budget

#1goodmoneything, and its #badcousins.

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Lately I’ve been noticing the #1goodmoneything hashtag on Twitter and Facebook. People use it to describe both major and minor money choices and actions.

Stuff like using increasing a 401(k) contribution, reaching a side hustle goal, winning tickets to a show, using travel rewards credit cards for a big trip, taking charge of bills vs. ignoring them, and not being upside-down on an auto loan any longer.

My daughter, whose blog many of you read, contributed one as well:

$10.95 sale on sports bras + $10 rewards card = $1.03 Victoria’s Secret sports bra.

That surprised me, since I had no idea that VS sold sweaty grunty stuff like sports bras. I thought they were all about frilly scanties. Live and learn.

Lately I’ve encountered a few #1goodmoneythings of my own. The most recent example was Saturday’s J.C. Penney anniversary sale. Coupons were handed to us at the door, good for $10 off a purchase of $10 or more. Because a video-game-themed T-shirt (destined for a nephew’s birthday gift bag) was on sale, I paid just $2.99.

My niece, a single mom who sniffs out deals the way a Brittany Spaniel scents quail, got six items for just over $20. Among other things this included tops she can wear to work, a handsome Henley shirt for her older son and a long-sleeved, screamin’ aqua bike jersey for the younger. (One of his plans this summer is to “ride my bike as much as I can.”)

Wish I could say it’s been all good-money-things, all the time, lately. Some But me being me, I’ve also met a few of the hashtag’s cousins.

 

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Financially dependent (adult) children.

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Feeling sentimental about your kids growing up and not needing you any longer? Take heart: They might rely on you for longer than you think (or want).

About one in three teenagers expects to remain financially dependent in some way until reaching age 30, according to a new national survey from Junior Achievement USA and Citizens Bank.

About three-quarters of them figure they’ll own a car before they hit the big 3-0. Way to keep the bar low, guys.

According to Jack Kosakowski of Junior Achievement USA, the survey results show “a disconcerting lack of confidence among teens when it comes to achieving financial goals.

“With a strong economy, you would think teens would be more optimistic,” says Kosakowski, president and CEO.

“It just demonstrates the importance of working with young people to help them better understand financial concepts and gain confidence in their ability to manage their financial futures.”

Only 44 percent say they’ll have begun saving for retirement by then, and about the same number hope to have paid off their student loans. At the same time, 60 percent of those surveyed think they’ll own homes.

There’s a disconnect there, I think, that may not be the simple optimism of youth: How do they plan to save for retirement, pay off all their student loans and still own a home?

 

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12 ways to save money on groceries.

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If you want to balance your budget, start by looking for ways to save money on groceries. You probably can’t negotiate your rent/mortgage or car payment downward, but you can find wiggle room in your food bill. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly one-third (32.7 percent) of our food dollars go toward meals prepared somewhere else.

Saving money on groceries means different things to different households. Not everyone lives near a warehouse store, or can afford to belong to one. Nor can everyone grow a garden or visit you-pick farms.

Fortunately, plenty of other ways exist to keep food prices as low as possible. This article’s focus is on getting food at low prices.

Use some (or all!) of the following hacks to eat well without breaking the budget.

Look for “manager’s specials”

Not store-wide sales, mind you. No, these are items that are close-dated or otherwise no longer welcome at the store. You’ll generally save 50 percent and sometimes more.

Meat and dairy items need to be used or frozen quickly, of course. I grab half-price milk whenever I see it, for making yogurt, but milk can also be frozen. Ask the dairy and meat departments at what time(s) of day these marked-down products are put out.

With regard to shelf-stable specials, sometimes it’s because they’re holiday items (canned pumpkin, chocolate bunnies) that have to move along. It might also be a new product that didn’t do as well as the manager hoped, which is how we scored a dozen boxes of mango-flavored gelatin for practically nothing. (We prepared some of it with apple juice instead of cold water and called it “mangle” Jello.)

Sometimes the manager’s special rack includes scratch-and-dent stuff, such as canned goods that have been dropped by shoppers or boxed/packaged items with torn or crushed corners. We’ve gotten some extremely good prices this way; last year we found several giant cans of pickled jalapenos for less than a dollar apiece.

Note: According to the USDA you shouldn’t buy any can that has visible holes or punctures; is swollen, leaking or rusted; is crushed/dented badly enough to prevent normal stacking or opening with a manual can opener; or has a dent so deep you can lay your finger into it.

 

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Financial planning: Too many women don’t care.

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This just in: In the 21st century, plenty of women are still leaving the long-term financial planning decisions to their husbands.

According to a study from UBS Global Wealth Management, 58 percent of women let their spouses handle the big-picture finances.

Here’s what really startled me, though: In the United States, 56 percent of millennial women (ages 20 to 34) were okay with letting their husbands handle the big money choices.

Have we learned nothing from the past few decades?

As a very young woman experiencing poverty, sexism, harassment and exploitation, I used to think, “Things will be better for our daughters.” Surely they would have more. More education. More redress. More lifelong options. More financial security.

Yet we’re still raising our girls to think they’re not good with money, or maybe that men are somehow better at it.

 

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No-spend February: What have we learned?

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Really, really enjoyed the no-spend February. The month showed me that sometimes even super-frugal types are susceptible to advertising. It reminded me to keep an eye on impulse purchases. And on the bright side, it spotlighted how ingrained my careful spending habits tend to be.

I also loved the sense of community, of seeing readers encourage one another and suggest tactics to help stay on target. This has long been a sharing group; the no-spend month merely confirmed that.

It was great fun to read about everyone else’s frugal hackery, including but not limited to:

Slowing down (staycations, letting bad weather keep us indoors, craft activities, taking the time to watch TV or read free Kindle books)

Substituting (adding chopped apples to the oatmeal because the raisins are all gone; substituting not-quite-right yogurt for the sour milk in a recipe; trading a discount movie for a friend’s DVR queue)

Stretching (adding some water to full-fat milk; turning doggy bags into additional meals)

Setting things to rights (repairing a vacuum cleaner with help from a YouTube video

Sunk-cost strategies (fixing meals based the cupboard and freezer; using on-hand items to make snacks rather than buy them; bringing coffee from home vs. hitting Starbucks)

A lot of good money habits begin with the letter S.

And now that the month is over, we can all spend again! But will we?

 

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America Saves Week: Grow your dough.

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As a country, we’re not saving. Our personal savings rate is at its lowest level since the 2008 recession.

How’s your savings going?

Plenty of reasons explain why people aren’t saving: un- or underemployment, tax issues (local, state or federal), stagnant wages if you do have a job, illness (your own or a family member’s), the rising cost of living or even good old-fashioned bad luck (of all the cars in the parking lot, yours was the one that got sideswiped by a guy who just kept going).

Fact is, we have to do better. That’s why America Saves Week was created. Even if you don’t take the America Saves pledge (which apparently gives you the chance to win cash) or follow any of the suggestions in the ASW tool kit, the program might help you focus on this essential fact: It’s up to us to save ourselves – and one way to do that is to SAVE.

 

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No-spend February, Week 3: Taming the reflex.

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It has been a quiet week in Lake Spend-be-gone*. In honor of no-spend February, this has been a week without  questionable stock-ups of Tater Tots, trips to the movies or other unnecessary expenditures.

One big-ticket item, though: a plane ticket to Phoenix* for next month, which set me back close to $600, including trip insurance. Of course, I expected to pay a lot: Right now is the high season for people wanting to get out of Anchorage.

But this trip is an essential expense: My daughter is having cataract surgery, so I’ll be driving Miss Abby. Also painting her bathroom, doing a few household chores, making some casseroles and scooping the litter box. And, yeah, taking daily walks on gloriously ice-free sidewalks.

I watched “The Walking Dead” at my niece’s home for free, rather than go to a local bar and have to spring for a soft drink and a tip. The writers group to which I belong had its monthly meeting, and I brought a spice cake made from ingredients we already had. (More on that later.)

While I’d planned to get some vanilla ice cream on the way to the meeting, to go with the cake, I forgot all about it. Turns out it wasn’t necessary (very moist cake!), and besides, the forgetting jibed with something from last week’s comments section.

A reader named mdoe37 said she’d picked up a planner to help organize her household. Soon afterward she had what she calls a “hello!” moment: Don’t I already have a couple of binders at home, and couldn’t I go online for some organizational sheets to print out?

Somehow her first impulse on seeing a planner was to buy it: Look, a thing that will help organize all those other things! Upon reflection, though, she decided to return it and save a little over $5.

“It’s all about taming the reflex,” she notes.

If people take away nothing else from the no-spend month, I hope they get this part.

 

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Honey-mustard pretzels: An easy, frugal snack.

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Lately we’ve been playing around with recipes for honey mustard pretzels, thanks to having scored one-pound bags of Snyder’s of Hanover pretzels for 50 cents apiece at the bakery outlet.

We’ve experimented with proportions and also the type of pretzel: minis, nuggets and “snaps” (the square ones that look like tic-tac-toe grids — see illustration at left). Yesterday DF came up with what I think is the simplest and most flavorful honey mustard pretzels recipe in the whole wide world.

In the interest of scientific discovery, perhaps you should try it yourselves.

Here’s how:

Melt two tablespoons of butter. (We use a Pyrex cup in the microwave.)

Add three tablespoons of honey and three tablespoons of prepared mustard.

Stir in one teaspoon powdered mustard, a shake of garlic powder and a splash of Worcestershire sauce.

Pour one pound of pretzels into a large bowl and drizzle the sauce over them, stirring constantly until evenly distributed. (A rubber or silicon spatula works well.)

Coat two or three cookie sheets with cooking spray and spread the pretzels as evenly as possible. Bake at 250 degrees for at least one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. If they still feel super-sticky, bake them a little longer. (We have left them in for 75 minutes.)

Break up the pretzels with a pancake turner or your brave, brave hands. (Pro tip: It’s more fun to lick your fingers than a hot metal utensil.)

 

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No-spend February, Week 2: Lots and lots of Tater Tots.

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This week reminded me, once again, that retailers are ultra-skilled at coaxing us to spend on stuff we hadn’t expected to buy.

Yep, I backslid.

But since it was all in the food/healthcare category, I’m going to give myself a pass rather than regret the dollars that flowed from my wallet – or the chopped, formed and extruded potato scraps that landed in our freezer. (More on that later.)

After all, one of the points of the no-spend month is that each person gets to determine what “essential” and “non-essential” spending means. What’s vital to you might be a pffftttt…are you KIDDING me? to someone else.

For example, some people consider coffee an urgent need (DF calls it “God’s blood” – and he’s religious) while others can take it or leave it. The first group will therefore deem a replacement bag of grounds, or daily cups from their favorite java joints, as essential.

The second group will shrug and say, “Not in the budget right now” and either stick to water or bring coffee from home. Which brings me to the mad frugal skillz of a reader named Kate.

 

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No-spend February, Week 1: How’s it going?

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Last week I proposed a no-spend February. The idea appealed to some readers, for very different reasons

First – and worst! – was Yvonne Wilder’s situation. “We just went through a no-spend month in January, with the government shutdown,” she says.

All discretionary spending was cut, to the dismay of the three children in the household. (Not that what it was much fun for the adults, either.)

However, the stressful situation wound up becoming a teachable moment: “We talked quite a lot about the shutdown and budgets and they were definitely on board.”

Although the family is generally thrifty, Yvonne thinks they could stand to step up their game. January’s crash course “made us all aware of spending on wants instead of needs.”

Which of course is the point of the no-spend February: not that you can’t spend money, but rather that you become super-mindful about how and why you spend.

 

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