We have been dealing with this at our home. We have inherited our parents stuff. We cleaned out the stuff, but now we are on a mission to clean out the personal items – family photos, slides & movies, stuff that may be worth money. Do we really need all this stuff?
Spring Cleaning Your Finances
Spring is a great time of year! One of my favorites, as the weather turns warmer and the days are longer. For us, it means more time outside and that can be from getting my garden planted and the thrill of fresh vegetables right in my backyard, to having meals outside; either just us or with friends and family. We can open the windows to air out the winter stale indoor air and sleep comfortably with the windows open all night. It means exploring the outdoors, maybe taking a walk in a new neighborhood or park, picnics and movies in the park.
With spring comes weddings and graduations – new beginnings. This can be true for all of us, even if we don’t have a milestone event coming up.
Traditionally, spring makes me think of spring cleaning and tackling the heavier cleaning throughout the house. We can do the same for our finances. For the graduate, you can start them off with the gift of good finances – being able to start to plan their money and finance proactively and make planned purchases versus impulse buying. A great way to start would be the gift of my book, Cash Credit and Your Finances: The Teen Years.
For those who want to get your own finances back on track, 111 Ways to Save or Thrive In Five: Take Charge of Your Finances in 5 Minutes a Day will give you the push you need to get your finances in order.
You can order my books through my website or by order form. If you use the order form, you have the option of me personalizing the book. Just print the order form, fill out the recipient information section, and mail it to the address on the form or fax it to 203-504-7995. For the month of June 2017, we are also offering free shipping on all book sales that are ordered with the order form via mail or fax.
Click here to download the order form.
Should teens pay some of the cost of driving?
What do you think?
Are you paying too much for TV?
Change Is The New Normal
To start, we have been making better food choices over the past few years. As we get older, I want to still be active and healthy. This is a journey with small changes happening. We are striving for 50% of our plate to be vegetables. Our proteins are certified grass fed meats and fish with no antibiotics and non-GMO all while staying within our food budget. We shop what’s on sale and plan our meals to get the most from our dollars.
It’s that time of year to plan our garden and have fresh picked vegetables right in our backyard, at a minimal cost for organic seeds. Love this part of summer!
Here are some of our favorites to get more organic vegetables into our meals:
• Chicken Vegetable Soup making healthy bone broth with assorted vegetables. This is great to have on hand when we are short on time for dinner – just heat and eat.
• Lettuce wraps for lots of foods. Big leaf lettuce replaces the bread, wrap, taco and more. Inside can be anything from tuna to tacos – let your imagination run wild.
• Fries are one of my stress foods. But as I make these changes, there goes the fried foods. Now we bake or grill vegetable fries. Try it – avocado fries are one of favorites, but you can use many other veggies.
We are changing our food for the better. This wasn’t done overnight, just small changes (or baby steps) to gradually improve our choices. Our first step was to eliminate trans fats/partially hydrogenated oils, then came nitrates and then GMO’s. This exercise was eye-opening when I went through our pantry and even more surprising reading labels at the store.
As you can see, we are eating more at home and taking meals/snacks from home. Both are good things for our health and benefit our wallet too. More on the other areas of our lives that we have changed in the next issue.
Do you want to have $1,000,000 in the bank?
I Challenge You to Track Your Expenses
Have you ever written down a budget to see where your money is going? Well, we did this earlier this month and everything looks fine, meaning that we make more than we spend.
That means we can pay our bills – great! That’s check one. Check two – are we saving enough? No, we we’re not, but where do we get the money? We won’t find extra money to save until we find out exactly where our money is going.
If you want to do this process with me, follow these steps:
1. Write down a couple of short and long term goals, so you’ll be inspired to do the work.
Short term goals can be planning for a vacation, buying a car, paying down debt, saving for something that you want, and starting an emergency fund.
Long term goals can be saving to purchase a home, saving for your children’s education, retirement planning, and paying off debt/mortgage. What are yours? Imagine what you want or need and write it down now.
2. Track every penny you spend. That means finding a way to record your spending as it happens.
Don’t wait until the end of the month and use your bank statement or receipts. A single store can fall under many spending categories and receipts don’t always list items by name (or by names that you can decipher). Don’t think for a minute that your grocery store trip can be lumped under food. You may buy your pet food there, as well as cleaning supplies, shampoo, or even magazines.
I know this sounds time consuming, but it’s worth it. You can carry a pen and pad with you and write down everything by hand. Another way to track your money is by using a phone app. Choose the way that works best for your lifestyle.
3. Write your totals in a budget worksheet to see where you stand.
Once you see a month’s worth of numbers, than you can begin to analyze what is going on. With this clear picture, you can make changes – lower bills to save money, get rid of unused services, check out the competition to switch etc.
Tell me what you have discovered with this exercise. Next issue, I will tell you what we have changed.
The Importance Of Insurance
We all know we need insurance and probably have all the standard ones in place – homeowners / renters, auto, and umbrella. But it’s those special ones that are in question for us. I am referring to travel, car rental, pet, extended warranties, home warranties and more. We think we don’t need them, but do we?
We just booked a vacation and we have the option to add travel insurance for a reasonable fee. Do we do it? Is it a waste of money? Fortunately, we don’t have to make this choice for a few months. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you my initial research.
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Reasons you might need the coverage
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Reasons you might NOT need the coverage
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Travel / Trip Insurance
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Non-refundable vacations
You are taking an expensive vacation with lots of opportunities for losses
Your health insurance will not cover you where you are going (anything from a doctor’s visit to medical airlift)
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Your credit card that you booked your vacation with gives you the insurance coverage you need
If your travel plans are refundable / changeable without or a minimal penalty
You can financially afford the cost / loss
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Car Rental
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If you don’t own a car and therefore don’t have auto insurance
If you are going to a location that your car insurance will not provide you the coverage
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If you have this coverage on your current auto policy and it extends to your rental car
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Pet
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If you are the type of person that would do anything for your pet, regardless of the cost
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If you can afford to pay for the services
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Extended Warranties
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If you want peace of mind knowing that your electronic device is covered
If you are a person that tends to lose, break or damage things
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If your budget can handle the cost of replacement on short notice
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Home / Car / Appliance Warranties
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If you want peace of mind knowing that you are covered
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If the cost of the insurance is more than the cost to replace / repair
If your budget can handle the cost of replacement with short notice
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As you can see, I have suggested many things for us and you to think about before you make your own choices. Let me know any thoughts I have omitted and what helped you decide.
Budgeting
This newsletter, we are going to talk about spending too much! Personally, we upgraded the master bedroom and bath. In addition to the insurance deductible, we added on the additional expense of better bathroom fixtures – granite counter, higher end faucet, natural stone ceramic tile and more. Yes, we did spend more (maybe too much). With a new year beginning, we need to reign in our expenses and rebuild our savings.
If your 2017 goal is to track your expenses and come up with your actual budget, there is an exercise I like my clients to do when they have their budget created. Take out two different color highlighters. Use one color for your fixed expenses (amounts that can’t easily change) and then use the second color for expenses that you can adjust or eliminate. Typically, I see three areas for the adjust or eliminate category:
- Penalty fees (late fees, overdraft, over limit, etc.)
- Do it yourself fees – these are things that you pay others to do that you could do yourself and save money (lawn maintenance, snow removal, housecleaning, coffee, manicure / pedicure, laundry, trash pick-up, etc.)
- Life extras – these are the things that you do that you could reduce or live without (entertainment, movies, concerts, dinning out / take-out food, personal care, etc.)
Now make a list of five ways to reduce or eliminate specific items. For example, I could find a teen to shovel my snow versus paying a snow plowing service.I could download a movie for free (Hoopla) or borrow from the library versus renting and not returning on time and incurring a late fee. I could balance my checkbook regularly to know how much money I have available and not incur an overdraft fee. These are just a couple of ideas. Now make your list and track your savings. How much did you save this month? How much would that be in one year?
Are you getting the hang of it? Are there more ways to reduce or save on your expenses? Share what expenses you have reduced or eliminated by 5pm EST on March 10, 2017 as a comment below and you could win a copy of my new book 111 Ways To Save. Three winners will be selected randomly at the end of March.
Holiday Tipping
The holidays are coming! The holidays are coming! You probably know this and the retail stores are starting the holidays off during the summer. From Labor Day weekend, I see the holidays all over the place in retail stores. I’m thinking the beach and heat and they are thinking December. While it’s not bad to plan ahead and be proactive, it’s too early for me, but it’s never too early to think about your budget.
Tipping is always something that comes up around this time of year. Here are my thoughts and what we do.
First, we don’t wait for the holidays. In my opinion, good service doesn’t have to wait until the end of the year. If someone goes out of their way or does an exceptional job, then by all means tip them. A while back we bought dining room chairs and the person in the store took the time to go out of his way. That deserved a tip then and there.
Second, give what you can afford. While it’s nice to give cash and to be able to give to everyone, that may not work for your budget. You can thank people verbally and express your gratitude with a conversation, special note in a card, contact the company or supervisor and express the great service you received, instead of cash. I have made calls to the airline to express how grateful we were for a particular person and the excellent service we received. Rarely do companies get calls like this and they can seem shocked at the call.
This is my plan of attack. Create a list people in your life and here are some examples:
Mail Carrier / Package Delivery
Personal Care (Hair, Nails, Massage)
Child & Elder Care
Teachers
House Cleaner / Lawn Care / Snow Removal Care
Pet People (Groomers, Walkers etc.)
Doorman / Maintenance Workers
Assistants / Key Employees
Then make a plan. If you were to tip everyone in one week, you would break the bank. I like to start after Thanksgiving and end this by New Year. Now if you have decided on an actual tip, it can take the format of the cash or possibly a cash gift card, unless you know them well enough to pick a specific merchant’s general gift card. Spreading out the tipping, helps my budget. Plus, I like to do this in person. So when I have a service done, that’s the time I tip, and again throughout the year helps my budget as well.
Finally for cash tips, make a trip to the bank and get nice new crisp bills and have thank you or blank note cards. People who get many tips need to know who they received it from, so a short thoughtful note handwritten in the card works well. It always is so much nicer to give a tip with a good presentation. I feel that the recipient thinks you took the time to think about them versus handing them crumpled bills from your wallet.
Not sure how much to give? That’s entirely up to you. There are many guides on the internet to assist you, but ultimately it’s your choice. Make your plan now so that you check one thing off your holiday to do list.
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