Money Tips Network

When you’re car shopping, you might stumble across a deal that seems too good to be true. In
these cases, check the car’s title. If the car has a rebuilt title — or, worse yet, a salvage title —
you could be left dealing with issues ranging from structural problems to challenges getting
certain types of insurance.

You might be wondering, “What does salvage title mean?” or “What does rebuilt title mean?”
In this guide, we’ll teach you the difference between rebuilt and salvage title cars, plus how
your car’s title affects your ability to get insurance for it.

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Yesterday in the /r/financialindependence community on Reddit, /u/mkengland asked a seemingly innocent question:

What made you stop planning/researching financial independence and actually start?

Was there a tipping point for you where you finally felt ready to start your FI journey? What made you finally take the plunge, open that first IRA/brokerage account/etc., and throw your money into the market?

[…]

I'm waffling over details, though…and can't seem to just DO IT.

This question seems innocuous, right? Yet, I've been thinking about it for the past 24 hours.

As many of you know, one of my lifelong hobbies has been tabletop gaming — board games, card games, storytelling games and so forth. If it involves gathering people around ta table to spend time together and play a game together, I tend to enjoy it.

This affinity has come in great handy during this period of social distancing. Our family has been spending a lot more time at home, which means that we’ve had a lot more time to play some of the many games we’ve collected over the years.

The truth is that tabletop games can be a really inexpensive and very social hobby. The key is to lean into playing games over and over rather than playing them once or twice and discarding them or hauling them off to Goodwill.

What follows are some suggestions on how you can inexpensively dip your toes into this hobby, potentially just with the items you already have in your home.

Please Note: Information about the Ink Business Unlimited℠ Credit Card have been collected independently by TheSimpleDollar.com. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy.

With the Ink Business Unlimited℠ Credit Card, you get unlimited 1.5% cash back on all purchases with no categories to track or activation dates to keep on your calendar. When you compare it to other business credit cards, it has lower rewards rates but charges no annual fee — which is a major perk in a fee-heavy category. Unlike other business cards, you’ll be able to get free employee cards to help maximize your rewards across the board. Overall, it’s an intriguing option for a business owner who wants to earn cash back easily.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc in a way that most of us could not have imagined. Though necessary, social distancing measures and business closures to slow the spread of the virus are currently causing spikes in layoffs. President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, and since then more than 22.1 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance. As of April 15, the unemployment rate is hovering over 15%. To get an idea of what this implies, the Great Recession had an unemployment rate peak of 10.2% by October 2009.

In conversations with friends and family recently, one theme I’ve heard again and again is how struck people are by how dependent they are on the availability of so many services and products. Many of them simply needed to go to stores or other places simply because they simply didn’t have access to basic things otherwise.

This left me thinking about what moves I can make that reduce my reliance on external services while being financially sensible, not incredibly wasteful and not requiring a ton of additional time for upkeep. The goals are simple: I want to find ways that make me less reliant on services, have less need to leave home if there are reasons not to (like, say, social distancing), and manage to achieve both of those things in a way that keeps costs low and doesn’t require a lot of ongoing time investment.

Every Monday morning, Tom and I have a Zoom call to discuss the coming week's priorities for this site. For the past couple of months, we've been focused on behind-the-scenes stuff as we prepared to launch the redesign. (That, and I was working on my course for Audible.) Now that the redesign is (mostly) finished, we've begun talking about content. What sorts of articles do we want to write in coming weeks?

“You know,” Tom said this morning, “it wouldn't kill you to write about the financial tools you use. You love your credit card, right? And you use Personal Capital? If you were to write about this stuff, we could make more money.”

Back in 2018, roughly 40% of Americans said they would struggle to cover an unexpected $400 emergency bill. Jean Chatzky, an award-winning personal finance journalist and CEO and co-founder of HerMoney, says the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how alarming that statistic really is.

“If you don’t have a reserve, you’re truly fragile when it comes to your finances,” Chatzky says, “and emergencies like this are more difficult than they otherwise would be.”

For members of AARP, AARP offers home insurance through The Hartford. It comes with unique benefits and services you can’t find with other home insurance companies, and you can personalize and customize your coverage to make it suit your needs.

You don’t have to join AARP to purchase home insurance through The Hartford, but if you are a member, you will save more each month and get access to unique benefits not offered to non-AARP members.

If you’re 50 or older, AARP home insurance is worth your consideration.

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