Money Tips Network

HO HO HO!

Just like that, the holiday season is upon us!

This year, I intend to do most of my Christmas shopping during a three-week tour of Europe with my cousins. We're deliberately visiting as many Christmas markets as possible, so I hope to find a variety of interesting and unusual gifts for my family and friends. (They need to be small, though. I don't have much space to carry things home.)

While I'm buying new (and possibly expensive) gifts this year, that's not normally my style. I'm a fan of keeping Christmas frugal.

Being a frugal shopper doesn't mean you can't give thoughtful gifts though. In fact, my experience has shown that it's often more fun and rewarding to impose limits on gift-giving. These limits breed creativity and inspiration. “Christmas on a budget” doesn't have to mean “Christmas without fun”.

If you and your spouse or partner both have access to a 401(k) or other employer retirement plan, you might be wondering how you should divvy up your contributions between the two of them.

This can be an especially difficult and emotionally-laden question if one of those 401(k)s is measurably better than the other, in which case it may make rational sense to contribute more money to that 401(k) even if it would leave the other spouse or partner with less money saved for retirement.

So, what should you do in that situation? Should you split your contributions evenly, even if it means putting money into a bad 401(k)? Or should you contribute more to the better 401(k) even if it means that one of you will have more money than the other?

Let’s break it down.

The office supply section of the local pharmacy has a nasty habit of extracting money from my wallet.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Stock market dropping!
2. IRA maximum income question?
3. Simple small business budgeting software
4. Financial coaching services
5. Smartly using a small windfall
6. Improving communication skills at work
7. Environmental benefit of reusable bottles
8. How to find used guitars?

The following is a guest post from Mike at Miked Up Blog.

I had an email stop me completely in my tracks last week… I probably receive over 100 emails a day and this is the first one I can remember that made me stop what I was doing, re-read the text twice, and then take a deep breath. The emails reason for being? "After a search of the dark web, we found your email address and [other personal information] listed in multiple locations. Your person data are at risk. You should act quickly…” (that’s paraphrased)

I met a GRS reader named T.J. for happy hour last week. As we sipped our beer, we chatted about money and videogames and our personal struggles with ADHD. We also discovered we have a shared love for audiobooks.

T.J. listens to audiobooks as he drives from client to client. I used to consume audiobooks during my commute to work at the box factory. In recent years, I've found that audiobooks are an effective way to cope with my insomnia. No joke: Every night — all night — I listen to audiobooks. (Plus, I still like to listen to them during long drives.)

Here's a shocking stat: I listen to nearly 3000 hours of audiobooks every year. (As a point of reference, if you work a full-time job, you probably work about 2000 hours each year.)

As the holiday season gets into full swing, so too do the credit card promotions from retail stores far and wide.

This is prime season for enticing shoppers to sign onto the dotted line for cards that offer a discount on your first purchase or a special 0% introductory APR — which to many cash-strapped consumers can sound like an ideal way to finance a holiday extravaganza.

The reality of these deferred-interest retail credit cards however, is that they may not be as helpful as they sound at first blush. In fact, in many cases, signing on for one can cost far more than expected if you’re not clear on how the deferred interest proposition works.

I absolutely love hot sauce.

I put hot sauce on everything. If it’s savory and I have some hot sauce around, I’ll put hot sauce on it. Pizza. Burritos. Scrambled eggs. Grilled vegetables. Beans and rice. All of it gets hot sauce.

Even dishes where you wouldn’t expect hot sauce are dishes where you’ll often find me doling out the hot sauce. I have a savory oatmeal recipe that I often make for myself in the mornings that I consistently add hot sauce to (it’s not sweet at all – much different than the pre-sweetened oatmeal packets from the store).

I’ve had a draft of this post in various forms floating around for years and I felt that right now, on the cusp of Thanksgiving, when many families are getting together to celebrate a meal and a day together, it might be a good moment to write about the ins and outs of aging parents. I hope that some of this might spur healthy conversations in your family over the next few days.