Money Tips Network

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Short term pay boost
2. Taking advantage of the dollar
3. The value of credit counseling
4. Thoughts on Todoist
5. When NOT to use Roth?
6. Retire where it’s cheap?
7. Going carless
8. I can pay it off!
9. Always afraid

This article is by staff writer Honey Smith.

Once you have been offered a new job, you might assume the process is at an end. But is it really? Not all jobs are created equal, and the goal in getting a new job is (typically) to improve your situation. So job offers must be evaluated carefully to ensure that your goals, personal finance and otherwise, are being served.

Salary considerations

The standard advice when interviewing for a new job is to avoid being the first person to put forward an exact number. Why? Because you risk low-balling yourself and losing any chance of getting the upper hand as you negotiate.

Cramped kitchen quarters? Elevate. Get your pots and pans, knives, mugs, and large utensils out of the cabinets and onto the wall. Photo: Ikea

Need more space in your kitchen? No problem at all! All you have to do is tear down some walls and add more cabinets.

Easier said than done, especially if you don’t have thousands of dollars stuffed in those cabinets just waiting to be spent on a kitchen renovation. Even if money isn’t an issue, there are probably plenty of other ways you’d rather use your hard-earned cash.

So, in an effort to avoid the contractors and unrest that accompanies a home renovation project in the heart of the house, here are some ways to get the most out of your current kitchen space:

Football, baseball, and hockey are among the most expensive sports to enroll your kids in. Photo: Brian McDermott

After much thought and consideration, my husband and I decided that it is finally time to get our kids started in a few sports and activities this year. And since our two daughters are only 3 and 5, we chose to begin this chapter with a weekly gymnastics class we thought our girls would enjoy.

Taking place on Wednesday nights at 6:30, the class will cost a total of $125 for the two of them each month. Since we were looking for something fun yet affordable (and indoors for winter), gymnastics seems like the perfect fit… at least for now.

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.

1. Starry Night – Vincent van Gogh

This has always been one of my favorite paintings. For years, I kept a poster of it on my bedroom wall above my bed so that I could gaze at it each night before I fell asleep. Something about Van Gogh’s style speaks to me in a very deep way, a way that really can’t be described in words.

So, why am I including this now?

Recently, my son brought home an art book that he checked out from the library. In it were beautiful prints of various paintings. He’s browsed through the book a lot over the last week or so.

My family and I have lived in our current home for almost 5 years.  We are working hard – paying off our 15-year, conventional mortgage.

I use a simple pie-chart to track our progress.  Having a visualization keeps us motivated and excited about the progress we are making.

We purchased our home in February of 2010.  Hopefully, we’ll pay it off in less than 10 years – which is our stretch goal – but as of right now, we have shaved 6 months off of the length of the loan.  Our progress was slowed, just a bit, when I changed jobs, but we are back – on-track – making principal-only payments on a regular basis.

Here’s a chart with details for our current progress –

The percentages above represent the amount of our mortgage we have paid – 27.25% – and the amount we still owe – 72.75%.

Link for teaser title: 

http://www.wisebread.com/bestdeals/today

Gap: $20 eGift Card free w/ $50 purchase, Office Depot and Office Max: Up to 65% off, 10-Piece Reversible...

We spend a lot of our lives in shoes — and about $25 thousand in a lifetime — so it's in the best interest of our bank accounts to properly care for them.

When the time arrives to sign up for a retirement plan at work or open a Roth IRA, people are pulled in two different directions.

On the one hand, it’s very obvious that in the long term, saving for retirement is far superior to not saving for retirement. Retirement planning offers the ability to retire with some degree of comfort and often allows the saver to retire years earlier than the person who does not save.

Yet, on the other hand, it appears very painful in the short term. Like it or not, saving for retirement is going to cut into your paycheck, and if you’re already struggling to make ends meet, that is an incredibly bitter pill to swallow.

Quite often, when people are faced with this dilemma, they convince themselves that retirement is so far off that they can wait a little while to start saving. I’ll start saving in a few years when things are in better shape, they’ll say to themselves.