My friend and fellow aspiring writer, Autumn Heartsong, has honored me with an Honest Scrap Award. The award is for bloggers who post honestly and from the heart, and in order to accept the award, I must:
So, here goes with my acceptance lists:
Many people have a habit of purchasing their Christmas gifts on their credit cards each year, acting as if they were suddenly surprised to find that Christmas came on the 25th of December…what, again?! Others frantically try to scrape together enough money to buy gifts by cutting corners in the months of October, November and December. Again, they seem to be surprised to find that there’s a major expense in the fourth quarter of the year. If you’re in one of these groups, here’s your clue: it’s time to start planning for next year. [Read more →]
If you have a partner in your life—a spouse, someone you live with as a committed couple, anyone who affects or is affected by your financial decisions—please do everything you can to make sure that both of you stand on equal footing when it comes to money. By “equal footing”, I don’t mean that you have to both work and earn the same amount of money in your paychecks. Equal footing is when you both know everything about your individual and joint financial situations and you make decisions for the present and the future together. It is not when one of you earns the pay and the other receives an allowance determined by them because “it’s my money and I will decide what you need”. It is when all household income is pooled and it goes from being mine or yours to become simply ours. [Read more →]
This one is for folks who have a real problem with impulse control. You know who you are, even if you won’t admit it out loud to anyone else. You’ve got credit card balances that are beyond your ability to keep up with the minimum monthly payments, or they’re rapidly approaching it. You believe that any available credit on your card(s) is as good as cash and you’ve just got to spend it. (If you pay off your credit cards each month, never carrying a balance on them, feel free to disregard this post, or keep reading if you think there’s someone else that this may help.) [Read more →]
As the days grow colder in the Northern Hemisphere, we often find ourselves with higher utility bills due to the need to heat our homes and keep the lights on longer. One simple way to save on those bills is to turn down the heat. According to Energy Star, “On average, for every degree you set back your thermostat, you can save 3% on your energy bill.”
You can adjust your thermostat a degree a day and probably not notice any difference. [Read more →]
Our current social environment has conditioned us to believe that credit cards are necessary, that we have to have them in order to live our every day lives. We are a nation that thinks that living beyond our means is normal and that savings accounts are old fashioned. Credit cards are commonplace, but what we know about the business of consumer credit is woefully little. [Read more →]
When I first set out with this blog, I had thought I’d write a post a week. Then I found out about the NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) challenge to write a post a day for a month. It seemed like a good idea, and a good test of whether or not I’d be up to the challenge of writing on a consistent basis.
So, here I am, 30 days later with 30 new posts in this blog. It was far easier to create an entry each day than I had thought it would be. I can’t promise I’ll still post every day, but I will try. If you’ve got questions, feel free to post a comment to any post or to use my contact form to send your question to me directly.
Which is the better deal: one item for $2.50, two for $5, or four for $10? Truth is, they are all the same price. Unfortunately, most people assume that the multiple item pricing equals savings. This is a trick that stores use to convince you to buy more, and if you’re watching your pennies, this is one trick you need to know how to avoid. [Read more →]
I’ll bet that you regularly carry around more than a dollar in change in your pockets or purse, rarely pulling it out to make a purchase. Most people simply rack up coins, drop them in any convenient place, and forget that they actually have value as money. Do you have coins on your dresser, your desk, on the floor of various rooms in your home? Are they cluttering up the console and door handle of your car? Are you surrounded by money? Then why don’t you seem to have any when you need it? [Read more →]
You’ve heard all about the ever-important credit score, right? You’ve got to have a good one if you’re looking to buy a house or get a car loan with a reasonable interest rate—or even get approved for the loan in the first place. A recent development is that a bad credit score can even keep you from getting good insurance rates or some jobs. But what, really, is your credit score? How do they come up with that number and what’s actually a “good” number to have? [Read more →]