Sharing insights since 2007 on carefully saving money, investing, frugal living, coupons, promo codes because the little things matter in achieving financial freedom!
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.
If you read or watch the news, you’ve likely noticed one scary thing: fraud is on the rise and perpetrators aren’t cutting victims any slack. This is even more evident as the holiday season gets closer, as consumers are trying to avoid the crazy shopping malls and opt to order gifts online instead.
This is beyond bad news for anyone who is inexperienced with financial issues, or don’t protect themselves when listing payment information online. But how about those of us who do take precautions, and are well seasoned in money matters? Unfortunately, criminals have a way of retrieving information and wreaking havoc on anyone’s wallet and possibly, credit profile.
And on the other side of the fence are companies that will do anything to make a buck, so they convince you to “invest” in your future by joining them. In essence though, you’re actually making their pockets fatter and will inevitably receive the short end of the stick.
One of the pieces of advice you hear over and over in the financial industry is, to not borrow money against your home for basically any reason.
There are some people who suggest that it’s OK to take out a home equity line of credit (or HELOC) so you can invest the funds, or make improvements on your home. But to pay off consumer debt? That’s a no-no. I always thought this was a wise piece of advice, but recently decided not follow it.
Halloween is just around the corner, and for some people it’s one of the most anticipated holidays of the year. The National Retail Federation expects Halloween to cost the average person $77.52 this year* (including costumes, decor, and candy) which is up from $75.03 last year. This translates to over $7 billion nationwide.
This trend is as visible as the cropping up of exclusive “Halloween stores” that do 90% of their annual business in the month of October. With that much money being spent on one holiday, there are sure to be ways to save a money on Halloween costumes (while still having a whole lot of fun).
For instance, instead of looking for the best deal or piecing together a costume themselves, many people fall into the trap of paying top dollar for the exact costume they want. In our high-paced society, it’s convenient to wait until the last second and then buy a costume that doesn’t require any additional work or creativity. But what if you could save 50% or more simply by getting a little creative and planning ahead?
The vehicle registration notification came in the mail today — but I expected this. The amount on the bill to register the van we bought in January was a bit of a shock to the system, however. Before purchasing our new family car, we owned the same 2 vehicles for almost ten years. The yearly registration fee for them was $99, and had been so for as long as we could remember.
But this time, the registration for our new van was $342.
The fee for our van’s license tabs wasn’t something we’d given much thought to when we were buying our new car. It was a once-a-year type fee, so we just figured we could easily deal with it when the bill arrived. Unfortunately, coming up with several hundred dollars extra was a bit of a difficult task.
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