It does take a little bit of time to completely figure out. I did the CVS deals really aggressively a few months ago, and now I don't need to go (I have a good stockpile). I've given products to family and charities.
If you have a Walgreens or Rite Aid, you can also get some great freebies there.
The CVS program would challenge the best coupon maven. But I have beaten it a couple of times. I got $25 gift card for changing over a prescription. And periodically I go to their website and am eligible for no strings attached $2.50 coupons.
I've started leaving my CVS ExtraBucks coupons in my car so I am not caught without them. And I work hard not to buy things I wouldn't have bought otherwise. This can be challenging when you're trying to reach the $15, and if you're not careful you end up paying a premium price for something you wouldn't have bought to get there.
Yes, she brings home a TON of stuff that we don't need or use. But she also gets a ton for free that we ~do~ use, especially with the extra-care-bucks "overage" that she accumulates. For example, milk prices are through the roof right now... it's cheaper to feed our kids a glass of 89-octane than it is for 1%-lowfat. However, her ECBs give us a constant supply of milk for free.
So what do we do with all that extra stuff we don't need? On a quarterly basis, we give them to charities. Win-win all around. Make-up, shampoo, etc. go to womens' shelters, extra food/drinks to homeless shelters, arts/crafts to Ronald McDonald house ... We feel good, get free stuff, and *bonus* get tax deductions.
And she does all of this mostly because she likes the "game" of it. Other than the extra space that we sacrifice, I can't complain!
and wonder why I'm not saving like some of the others I'm reading about online...I mean, I buy most of our paper products and toiletries at Costco...so, like you, I have jugs of shampoo and the like already on-hand. I do have a friend who claims when she goes to shop at CVS, they have to pay HER money...but then again, this is the same friend who can't use her bathtub because it is stacked to the ceiling with toilet paper and papertowels...I kid you not. Thanks for Moneysavingmom's link...I hadn't heard of that one!
Though it might work, it is not the best solution. Maybe it would be more efficient preventing non-used applications to occupy memory? not loading quicktime/itunes and msn at start-up of your computer for example would be more constructive.
Even a better solution would be installing an operating system that does not keep all unnecessary stuff in memory, so you can keep your compuer turned on for weeks/months/years, without slowing it down....
P.S.: rumors go that Linus Thorvalds doesn't even know that you can power off a computer.....
Great solution...I tried it and liked it. By some of the comments above, apparently some of the techno-geeks are offended...too bad for them. I use my laptop all the time and noticed an immediate improvement in speed. If there are any geeks - with positive attitudes - out there with some other good ideas, please post.
I was trying to cover the whole spectrum from roommates to people who are part of your family, including everything in between.
I think having a whole house that includes nothing but a nuclear family is great--but I also think it's a great luxury that was unavailable to anyone but the wealthy for most of human history. The many problems of sharing your living space (whether with strangers, friends, lovers, distant family, or close family) are nothing new--people everywhere have been dealing with them for as long as there have been houses. There are social conventions for dealing with them, but people in wealthy countries (and especially in the US) have begun to forget them.
I think the fear that strangers would be a threat to kids is way over-blown (after all, a boarder would certainly have less unsupervised access to the children than a babysitter), but that doesn't make it any less sincere.
Without a job due to a tech bust layoff, I went 14 months unable to find work, after having just received a promotion (the company had never laid off anyone previously, and my career path looked rock solid) and buying a house. I had a year's worth of emergency fund, but some unexpected repairs ate it in eight months. I then had to turn to my credit card, which I deliberately kept with a low limit, and finally a high-interest consumer loan to survive the drought. When I got work again, I started paying off and am now free of all debt other than my mortgage. But if I had been denied access to a total of $10,000 in credit because of how suddenly I had needed to access it, I literally would have lost everything and been homeless.
Long story short -- they need to have in place a way of overriding this decision to allow responsible people access to the credit they have earned in times of emergency.
My pressure cooker just has a different "full" line if you're cooking lentils.
I think the issue is simply that lentils foam up a bit, meaning that there's a danger that the pressure control valve can get blocked. If you follow the instructions, and don't over-fill the cooker, it's safe enough.
I think the only time I lived truly "alone" was for a 2-month stretch after I split up with a boyfriend and he moved out of our 2-br apt, and before I found another roommate. (Although I did have a long period as a single parent when I was the only adult in the household). With kids in the house now, I am less worried about tenants disrupting family life as I am about kids disrupting tenants' life!
I guess one caution I would add is that shared housing can be a boon, but it can also open you up to financial risks. If you sign a 1-year lease on a 2 or 3 br apartment and are dependent on more than one income to pay the rent, what happens when one roommate loses a job? Or if you buy a house and need rental income to meet the mortgage, and your tenant decides to move to Kansas for some girl he met on the Internet?
Even if you're not broke, grocery stores are a wonderful cultural experience. Who doesn't get excited over all those cheeses and olives? It often makes me sad that I can't put liquids in my suitcase, since there are always sauces or mustards or wines that I'd love to try at home . . .
I think your flub was a blessing in disguise. Any interviewer who would become angry is a poor representative of a company or business. Imagine working in that climate....
I'm amazed at how much drag is created by the snow on my car. I live in the mountains. I usually have to down-shift considerably to stay below 55 MPH on the steep, downhill runs. If the car is covered with snow, it stays below the speed limit when coasting down the mountain in neutral. I estimate that that the snow creates enough drag to slow me down at least 20 MPH, probably more.
Going back up the hill, my hybrid is much happier at 55 MPH than it is at 70 MPH. It has to be totally floored to go 70, but it loafs along at 55. It stands to reason that the car will last a lot longer if not abused. And, it's safer to drive at a relaxed speed.
What you seem to be talking about is the roommate solution. For a number of years, I lived in a house that varied between 4-6 adults living there. Prior to that I lived in a room rented from a friend of the family, a single woman with four kids, two of whom, as 16-18 years old, were practically adults. Before that I lived with my mother and step-father and carried a good portion of the rent. A one point I lived with my long-time boyfriend and his mother. In fact, many, many people know have live in some combination of all these situations throughout their adult lives. Gone are the days when we can live alone.
The problem with living with more than one adult is more complicated than simply chalking it up to a fear of strangers.
There are matters of respect, other people's issues and dysfunctions, cultural clashes (meaning that even people from statistically similar cultures are often raised to behave toward, react to, look at life in strikingly different ways that others often cannot handle because of drastically different lifestyles or, experiences). I have never seen an instances of pooling resources and sharing food work out. Some people do not even know how to share a TV. Everybody's version of good housekeeping varies in sometimes volatile ways. And stories of slackers, con-artists and horrifying accounts of general disrepect abound.
Quite simply, I 've never seen it work for any decent length of time.
This is why people avoid, as much as possible, having to ever resort or, go back to that kind of living arrangment
The HELOC is only calculated from the time at which you borrow from it, but the mortgage is at a constant rate and time. The optimal position for savings will occur if you do not let your "idle" funds sit in your checking account, but use them to pay down your HELOC account until you need them. It is more about timing to optimize all of your income.
The HELOC is only calculated from the time at which you borrow from it, but the mortgage is at a constant rate and time. The optimal position for savings will occur if you do not let your "idle" funds sit in your checking account, but use them to pay down your HELOC account until you need them. It is more about timing to optimize all of your income.
Finally! Maybe this is the path to a better credit scoring system where people with out of control spending will have a harder time bringing themselves to default. Having a credit limit that is higher than a month's wage income never was a good idea in the first place.
I think that hostels are very accepting of older travelers. While I do agree the scene tends to be students and younger people, I have stayed with many middle-age and older travelers in hostels. I have even been to a few that advertise senior discounts!
Of course, there are many, many accommodation options open to the traveler. Often, determining the best option for a group or individual is dependent on the region. For example, in Europe pensions, kind of in between a bed and breakfast and small hotel, are often the cheapest option for a group of two to three. In China, almost every hotel has a dorm room that is much cheaper than a regular room. Almost anywhere, a large group would be better off renting a house or apartment.
All that said, I agree with Nora that most of the time accomodation splits between 'hostel style' or 'hotel style'. Great overview of what to expect from the two!
I also love instuctables. It is a great place to go if you are convinced you can make a better product than those available in the store. Two of my favorites are the tyvek wallet and this album cover notebook.
My husband and I lived in a converted garage, a 17' x 20' space with bathroom, kitchenette, living and sleeping area for 25 years, for financial reasons. Anyway, being organized is KEY. We have recently moved to a space 4 times larger, but my organizational skills have paid off here too. Examples, have only the pots and pans you will use, there is no need to have a 40 pc set, same with drinking glasses, I don't need to store 8 juice, 8 high-ball, 8 tumblers, 8 medium size glasses work for all situations. Your ideas are all wonderful and I am sure came with experience, trial and error and a lot of "um.....let me think a minute", moments.
It looks like the right hand side might say "atlantic herring" or something like that. Who in the world would eat fish mouths? All those sharp teeth would be a pain to pick around.
It looks like the right hand side might say "altantic herring" or something like that. Who in the world would eat fish mouths? All those sharp teeth would be a pain to pick around.
I currently live in a two family home (a house with a built on in-law suite) with a total of 8 people. We have 1 retired senior citizen, 2 semi-retired 60 something adults, me, my wife and our 3 children. We're the modern day Waltons with 4 generations under one roof.
Where does the live-in phsycologist reside; you might ask? Well I tell you it's not as bad as it might seem. We haven't really done this out of necessity either.
My father-in-law is old-school Pennsylvania Dutch through and through. They believe in family taking care of their elders until they die, and on ensuring the family "home-stead" stays within the family. My wife's two sisters had no desire to maintain the home and both of my wife's parents were getting to the age where they didn't want the burdern of maintaining the 30 year old house and 3.5 acres.
What do we get out of all of this? An interest free, seller financed loan for the $300,000.00 home. In this part of the country, this situation isn't all that rare.
It does take a little bit of time to completely figure out. I did the CVS deals really aggressively a few months ago, and now I don't need to go (I have a good stockpile). I've given products to family and charities.
If you have a Walgreens or Rite Aid, you can also get some great freebies there.
The CVS program would challenge the best coupon maven. But I have beaten it a couple of times. I got $25 gift card for changing over a prescription. And periodically I go to their website and am eligible for no strings attached $2.50 coupons.
I've started leaving my CVS ExtraBucks coupons in my car so I am not caught without them. And I work hard not to buy things I wouldn't have bought otherwise. This can be challenging when you're trying to reach the $15, and if you're not careful you end up paying a premium price for something you wouldn't have bought to get there.
Good luck with it. Let us know how you do!
Yes, she brings home a TON of stuff that we don't need or use. But she also gets a ton for free that we ~do~ use, especially with the extra-care-bucks "overage" that she accumulates. For example, milk prices are through the roof right now... it's cheaper to feed our kids a glass of 89-octane than it is for 1%-lowfat. However, her ECBs give us a constant supply of milk for free.
So what do we do with all that extra stuff we don't need? On a quarterly basis, we give them to charities. Win-win all around. Make-up, shampoo, etc. go to womens' shelters, extra food/drinks to homeless shelters, arts/crafts to Ronald McDonald house ... We feel good, get free stuff, and *bonus* get tax deductions.
And she does all of this mostly because she likes the "game" of it. Other than the extra space that we sacrifice, I can't complain!
It only takes one time and then the CVS addiction will set in.. soon you will be piled up with more crap then you know what to do with :)
and wonder why I'm not saving like some of the others I'm reading about online...I mean, I buy most of our paper products and toiletries at Costco...so, like you, I have jugs of shampoo and the like already on-hand. I do have a friend who claims when she goes to shop at CVS, they have to pay HER money...but then again, this is the same friend who can't use her bathtub because it is stacked to the ceiling with toilet paper and papertowels...I kid you not. Thanks for Moneysavingmom's link...I hadn't heard of that one!
Is there anyway to do the computer thing on macs?
Though it might work, it is not the best solution. Maybe it would be more efficient preventing non-used applications to occupy memory? not loading quicktime/itunes and msn at start-up of your computer for example would be more constructive.
Even a better solution would be installing an operating system that does not keep all unnecessary stuff in memory, so you can keep your compuer turned on for weeks/months/years, without slowing it down....
P.S.: rumors go that Linus Thorvalds doesn't even know that you can power off a computer.....
Great solution...I tried it and liked it. By some of the comments above, apparently some of the techno-geeks are offended...too bad for them. I use my laptop all the time and noticed an immediate improvement in speed. If there are any geeks - with positive attitudes - out there with some other good ideas, please post.
Thanks for all the good comments!
I was trying to cover the whole spectrum from roommates to people who are part of your family, including everything in between.
I think having a whole house that includes nothing but a nuclear family is great--but I also think it's a great luxury that was unavailable to anyone but the wealthy for most of human history. The many problems of sharing your living space (whether with strangers, friends, lovers, distant family, or close family) are nothing new--people everywhere have been dealing with them for as long as there have been houses. There are social conventions for dealing with them, but people in wealthy countries (and especially in the US) have begun to forget them.
I think the fear that strangers would be a threat to kids is way over-blown (after all, a boarder would certainly have less unsupervised access to the children than a babysitter), but that doesn't make it any less sincere.
Without a job due to a tech bust layoff, I went 14 months unable to find work, after having just received a promotion (the company had never laid off anyone previously, and my career path looked rock solid) and buying a house. I had a year's worth of emergency fund, but some unexpected repairs ate it in eight months. I then had to turn to my credit card, which I deliberately kept with a low limit, and finally a high-interest consumer loan to survive the drought. When I got work again, I started paying off and am now free of all debt other than my mortgage. But if I had been denied access to a total of $10,000 in credit because of how suddenly I had needed to access it, I literally would have lost everything and been homeless.
Long story short -- they need to have in place a way of overriding this decision to allow responsible people access to the credit they have earned in times of emergency.
My pressure cooker just has a different "full" line if you're cooking lentils.
I think the issue is simply that lentils foam up a bit, meaning that there's a danger that the pressure control valve can get blocked. If you follow the instructions, and don't over-fill the cooker, it's safe enough.
I think the only time I lived truly "alone" was for a 2-month stretch after I split up with a boyfriend and he moved out of our 2-br apt, and before I found another roommate. (Although I did have a long period as a single parent when I was the only adult in the household). With kids in the house now, I am less worried about tenants disrupting family life as I am about kids disrupting tenants' life!
I guess one caution I would add is that shared housing can be a boon, but it can also open you up to financial risks. If you sign a 1-year lease on a 2 or 3 br apartment and are dependent on more than one income to pay the rent, what happens when one roommate loses a job? Or if you buy a house and need rental income to meet the mortgage, and your tenant decides to move to Kansas for some girl he met on the Internet?
Savvy travelers with hardly any means find groceries the only way to go. I covered this topic in my series "Budget Eats" and "Budget Drinks," as well as how to picnic like a pro in "Fighting Hunger on the Road."
Even if you're not broke, grocery stores are a wonderful cultural experience. Who doesn't get excited over all those cheeses and olives? It often makes me sad that I can't put liquids in my suitcase, since there are always sauces or mustards or wines that I'd love to try at home . . .
I think your flub was a blessing in disguise. Any interviewer who would become angry is a poor representative of a company or business. Imagine working in that climate....
I'm amazed at how much drag is created by the snow on my car. I live in the mountains. I usually have to down-shift considerably to stay below 55 MPH on the steep, downhill runs. If the car is covered with snow, it stays below the speed limit when coasting down the mountain in neutral. I estimate that that the snow creates enough drag to slow me down at least 20 MPH, probably more.
Going back up the hill, my hybrid is much happier at 55 MPH than it is at 70 MPH. It has to be totally floored to go 70, but it loafs along at 55. It stands to reason that the car will last a lot longer if not abused. And, it's safer to drive at a relaxed speed.
What you seem to be talking about is the roommate solution. For a number of years, I lived in a house that varied between 4-6 adults living there. Prior to that I lived in a room rented from a friend of the family, a single woman with four kids, two of whom, as 16-18 years old, were practically adults. Before that I lived with my mother and step-father and carried a good portion of the rent. A one point I lived with my long-time boyfriend and his mother. In fact, many, many people know have live in some combination of all these situations throughout their adult lives. Gone are the days when we can live alone.
The problem with living with more than one adult is more complicated than simply chalking it up to a fear of strangers.
There are matters of respect, other people's issues and dysfunctions, cultural clashes (meaning that even people from statistically similar cultures are often raised to behave toward, react to, look at life in strikingly different ways that others often cannot handle because of drastically different lifestyles or, experiences). I have never seen an instances of pooling resources and sharing food work out. Some people do not even know how to share a TV. Everybody's version of good housekeeping varies in sometimes volatile ways. And stories of slackers, con-artists and horrifying accounts of general disrepect abound.
Quite simply, I 've never seen it work for any decent length of time.
This is why people avoid, as much as possible, having to ever resort or, go back to that kind of living arrangment
The HELOC is only calculated from the time at which you borrow from it, but the mortgage is at a constant rate and time. The optimal position for savings will occur if you do not let your "idle" funds sit in your checking account, but use them to pay down your HELOC account until you need them. It is more about timing to optimize all of your income.
The HELOC is only calculated from the time at which you borrow from it, but the mortgage is at a constant rate and time. The optimal position for savings will occur if you do not let your "idle" funds sit in your checking account, but use them to pay down your HELOC account until you need them. It is more about timing to optimize all of your income.
Finally! Maybe this is the path to a better credit scoring system where people with out of control spending will have a harder time bringing themselves to default. Having a credit limit that is higher than a month's wage income never was a good idea in the first place.
I think that hostels are very accepting of older travelers. While I do agree the scene tends to be students and younger people, I have stayed with many middle-age and older travelers in hostels. I have even been to a few that advertise senior discounts!
Of course, there are many, many accommodation options open to the traveler. Often, determining the best option for a group or individual is dependent on the region. For example, in Europe pensions, kind of in between a bed and breakfast and small hotel, are often the cheapest option for a group of two to three. In China, almost every hotel has a dorm room that is much cheaper than a regular room. Almost anywhere, a large group would be better off renting a house or apartment.
All that said, I agree with Nora that most of the time accomodation splits between 'hostel style' or 'hotel style'. Great overview of what to expect from the two!
I also love instuctables. It is a great place to go if you are convinced you can make a better product than those available in the store. Two of my favorites are the tyvek wallet and this album cover notebook.
My husband and I lived in a converted garage, a 17' x 20' space with bathroom, kitchenette, living and sleeping area for 25 years, for financial reasons. Anyway, being organized is KEY. We have recently moved to a space 4 times larger, but my organizational skills have paid off here too. Examples, have only the pots and pans you will use, there is no need to have a 40 pc set, same with drinking glasses, I don't need to store 8 juice, 8 high-ball, 8 tumblers, 8 medium size glasses work for all situations. Your ideas are all wonderful and I am sure came with experience, trial and error and a lot of "um.....let me think a minute", moments.
It looks like the right hand side might say "atlantic herring" or something like that. Who in the world would eat fish mouths? All those sharp teeth would be a pain to pick around.
It looks like the right hand side might say "altantic herring" or something like that. Who in the world would eat fish mouths? All those sharp teeth would be a pain to pick around.
I currently live in a two family home (a house with a built on in-law suite) with a total of 8 people. We have 1 retired senior citizen, 2 semi-retired 60 something adults, me, my wife and our 3 children. We're the modern day Waltons with 4 generations under one roof.
Where does the live-in phsycologist reside; you might ask? Well I tell you it's not as bad as it might seem. We haven't really done this out of necessity either.
My father-in-law is old-school Pennsylvania Dutch through and through. They believe in family taking care of their elders until they die, and on ensuring the family "home-stead" stays within the family. My wife's two sisters had no desire to maintain the home and both of my wife's parents were getting to the age where they didn't want the burdern of maintaining the 30 year old house and 3.5 acres.
What do we get out of all of this? An interest free, seller financed loan for the $300,000.00 home. In this part of the country, this situation isn't all that rare.