I love the analogies you've drawn between Mr. Vader and Debt! And I think the best one is the 4th idea - when any debt plan is too good to be true, it honestly trying to trap you while you look the other way peacefully thinking about something else. The most common trap to look out for is the 'type' interest rate - is it compounding, is it on a decreasing balance or not? It's easy for banks to fool customers by fudging the marketing material and clients need to beware.
I use microfiber cloths to dust everything; they work best for attracting dust. The best thing I've found to clean marks, stains or virtually anything else on walls is a Magic Eraser pad. For everything else I use Pine-Sol, an old-fashioned cleaner but still one of the best.
Oooh! Someone's busting my chops who knows all about my gigantic mason jar collection.
Oddly, I am not one of those cupcake in a jar people because I hate washing dishes. If I can eat something while standing over the sink I totally will.
Get organized before you start - gather all your cleaning tools together. Also, carry several bags/boxes between rooms: one for items that are in the wrong room, one for giving away, and one for toss.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I've just received an email from Netspend that my card should arrive in the mail any day now. I went through the email multiple times to make sure I didn't miss something that stated it was just an offer.
The first thing I thought of was identity theft, like your husband did. It's the worst feeling...Sadly, we'll keep seeing more financial companies pull this stunt.
Roth IRAs are most likely going to be the best bargain when you're very young and just starting out, especially if you have kids and a mortgage. (Once you tap out any matching contributions on your 401-k, of course.) Lower wages and higher deductions mean that your tax bracket is likely to be very low compared to later in your life. If you are among the 47% of Americans who pay no income taxes, it's pretty much a no-brainer!
But if you're in a higher tax bracket and are getting close to retirement, a Roth IRA is far less appealing.
This year, I'm making an envelope for all my tax-deductible self-employed expenses so I don't have to comb through my credit card statements. Using credit card statements to track business expenses isn't hard, but it does provide a mental barrier to tax prep that a nice stack of paper doesn't.
I value most things in terms of a week's worth of groceries, which is about $50-60 for my family of about-to-be-five. (I live in an expensive part of the country, where milk is often $4.00 a gallon at regular grocery stores, but I can squeeze a dollar until it squeals!)
My second value is, like Ian's, time. Is my purchase going to be worth the time that it takes to earn the money, go out and buy it, and then use it? If not, I'm not getting it!
Try Ting. They're a fairly new cell phone company that uses the Sprint network. They offer exactly what a lot of reasonable people want--fair prices for a reasonable amount of usage. My husband and I switched over last month and it's cut our cell phone bill in half.
I bought a lighter for my brother and it broke two weeks after he received it. After contacting AMEX, I received my refund without me noticing. It was just that simple.
Another silver lining was my property taxes went down because my house wasn't valued as high. Granted, if you are a person that likes to upgrade every few years this was a nightmare, but I have been living in the same small house for 17 years with no plans to move any time soon. My house is paid for and by design we have made it so that we don't need both of our incomes to maintain our standard of living.
We like to make it fun! Like the picture above, we engage the kids and make it a Spring Clean Party. We make lists. We dance or reward (healthy snacks, ok sometimes a cookie :) when we complete a task from the lists. Everybody has their own list yet we all stop and celebrate when someone comes running with a task checked off. We cheer and high five and everybody encourages everybody. Albeit, this may not work with all families, but our 3 and 5 year old loves it! This builds our family and support for one another's accomplishments. We are also teaching the little ones how to work hard and the satisfaction of a job well done. We also do something special like go on a bike ride if everybody doesn't quit and gets everything on their list finished!
I'm glad you're doing better but I'm just not seeing it.
Unemployment is now just a tick below the level it was when the President first took office, and according to the NYT, “Median Household Income Down 7.3% Since Start of Recession” - 5.6% of that is actually since the Obama "recovery" began. (Remember "Recovery Summer"? Good times...) And that's AFTER $6 trillion in deficit spending to stimulate the economy. Our household's standard of living has been gradually shrinking since 2009 right along with the rest of the country. We're still getting by but we started off economizing on little things, then bigger things and now there's just not much fat left to cut.
Grandma is helping out right now, but we will need some help once she goes home. Parent co-op or preschool co-op sound great. I need to find one that's close by.
Baby sitting would be ok too, but not too many babysitter around here.
I use two "motivators" over the weekend I spring clean: 1) I get a Post-it style flipchart page from work and list the rooms and the areas of each (Kitchen - table, Bedroom - closet, LR - TV area, etc.) so I can mark them off as I go along then I also use it for 2) writing down fix-its and follow-ups so I don't stop cleaning and get distracted. For instance, need to get replacement hangers for some broken or metal ones or calling a friend to ask if they have my game I loaned them 2 months ago. Having the list on wall makes it easy to see, it is repositionable as I move from room to room and I have a running future To-Do so I have no excuse to "just take a minute" and to something now.
Sure, unemployment has gone down. Many people receiving benefits have reached the end. They can't file a new claim, because you have to have worked during the past year to file. And just try to find a job if you have been unemployed that long. Or if you are over 60. Or if the job you can do can be done more cheaply overseas.
I would say the price of travel, and hotels. Even Disney had some solid prices on their resorts, and often offered the Disney Dining Plus plan for free.
I just lost a friend that constantly asked for small loans. To make he feel better about it I let her clean my home. Then it was excuses that she could not come over yet still asked for money. She has kids and we felt we were helping to feed them. Then she asked for $3000. To pay off a Title loan I told her not to get. She said she would pay us back. Really? With what? We were buying groceries and clothes for them. I told her we needed to take a break from each other for a while. I feel like I am finally free. I really love her, but we were enabling her. I also think we are not the only ones she was using. Facebook has become the new panhandling tool. That is my story.
Years of working as an intern and a fellow for no living wage motivated me to start saving as soon as I got a "grown up" job. Financial independence is such a freeing feeling!
Yeah, I noticed that during the recession, we barely had to wait for a table when we would go out to eat. Of course, we started our family during that time, so I attribute that partially that we go more to family friendly places, which I would guess would have shorter lines anyways.
*snicker* Thanks for the giggle first thing in the morning.
I love the analogies you've drawn between Mr. Vader and Debt! And I think the best one is the 4th idea - when any debt plan is too good to be true, it honestly trying to trap you while you look the other way peacefully thinking about something else. The most common trap to look out for is the 'type' interest rate - is it compounding, is it on a decreasing balance or not? It's easy for banks to fool customers by fudging the marketing material and clients need to beware.
I use microfiber cloths to dust everything; they work best for attracting dust. The best thing I've found to clean marks, stains or virtually anything else on walls is a Magic Eraser pad. For everything else I use Pine-Sol, an old-fashioned cleaner but still one of the best.
Oooh! Someone's busting my chops who knows all about my gigantic mason jar collection.
Oddly, I am not one of those cupcake in a jar people because I hate washing dishes. If I can eat something while standing over the sink I totally will.
Get organized before you start - gather all your cleaning tools together. Also, carry several bags/boxes between rooms: one for items that are in the wrong room, one for giving away, and one for toss.
Thanks Ashley. We can all clean out our closets and make some money. We may not get rich but certainly it is a way of saving hard-earned money.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I've just received an email from Netspend that my card should arrive in the mail any day now. I went through the email multiple times to make sure I didn't miss something that stated it was just an offer.
The first thing I thought of was identity theft, like your husband did. It's the worst feeling...Sadly, we'll keep seeing more financial companies pull this stunt.
Roth IRAs are most likely going to be the best bargain when you're very young and just starting out, especially if you have kids and a mortgage. (Once you tap out any matching contributions on your 401-k, of course.) Lower wages and higher deductions mean that your tax bracket is likely to be very low compared to later in your life. If you are among the 47% of Americans who pay no income taxes, it's pretty much a no-brainer!
But if you're in a higher tax bracket and are getting close to retirement, a Roth IRA is far less appealing.
This year, I'm making an envelope for all my tax-deductible self-employed expenses so I don't have to comb through my credit card statements. Using credit card statements to track business expenses isn't hard, but it does provide a mental barrier to tax prep that a nice stack of paper doesn't.
I value most things in terms of a week's worth of groceries, which is about $50-60 for my family of about-to-be-five. (I live in an expensive part of the country, where milk is often $4.00 a gallon at regular grocery stores, but I can squeeze a dollar until it squeals!)
My second value is, like Ian's, time. Is my purchase going to be worth the time that it takes to earn the money, go out and buy it, and then use it? If not, I'm not getting it!
Try Ting. They're a fairly new cell phone company that uses the Sprint network. They offer exactly what a lot of reasonable people want--fair prices for a reasonable amount of usage. My husband and I switched over last month and it's cut our cell phone bill in half.
I bought a lighter for my brother and it broke two weeks after he received it. After contacting AMEX, I received my refund without me noticing. It was just that simple.
Another silver lining was my property taxes went down because my house wasn't valued as high. Granted, if you are a person that likes to upgrade every few years this was a nightmare, but I have been living in the same small house for 17 years with no plans to move any time soon. My house is paid for and by design we have made it so that we don't need both of our incomes to maintain our standard of living.
We like to make it fun! Like the picture above, we engage the kids and make it a Spring Clean Party. We make lists. We dance or reward (healthy snacks, ok sometimes a cookie :) when we complete a task from the lists. Everybody has their own list yet we all stop and celebrate when someone comes running with a task checked off. We cheer and high five and everybody encourages everybody. Albeit, this may not work with all families, but our 3 and 5 year old loves it! This builds our family and support for one another's accomplishments. We are also teaching the little ones how to work hard and the satisfaction of a job well done. We also do something special like go on a bike ride if everybody doesn't quit and gets everything on their list finished!
I use those magic erasers from Mr.Clean. They make cleaning less of a chore, thus I am more likely to do it.
Return of the Jedi has been out since 1983. If you haven't seen the ending by now, you obviously don't care for the series that much.
I'm glad you're doing better but I'm just not seeing it.
Unemployment is now just a tick below the level it was when the President first took office, and according to the NYT, “Median Household Income Down 7.3% Since Start of Recession” - 5.6% of that is actually since the Obama "recovery" began. (Remember "Recovery Summer"? Good times...) And that's AFTER $6 trillion in deficit spending to stimulate the economy. Our household's standard of living has been gradually shrinking since 2009 right along with the rest of the country. We're still getting by but we started off economizing on little things, then bigger things and now there's just not much fat left to cut.
Grandma is helping out right now, but we will need some help once she goes home. Parent co-op or preschool co-op sound great. I need to find one that's close by.
Baby sitting would be ok too, but not too many babysitter around here.
I use two "motivators" over the weekend I spring clean: 1) I get a Post-it style flipchart page from work and list the rooms and the areas of each (Kitchen - table, Bedroom - closet, LR - TV area, etc.) so I can mark them off as I go along then I also use it for 2) writing down fix-its and follow-ups so I don't stop cleaning and get distracted. For instance, need to get replacement hangers for some broken or metal ones or calling a friend to ask if they have my game I loaned them 2 months ago. Having the list on wall makes it easy to see, it is repositionable as I move from room to room and I have a running future To-Do so I have no excuse to "just take a minute" and to something now.
Sure, unemployment has gone down. Many people receiving benefits have reached the end. They can't file a new claim, because you have to have worked during the past year to file. And just try to find a job if you have been unemployed that long. Or if you are over 60. Or if the job you can do can be done more cheaply overseas.
I'd have some too--if I could afford it.
I would say the price of travel, and hotels. Even Disney had some solid prices on their resorts, and often offered the Disney Dining Plus plan for free.
I just lost a friend that constantly asked for small loans. To make he feel better about it I let her clean my home. Then it was excuses that she could not come over yet still asked for money. She has kids and we felt we were helping to feed them. Then she asked for $3000. To pay off a Title loan I told her not to get. She said she would pay us back. Really? With what? We were buying groceries and clothes for them. I told her we needed to take a break from each other for a while. I feel like I am finally free. I really love her, but we were enabling her. I also think we are not the only ones she was using. Facebook has become the new panhandling tool. That is my story.
Years of working as an intern and a fellow for no living wage motivated me to start saving as soon as I got a "grown up" job. Financial independence is such a freeing feeling!
Yeah, I noticed that during the recession, we barely had to wait for a table when we would go out to eat. Of course, we started our family during that time, so I attribute that partially that we go more to family friendly places, which I would guess would have shorter lines anyways.