Donna Freedman - Surviving and Thriving

Holiday shopping in the time of COVID.

September 17, 2020 by Donna Freedman

(Surviving and Thriving has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Surviving and Thriving and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses and recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.)

Some 71 percent of U.S. residents plan to go online for most of their holiday shopping this year, according to a new survey from CreditCards.com. Will you be one of them?

I sort of hope not.

Local stores have already been hammered by the novel coronavirus. Some are barely hanging on. If there’s another stimulus check – and even if there isn’t – I plan to do much of my shopping here in town.

Note that I said “much.” A bunch of my gifts won’t actually be physical gifts, but rather gift cards that I get from rewards programs like Swagbucks and MyPoints or from my rewards credit cards.

But I’ll also be visiting some local shops with beautiful and/or practical gifts.

Sure, I could go online for pop-culture items for my nephew and niece, or cash in some of those rewards points for chain pet stores. But I’d much rather head over to Bosco’s or the Anchorage PetZoo and leave my dollars here in town.

Monday miscellany: Pandemic hangout edition.

September 14, 2020September 14, 2020 by Donna Freedman

Note: Surviving and Thriving is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

The “miscellany” idea is one that I’d like to make a weekly (or at least relatively frequent!) feature on the site. It will be a mix of news, events and whatever crosses my desk.

This week I’ll start with what’s happening today: a free virtual hangout designed for mothers during the pandemic.

“Monday Mom” is a way for mothers to share resources, chat and, yeah, vent to other moms who Get It. It takes place at 5 p.m. PDT/8 p.m. EDT.

Monday Mom is staged by the LOLA Retreat, an annual conference that’s the brainchild of personal finance author Melanie Lockert (“Dear Debt: A Story About Breaking Up With Debt”). Lockert has two other events this week as well:

“Managing Debt During COVID” is just what it sounds like: tips and tactics to help you survive financially during the pandemic, with financial law attorney and money maven Leslie Tayne. She’s the author of “Life and Debt: A Fresh Approach to Achieving Financial Wellness.” The program takes place Tuesday at noon PDT/3 p.m. EDT.

Finally, the “LOLA Retreat Hangout” is a place to connect with other women and talk about personal finance. The topic of money is too often taboo and as a result people miss opportunities and/or make choices (or don’t make choices) that wind up affecting their entire lives.

Giveaway: Alaska coffee and chocolate.

September 23, 2020September 11, 2020 by Donna Freedman

We had the itch to get out of town recently, so we spent part of the day in Seward. In part, the trip was to enjoy a nice, relatively warm day and the gorgeous scenery of this small (2,729) city. The drive there was also beautiful, beginning along Turnagain Arm, continuing through Johnson Pass and terminating with knockout views of Resurrection Bay.

The day trip was also specifically designed to spend money. That may sound odd coming from a couple of frugalists, but we have decided to do our part to support the local economy. Did the same thing last month with a trip to Talkeetna, home of the Bachelors Auction and Wilderness Woman Competition.

Not that we broke the bank, mind you. DF had coffee from a little shop called Seward’s Cup (we tipped the barista 100%), and bought a much-needed wallet from the town’s only clothing store. He could have purchased it here in Anchorage, but had decided he would drop a few dollars (29 of them, as it turned out) somewhere else.

We looked in at the shops, soaked in the scenery and watched jellyfish bobbing along the shoreline. Before we left town, we had the World Famous Bucket of Butt for dinner.

That’s “butt” as in “halibut.” True, the spelling isn’t accurate. However, it’s funnier this way. Butts are just funny, no matter how old you get.

And I made it my business to buy something to give away on the website. It wound up being three things, one of which be part of a different giveaway.

This time around, though, it’s Alaska-themed (and produced) coffee and chocolate.

Any takers?

What to do with “extra” money.

September 7, 2020 by Donna Freedman

Recently I interviewed personal finance blogger Jordanne Wells and something she said really struck me:

“If you know having money in your pocket will make you feel like you want to spend, then don’t have money in your pocket.”

Wells didn’t mean using cash vs. credit/debit, or walking around without any money/plastic. She was referring to having “extra” money, as in spending less than you thought you would.

For example, maybe you budgeted $100 for groceries but the total was only $80 thanks to wise coupon use and some really good sales.

What to do with that $20?

“Put it toward something right now,” Wells says.

As in, right now. Don’t wait for the monthly credit card statement, or hesitate to move those bucks into your emergency fund. Do it nownownow.

“All of those payments just help to get you in that habit of ‘When I have money, I do something (positive) with it’,” the writer says.

She’s no ivory-tower theorist. Her lessons came the hard way. When Wells came to the U.S. from Jamaica to attend college she had zero information on how to handle money. Credit cards were a revelation: “I can charge $50 and I only have to pay $10? Awesome!” What with school expenses and then “work-appropriate” clothing, Wells amassed debt that she couldn’t pay in full – and that grew to $30,000 by her early 30s.

Needing to buy a vehicle after a car wreck, she learned that she had “awful” credit; the best car loan she could get was at 11 percent interest. So she set out to improve her financial life via what she calls the “Debt S.L.A.Y.E.R” method. Wells also wrote an e-book called “How to Build Credit and Raise Your Credit: Everything You Need to Know to Understand, Build and Maintain Excellent Credit.”

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Right now a lot of folks would love to be in the position of having “extra” money. Plenty of people would have liked that opportunity pre-pandemic, too. If you’re living from paycheck to paycheck, or even just on very thin margins, the notion of surplus money cluttering up the checking account is something of a pipe dream.

Or maybe it isn’t.

Extreme Frugality: Waste nothing edition.

May 21, 2021August 29, 2020 by Donna Freedman

(Note: This is one of an occasional series of articles on saving money.)

We took the second batch of apple rings from the dehydrator this morning. Made from windfall apples, they have a mildly sweet flavor that at first seemed bland. Yet after eating two or three, I was hooked. Really looking forward to snacking on these this winter.

The cores of those apples wound up in the slow cooker along with other cores from the freezer; they’d come from the previous batch of dehydrated fruit and from two batches of apple pie filling. When DF judged them done, he drained the liquid through a cloth-lined colander and poured the juice into wire-bail bottles, then stored them in the chilly basement.

And the gloppy pomace left in the colander? That went into the compost pit out back. One day it will become part of a garden bed.

Not everyone can (or wants to) garden, or to preserve food. But you can observe the “waste nothing” ethos in other ways, too.

Not-wasting is a central tenet of frugality. A life without waste is a life in which each decision means something. This doesn’t limit our choices, however. It merely refines them. Rather than drifting through life reacting to every trend or advertisement, we decide what’s really important to us.

DF and I didn’t set out to become Super Green Eco-Consumers when we chose to reduce, reuse and recycle. We were merely living the way we grew up, i.e., not spending more than we must on food, clothing, utilities, housewares and the like.

Sure, this affects our impact on the Earth, which I guess does make us eco-friendly. But it also dovetails nicely with my frugal mantra (which he now shares): I save where I can so I can spend where I want.

Because we’re careful with money, we can afford to save for retirement, which means we won’t be a burden to our families as we age. We can also afford to give to charity, help relatives and friends in need, and allow ourselves special treats (a trip to Phoenix, a massage, a really good meal at Kincaid Grill once or twice a year).

Living without waste makes our lives better. And one or more of the following tactics might make your life better, too.

Reminding myself of the good.

August 16, 2020 by Donna Freedman

The ongoing COVID lockdown and its associated nationwide healthcare and financial woes have left me feeling both detached and hyper-focused.

I don’t care much about anything, yet I worry nonstop about another massive recession (or, dare I say, a depression).

On the topic of depression: I remain very concerned about what the prolonged COVID isolation is doing to my daughter’s mental health.

(This is not meant to infantilize her. Quite the contrary: I’m in awe of her strength. But it’s a mom thing. We worry.)

To make matters much, much worse, I recently learned that my dad has cancer. He is optimistic – and he’s also 84, and aware that he’s had a pretty damn good run – but I struggled with the news.

Taken together, the result has been me wanting to bury myself in reading whenever I’m not working. It’s a handy way to numb my reactions to Just About Everything.

This was once an unhealthy coping mechanism, because the numbing was nonstop. Suspended animation was my go-to response to anguish, and I spent decades in emotional exile. If I buried myself in a book, or took on freelance assignments in addition to my day job, I’d be far too busy to take honest stock of my life and what was really going on.

These days, the numbing is not prolonged. It’s more of a pause than a freeze.

Specifically, it’s me working my way through the bad stuff by allowing myself to acknowledge it. I’ve found that it’s easier just to admit you’re scared than to fight being scared. Yes, my dad is sick; yes, the country’s economy is in a horrible place; yes, I am concerned about my daughter. It all stinks. Now: What are you going to do about it?

On Friday I stopped in the middle of an editing gig to write down the following phrase: “Reminding myself of the good.” Then I went back to editing, knowing that emotional work was likely going on under the surface.

It was.

Poor, poor (but not pitiful) me.

July 23, 2020 by Donna Freedman

(Happy Throwback Thursday! This piece originally ran on July 21, 2015. Right now seemed like a good time to remind ourselves that a lot of the things we think are necessities really aren’t.)

The response to my early-June reboot of “Surviving (and thriving) on $12,000 a year” was humbling. It was great to see reader comments about the impact this piece had on their lives.

When the post originally ran (January 2007) it got more response than anything else MSN Money published that year. The editor immediately said, “Write another one.” So I did.

The headline I chose was the one you see above; it got changed to “Living ‘poor’ and loving it.” (I refrain from comment.)

I’ve decided to re-boot the second piece as well, again in its original format vs. the MSN-edited version. Once again, asterisks indicate that updates can be found at the end.

Comedian Dick Gregory grew hungry and cold in an impoverished home. Yet his mother always assured the kids, “We ain’t poor, we’re just broke.”

Get free credit reports weekly.

July 7, 2020 by Donna Freedman

Thanks to the economic impact of COVID-19, some people are paying credit card bills and other obligations late. Or even missing them altogether, which can put a major hurt on your credit score.

Coronavirus-related scams are on the rise, and identity theft is a big concern since so many people have been shopping online. The Federal Trade Commission fielded four times more fraud claims in the first few weeks of April than in the previous quarter combined.

We’re all supposed to check our credit reports every four months, through annual free reports from the big three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion). But for the next nine months, you can check it every week.

Those bureaus have teamed up to provide free weekly reports through AnnualCreditReport.com. It’s a collective response to COVID-19, whose financial upheaval has led to those late/missed payments, and it continues through April 21, 2021.

However, you don’t have to be struggling financially to want to check your credit report. It’s always a good idea to make sure there’s nothing weird on your report – and it’s not always fraud-related. Incorrectly entered info, such as transposed digits in a Social Security number, can lead to errors.

For example, one time when I checked the report seemed to think that I worked at a credit union in the southeastern United States. Nope, that wasn’t me.

Note: A credit report is not the same as your credit score. But this new paradigm offers help with that, too.

Giveaway: Two $10 Starbucks gift cards.

June 29, 2020 by Donna Freedman

Hot enough for ya? Some cities are broiling right now and a cold, cold drink could be just the thing.

Up here it’s still a fairly chilly summer, and in parts of Alaska it’s always chilly. A hot, hot drink would be soothing.

Then there are those who believe in drinking hot tea in the summer to cool themselves off. I refrain from comment.

But two lucky will have their first $10 worth of Starbucks beverages covered.