Money Tips Network

12 Unconventional Ways to Save Money During the Pandemic

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.

What Is a VIN Number and What Is It Used For?

All vehicles have a vehicle identification number — or VIN. This unique identifier helps in a number of ways, both before you purchase a car (particularly a used one) and during the time you own it. No two vehicles have the same VIN. Find out what information is included in a VIN, where to find it on your car and how your VIN can come in handy over time.

Compare Affordable Car Insurance Rates

Save money on auto coverage with our simple comparison tool.

What’s the Difference Between a DWI and a DUI?

Nearly one-third of car accident fatalities involve a driver impaired by a substance. To keep others safe, there are some serious consequences for driving while under the influence of a substance. If you drive impaired, you run the risk of getting cited with a DUI (driving under the influence) or a DWI (driving while intoxicated or driving while impaired). Learn the difference and the consequences of each.

Compare Affordable Car Insurance Rates

Save money on auto coverage with our simple comparison tool.

What Is My State’s Minimum Coverage For Car Insurance?

Car insurance protects you and other people financially. Should you get into a car accident, your insurance will help pay for medical bills, personal property damage and legal fees. Because it’s financial protection, it can help protect your most valued assets from being seized in court. Because of how important car insurance is, many states have requirements about the amount of insurance you have to carry. Learn about car insurance state minimums to make sure you’re meeting this legal requirement.

Compare Affordable Car Insurance Rates

Save money on auto coverage with our simple comparison tool.

How Much Does Life Insurance Cost?

When you’re young, single and independent, you don’t need to think much about protecting your assets if you die. But when you reach certain milestones, your financial life and responsibilities change. After you get married, buy a home or have a child, you must consider how your loved ones will carry on without you.

Find the Best Life Insurance

Enter your ZIP code below and be sure to click at least 2-3 companies to find the very best rate.

Foremost Home Insurance Review

Unless you own a mobile home or recreational vehicle, you may never have heard of Foremost. Founded in 1952, the company carved out a name for itself in the newly-created mobile home industry. It was instrumental in creating the standards for the first homeowners insurance policies for mobile homes.

Find the Best Home Insurance

Enter your ZIP code below and be sure to click at least 2-3 companies to find the very best rate.

Home Insurance Quotes, Explained

After you close the deal on a new home, the next step is to purchase homeowners insurance. If you’ve purchased insurance in the past, you know it’s not always cheap. In fact, the average homeowners insurance rate in the U.S. was $1,211 per year, as of 2017.

If you’re in the market for homeowners insurance, you don’t have to settle for an expensive rate. You can find a great deal on homeowners insurance by getting multiple quotes and comparing them. In this article, we’ll help you understand how insurance quotes work, how to get one and how to compare them.

4 Eco-Friendly Home Modifications That Can Lower Your Home Insurance Premium

As the green revolution continues to gain popularity, homeowners are discovering practical ways to reduce their carbon footprint. One of the most meaningful ways is by making eco-friendly modifications to your home and making sure your homeowners insurance takes them into account.

Benefits of eco-friendly home modifications

  • Lower utility costs
  • Reduced carbon footprint
  • Save money on energy costs
  • Potential tax credits

Whether you’re on the market for a new energy-efficient home or interested in upgrading your current space, you must make sure your policy is ready to accommodate those changes. While many insurers are extending their coverage to include green renovations, not all offer this additional coverage.

4 Surprising Steps to Achieve Your Long-Term Financial Goals

Once I had some appreciation of the value of financial goals, my first real financial goal was to pay off all of our high-interest debt. It was a very tangible, real goal — a nice short- to medium-term goal for which I could easily track my progress, easily figure out things to do each day to move me toward that goal and achieve success within several months.

From there, I moved onto other, similar tangible goals. I wanted to be completely debt-free — no student loans, no car loans, no anything. That took us roughly a year. Then, we bought a house and I wanted to get rid of that mortgage, which took us about four years by aiming to make at least a triple payment on our mortgage every month.

What happens after that?

Survey: Majority of Americans Are Confident They Can Cover Expenses This Year

The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting shutdown measures have resulted in a deep recession for the global economy. Despite this, we found the majority of Americans are either very or somewhat confident about their finances for the rest of 2020, according to a new survey conducted by The Simple Dollar.

A Home Insurance Guide For Multigenerational Families During Covid-19

Table of Contents

Why You Should Try Microsoft’s New “Money in Excel”

Recently, Microsoft released a powerful personal finance spreadsheet add-on for its Excel spreadsheet program, called Money in Excel. The name is a throwback to Microsoft Money, a separate software package for personal finance tracking that Microsoft discontinued many years ago. Now, it exists as a rather powerful spreadsheet template, one that I recommend for people who already have an Office 365 subscription.

How to Support a Charity With Your Insurance

As people look for ways to donate in today’s climate without overextending their financial resources, many are getting creative and turning to providers they already use. Numerous providers partner with charities, organizations and initiatives as part of their corporate social responsibility commitment. Whether it’s through companies providing home, life or auto insurance, for instance, it’s an indirect way of using your dollars to help the community and those in challenging circumstances.

Americans long to help those in need. As a nation, we voluntarily donate seven times more than continental Europeans. Statistics show that 60% of U.S. households donate in a given year, with average contributions adding up to between $2,000 and $3,000.

How to Make Money From Your Hobbies

A few years ago, I went through a period where I longed to spend more time on one of my favorite hobbies: tabletop gaming. I really like sitting down with friends and playing a board game or a card game or a roleplaying game. The social experience, the thinking process, the handling of the components on the table — all of those things, and more, appeal to me.

At that point, I really felt like I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I wanted to on the hobby. I also knew that there were some people who had started making online content — YouTube videos, podcasts and other material — related to the hobby, and a few were actually making a living at it (like DiceTower, Heavy Cardboard and Shut Up and Sit Down).

How Should You Prepare For the End of the CARES Act?

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.

12 Things to Inspire You in July

Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life. Please enjoy the archives of earlier collections of inspirational things.

3 Ways to Keep Going When You Feel Like Giving Up

There are times — and for many of us, 2020 has been filled with them — where we feel like giving up on our dreams.

There are a lot of reasons for that feeling. It might be simple frustration or dissatisfaction with the world at large, causing us to feel like our old goals are now meaningless. It might be that changes in the world have seriously altered the path we expected to take going forward. It might be that we simply feel a much stronger desire to be cautious with our next steps rather than taking a leap and trying something big and new.

Whatever might be the root cause of that change of heart, the end result is the same. The dreams we’ve been chasing for months or years no longer seem realistic or important, and we feel like giving up on them.

How to Convince Your Teens to Care About Finance

As our oldest child traverses his high school years, I wanted to have a plan in place that would help him begin to take his first steps into managing his own finances so that he didn’t find himself overwhelmed with the changes and unsure how to manage financial responsibility during his college years and early professional years. It was that very sense of unsureness coupled with more money than I had ever had before that gradually led me down a dangerous financial path in my 20s, and it’s a pattern I don’t want to see my children repeat. I want my children to have the financial tools and mental models in place to make good day-to-day financial decisions from the very start of their adult lives.

A Guide to Transferring From an On-Campus University to Online Learning

When you think of higher education, the first thing that comes to mind is probably an on-campus learning experience at a bustling university. On-campus education offers structure, the opportunity for communal learning and a strong sense of community. But it may not be the best decision for everyone, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

You may enroll in a traditional four-year educational institution, only to discover that it wasn’t the right choice. It may be that your financial situation has changed, and you can no longer afford high tuitions. You may also be experiencing a change in your life circumstances or you might want to change your major or field of study.

How to Find Your Financial Comfort Zone

A few days ago, the weather here took a big turn toward heat. Temperatures shot well into the 90s with a wonderful dose of Midwestern humidity to boot.

One might think it was a perfect day to stay inside, but I actually spent much of it outside. I didn’t run around killing myself, but I went on a few walks, did a bunch of outdoor tasks and puttered around. I had some things I wanted to do outside and I wasn’t going to let the heat of the day stop me.

I went inside at one point and the house felt extremely cold to me. The air conditioning was running full blast and the whole house felt like an icebox.

One might think that such a feeling sounds great on a hot day, but it left me thinking. I didn’t want to feel cold. I just wanted to feel not hot and merely comfortable. I didn’t need the temperature to be anywhere near as low as it was in order for me to feel not hot.