Jill Russo Foster

Tips for Successful Personal Finances

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Ready To Make A Big Purchase

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We recently purchased a replacement car.  We bought my 1995 Jeep in September 1994 and we felt it  was time to get another car.

Here are the steps we took before making the purchase:

  • Started to look at cars to determine what manufacturer and model we were interested in (looking a pricing)
  • Reviewed our finances – how much can we put down as a down payment, how much can we afford as a monthly payment, etc?
  • Reviewed our credit to make sure all is well
  • Looked at car loan interest rates from several sources to determine rates and terms
  • Unfroze it to make it accessible to the lender for a car loan

All this took place over about a four month time frame.  Once we determined what car – brand and model, we did our online research for deals (the model and miles).  We wanted to be ready to move as soon as we found the car we wanted.  It had been a long time since we purchased a car, so we weren’t sure what we wanted in an SUV and we were open to most car manufacturers.  This made the search process long, but I knew when we found what we wanted we would be ready.

And it happened a couple of weeks ago, we found the perfect SUV for me.  A couple of years old (2016) with hardly any miles (less than 4,000), certified pre-owned and an extended warranty.  That was the car for me. Saw it on a Thursday and make the decision on Friday – all our preparation made us ready to go.  We picked up the car the following week.

Life Without Chemicals Or Harmful Additives

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I am on a mission to remove hazardous chemicals from our lives.  There are so many that appear in our lives without even thinking about it.  There are additives in our foods.  There are chemicals in our cleaners in our personal care items and food.  This is too much for me and we are changing how we buy things.  Reading the labels for ingredients.  Yes, it takes time, but my health is more important.

I buy organic foods and do a lot of cooking myself versus buying prepared foods.  I grew up with a family that lived farm to table lifestyle with a garden in the back yard for some awesome vegetables.  I still garden to this day. in fact, we just planted this years garden.  There is nothing better to me than picking lettuce and making a salad or picking a vegetable for a meal based on what’s ready to pick.  You can’t beat the freshness or the taste without any additives or chemicals.

In addition, we have been eliminating chemicals in our home too.  All those chemicals in the cleaners we used to use.  Not to mention the chemicals in our personal care products. Ugh!  We use products such as vinegar, baking soda and essential oils to clean and sanitize our home.  Young Living’s Thieves is what we use for laundry, dishes / dish washer / household cleaner and more.

When is the last time that you read the label on a product you regularly use in your household? Take one out now and see what’s in it.  It might shock you.

We are putting our money towards better options.  For more information check out these websites:

  • Environmental Working Group for a list of the dirty dozen and clean 15 fruits and vegetables.  Also, they have a list of skin care products with ratings to help you choose.
  • Food Babe – great information about what is in the food that we eat – it’s shocking.
  • Young Living – for non toxic cleaning and personal care products included the Thieves products in the photo*
  • Center for Food Safety – working to keep our food / environment safer

Once you read the labels, you will be shocked at what is in these products.  For me, it means making my own healthy versions for our home.  For example, condiments – we make our own from scratch.  I couldn’t find mayonnaise or salad dressing without partially hydrogenated oils and added sugar. Yes, it takes time, but my health is more important.

We are not perfect, but we are eliminating and replacing one product at a time.  It’s a journey and it will take time, but it’s one step at a time to a healthier lifestyle.

* We may receive a percentage of the purchase price if you chose to buy the linked products. There is no difference in price to you.

Off Season Shopping

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Now is the time to shop for your winter items – no, it’s not a typo.

You can get great deals on off season items now.  Think snowblowers, coats, heavy clothing, and so much more.

I saw a ski jacket I liked this winter. It was $200 – more than I wanted to spend.  I kept an eye on it.  In March it was reduced to $80 – not bad but I was hoping for more of a discount.  Well in May it was down to $60.  I was able to save $140 and get the coat I wanted for next season.  It pays to shop off season.  In addition, I will watch the price.  If it goes down more in the next 30 days, I will bring it back for a price adjustment for the difference.

This is just one example of shopping off season.  What are you thinking of buying?

Summer Travel For Everyone

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As we start to think summer, what are your plans?

Personally, we are planning a few day trips / long weekends.  One day trip in the works is to a concert that’s about 2 hour drive each way.  This takes some planning – checking out the route and plans for the concert – tickets, parking, the location, etc.  Our weekend away is for later in the summer, this involves more planning as it’s out of state to an event. Nver the less, planning comes into play here as well.

With all our plans (and whatever you are planning) for this summer, here are some tips for that road trip from The Hartford for everything from a day trip to driving in a foreign county to prepare yourself and your car to be able to plan ahead.

You need to consider – route maps, lodging, gas, lodging, admission fees, parking and more to work with your budget.  Options is what it’s about.  For example, route maps have come a long way from the paper maps to GPS to phone navigation apps – all are good choices, but require planning.  What’s your preference?  Doing your research ahead of time, helps you plan your finances and helps you to stay within your budget.

I’ll keep you posted on our summer adventures.  So what’s on your bucket list for this summer (and beyond)?

Where Did My Money Go!

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Do you ever get that feeling you are missing some money?

There is lots of unclaimed money in every state.  The unclaimed money list is a big list of names (individuals, companies, non-profits and more), that each state maintains from institutions that turn over money to them.  You may be asking why would an institution turn over your money to the state?  Good question, these are funds from accounts that haven’t had any activity in several years.  Here are a few examples:

  • An in active savings account – did you forget you had an account from when you were a child?
  • Proceeds from a check not cashed – did you lose a check a while back?
  • Unclaimed insurance polices proceeds – did your parents buy life insurance when you were born that was forgotten about?

This past weekend, I did a search for myself and members of my family. I didn’t find any results this time, but I have in previous attempts.  In the past, I found a few share of stock that I inherited from my mother’s estate and the proceeds of an old life insurance policy my father that my father must have forgotten.

When was the last time you checked? Don’t forget to check in every state you have lived in.  Search by your name(s) and for family members.  Remember that there is no fee to claim unclaimed money.  If you are asked to pay a fee – don’t.  You can do this yourself easily and there is no fee to collect unclaimed money.

Here’s an old article I wrong on this for more information click here.

Single Use vs. Reusable

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I grew up with a mother that recycled and composted, so reducing and reusing is in my blood.

Our town was one of the first town’s in the state to ban the single use plastic bags at stores.  They encourage you to bring your own bags.  If you don’t bring your own, they will give you a paper bag.  I personally keep my reusable bags in the back seat of my car, so that they are always available and with me.  Also, when buying one single item, we skip the bag and take the item without a bag.

 

 

In addition, we have been reducing our single consumption items in favor of reusable ones.  We are eliminating the plastic in our lives.  We have switched from plastic bags to reusable silicone bags and from plastic containers to glass jars (mason jars are a great inexpensive alternative).  We try not to purchase items in plastic instead looking for alternatives.

We now make our own cleaners in reusable glass jars – no more single use bottles from the store.  You can believe how inexpensive it is to make your own (besides not having a single use container to toss).  Baking soda, vinegar and essential oils can clean just about everything for a fraction of the cost of store bought cleaners.

We have eliminated the private trash collection service from our home and now take our own trash to the transfer station – we our down to one bag of trash per week.  This eliminated a $100 a month bill!  I love saving money.

Share with me what reusable things you do.

 

 

 

 

What Can You Do With $20.00

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In honor of Money Smart Week, let’s talk about cash. Do you have enough?  Are you living paycheck to paycheck? My philosophy about money is that is comes down to make choices that are right for you at this particular time of you life.  Let’s start with $20.00 cash.  What would you do?

A $20.00 may not seem to be a lot of money, but it can be.  If I gave you $20.00 bill, what would you do with it?

You could:

  1.  Deposit it to your bank account or open a bank account
  2.  Buy something
  3.  Give it to help someone or a charity to help others
  4.  Have fun by brightening your day

I bet you can think of more choices.  Your choices are unlimited.  But instead of think about one thing to do, how about thinking about multiple things to do.  You might be thinking that $20.00 is too little to do anything with, trust me it’s not.

What will $20.00 buy you:

  1.  Movie ticket and possibly popcorn too
  2.  Flowers for you or to give away
  3.  Picnic lunch on a nice spring day
  4.  Pay extra on a bill
  5.  Can of paint to refresh a room

My suggestion is to think about money is multiples.  In this case, it’s not $20.00 maybe it’s 2 $10.00 bills or 4 $5.00 bills.  Now what can you do with that?  Now you can select multiple things on your list.  Your choices are unlimited.  Instead of thinking it’s only $20, think 12 months ahead – that would be $240.  What could you do with that?

Finding extra money (no matter how small) can be put to good use.  The choice is yours – do you use it today or save it for tomorrow?

 

Cutting The Cord – Step 2

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For those of you who have been following this newsletter – Cutting the Cord – here is our last step.  If you missed – Cutting the Cord – Step 1, please read this first.

The home phone number is ported!  The actual process was supposed to take 3 to 4 weeks.  So I started the process thinking I had time to set up the new actual device. Well surprise – I didn’t.  I started the porting process on a Friday afternoon and the number ported by Monday afternoon (2 business days)!.  So that was great because it was fast.  It was bad because it wasn’t easy to set up the new device.  I’ll be honest with you, currently it’s set up wired. I haven’t been able to connect the wireless  setting to this date.  But the phones and voicemail work!

So our next step was the TV’s.  Over the years, we had reduce our TV package / channels down to basic so there wasn’t anymore we could do to reduce our bill.  In honesty, we already had some alternative TV options in the house so my husband can watch live sports.  This past weekend, I did some exploring with our TV options.  I added and set up the major networks apps for streaming live TV and on demand.  We installed an app recommended by our alternative TV sources for all local over the air channels and set that up (that is a minimal cost as they suggest a $5/ month donation).

Called the TV provider to discuss the cost of internet only (vs. the triple play).  I wasn’t happy with that call.  I was told that we wouldn’t be keeping the current price for that portion of the bill, because we were dropping the triple play.  It would go up by $15/month.  I knew there would be alternatives to this service and I was on a mission to find them.

First, we disconnect the bedroom TV from the cable TV and re-set up the TV and all worked fine.  The next day, on to the living room TV.  Got that TV disconnected and re-set up. That was a little more challenging as this one had more components involved, but we did it.  All is working without cable box!

Next, we called the TV provider to disconnect the phone and TV service.  Again, I was told the internet only was going to go up by $15.00.  Not what I wanted to hear.  After a lengthy conversation, I was transferred to another department and there I got to a great helpful person.  I explained our situation – how long we had been a customer, the original TV package we started with and all the down grades over the years.

Bottom line, is that we did get the internet service (same speed) for the price that we were paying for the triple play.  And, they gave us the basic cable with the box and remote for no additional change.  Yes, we did go through a lot of set up to configure the TV’s without cable and then back to be with cable, but now with a savings of over 45% per month.  When the price goes up, we will be ready to fully cut the cord.

 

Cutting The Cord – Step 1

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I don’t know about you, but our TV, internet and phone bill keeps going up, regardless if you have negotiated with them or not.  I don’t want to keep playing the game of switching companies for a new triple play package each and every year.  I’m done with this!

So we have taken step one in the process of cutting the cord.  We just purchased a device to have our same home phone for a fraction of the cost.  We are in the process of having our number ported over over the next couple of weeks. It will be a minimum monthly cost for taxes and fees – about $5.00 per month versus $35.00 – that’s a big savings to us.

Once that is up and running, it will be time to cut the TV service.  No need to keep paying for channels that we don’t watch.  Over the years, we have reduced the number of channels and are currently just subscribing to basic, but it all adds up.  So there wasn’t anymore to cut out.

Keep reading for the rest of journey on cutting the cord.

What We Spend Money On

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Last week I wrote about what we don’t spend money on.  Some of it may have surprise you.  But we don’t live by candle light and never go anywhere.  Today, I’ll share with you what is important to us and what we spend our money on.

Yes, we spend money on food – good food – healthy food – organic, free range, pasture raised food like our parents purchased.  We make most of our foods from scratch and have home cooked meals most nights and bring our lunches to work.  We rarely buy processed and prepared foods.  Once the weather starts to warm up, I start my vegetable garden.  It’s another way to have fresh food at a fraction of the cost. This is where we spend money.  I like to think of this as back to basics.  The same is true for our home.  We clean with home made cleaners, made up of vinegar, baking soda, essential oils and water.

We also travel.  We save most of the year to travel – sometimes local sometimes far.  But we do this on a budget and look for ways to save with deals, points, miles and rewards. We are in the process of planning a trip for 2020 right now. It may seem far away, but to get the lowest prices you sometimes have to plan the travel when it becomes available.  You may be aware of this with airfares that prices go up and up, the same is true for other travel plans.

What do you spend money on?