Sharing insights since 2007 on carefully saving money, investing, frugal living, coupons, promo codes because the little things matter in achieving financial freedom!
My husband and I bought a 5-year-old vehicle 7 years ago, a particular make and model with high ratings for both reliability and owner satisfaction that holds its value well. The car has been incredibly dependable — even through a cross-country move a few years back.
Recently, however, we’ve noticed an uptick in our vehicle maintenance and repair costs so we have started thinking about selling or trading it in before the transport eats up more money than it’s worth.
With the aim of matching a newer vehicle price as close to the sale price of this one as possible—who wants a car loan? We’ve been car payment-free for over three years and loving it!—I’ve been looking for any bit of advice for squeezing every cent-worth of value out of it. Here’s what I found: [ continue reading… ]
Now that the 2017 tax season is out of the way (did I hear a huge sigh of relief?), it’s time to look ahead to how the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) will change things next April. As a home owner for just over a year, I’m especially interested in how the new law impacts the tax advantages of home ownership.
When my husband and I bought our house, we viewed it as a good opportunity to build equity, lock into a fixed mortgage payment in an area with steadily increasing rental rates, and, of course, take advantage of all the home-related tax breaks and incentives we’ve been hearing about for years.
We learned that there often aren’t enough expenses to itemize (we paid less than 12 months’ worth of property taxes and mortgage interest) the first time you file as a homeowner. There are also fewer incentives than if we’d bought a house eight years ago (did anybody get the chance to cash in on the first-time home buyer’s credit?). Now, under TCJA, the tax breaks of home ownership are changing yet again.
Here’s a rundown of the changes and how they will impact those of us who are home owners or planning on taking that step this year. [ continue reading… ]
A recent article from Travel Weekly has created a lot of buzz about the future of airline ticket rates. In it, the project management director for PROS, a revenue management software provider, hinted that some larger airlines are on the brink of adopting technology that will charge each customer differently based on the virtual data it gathers about them — or at least their name-less profile. Smaller airlines have already been experimented with this type of platform on their own websites and sales channels.
It’s called dynamic pricing (or surge pricing, or micro-target pricing), and most airlines already practice it at some level. For example, carriers change class-based rates based on demand, peak travel times and holidays, and even when people book their flights (late booking is typical of business travelers).
But this newer version gets a little more intrusive and controversial (there’s even talk that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) might get involved to examine its impact). [ continue reading… ]
After filing for bankruptcy last fall, the well-known international toy retailer, Toys R Us, recently announced it will be closing all 740 of its US stores. Toys R Us is one of the hundreds of companies that filed for bankruptcy last year — including Radio Shack, Wet Seal, Payless, and Perfumania. The trend isn’t ending anytime soon, as many other retailers are scheduled to downsize this year too.
If you enjoyed shopping the aisles of these nostalgic stores, this might be sad news to you. The upside is that you’ll still be able to purchase many of your favorite branded products online, whether on company websites or from e-commerce giant Amazon — which is where a lot of our business has been going, already.
With so many store closings, another positive outcome for shoppers is the potential to save big during total-store liquidation sales. Since it’s easy to get carried away when you hear the word “liquidation” and see clearance banners go up, here are some tips for shopping responsibly to get the most savings during these last-chance sales. [ continue reading… ]
Filing taxes used to take me 15 minutes. I would wait for the first day taxes could be filed, log in online, fill out a few simple forms, and just wait for my refund check. Then life happened. I created an online business, started a family, owned a few different types of investments, and more. I’m sure I can still file my taxes easily online, but I no longer have the confidence that I can take advantage of every tax break available to me.
Now I solicit the help of a tax guy. He’s great – confident, attentive, and knowledgeable. He’s also expensive. What I don’t like the most is how it now takes me a few hours to gather documents, drive out to meet him just to tell him all the nuances of my past tax year and then to email him every once in a while to make sure he is working on my return.
Telemarketing has been around since the early days of the telephone. Now that we have caller ID and the “do not call” registry, unwanted cold calls have become less of a problem for most of us — but that doesn’t mean they’ve completely disappeared.
In fact, with the rise of automated telemarketing — otherwise known as robocalling — it looks like the annoying calls have simply evolved. If these automated calls could simply be chalked up as the digital version of cold calling, it would be the least of our worries.
But many of them are deliberate scams designed to trick people into sharing their account details, social security numbers, and other personal information. Based on consumer reporting, the Federal Trade Commission estimates there are 2.6 billion of these calls each month.
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