<$Thursday, February 14, 2008$>
Free Finance Book by Suze Orman
| Oprah's web site is offering a free .pdf download of Suze Orman's new book, Women & Money. It's available to download until tonight at 7:00 Central. Here's a direct link. I've already started reading it, and while it states that it's written specifically for women, I'm sure it contains advice that men can also apply to their finances, or to understanding and helping their partners' struggles with money. And it's free! I love free. |
<$Monday, February 4, 2008$>
10 more shopping days to prove your love...
| I can't say I was all that surprised to see Valentine's Day displays spring up the day after Christmas, seeing as how this is one of the more consumer-driven holidays in our culture; which, as usual, pretty much misses the point. That is, if the point is to celebrate love and the people in your life, and not to try to quantify how much you love someone based on how much you're willing to spend on them. I was never a huge fan of Valentine's Day. I thought this would change after I met my husband, but we're still both pretty "meh" on the whole subject. We acknowledge it, and use it as an excuse to do something romantic, but (with the exception of last year, when I bought him a wedding band to replace the wedding ring that got lost on our honeymoon, and he took me out to an overpriced pub; but it was our first V-day as married people, so we can be excused) we don't go nuts with the spending. Our favorite Valentine's Day so far is the one after we became officially engaged, when I wrote him a love poem and printed it on a homemade, computer generated card, and he gave me a really sweet love letter. Neither cost a cent (unless you tally up the cost of ink and paper), but nevertheless we were both moved to tears by the mutual gesture. That's why this year I plan to try to top that by sitting down and handwriting a love letter to my husband. If you're like me and you think putting time and energy into your Valentine means more than the money you put into it, then these links might be for you:
One thing I'd ad to that last list: make a night of snuggling on the couch and watching her favorite romantic movies. If my husband would do this instead of grumbling about having to watch chick flicks and then finding something else to go do halfway through the movie, I'd be thrilled. It's one night, guys. It won't kill you. And it's a great way to get her in a mood for romance after the movie's over (If you want to surprise her and you don't know what her favorite movie is, a good bet is anything starring Drew Barrymore that does NOT have "Charlie's" or "Angels" in the title). |
<$Wednesday, January 30, 2008$>
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 |
<$Tuesday, January 29, 2008$>
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 $24.95 a year was a pretty reasonable price to pay for those extra functions. Still, I decided to keep looking. Yesterday I found Phixr, which turns out to be almost exactly what I wanted. It's very close to Photoshop in both function and form, and I was really impressed with how much I could do with it. The only drawback I could see was that it doesn't have a great selection of fonts to choose from. I got around this by combining it with the other two programs mentioned above. Between the three of them, I could accomplish pretty much everything I needed. In a pinch, there's also always Big Huge Labs' Flickr toys, with their motivational poster generator, ID badge maker, picture framer, and more. I used their magazine cover generator to create the home page for JMBauhaus.com. This one is a lot of fun to play with. With all of the web based applications available these days, you could easily get away with not even having any office-type software on your computer. I'm sure Microsoft is just loving that. I know I sure am. |
<$Tuesday, January 22, 2008$>
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 $310 I unwittingly spent for my "free" credit report. The actual free credit report site, set up by the three major reporting agencies in compliance with federal law, is Annualcreditreport.com. You won't get your credit score, but you will get all three reports with no hidden fees or strings attached. You can get each report once a year, but you don't have to get them all at the same time, which means you can stagger them out and check up on your credit three times a year at no cost. They also provide enough information for you to get a reasonable estimate of your credit score by using the FICO Score Estimator, which is also totally free. Monitoring your credit is a smart thing to do. Just be careful of getting sucked in by misleading advertising. Labels: credit cards, debt reduction, evil, finance+blogs, freebies |
<$Wednesday, September 12, 2007$>
Free Sporting Lessons
| *Sponsored* I've never been much for sports, as either a spectator or a participant, but with four nephews (and a fifth on the way!), you can be sure that I've attended my fair share of Little League games, and I can recognize the positive impact that involvement in team sports has had on each my nephews' development. I also understand the desire parents' have to do everything they can to give their kids a leg up in the game and help them go as far as they can in their chosen sport (and with things like possible college scholarships and potential multi-million dollar professional sports careers in the offing, who can really blame them?). Parents who can't afford private lessons might feel that their kids are at a disadvantage, but now the playing field is a bit more level. Play Sports TV is an instructional guide for sports that offers hundreds of free videos and other instructional content, including a blog with even more tips, interviews with coaches and athletes, and other kid-friendly content. They emphasize character and sportsmanship, and even offer sportsmanship training for parents, who often tend to have more at stake emotionally in each game than their kids do. All in all, this looks like a great resource for parents and young athletes alike, and the best part is, it's FREE. Labels: disclosure, freebies, PPP |
A Tale of Good Drive-Thru Service
| Decent customer service is rare these days, especially at drive-through windows where it seems that if the kids who man them have even HAD any customer service training, they can't be bothered to remember it any more than they can bother to say "Welcome to McCarl's King" or thank you for your order (or make sure you get what you ordered, for that matter). I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks, but this time of year, when the temperature dips below 65 in the mornings and actually stays below 90 all day and fall is so close you can practically smell it, I fall prey to the Pumpkin Spice Latte the same as anybody else. With yesterday being the first truly fall-like day of the season, I was jonesing for one by the time I got off work, so I went to Starbucks and placed my order at the drive-through. Now that I think of it, the kids at the Starbucks drive-through window usually are pretty courteous and thorough with the customer service. So score one for Starbucks Corp., that they actually care about such things in this age of entitlement enough to properly train their staff in the ways of treating customers like they matter. But I digress. Back to me at the drive-through yesterday. There was a line of cars in front of me, such that after I ordered I couldn't pull forward for a couple of minutes. After about half a minute passed, I realized that it was still warm enough that I'd prefer a Frappuccino, so I called out to the box and asked if it was too late to change my order. "No problem," said Taylor the Latte Boy, and adjusted my price accordingly. A few more minutes and I made it to the window, where were Taylor's dazzling All-American good looks not enough to make me fall for him while he rang up my order and handed me my beautiful cup of frozen pumpkiny, spicy goodness, I would most certainly have been done for when he then held up a lidded paper cup and said, "We already made your latte, do you want it too? No charge." And that's how I got to sip a re-heated free Pumpkin Spice Latte on the way to work this morning, filling me with a warm and happy buzz that has yet to wear off. Thanks, Starbucks. That kind of service at the very least deserves a mention. |
<$Tuesday, July 17, 2007$>
Freebies & Greenies
| In my perusal of the personal finance community, I've noticed a general interest in keeping things Green. I've also noticed a propensity for liking free stuff. Well, yes, of course, because who doesn't like free stuff? Like free graphic design, for example? The Thinking Blog, run by graphic design artist Ilker Yoldas, is holding a contest: review Ilker's blog for a chance to win a free re-design for your own blog. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but my template could use a pick-me-up, and I have neither the time, tools or know-how to do my own, nor the dosh to hire someone to do it for me. So this is one prize I would be beyond thrilled to win. As for the blog itself, The Thinking Blog is an interesting and ecclectic mix of posts on topics ranging from science & technology to the environment to Web 2.0 socialization, all designed to make you think. Ilker also offers up info and reviews on environment-, wallet- and declutterer-friendly sites such as SwitchPlanet. Best yet, if you love to get in on the ground floor and beta-test new start-ups (or if you just like the bragging rights associated with being among the first users), she also freely offers invitations to hot new start-ups. Besides looking fabulous, with a design that's clean and readable while still being visually interesting, The Thinking Blog is a neat resource for finding some pretty neat stuff. I'll definitely be adding it to my daily reads. Even if I don't win that free blog do-over. ;) |
<$Tuesday, April 24, 2007$>
Plans, frustrations and useful papercrafts
| I'm having a blogging slow-down this week as I catch up and get some stuff squared away at my job and work on finding a better work/blogging/writing balance. In the spirit of getting organized and setting goals, though, here are some topics I'd like to tackle here once my workload lightens up a bit: ~~~ That's what's on slate for the future. Meanwhile, between not being able to make a significant impact on what's left of my highest-interest credit card this month, and having to dip into our savings to get us through this pay period, I'm feeling a tad discouraged. It's not really putting me in the mood to talk about my finances. Part of the reason I'm focusing this week on getting on top of things on the job front is so that I'll have more time for some of my extra-income pursuits, such as writing for Associated Content (or referring people to sign up and write their own articles; do it through that link and I get a little referral kickback). I have plenty of article ideas, as well as things I want to add to my Etsy shop, not to mention promoting said shop; but I'm too distracted by things piling up around the office, and all of the guilt that goes with neglecting them. I think I'll be more motivated and productive on the extra earnings front once I'm not feeling quite so overwhelmed in my actual job. Which will be a very good thing, seeing as how we really need that extra cash to help us get ahead. Without it, we're just treading water. ~~~ Want to save money on what you carry it in? Check out this Instructables on making a paper wallet. I whipped one up on my coffee break a little while ago. I've been looking to replace my bulky and worn-out wallet with something less apt to weigh my purse down, and while this might not be the most fashion-conscious choice I could make, it's perfect for containing my money and credit cards without any bulk, all for the cost of a sheet of paper. As one astute commenter points out, it also doubles as a scratch pad to jot down grocery list items, and it's easily replaceable when you run out of room to write. And it's recyclable, too! Very nifty. Labels: extra income, freebies, goals, personal, random |
<$Tuesday, April 17, 2007$>
Web Tools: FICO Credit Score Estimator
| Lifehack.org (via DumbLittleMan) posted a link to a handy FICO Credit Score Estimator. I just tried it out, and it appears to be pretty accurate. Guesstimating within a range-span of 50, it estimated the range in which my credit score fell the last time I checked it a couple of months ago. It wouldn't be my go-to source if I were getting ready to apply for a loan, but it looks like a good bet for tracking my score as I work to improve it. Labels: credit cards, freebies, tools |
<$Friday, April 13, 2007$>
Free Stuff: SparklePeople.com
| Yesterday in my journal I asked my readers to help me decide whether to keep my Weight Watchers subscription and shell out the membership fee. I was considering doing so, because after 4 days into my free week-long trial membership, I was impressed with their Points Tracker and how well it was keeping me motivated and on-track. A friend commented to point me to SparkPeople.com, and after signing up, looking around the site and trying out their Nutrition Tracker and Fitness Tracker tools, I immediately cancelled my Weight Watchers membership, because, you guys, this is almost EXACTLY THE SAME THING, and it's 100% FREE. Note that I said ALMOST exactly. SP doesn't use points like WW, I suspect because the Points program is proprietary and probably has all kinds of copyrights and trademarks and patents and what-not associated with it. Instead, SP's Nutrition Tracker tracks the actual nutritional value of your meals, including calories, protein, fat and carbs. Instead of a daily points value you get a daily caloric range to shoot for. Lest this sound daunting, I've been tracking my meals and snacks all day and I have yet to have to go look up a nutrition label or do any math. They have a pretty extensive search database wherein all you need to do is look up what you're eating, enter your serving size, and it calculates all of the values for you. SparklePeople also gathers health information beyond just your weight and daily activity level to tailor a diet and fitness plan to your specific needs. The web site also has a HUGE community, complete with a message forum, and teams that you can join for added motivation. They also offer a points incentive in which you can rack up points and earn "trophies" simply by sticking to your plan and accomplishing your goals. This mainly amounts to a gold star system, but, well, I'm enough of a nerd that I'll work pretty hard to get a gold star. So color me impressed. SparklePeople gives me everything I was hoping to get out of Weight Watchers, and then some. And did I mention the part where it's FREE? Labels: freebies, healthy living |
<$Monday, April 9, 2007$>
Bad blogger!
| Color me lame. I have an excellent excuse for not blogging, though, as you already know if you follow my journal. My husband and I both came down with some kind of bug on Wednesday (which hit him harder than it hit me), and I was home sick on Thursday, which was followed by a long holiday weekend. Generally speaking, with a few exceptions, if I'm not at work, I'm not online. One of the many drawbacks of not owning a working computer. I spent today catching up and getting back into my routine. Tomorrow, I'll pay this poor, neglected baby blog some much needed attention. I have plans for it, which I hope to carry out this week and which mainly involve a redesign. I have articles planned for it, too, though, so stay tuned. There WILL be content here. In the meantime, a quick finance update: I got paid Thursday, and judging by the amount (I haven't seen my paystub yet), it looks like my raise kicked in earlier than scheduled, so there's some good news. I was able to make another dent in Chase card, as well as loading a hundred into savings. That may not sound like much, but for me that's a pretty big deal. This isn't really a general savings fund, though--it's all earmarked for when we finally move. We still need to get going on that emergency savings fund. That's going to become top priority once the moving fund is fully loaded. I did a little more personal spending on Friday than I should have, what with wanting to build myself a laptop fund and all, but it wasn't really that much, and it was my birthday, so I refuse to feel bad about it. I took advantage of a sale at Ulta to stock up on makeup items I'm about to run out of; ditto a tee-shirt sale at Target. I also found a couple of cute tops at Ross for under $10 each, and I love them, so no guilt there. The only really frivolous spending I did was stopping at Petco to pick up a treat for my aunt's poor, bored, oft-ignored budgie, and while there I bought a toy for my cats on impulse. But it was a pretty cheap toy (just some feathers and sparkly ribbon on a stick), and they love it, so I don't feel too badly about that, either. I wanted to leave off with some links, but I didn't really have time to surf around today, because I was mostly too busy obsessively playing with all of the calculators and tools over at Weightwatchers.com, where I just signed up for a free trial membership that's good for a week (long enough for me to learn all I need to about the points plan). Oh, look, there's a link, and it's for free stuff, too. So there you go. |