If you look closely, AnnJo uses random sources without actually quoting anything. Secondly, one’s point is not proven accurate by good writing and proper use of a spell-check. AnnJo claims to only work ten hours each week, so she does have more time to write long posts with questionable sources. Also, no one in this forum brought-up the legitimacy of her posts; except for AnnJo herself, as she joked about receiving payment for her efforts. There have been many stories about the RNC hiring people to “infatuate” blogs to put forth the conservative viewpoint. The fact is, AnnJo follows the “wisdom” of Phl Graham, who pushed for massive deregulation, in 1999, which resulted in sub prime lending.
Might be a good time to trade in the 15 year old Mustang with 170K miles or the 10 year old Ranger with 120K miles or the 16 year old Vette. All have been great and all still running great with hardly a problem ever. If the program does not happen, I will keep them all. Probably good for many more years. Never went back to the foriegn cars in the last 15 years cause all my american cars/trucks have been great cars.
Teacher salaries vary WIDELY by state and location. I live in Baltimore, where my first-year teaching salary is quite high ($43,000) and the cost-of-living is quite low. (I pay $435 a month for my apartment.) Right now, as a non-married 22 year old with no children of my own, sharing an apartment, I'm able to save money, even when I spend thousands of money on supplies for my classroom. (Don't forget about that expense that most teachers have. Some schools offer more supplies or offer teachers a budget for supplies, but my school seriously wouldn't even make photocopies for us. Every single copy I made for my students cost $.05. It adds up. Also bought whiteboards as we didn't have enough board space to adequately teach all 5 subjects. $100 each. We didn't have any computers, I had a Special Education class, thought we really needed one, got fed up, bought one for the classroom, $400. But I digress...)
Like someone said above, the HOURLY pay of a teacher is quite low, especially if you're the kind of teacher who works 10-12 hr days 4-5 days a week and at least 3-6 hours over the weekend. 56 hrs a week @ $43,000 averages out to about $13-15/hr. No, it isn't minimum wage. No, it's better than many other people are getting right now. But considering the amount of work that goes into teaching---both before employment (Bachelor's Degree, several standardized tests, certification costs, Master's degree costs) and during (TEACHING, counseling, grading, cleaning, organizing, mentoring, paperwork, etc.) it doesn't pay nearly enough as it should to keep the best, most qualified, most effective teachers in the field. Most teachers quit within the first 5 years of teaching, just when they're finally hitting their stride. Studies have shown that most teachers don't quit because of the salary, BUT, it can be a deciding factor. In some areas of the country, it's very easy to replace teachers. But in other areas (like Baltimore!) there is a true shortage of qualified, experienced, effective teachers, especially in the very intensive fields of Science, Math, and Special Education. If you already feel abused and disrespected on a constant basis, as it's easy to feel at times as an inner-city teacher, that higher paying consulting job or something similar gets more and more enticing every day...
I LOVE teaching. I am trying to make the wisest choices possible so that I can pay off my atrocious student loans and have a good nest egg saved up for when I'm older and looking to buy a small house. It is definitely possible.
Well, what I was thinking about was arranging so that savings got taken out of the paycheck automatically, so that just enough money went into the checking account to pay bills (which would also be set up paid automatically). Enough money to cover budgeted cash expenses would go into an account where cash could be withdrawn (or accessed with a debit card).
The point would be to arrange things so that any over-spending had implications that required affirmative steps to enable it--money would have to be transfered from savings before it could be spent.
It doesn't keep you from spending it, but it does keep you from imagining that you're not blowing the budget when you actually are.
Living in the UK, married couples are treated much more as separate individuals than they are seem to be in the US - in particular you aren't responsible for your spouse's debt unless it's a joint account.
Also, it used to be common in working class northern families for the matriarch to control the money, giving only the excess from his wage packet back to her husband. Still that's only a reversal of the husband controlling.
I'm happily single at the moment, and I reckon that being sensible about money and realising that you must spend less than you earn is probably one of the more important things about a future partner.
That's b/c you're small minded and assume, so wrong. How do you know that that's not true. So you mean to tell me out of everyone alive that's in the working field, no one can have a smooth ride? You're full of crap, b/c I've never had any problems with anyone at the job and I've been working since 1994.
If necessary, set up a system of accounts that make it easy to pay for things in line with the budget and difficult to pay for things that aren't in the budget.
I'm allergic to Kiwi, (the go to the emergency room type of allergy). Is it necessary to find a substitute for it in the recipe, or ok to omit it all together?
I was very skeptical with this "just ask" business because there are some customer reps who are aggressive and I am by no means considered aggressive in nature. So I took a deep breath and just called AMEX. At first, I couldn't do anything because my husband is the primary account holder but once we squared that over, the customer rep lowered our APR to 10.25 percent from 18.99 percent. At first, I wanted to fight for them to lower it more but decided to just accept it. It was great. All my husband and I had to do was ask. You should really try it.
My Wisebread comes in the the next day, so I was slightly floored by this post - then I realized, "ahh...something is going on here, hey - this thing is dated yesterday!"
And we're in CA, so the tax bennie will be nice, assuming it doesn't phase out at a certain income level.
I enjoy reading about people driving their cars 20+ years. We just bought a Honda, so I hope it lasts that long. Sadly, we replaced the Prizm (Corolla) as it was totaled in an accident (hubby and child were fine).
I figure with an '06 Toyota and an '09 Honda, we won't need to buy a car for awhile. Maybe we'll send our 3-year old off to college in one of them.
Oh, and I ride my bike to work fairly often (depending a bit on my schedule and the weather). I have ridden the 10 miles in less than 40 degree weather. It was chilly, but with a scarf, gloves, and thick socks, totally doable.
I have good decent bike paths and roads though. If I lived in the country (like my family) - no way am I riding my bike on narrow roads where people drive 55.
If you plan your travels and plan not to spend extravagantly Nora's figure of $10K per person is quite doable. Hostels, traveling in inexpensive countries and cooking for yourself whenever possible will allow you to save cash so you can travel farther and longer. This is exactly the idea I had when I started my round the world trip.
Hey, if the government can print money, and the government is by the people, for the people, etc., why shouldn't the people be able to print money also? Heck, we can call be millionaires, think of the psychological value!
I totally agree with Ash (above). Teachers here start at 42,000. Now compare that with someone working at Walmart for min. wage and tell me about making ends meet. I find it really hard to feel bad for them (especially when I'm shlupping into my county employee job on a hot summer day-lol!) and because teachers have so many programs available to them for continuing education, loan reimbursement,etc. But I bet in every field there is a low end, and maybe some teachers are not being paid what they are worth. I don't even want to know what my college profs are making...
I'm a stay at home mom to one little boy with hopefully more children in our future. My husband works full-time and I have a business that I run from home part-time. Our house and lifestyle are far from luxury, but considering the amount of money we would have to pay for child care, commuting, professional attire and other expenses, we are probably saving money by my not working. Plus, I'm able to take on paid gigs when I can fit them into my schedule. I'm also in charge of deciding (for the most part) what we buy and what we don't buy so I consider my frugality, couponing, rebating, deal hunting etc a part-time job as well. What I do in these areas makes my husband's paycheck go further and these are rather time-consuming tasks that I might not be able to do at the level I do if I was working outside the home. It works for us while the kiddos are young!
You're spot on when you say you need to balance quality with savings. I try to get brand names when they're on sale, but sometimes I don't have time to run out and face the crowds. I do get a fair bit off vente-privee.com as their stuff is usually 70% off, although you have to get up early and your order takes a while to arrive, but it's worth it in the end IMO! Use my email as a sponsor if you want to have a look: wlfoot@yahoo.co.uk
All you need is a product called Zoom 5900 then have your land line servives removed. By law all unactive land lines must still be able to reach 911. The zoom 5900 box will switch from skype to land line by pressing the # key. So basically all you have to do is press #911, and no phone land line bill is ever needed again.
Honestly? Compared to what I was making before a teacher's salary would be a HUGE step up for me. Granted, I live in a LCOL area, but at least here in Cinci I don't think teachers have bad salaries at all.
I'm in school to get my masters in education right now so that I can teach. I had a lot of motivations for doing this that were focused on this being the right profession for me and doing what I love, but I would be lying if I said the giant increase in salary was not a motivator.
Even though I hate it, my Husband makes us RUN OUR CARS TO THE GRAVE!!!!
And it's smart, actually.
When we buy a car, we're not looking to buy something with good trade in value.
We are looking to run that car till it can't be fixed anymore.
Hopefully that is PAST the 5 years it takes to pay it off!
There's just something great about paying that last payment on your car, and getting the title in the mail.
You ACTUALLY OWN that car!
The temptation comes every once in a while, don't get me wrong...I'd LOVE to get a new car, with all the new bells and whistles that always seem to come out RIGHT AFTER you buy a car!
But...there's more to life than driving a shiny new toy.
It's JUST to get you there and back, really.
After you step out of it, it matters what YOU look like...not what your horse and buggy look like, right?
We bought a new Toyota minivan in 2004. Hopefully it's got at least another 5 years left after we're done the payments!
That way, we can LIVE LARGE, with our EXTRA $500 a month!!!!
Woooo hoooooo!
Yup- this economy is getting us out to buy - we figured we would need to replace our 9 yr +, 100,000 miles + cars in the next 2 yrs anyway.
Just got a honda for over 35% off sticker and with prices as such, I am looking at far "fancier with more saftey features" cars than I thought possible for my budget of about $ 20-22,000... most initial offers from dealers on cars I am interested in have been over $6,000 off sticker to start.
the dealers are willing to move the cars- they are hurting- most of teh time we were the only customers in the place.
we are fortunate to have very stable jobs and the foresight to drive the cars into teh ground before jumping into a new one.
I'm 40, been driving my own car since 18 and this new car I am shopping for now is only the 3nd car I will have had.
Great Fools Day Article.... but be careful, don't give the loonies in Washington (both parties) and crazy ideas!
If you look closely, AnnJo uses random sources without actually quoting anything. Secondly, one’s point is not proven accurate by good writing and proper use of a spell-check. AnnJo claims to only work ten hours each week, so she does have more time to write long posts with questionable sources. Also, no one in this forum brought-up the legitimacy of her posts; except for AnnJo herself, as she joked about receiving payment for her efforts. There have been many stories about the RNC hiring people to “infatuate” blogs to put forth the conservative viewpoint. The fact is, AnnJo follows the “wisdom” of Phl Graham, who pushed for massive deregulation, in 1999, which resulted in sub prime lending.
Might be a good time to trade in the 15 year old Mustang with 170K miles or the 10 year old Ranger with 120K miles or the 16 year old Vette. All have been great and all still running great with hardly a problem ever. If the program does not happen, I will keep them all. Probably good for many more years. Never went back to the foriegn cars in the last 15 years cause all my american cars/trucks have been great cars.
Teacher salaries vary WIDELY by state and location. I live in Baltimore, where my first-year teaching salary is quite high ($43,000) and the cost-of-living is quite low. (I pay $435 a month for my apartment.) Right now, as a non-married 22 year old with no children of my own, sharing an apartment, I'm able to save money, even when I spend thousands of money on supplies for my classroom. (Don't forget about that expense that most teachers have. Some schools offer more supplies or offer teachers a budget for supplies, but my school seriously wouldn't even make photocopies for us. Every single copy I made for my students cost $.05. It adds up. Also bought whiteboards as we didn't have enough board space to adequately teach all 5 subjects. $100 each. We didn't have any computers, I had a Special Education class, thought we really needed one, got fed up, bought one for the classroom, $400. But I digress...)
Like someone said above, the HOURLY pay of a teacher is quite low, especially if you're the kind of teacher who works 10-12 hr days 4-5 days a week and at least 3-6 hours over the weekend. 56 hrs a week @ $43,000 averages out to about $13-15/hr. No, it isn't minimum wage. No, it's better than many other people are getting right now. But considering the amount of work that goes into teaching---both before employment (Bachelor's Degree, several standardized tests, certification costs, Master's degree costs) and during (TEACHING, counseling, grading, cleaning, organizing, mentoring, paperwork, etc.) it doesn't pay nearly enough as it should to keep the best, most qualified, most effective teachers in the field. Most teachers quit within the first 5 years of teaching, just when they're finally hitting their stride. Studies have shown that most teachers don't quit because of the salary, BUT, it can be a deciding factor. In some areas of the country, it's very easy to replace teachers. But in other areas (like Baltimore!) there is a true shortage of qualified, experienced, effective teachers, especially in the very intensive fields of Science, Math, and Special Education. If you already feel abused and disrespected on a constant basis, as it's easy to feel at times as an inner-city teacher, that higher paying consulting job or something similar gets more and more enticing every day...
I LOVE teaching. I am trying to make the wisest choices possible so that I can pay off my atrocious student loans and have a good nest egg saved up for when I'm older and looking to buy a small house. It is definitely possible.
@ J.:
Well, what I was thinking about was arranging so that savings got taken out of the paycheck automatically, so that just enough money went into the checking account to pay bills (which would also be set up paid automatically). Enough money to cover budgeted cash expenses would go into an account where cash could be withdrawn (or accessed with a debit card).
The point would be to arrange things so that any over-spending had implications that required affirmative steps to enable it--money would have to be transfered from savings before it could be spent.
It doesn't keep you from spending it, but it does keep you from imagining that you're not blowing the budget when you actually are.
I like this.
Living in the UK, married couples are treated much more as separate individuals than they are seem to be in the US - in particular you aren't responsible for your spouse's debt unless it's a joint account.
Also, it used to be common in working class northern families for the matriarch to control the money, giving only the excess from his wage packet back to her husband. Still that's only a reversal of the husband controlling.
I'm happily single at the moment, and I reckon that being sensible about money and realising that you must spend less than you earn is probably one of the more important things about a future partner.
That's b/c you're small minded and assume, so wrong. How do you know that that's not true. So you mean to tell me out of everyone alive that's in the working field, no one can have a smooth ride? You're full of crap, b/c I've never had any problems with anyone at the job and I've been working since 1994.
If necessary, set up a system of accounts that make it easy to pay for things in line with the budget and difficult to pay for things that aren't in the budget.
Could you give some examples of how to do that?
Thank you.
I'm allergic to Kiwi, (the go to the emergency room type of allergy). Is it necessary to find a substitute for it in the recipe, or ok to omit it all together?
Very funny! Loved it.
I was very skeptical with this "just ask" business because there are some customer reps who are aggressive and I am by no means considered aggressive in nature. So I took a deep breath and just called AMEX. At first, I couldn't do anything because my husband is the primary account holder but once we squared that over, the customer rep lowered our APR to 10.25 percent from 18.99 percent. At first, I wanted to fight for them to lower it more but decided to just accept it. It was great. All my husband and I had to do was ask. You should really try it.
He claims it's not just for the summer vacations, but I have my doubts. Seriously, he seems pretty determined. I'll have to pick this book up for him.
My Wisebread comes in the the next day, so I was slightly floored by this post - then I realized, "ahh...something is going on here, hey - this thing is dated yesterday!"
And we're in CA, so the tax bennie will be nice, assuming it doesn't phase out at a certain income level.
I enjoy reading about people driving their cars 20+ years. We just bought a Honda, so I hope it lasts that long. Sadly, we replaced the Prizm (Corolla) as it was totaled in an accident (hubby and child were fine).
I figure with an '06 Toyota and an '09 Honda, we won't need to buy a car for awhile. Maybe we'll send our 3-year old off to college in one of them.
Oh, and I ride my bike to work fairly often (depending a bit on my schedule and the weather). I have ridden the 10 miles in less than 40 degree weather. It was chilly, but with a scarf, gloves, and thick socks, totally doable.
I have good decent bike paths and roads though. If I lived in the country (like my family) - no way am I riding my bike on narrow roads where people drive 55.
If you plan your travels and plan not to spend extravagantly Nora's figure of $10K per person is quite doable. Hostels, traveling in inexpensive countries and cooking for yourself whenever possible will allow you to save cash so you can travel farther and longer. This is exactly the idea I had when I started my round the world trip.
Hey, if the government can print money, and the government is by the people, for the people, etc., why shouldn't the people be able to print money also? Heck, we can call be millionaires, think of the psychological value!
Whew. You really had me. Our Wisebread comes the next day in our inbox, so I was totally thrown off. Glad I read the comments.
I totally agree with Ash (above). Teachers here start at 42,000. Now compare that with someone working at Walmart for min. wage and tell me about making ends meet. I find it really hard to feel bad for them (especially when I'm shlupping into my county employee job on a hot summer day-lol!) and because teachers have so many programs available to them for continuing education, loan reimbursement,etc. But I bet in every field there is a low end, and maybe some teachers are not being paid what they are worth. I don't even want to know what my college profs are making...
Very funny.
I'm a stay at home mom to one little boy with hopefully more children in our future. My husband works full-time and I have a business that I run from home part-time. Our house and lifestyle are far from luxury, but considering the amount of money we would have to pay for child care, commuting, professional attire and other expenses, we are probably saving money by my not working. Plus, I'm able to take on paid gigs when I can fit them into my schedule. I'm also in charge of deciding (for the most part) what we buy and what we don't buy so I consider my frugality, couponing, rebating, deal hunting etc a part-time job as well. What I do in these areas makes my husband's paycheck go further and these are rather time-consuming tasks that I might not be able to do at the level I do if I was working outside the home. It works for us while the kiddos are young!
You're spot on when you say you need to balance quality with savings. I try to get brand names when they're on sale, but sometimes I don't have time to run out and face the crowds. I do get a fair bit off vente-privee.com as their stuff is usually 70% off, although you have to get up early and your order takes a while to arrive, but it's worth it in the end IMO! Use my email as a sponsor if you want to have a look: wlfoot@yahoo.co.uk
All you need is a product called Zoom 5900 then have your land line servives removed. By law all unactive land lines must still be able to reach 911. The zoom 5900 box will switch from skype to land line by pressing the # key. So basically all you have to do is press #911, and no phone land line bill is ever needed again.
Honestly? Compared to what I was making before a teacher's salary would be a HUGE step up for me. Granted, I live in a LCOL area, but at least here in Cinci I don't think teachers have bad salaries at all.
I'm in school to get my masters in education right now so that I can teach. I had a lot of motivations for doing this that were focused on this being the right profession for me and doing what I love, but I would be lying if I said the giant increase in salary was not a motivator.
Even though I hate it, my Husband makes us RUN OUR CARS TO THE GRAVE!!!!
And it's smart, actually.
When we buy a car, we're not looking to buy something with good trade in value.
We are looking to run that car till it can't be fixed anymore.
Hopefully that is PAST the 5 years it takes to pay it off!
There's just something great about paying that last payment on your car, and getting the title in the mail.
You ACTUALLY OWN that car!
The temptation comes every once in a while, don't get me wrong...I'd LOVE to get a new car, with all the new bells and whistles that always seem to come out RIGHT AFTER you buy a car!
But...there's more to life than driving a shiny new toy.
It's JUST to get you there and back, really.
After you step out of it, it matters what YOU look like...not what your horse and buggy look like, right?
We bought a new Toyota minivan in 2004. Hopefully it's got at least another 5 years left after we're done the payments!
That way, we can LIVE LARGE, with our EXTRA $500 a month!!!!
Woooo hoooooo!
Yup- this economy is getting us out to buy - we figured we would need to replace our 9 yr +, 100,000 miles + cars in the next 2 yrs anyway.
Just got a honda for over 35% off sticker and with prices as such, I am looking at far "fancier with more saftey features" cars than I thought possible for my budget of about $ 20-22,000... most initial offers from dealers on cars I am interested in have been over $6,000 off sticker to start.
the dealers are willing to move the cars- they are hurting- most of teh time we were the only customers in the place.
we are fortunate to have very stable jobs and the foresight to drive the cars into teh ground before jumping into a new one.
I'm 40, been driving my own car since 18 and this new car I am shopping for now is only the 3nd car I will have had.