budget - Surviving and Thriving

Two ways to get free credit monitoring.

February 4, 2014 by Donna Freedman

Target is offering a great big mea culpa as a result of its recent data breach: a year’s worth of free credit monitoring through Experian. This is for anyone who shopped at Target stores in the United States between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15.

Personal finance expert Liz Weston offers some best-practices tips plus a legitimate URL where you can sign up for the service. According to the Target website, consumers need to be wary of e-mails and phone calls by scammers pretending to represent the company but who “are really trying to get personal information from you.”

Experian may try to get something from you, too, according to Weston: “It will try to sell you upgrades, such as a peek at ‘your credit score’ – actually a PLUS score that isn’t used by lenders.” But you don’t have to give a credit card number or pay for anything, because Target is picking up the tab.

You do, however, have to provide your Social Security number and some other info, so that Experian can make sure it’s protecting the right person.

The (sorta) poor relation.

January 7, 2014 by Donna Freedman

Several times during this visit I’ve tried to pay for things but my daughter wouldn’t hear of it. At one point she noted that she now makes considerably more than I do, thanks to my recent economic downturn.

She wasn’t snide or condescending, but rather expressing a “so glad I can help you for a change” vibe. When I thanked them today for buying me lunch out Abby’s response was, “Thank you for cooking and cleaning.”

Having my daughter pay for groceries or meals out while I’ve been here feels weird. Sure, it’s a cheap price for a maid and cook, and I know she really can afford it due to her own awesome budgeting and frugal-hacking skills.

Oh, and her salary, which is now larger than mine.

For years I’ve been the one who helped, even when I could barely afford to do so. Now I’m the one who gets helped.

Then again, that was my choice.

Time is something we can’t do over.

October 15, 2015October 25, 2013 by Donna Freedman

The 2013 Financial Blogger Conference was the best yet, and also the most exhausting. We got up at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15 to fly to St. Louis and, coincidentally, walked back through our front door at about 2 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24.

In between: a long plane trip, most of a day spent “frugalizing” a family with MP Dunleavey (for her Woman’s Day column), the conference itself and then a few days hanging out with my daughter, who also attended.

The conference days were a blur of activity, four days of leaving the room at 7:30 or 8 a.m. and falling back into bed at 1:30 or 2 a.m. Yet it was delightful to attend sessions, reconnect with others who’ve attended for three years running, to win prizes, and to discuss some very interesting work-related propositions (nothing I can noise around just yet, though).

Right now DF is on furlough (grrr), so we had Thursday and today to recover from the trip. It’s been tough for me to get my head back into the game; instead, I want to spend my days talking about writing and having other people cook for me.

Scratch that: I want to spend my days working only when I feel like it. I expect I’m not alone.

As I noted in “Termination dust,” being kicked to the virtual curb by MSN Money has caused me to reconsider the kind of life I want to lead. That’s why an e-mail I received today really resonated.

When helping your parents hurts you.

October 5, 2015September 19, 2013 by Donna Freedman

When helping your parents hurts you. Last month I was contacted by Kira Reginato, an elder-care management specialist and host of a weekly radio program in Santa Rosa, California. She’d come across an article I did for MSN Money called “Are you your parents’ ATM?”

Reginato invited me to be on her program, “Call Kira About Aging,” to talk about this very sensitive issue. If you’d like to hear the result, you can access the podcast here.

No time to listen? Let me give you a few of the highlights, starting with some frightening stats regarding folks currently in their 40s and 50s. According to the Pew Research Center:

27% provide primary support for a grown child.
21% have provided financial support to a parent aged 65 or older in the past year.
38% say both their grown children and their parents rely on them for emotional support.

Anybody but me think that sounds not only emotionally but financially exhausting?

Specifically: If you’re helping out parents whose money isn’t stretching far enough and/or picking up the slack for your under- or unemployed kids, what happens to your own finances?

Sweating the cost of summer fun.

June 6, 2013 by Donna Freedman

Late last week I suggested we drive to the Turnagain Arm Pit BBQ for supper. It wasn’t that there wasn’t anything to eat at home. It’s that the weather was too nice to stay inside.

Sure, we could have had leftovers at a table in the back yard. In fact, DF suggested we do that rather than spending $30 or more on ribs. But I wanted to take advantage of the splendid drive along Turnagain Arm, and then sit on the patio eating fried pickles and basking in the nonstop Alaska sun.

Summer can do a number on a frugalist’s finances – especially if your friends don’t play fair. Whether it’s beer and chicken wings after a pickup softball game or al fresco lunches with pals on a sunny Saturday, the next few months could lead to all sorts of uncomfortable money situations.

Resist the ATM! Here’s how.

April 28, 2011 by Donna Freedman

Your ATM card is a tool, just like a credit card — or a hammer. The powers of all three can be used for good, or they can land you (or maybe just your thumb, sometimes) in a world of hurt.

Could you live well on $30k a year?

October 3, 2015March 31, 2011 by Donna Freedman

One of the two couples I interviewed in my latest MSN Money column has an adjusted gross income of $30,000 — and is raising kids and paying for a home on that sum.

The other couple is doing the same thing on an AGI of $36,000.

Could you?

Could your family survive on one salary?

November 28, 2015November 27, 2010 by Donna Freedman

Some couples choose to go to one income: to have a baby, to go back to school, to start a business. For others the change is involuntary and terrifying: layoff, illness, a business going under.

Those who seek change have the option of preparing for it. Those who have change thrust upon them can only scramble to minimize the damage.