Money Tips Network

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup!

Link for teaser title: 

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

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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. Roth IRA withdrawal question
2. Buy it for life: Goodwill
3. Year away from down payment
4. Retirement and disability
5. Having “a life”?
6. Making cheese at home
7. Can I afford this house?
8. Ames Public Library opening?
9. How to keep leftovers?

The first step to saving dough is to have a go-to list of cost-cutting strategies in your pocket. Below are 73 ways to cut spending, some more orthodox than others. Find just a few that work for you and watch the savings add up. (See also: The 10 Things Everyone Should Be Saving For)
1.

A quick Google check confirms it:  The first day of fall is September 22.

I had to look that up just to be sure, because the high today was 91 degrees, which is decidedly un-fall-ish.

In just a few weeks (hopefully!) the weather will turn and fall will be here.  In preparation, I’ve been working hard to get our house ready for fall – and the winter to follow.

Outside –

Rain Gutters – At the end of summer and winter, I clean out our rain gutters.  With several large oak trees in our yard, it’s important to routinely remove fallen leaves from our rain gutters.

Vinyl Siding – Our house has vinyl siding and I pressure wash the siding (at least) twice a year.  I’ll do so this week, washing off the dust of from summer mowing, so that house will look nice for fall.

Here's an email I recently received from a reader:

Some background info: My baseline gross salary is $74k, but with recent overtime it's looking like I'm on pace to make closer to $85k this year. I've been contributing 30% pre-tax dollars to my company 401k plan. They match 50% up to the first 8% I contribute, so basically I get a free 4%.

On my previous pay period, I hit my max $17,500 pre-tax contribution limit. In that same pay period, there was also a new line item for after-tax contribution spillover, so now I have $280 of after-tax money in my account.

My max employer match is 4% if I put in 8%. I just called my benefits office and they clarified this is applicable to both pre-tax AND after-tax contributions to the retirement account.

I'm 25 years old and don't have a Roth IRA setup yet.

I find that defaulting to pessimism about the economy is a great way to hedge your emotional bets. If things turn out well, then I can count it a pleasant surprise. If things turn out badly, at least I have the satisfaction of having been right.

Lately though, there have been some cracks in my gloomy facade. I look at economic data every day, and there is so much information that there is bound to be a mix of bad and good. (You can pretty much always spin the economy however you please.) Still, beyond the usual week-to-week gyration of data points, there are a number of trends that seem to have real significance for the economy — and many of these happen to be positive.

So, coming from a confirmed skeptic, it should mean something that I can find five reasons to be optimistic about the economy:

If you’ve got a busy family, or are constantly on the go, you’re probably looking for easy recipes to make high quality yet cheap meals your family will love. At The Simple Dollar, we’re not only looking out for your pocketbook, but also your other precious resource – time. That’s why we put together a list of cheap meals that are also easy to put together. Not only are these recipes easy, almost all of them can be prepared vegetarian or vegan. If you need a few quick tips to make your meal prep easier, look for the additional resources towards the bottom.

Easy Dinner Recipes

Dinner is often the most rushed time for a busy family. Family members get home at different times from work, school or social activities. So, dinner is especially difficult to get the whole family together. Next time you want the whole family at the dinner table, tempt them with one of these great meals. Just don’t let them know how easy it was to throw it all together!

There is no shortage of personal finance advice available. I’ve been known to produce a bit myself here and there.

There are recurring themes like “buy vs. rent,” “spend less than you earn,” “the magic of compounding,” and so forth which are the cornerstones of personal finance, saving, and retirement planning. They’re cornerstones because there’s a lot of wisdom behind them.

Checklists and more checklists

I ran across Richmond Savers today, which is run by a couple of CPAs in my part of the country.  The community is local to Virginia’s capital, but they have a list of financial guidelines that they try to live by every day.

If you’ve read lists like these before, the themes are very familiar.  They’re the important financial issues that most of us deal with at one point or another: credit and debt, big expenses like automobiles and houses, health and wellness, and investing.