- RT @Dave_Champion Obama asks DOJ to look at whether AZ immigration law is constitutional. Odd that he never did that with #Healthcare #tcot #
- RT @wilw: You know, kids, when I was your age, the internet was 80 columns wide and built entirely out of text. #
- RT @BudgetsAreSexy: RT @FinanciallyPoor "The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money." ~ Unknown #
- Official review of the double-down: Unimpressive. Not enough bacon and soggy breading on the chicken. #
- @FARNOOSH Try Ubertwitter. I haven't found a reason to complain. in reply to FARNOOSH #
- Personal inbox zero! #
- Work email inbox zero! #
- StepUp3D: Lame dancing flick using VomitCam instead or choreography. #
- I approve of the Nightmare remake. #Krueger #
How to Deal with Debt While You’re Out of a Job
This is a guest post from Marc Chase of My Credit Group.
Dealing with a lot of unpaid debt can be a hassle on its own. Having to pay those debts when you don’t even have a job to provide you with the money to do so can be a nightmare. While you’re hunting for a job to help make ends meet, your debts continue to pile up, leaving you scrambling to find a way to take care of them before they cause you to slip further into the poor house, and leave your finances needing credit repair services.
Since you’re likely more concerned about finding a job than anything else, we put together this handy checklist of what you should do to avoid your unpaid bills and debts getting the best of you while you search for a new job.
• Apply for unemployment benefits. This should be your first order of business after you’ve lost your job, especially if you’re one of the many Americans currently living paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment benefits go a long way towards helping consumers stay on top of their bills and credit accounts. Don’t make the mistake of thinking another job is just around the corner – there’s a good chance you can’t afford to wait.
• Keep paying the minimum balance. If you’re on the verge of drowning completely in unpaid debt, you may be tempted to stop paying your bills completely, at least until you get some additional funds in your account. Do this, and you’ll find yourself in need of credit score repair before you even get that call back for a follow-up interview.
Instead, do everything you can to at least pay the minimum balance on all of your credit accounts and bills. This will ensure that your credit history doesn’t take too much of a beating, and saves you from paying even more in interest fees down the line.
• Stop spending money like you have it. Because the sad truth is, while you’re still unemployed, you likely don’t have a lot of money to spare. If you’re still living your life as though you can afford to pay for everything – eating lunch and/or dinner out more than twice a week, generally buying things you don’t NEED – now’s the time to stop.
Stop charging every purchase you make to your credit card – break them out only in an emergency. This will help keep you from sinking further into debt while you’re out looking for a way to pay for your purchases.
• Eliminate and prioritize your bills. Now’s a great time to take a long look at some of the bills you’re paying, and deciding if they’re even worth the service. That doesn’t mean you should stop paying bills you consider “less important” than others; it means looking at some of the things that might have once been necessities (a land phone line if you primarily use a cell phone, a full package TV cable bill, etc.) and re-evaluating your stance on how important they are now that you can’t afford them all. In many cases, you can get in contact with your service provider(s) and talk about ways to reduce your bill (say, cancel cable but keep internet).
This is a guest post from Marc Chase, President of Product Development for My Credit Group, a website dedicated to helping consumers with managing their credit.
How to Save
Saving is hard. For years, we would either not save at all, or we’d save a bit, then rush to spend it. That didn’t get us very far. Years of pretending to save like this left us with nothing in reserve. Finally, we’ve figured out the strategy to save money.
First and foremost, make more than you spend. This holds true at any level of income. If you don’t make much money, then you need to not spend much, either. Sometimes, this isn’t possible under current circumstances. In those cases, you need to either increase your income or decrease your expenses. Cut the luxuries and pick up a side hustle. The wider the gap between your bottom line and your top line, the easier it is to save.
Next, make a budget and stick to it. There is no better way to track both your income and your expenses. I’ve discussed budgets before, so I won’t address that in detail today. Short version: Make a budget. Use any software you like. Use paper if you want. Make it and use it.
Pay yourself first. The first expense listed on your budget should be you. Save first. If you can’t afford to save, you can’t afford some of the other items in your budget. Cut the cable or take the bus, but save your money. Without an emergency fund, your budget is just a empty dream when something unexpected comes up. And something unexpected always comes up.
Automate that payment to yourself. Don’t leave yourself any excuse not to make that payment. Set up an automated transfer to another bank and forget about it. Schedule the transfer to happen on payday, every payday.
Now comes the hard part: Forget about the money. Don’t check your balance. Don’t think about it in any way. Just ignore it. For the first month or two, this will be difficult. After that, you’ll forget it exists for a few months and come back amazed at how much you’ve saved.
If you don’t forget about it, and you decide to dip into the account, you are undoing everything you’ve worked so hard to save. Do yourself a favor and leave the money alone.
20 Lazy Ways to Save Money
- Image by Paul Vivier via Flickr
Investopedia ran a post on 20 lazy ways to save money. I thought it was worth sharing my take on the post.
1. Schedule automatic payments. I do this obsessively. I run all of my regular payments through my bank’s online bill-pay. I think there are 2 bills that get paid manually; 1 is a quarterly payment, the other is due annually.
2. Eat your groceries. According to the post, Americans–on average–throw away 15% of the groceries they buy. I totally believe that. We don’t throw away that much, but it’s still too much. It tends to be the fresh vegetables, which we eat as side dishes instead of the main course. We need to switch that mindset, both to use the vegetable efficiently and to eat healthier.
3. Bundle services. I refuse. I hate the idea of having a single point of failure for multiple systems. If the power goes out, I lose my cable, but I keep the phone. If, for some reason, I can’t pay my phone bill, I don’t lose my internet connection. I like keeping these things separated.
4. Pay off credit card. Hardly a lazy process, but otherwise…duh!
5. Mark your calendar. I use my Google Calendar as obsessively as I use automatic payments. I put in reminders, grocery lists, or anything else I need to know at a specific time.
6. File your taxes on time. I just helped a friend dig out of this mess. I pay as soon as all of my paperwork is delivered. The IRS doesn’t give up and they have leverage, including garnishment and even jail.
7. Roll it over. When you change jobs, take your 401k with you. Don’t leave it behind like a series of red-headed stepchildren. It’s too easy to lose track of the accounts. Don’t cash it out! I made that mistake once and lost far too much to taxes. A rollover doesn’t count against your 401k contribution limits.
8. Switch credit cards. If you can a good balance transfer offer that’s followed by a better interest rate than you currently have, use it. But don’t forget to pay attention to the transfer fees. Do the math. If it costs you $500 to transfer the money, how much interest do you have to save to make it worthwhile?
9. Use your privileges. If you have a AAA membership, use it. It gives you a discount on hotels, oil changes, car rentals, and more. Read the paperwork. Former military gets a ton of random discounts, too. Ask.
10. Rent instead of buy. Renting can save you money over buying, if it’s something you’ll only use once, but borrowing is free.
11. Buy instead of rent. Rent-a-center is a ripoff, but they can’t even legally operate here. If you’re going to use something regularly, buy it.
12. Ask. I love to call up every company I give money to and ask if there’s a way I can give them less. Outside of chain stores and restaurants I almost always ask for a lower price.
13. Just say no. Extended warranties are generally a waste of money. However, if I can’t afford to replace the item, I do get the warranty. On my car, I brought it in for a full inspection and repair a few weeks before the warranty ran out and made all of that money back. We are slowly building a warranty fund to replace the need for any future extended warranties.
14. Have the awkward conversation. We tried giving gift-giving the axe, but nobody enjoyed that. Now, we cap the gifts at $20 and do a round-robin type of gift. $40 for gifts keeps 10 adults happy.
15. Eat at home. Generally, I can cook almost anything better at home, but I really do enjoy eating out and trying new restaurants. We just keep it from being a regular expense.
16. Balance your checkbook. What a waste of time! With automatic payments and cash for all of the discretionary budget items, I balance the checkbook once a month.
17. Stick with your bank. Either use your own bank’s ATM network, or use a bank that refunds ATM fees. I only take out cash on the first of the month, for the entire month and I do that with a teller, so this is never an issue for us.
18. Use your TV. Cable movie packages instead of a video membership? Really? That’s a horrible idea.
19. Quit those bad habits. I quite smoking, saving $200 a month. I don’t drink much and I’m working on fixing my eating habits. Vices are fun, and this is certainly not a fun way to save money.
20. Forget the pet. There is no way this would fly at my house. we have 5 cats, 2 gerbils, and a dog. Our renter has 2 pythons. We’re a flippin’ zoo and honestly, mess and cost aside, we all like it that way.
How do you stand on these ideas?
Saturday Roundup – Welcome to Halloween
- Image via Wikipedia
This weekend marks the beginning of Halloween at Casa del Myhouse. We’ll start setting up our yard display tomorrow. If we’re lucky, we’ll be featured on TV again.
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The Best Posts of the Week:
Bill and Ted is coming back for another sequel! I don’t know how they can top Bad Robot Ted or the Grim Reaper playing Battleship, but I’m looking forward to it.
Here’s a summary of the first stage of the new, overpriced, under-understood health care plan.
I keep thinking about signing up for a CSA. Here’s some details on how they work.
Frugal Dad talks about “my money“.
Finally, a list of the carnivals I’ve participated in:
Cheap Vacations was included in the Festival of Frugality. Thanks!
If I missed anyone, please let me know.
Priorities
I once saw a sign on the wall in a junkyard that said, “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
Another good one: “If everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.”
Once a week, I meet with my boss to discuss my progress for the previous week and my priorities for the coming week. This is supposed to make sure that my productivity stays in line with the company’s goals.
Great.
Once a day, my boss comes into my office to change my top priority based on whichever account manager has most recently asked for a status update for their customer.
Not so great.
At least twice a week, he asks for a status update on my highest priority items. Each time, he could mean the items we prioritized in the weekly meeting, or the items he chose to escalate later. Somehow, getting a new task escalated doesn’t deescalate an existing task.
Everything is a top priority.
To compensate, I’ve been working a few 12 hour days each week, and occasionally coming in on the weekends.
I’m dedicated and still behind.
Prioritizing is treated as an art, or in the case I just mentioned, a juggling act. It should be considered a science. It’s usually pretty simple.
- Is the problem costing you money? +1
- Is the problem costing your customer money? +2
- Is the problem going to hurt your reputation? +1
- Is there a deadline? +1
- Is it soon? +2
- Is it urgent? +1
- Is it important? +2
- Are there absolutely no real consequences for anyone if it doesn’t get completed? -500
That’s it. Too many times, we get hung up on urgent-but-not-important items and neglect the important things.
The hard part comes when it’s someone else setting your priorities, particularly when that person doesn’t rate things on urgency, importance, and cost but rather “Who has bitched the loudest recently?”
Can I tell my boss that I’m not going to do things the way he told me too? No. A former coworker very recently found out what happens when you do this.
Can I remind him that I’m busting my butt as hard as I can? Yes, but it will just earn me a request to come in on the weekend, too.
Can I ignore the official priorities part of the time, and work on what I feel is most important to keeping our customers happy? Yes, but it’s easy to go too far. “Boss, I ignored what you said, but this customer is happy, now!” won’t score me any points if it happens every week.
Priorities are simple, but not always easy. How do you balance your priorities?
