Blog - Surviving and Thriving

What was your first job?

October 7, 2021October 7, 2021 by Donna Freedman

I drove my great-niece to her first job interview the other day. They say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, but right now B doesn’t have any square clothing.

Well, she does have a couple of skirts and a chic black-and-white dress, but the interview is for a very casual food retailer.

“I don’t want to overdress,” she said, deciding to stick with jeans.

Besides, right now the job she wants is at Hot Topic, where you can dress in all sorts of expressive ways. But she’s not yet old enough to get hired there.

Having reviewed the potential interview questions on the company’s website didn’t make her any less nervous, especially since she’s a bit shy. But she tiptoed in bravely with her fluorescent lime-green hair, septum piercing, “Prudhoe Bay Alaska” sweatshirt and white face mask.

Ten minutes later she was back out, with a fistful of paperwork. Apparently the interview went something like this:

What school do you attend?

How far away do you live?

You’re hired.

Win a $100 Old Navy gift card.

October 6, 2021 by Donna Freedman

Savings.com is at it again. This time, the coupon/deals website is giving away five $100 e-gift cards to Old Navy.

Although this is being billed as the #OldNavyFallLooks giveaway, I’m thinking “holiday shopping.” You could do quite a bit of damage with $100 at Old Navy, especially if you check the clearance racks and/or wait until Black Friday.

Then again, Old Navy is known for fun clothing and accessories that are affordable even when they aren’t on sale.

Giveaway: Alaska aurora calendar.

October 1, 2021 by Donna Freedman

As I noted recently, it’s high time you started any holiday shopping you plan for the year. Due to supply chain/pandemic issues, it’s going to be harder to find what you want and it will almost certainly cost more than you hoped.

Here’s one solution: Win your gifts!

I post those e-gift card giveaways from Savings.com whenever I hear about them, in the hopes that one (or more!) of my readers will luck out. Regular readers also know that I give stuff away myself fairly often.

Lately I’ve been trying to focus on locally made items. This week’s giveaway is the Aurora 2022: Alaska’s Northern Lights calendar from Fairbanks-based Greatland Graphics.

Who’s in?

Holiday shopping hack: Unused gift cards.

September 29, 2021 by Donna Freedman

I give a lot of gift cards for birthdays and Christmas, because I like the flexibility* they provide to the recipients. Generally I get them from rewards programs, which means that most arrive as e-gift cards. I print out two copies: one to give and one as backup in case the cards get lost.

Which isn’t me being paranoid. Lost gift cards are a thing. According to a Bankrate.com poll of nearly 2,400 adults, U.S. residents have an estimated $15.3 billion in unspent spending power just lying around. The average amount is $116 per person.

On the bright side, it was $167 per person back in January 2020. That’s progress.

These numbers are sobering – and unnecessary. That’s why I’m proposing that we all go on an unused gift card hunt. Mine happened on Sunday, quite by accident.

Financial gifts.

September 23, 2021 by Donna Freedman

A fellow named Brandon, of Rinkydoo Finance, posed this question today on Twitter:

“What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you financially?”

The expected “parents paid for college” answer popped up a few times. Other responses were things I’d consider not mere kindnesses, but rather enormous advantages:

“Gave us $10k cash for a honeymoon. Loaned us $100k at 3% to refinance my wife’s high-interest student loans.”

“When they purchased my business.”

“Someone anonymously donated $13,500 to my brother’s medical fund when he was battling brain cancer. Never found out who it was. (The number was just under the gift limit for the year so they would not need to file any paperwork with the IRS.)”

Here’s mine:

When I was a 21-year-old unmarried mom, preparing to move from rural New Jersey to Philadelphia, an acquaintance took me out to lunch. He asked how I could possibly keep the baby and myself alive on my “permanent part-time” salary. So I laid it out for him: I make X dollars an hour, rent and public transit pass are X dollars a month, child care is X dollars a week, I just bought a scrub-board and we’ll eat a lot of beans.

Then I excused myself to the restroom. When I came back, he’d paid for the lunch and said, “Well, I have to be going.” After he hugged me goodbye, he put a slip of paper in my hand. Unfolded, it turned out to be a check for a month’s worth of child care. Immediately I said, “I can’t accept this! It’s too much!”

$1,500 in gift cards up for grabs from Savings.com.

September 14, 2021 by Donna Freedman

Once again Savings.com is putting some gift cards up for grabs, and once again I’m hoping one (or more!) of my readers will win. This is a pair of quick-turnaround giveaways, so please take 60 or so seconds to enter them right now.

Here’s what you have a chance to win:

Four $250 e-gift cards to Home Depot are the prizes in the #WinterPrepWithHomeDepot giveaway. Follow the link and enter before 11:59 p.m. PDT Thursday, Sept. 16.

What would you do with $250 worth of buying power? Home improvement projects, holiday decor, yard care items, e-security stuff like a doorbell camera? Note: Home Depot also sells furniture, linens, cookware, dishes and other home items.

Your second shot at free scrip is with the #SaveAtSamsClub giveaway, which will award $100 gift cards to five lucky winners. Again, enter through that link by 11:59 p.m. PDT Thursday, Sept. 16.

The possibilities at Sam’s Club are pretty wide-open: food, toiletries, pet care, furniture, clothing, towels, sheets, shoes, books, vitamins…If you’ve never been in a warehouse store, you’ll likely wind up a bit dizzy. And if there’s no Sam’s Club near you, just order online.

Be a frugal role model.

September 13, 2021 by Donna Freedman

A while back my cousin found out he’d accidentally encouraged someone. While he was on his daily walk, a car pulled up and its driver called out to him. Seems she and her daughter had seen him taking long strolls in the hot Utah weather.

“You inspired me to get out and walk. I’ve lost 10 pounds since February, just walking,” she concluded.

My cousin posted this encounter on social media, concluding with, “Sometimes we are unaware of the impact we have on others.”

A longtime reader, whom I’ll call V, recently reminded me that my long-ago MSN Money Smart Spending posts inspired her to pay off a ton of consumer debt. Soon after the debt was gone, V’s husband was killed in a traffic accident. Because she was otherwise debt-free, she was able to handle the mortgage on her own.

“You gave me the tools and support when no one else was there,” she says.

I pointed out that she was the one who did all the work. But I did cherish the gig of frugal role model for MSN Money. Even though I now work on my own, I still love sharing ways to get the most bang for your buck.

Judging from the comments you leave, a lot of my readers are not only frugal, but also love sharing frugal hacks. I encourage you to keep doing that. Money-saving knowledge is needed more every day in this country.

During the pandemic lots of folks cut way back on spending. Living on less was essential if you’d been laid off or had your small business hammered by lockdown. It reminded me of the recession, when people were floundering and desperate for info on how to pay their bills.

Enter personal finance blogs, which told readers how to fix cheaper meals, use coupons and take other steps to keep costs low. People couldn’t get enough of this advice until things eased up a bit – at which point some couldn’t wait to get back to business as usual. They jettisoned frugality, deciding it was no longer necessary because the good times were back.

5 ways to ruin the 2021 holidays.

September 30, 2021September 9, 2021 by Donna Freedman

The pandemic has messed with my sense of time, and maybe with yours. Certainly I was startled today when I did the math and realized that Thanksgiving is just 77 days from now.

Three days after that is the first night of Hannukah. And if you’re a Christmas person, that happens in 107 days.

Some of us prepare throughout the year. If we see gift bags and/or holiday wrapping paper on deep clearance (or waving at us from the mixed-paper bin at the recycling center), we stock up.

Yard sales, thrift stores and Buy Nothing Facebook groups yield us holiday décor, serving pieces and gifts. We stash points from rewards programs/apps, planning to cash them in for gift-buying.

Not everyone is as vigilant (or hypervigilant). To those who prefer a more laid-back approach, I hereby offer some helpful tips on completely screwing up the 2021 holidays.

1. Wait until the last minute.

So what if supply-chain issues are predicted to get worse in the coming months? Maybe they won’t!

And so what if retailers like Walmart and Amazon are struggling to get space on shipping vessels, or if the continuing microchip shortage has affected manufacturing? Surely they’ll have that all ironed out before Christmas.

You’re a busy person, after all, so it’s fine if you wait until Dec. 23 to start your shopping.

2. Relax about the mailing.

The U.S. Postal Service plans both a temporary rate hike and a first-class mail delivery slowdown starting in early October. If you don’t wrap and mail early, you’ll pay more and the stuff might not get there on time.

6 money lessons from “Black Widow.”

August 30, 2021 by Donna Freedman

A few weeks back I checked out “Black Widow” with my great-nephew, a superhero nerd. Appropriately enough for a Marvel Comics Universe film, I wore my mask, at least until we sat down. Social distancing is in effect in terms of how many tickets the theater will sell, so I felt safe enough removing my mask to enjoy some kettle corn* and a soft drink.

We’d been waiting a long time for this pandemic-postponed female action movie to open, and I went in planning to love the film so much that I wanted to bear its children.

This was not to be. Although I liked a lot of things about it, it ultimately didn’t hang together as a super-epic. One thing I did love was Florence Pugh’s portrayal of Yelena Belova, a sardonic young badass and sister to Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanov.

While I think Johansson’s a fine actress, and that the two of them played marvelously well against each other, Pugh walked off with the whole film tucked into one of her many pockets.** She lit up the screen and owned every scene in which she appeared.

So in-like, not in-love. Still a good day out – and I paid only $6 because it was cheap(ish) day. Even more luckily, I can call it a business expense if I write about it. So here we go.

Some people look for life lessons in movies. I look for financial ones, whether it’s in Metropolitan Opera HD Broadcast Series productions such as “Parsifal” and “Gotterdammerung,” or slam-bang action films like “Wrath of Man” and “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.”

Did I find them in “Black Widow”?

Do you really have to ask?