Welcome to our newest reader question series where we feature an inquiry submitted by the MoneyNing community, along with our answers. Today’s question relates to Flexible Spending Accounts and dependent daycare expenses.
The surveys are in, and although holiday shoppers plan to spend roughly 5% more than last year, the money they spend will be more strictly spent on gifts for others, and not gifts for themselves (a fact that retailers count on for high-ticket items).
Although more people are shopping early to more accurately budget their spending, the percentage of those polled who plan to capitalize on Thanksgiving weekend deals, increased significantly this year. This shows that most consumers are still feeling the need, and desire, to get the most out of their holiday spending in light of a the still-recovering economy.
Lastly, online shopping is slated to increase by about 50% from last year, representing the largest gain of all.* These trends represent the average shopper, but do they represent your personal spending strategy this holiday? Let’s discuss.
With the holidays quickly approaching we all have spending on our minds. Then when January rolls around, we calculate the aftermath of our spending habits and create New Year’s Resolutions to get out of debt and build an emergency fund.
But I have a better solution! Let’s not fall into this same habit this year. The holidays shouldn’t be an excuse to stop saving and go into debt. In fact, you can have a much more peaceful and relaxing holiday if you aren’t stressing about money.
Today I want to encourage you to make saving a priority and put money away in an emergency fund if you haven’t already done so. Here are two powerfully effective tips you can use to jumpstart your savings habit.
Every year, the IRS evaluates inflation and other items and decides how much savers can sock away in tax-advantaged retirement accounts. Coming in 2015, there will be higher limits for 401(k) accounts, and the income level for IRA phaseouts will also increase.*
This means you have the chance to put away more for retirement, even if you’re already maxing out your retirement contributions. Here are the details on how you can save more money for your future.
Alexa wrote a great article last week, on Why Saving for My Kids’ College Education Is Not My Priority, and I thought she made excellent points. It’s my belief that as a whole, parents are bringing up their children to be self-entitled and have everything come easy to them.
I have many friends whose parents paid an outrageous amount of money for a private four-year university, only to have those same kids needing their parents’ financial help after they graduate, then buy houses and have children.
Even though I don’t want to just hand my child $100,000 and tell them to get a good education, I do want to make saving for their future college fund a priority. Here’s why I plan on giving my children $20,000 to put towards their college education.
A situation at my job today made me realize just how electronic-dependent my financial information is. Our intranet system was down due to a router problem that won’t be fixed for a few days, debilitating and limiting many daily wireless functions we rely on to do business. An entire service department is down because they can’t use their computers.
This will not only affect our productivity and sales, but ultimately our profit. And with no backup plan, this is quite a hard blow to our bottom line.
While situations like this cannot be anticipated, and the amazing world of digital and wireless technology normally functions with no major complications, there are times our dependence on electronic devices in every aspect of our daily lives becomes all too clear. Servers crash, wireless signals fail, computers freeze up and lose our information, and virtual data gets lost in cyberspace.
Making good use of technology to run a business, or handle your personal finances isn’t a bad thing. The problem arises when we don’t have a backup plan. Since it’s difficult to think outside the realm of available technology, a backup plan for your finances can be hard to imagine or formulate.
