Feed items
Save money by overcoming the inconvenience barrier
A while back I bid on a new Keurig coffee machine at a silent auction. I bid $80 and won. (They went for $120 new.)
Predictably, the $40 savings went out the window in only a few weeks with the additional amount we began to spend on the little K-Cups.
It’s such a convenience to just pop one of the cups in there, listen to the little pump suck water from the reservoir, heat it up, and finally force it through the coffee grounds. And for someone who isn’t terribly discerning when it comes to coffee, it’s not bad.
But dang, the cost of those K-cups adds up fast! Even the large packages of K-Cups at Costco doesn’t make the things cheap; they still are over thirty cents apiece. With as many as I would use in a day, I might as well have bought a drink every day from Starbucks!
Overcoming the inconvenience barrier
Why savers are a necessary evil for banks and credit unions
The credit union my family belongs to had their annual meeting a couple of weeks ago. During the question and answer session, one of the members asked that the credit union look for ways to increase the rate of interest earned on savings accounts. “They’re not paying a whole lot these days,” the member lamented.
The board and the management listened and sympathized with her, while they gently reminded her how the credit union makes money: loans.
What they didn’t say
They didn’t go on to say that savers like her not only don’t make the credit union any money, they cost them money. The credit union accepts her cash and coins, allows her to withdraw it from dozens of ATMs a few times a month without any surcharges, and automagically transfers money to the cable company with free bill-paying services.
A $6.30 tax bill insignificant? Think again
One of my friends in college purportedly had racked up dozens of parking tickets courtesy of the campus police. He graduated, so either he took care of them before he left, or he never had to worry about them in the first place.
A woman in Pennsylvania, however, lost her home over an amount less than most parking tickets. Her home, which sold at auction for about $116,000 and which was reportedly valued at $280,000, was the result of a tax sale for $6.30 in unpaid interest.
That’s not a typo: She lost her house over six dollars and thirty cents.
No amount is too small
Treasure-hunting in your own house?
I’ll be one of the first to admit that I’m a pack rat. I come from a proud line of pack rats. Not quite hoarding-level, but that’s just one floor up from where I am.
My wife, talented woman that she is, has a lot of materials and tools that she uses to create things. Her crafting area in the house is well-organized. Still, though, our space isn’t endless, and some of the tools that she has have gotten buried, tucked away in a drawer or a box somewhere. They’re almost always in their proper place, but the boxes of things tend to “blend together” after a while.
The rediscovery process
Today, she was cleaning up one area, and found a good set of craft knife blades that she had forgotten about. The way she put it was neat: She was rediscovering the stuff that she already has.
Want to deduct your medical expenses? Try indoor parkour
Tax time. It’s just around the corner. Yay.
But there’s a bright spot in figuring taxes for most of us: deductions. Those subtractions that pare down the adjusted gross income (AGI) that is the primary benchmark that determines your tax rate, and ultimately your tax. There are a number of kinds of deductions. One kind is a deduction for extensive medical or dental expenses that was first introduced in 1942. People could deduct the portion of their “extraordinary” medical or dental expenses that exceeded 5% of their AGI (subject to a cap).
As of last year, the floor is now double that for people under 65. You’ll need to shell out fully 10% of your AGI in medical and dental expenses before you can deduct a dime of them. (In 2017, everyone, young and old, will be subject to this floor.)
Review of The Safe Investor by Timothy McCarthy
I received a review copy of Timothy McCarthy’s The Safe Investor: How to Make Your Money Grow in a Volatile Global Economy a few weeks ago. Any book that can give me at least one good idea is a win. It usually covers the cost of a book, or an e-book, or a membership to a site. This book had many good ideas for me.
Millionaire case studies: study and learn; find that one good idea
A while back my wife got me a mug that says “Future Millionaire” on it. The statement on the mug for me is as true now as it was then. o_O
Though some people are predisposed to becoming millionaires, and some have greater obstacles in their path to do so, the path to millionare-ity isn’t rocket science:
- Spend less than you bring in.
- Save and invest the difference.
- Start early and behold the magic of compounding.
The mainstay of Thomas Stanley and William Danko, The Millionaire Next Door, reinforced much of this, with loads of statistics from questionnaires and interviews completed by the affluent.
What did millionaires do to become millionaires?
Coins to save, and coins to spend
A few weeks ago we had lunch with some good friends. During the festivities, I saw a wooden piggybank-like thing on a shelf above the kitchen sink, part of which was a lucite window that showed the contents.
I asked, “So who was the cool person that gave you guys $2 bills?”
Later in the afternoon they let me go through the contents of the bank. It was a collection of interesting coins that they had gotten as gifts over the years.
A lot of conversations pieces … and a few reasonably valuable ones
The US Mint has put a nice twist on our coinage recently. The cent had four designs in 2009 to celebrate Lincoln’s 200th birthday. The nickel’s obverse was reworked in 2004, along with four designs on the reverse. The state quarter series was a lot of fun. And, frankly, I liked the Presidential $1 coins until they stopped it.
Get rid of a cash back credit card? Why?
I very much like my rewards credit card. One of the dumber things I’ve done is not getting one sooner. I mean, it’s downright silly not to have one if you use the credit card for convenience only, and not for spending beyond your means. The only thing better than free float is to be paid for it!
Frugal Toad had a post that caught my attention: Is it time to trade in your cash back credit card? Before I read the post, I had an idea what the punchline was, but it didn’t turn out to be what I thought it was.
Bean foot warmers: A great use for out-of-date dried beans
I know that I’ve mentioned before that my wife knows how to do many things well. She’s very handy. And today, she managed to put something together that not only got rid of some dried beans that were a bit past their use-by date — OK, over three years past — but made some money in the process!
A friend of ours had had these corn warmers for years. They were flannel strips a bit under two feet long that were filled with dried corn and sewn together. Pop them in the microwave, zap them for a bit, and the corn inside gets warm and holds the heat for quite a while. They had finally become so threadbare that they broke and spilled the corn all over the place.
So, our friend had a proposition. She had priced them already on Etsy ($15 each), and asked my wife if she could make three of them for that price each. She’d rather pay someone she knows than someone she doesn’t.
Facebook
Become a fan
Twitter
Follow us
RSS
Subscribe