furniture and decorating bargains and dreaming about what I want my new home to look like helps me to wait patiently until it all become a reality. It can be agonizing to wait, but sometimes the best part of waiting is the anticipation and imagining what it will be like when the time finally comes. Labels: bargains, disclosure, frugality, house-hunt, shopping |
<$Thursday, January 24, 2008$>
Just say no to McMansions
| Stop the Ride lists thirteen reasons "Smaller Is Better" when it comes to buying a house. This is advice I'd heard before, and it's advice we intend to heed when we shop for our new home. We don't really need that much room, especially for a starter home. We have so much junk that we plan to get rid of before we move. I really want to de-clutter and simplify my home life. I think having a small home will force us to be ruthless in letting go of our stuff. Not to mention the lower energy bills... just go read the list. All of my reasons are already over there. Labels: finance+blogs, frugality, goals, house-hunt |
<$Tuesday, January 22, 2008$>
Catholic Homeschooling Made Easy
| *Sponsored Post* My husband and I have pretty much already decided that if we ever have kids, we'll most likely home school them. This isn't a decision I take lightly, nor is it one I ever thought I would make; but there are a lot of motivations behind it. Some of them are practical: if our kids take too much after me, they're bound to have special needs, and I feel like I'm the best qualified to teach my (hypothetical future) children how to cope with them. Some of them are fear-driven: whether it's rational or not, I don't want to put my (hypothetical future) children in a position where they might get shot. And some of it is, of course, religion-driven. Although my husband and I are Protestant Christians and plan to raise our children in that tradition, I think the St. Gabriel Catholic Academy looks like a great resource for home schooling. They provide access to online teachers and homeschooling portfolios and resources that cover a full curriculum. They include catechism training, but I would think that as the creator of your child's curriculum, you would have full control over how much of that, if any, that they receive if you're not Catholic. And even if you are, I think exposure to different traditions helps to create a well-rounded, solid foundation on which faith can grow. Labels: disclosure, education, resources |
Frugal Post Script
| One more link: Small Cents posted a list of 25 frugal things she does while she's paying off her student loans. They're not all about food, and they're not all stuff I can do (that breastfeeding thing is kind of outside my ability for the moment), but there's a lot of good ideas there. Labels: finance+blogs, frugality |
How to be a Frugal Foodie
| That title is a bit misleading, because I don't really know how to be a frugal foodie. That's something I'm still trying to learn. I worry a lot about our food spending. We're spending a little less now than the last time I complained about it, but we've still got a ridiculously large food budget for just two people. I've realized something, though: as long as we've got the basics covered and we're well-fed, we're happy. Sure, we enjoy going out every now and then, and we like stuff as much as the next consumer; but for the most part, we're homebodies who are easily entertained. Homebodies, and foodies. Food is entertainment for us. When I remember that, I feel a lot better about our grocery bills. Even so, we could stand to cut down on our grocery bill. I'm sure this will become easier to do once we have a kitchen in which to cook our own healthy meals, but in the mean time, I'm constantly on the lookout for frugal food advice and money-saving grocery tips, such as you'll find at the links below: Some of this stuff I already do, and some of it's just impractical for the way I live right now. But there's also some stuff in there that's new to me that I'm willing to try. For now, though, since we've already run through our entire grocery budget for the pay period and we still have sixteen days to go (I know, right?!!!), I'm going to challenge us both to be creative about making the food we already have stretch as far as possible. I'm sure if we put our heads together and get creative, we can enjoy the food we have without spending much more. I hope. |
Good Deals on Dental Care
| *Sponsored Post* My husband hasn't been to the dentist in years. He knows he needs to go get his teeth cleaned and checked, and that he'll probably have cavities that need to be dealt with. He also needs to eventually have his wisdom teeth removed. So when the open enrollment period for my employer's benefits came around at the end of 2007, I enrolled him in the company's dental plan. I didn't like it; at $35 per paycheck--$70 per month--that seemed kind of steep to me, especially when a month's worth of premiums would almost cover the cost of a cleaning. But not knowing what kind of work he'll need done to his teeth, and not wanting to be caught with our pants down if he needed something major, we bit the bullet and signed him up anyway. That's what I get for not doing my research first. Instead of expensive insurance that only pays a percentage of most procedures anyway, we probably should have checked into discount dental plans. These are different from dental insurance in that instead of premiums and copay, you simply pay a one time annual fee to receive steeply discounted services for the entire year. Annual fees run as low as $79.95 for individuals--that's a heck of a bargain compared to my $75 monthly premium--and $129.95 for entire families, regardless of how many children you have. That particular dental plan also covers prescriptions, vision and chiropractic care, and includes three extra months of coverage for the first year. It's pretty frustrating to find out about this after we committed to a year of expensive insurance, let me tell you. I'm bookmarking this site, and when open enrollment comes back around for 2009, we're going to seriously consider switching over to this. Labels: bargains, disclosure, frugality, healthy living, insurance, PPP |
Link Round-Up: Totally Random Edition
| A lot of bloggers are so organized and clever as to present link round-ups with themes that tie each link together. I am neither that organized nor that clever (nor willing to work that hard), so I just present them as I find them. Here's some of the best stuff I've stumbled upon in today's round of PF surfing: Labels: finance+blogs, link roundup |
Cititec
| *Sponsored Post* One of the best ways to get out of debt and get ahead in your finances is to increase your income. Sometimes the best way to increase your income is simply to find a better job. Financial IT Jobs can be a pretty lucrative career choice. If you've got the relevant education and training already, you might consider placing yourself with an Investment Banking IT Recruitment firm. In such a niche market, it seems like it would be an excellent idea to have someone who knows the job market and the industry do your job searching for you. Cititec recruits globally, so registering with them could open the door not just for a more prosperous future, but a more adventurous one as well. Labels: disclosure, extra income, PPP |
How to get a credit report that's really free
| Money Smart Life has an unfortunate article up about how to get a free credit report that directs you to Freecreditreport.com. A lot of people make the mistake--including myself--of thinking that this is the web site where you get the free annual credit report that the reporting agencies are required to give you by law, and I'm sure FCR capitalizes on that assumption with all of their advertising. But what they don't make clear when you sign up is that when you register to get your free credit report from them, you're also signing up for their credit monitoring service. If you don't cancel this service within thirty days, they'll start automatically charging your credit card. Last year I was really bad about not checking my statements, and I ended up paying twice the fee for a year (for both my and my husband's reports) without realizing. As soon as I found out I canceled it, but they don't make that process particularly easy, either. That's $310 I unwittingly spent for my "free" credit report. The actual free credit report site, set up by the three major reporting agencies in compliance with federal law, is Annualcreditreport.com. You won't get your credit score, but you will get all three reports with no hidden fees or strings attached. You can get each report once a year, but you don't have to get them all at the same time, which means you can stagger them out and check up on your credit three times a year at no cost. They also provide enough information for you to get a reasonable estimate of your credit score by using the FICO Score Estimator, which is also totally free. Monitoring your credit is a smart thing to do. Just be careful of getting sucked in by misleading advertising. Labels: credit cards, debt reduction, evil, finance+blogs, freebies |