frugality

Pinterest won’t cover your credit card bills.

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According to the “Generations Ahead” study from Allianz Life, millennials aren’t doing too badly, financially speaking.

They’re building good savings habits, thinking about retirement, etc. However, social media is doing a number on their good intentions.

Almost 90 percent of the millennials surveyed believe that social media encourages people to compare their own lives with the way other people live.

You don’t say.

More than half (57 percent) of those millennials cop to having spent money because of social media influence. That’s why I wrote “Social media will try to bankrupt you: Here are four tactics to stay solvent” over at The Simple Dollar.

 

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Living “poor” and loving it.

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Happy Throwback Thursday! This is the original version of my second article for MSN Money. Given the popularity of the reboot of my first-ever MSN piece – the one about surviving and thriving on $12,000 a year – I’ve decided to post its successor.

Some of its sentiments about the Us-vs.-Them mentality are still relevant. (Unfortunately.)

Incidentally: I didn’t write the headlines; they were thrust upon me. My own suggestion was “How to be poor,” but the editor liked his version better. I’m leaving in the original because I’m masochistic like that.

 

I don’t consider myself deprived, although I can see why some people might think so. I don’t own a laptop computer, television, DVD player, stereo, iPod, video-game system or  many of the other things marketed as necessities.

But I have food, shelter, family, friends, a radio, a bus pass, a library card and the chance to attend a respected university. How could I consider myself “poor” when so many people have nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep and no chance to improve their situations?

Yet there is another reason I hesitate to call myself poor: the cultural baggage associated with the word. Poor people are lazy, stupid, immoral, shameless and incapable of making smart decisions. Poor people are losers; our country loves winners. We want poor people to trade their rags for riches. We want them to embody the American dream.

 

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Cheryl paid off her mortgage.

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When I visited my dad in Tarpon Springs, Fla., last year, he and I met up with a reader named Cheryl. The three of us sat in a Dunkin Donuts talking about life and money. One of the things she mentioned was a rapid mortgage paydown.

Recently she wrote to say she is now completely debt-free, 14 years ahead of schedule.

Cheryl also included a letter she wrote to her niece, a mid-20s newlywed who’s trying to vanquish student loans. While I’m loath to throw around the word “inspirational,” this note fits the bill. That’s why I’m excerpting it:

 

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Your governor earns HOW much?!?

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Had I been asked which state hands the biggest salary to its head honcho, I’d have assumed California or New York.

In which case I’d have been wrong, as I learned while researching “What the governor gets paid in every state,” my latest piece on Money Talks News.

Learned some other interesting stuff, too, such as the fact that one governor’s wife worked as a summertime waitress to save up for a car and that another governor credits his mad budget-balancing abilities to his super-frugal mother, a widow who washed and re-used not just aluminum foil but also wax paper and plastic wrap.

And nope, I’m not going to say which governor earns top dollar. You’ll have to go read the article to find out.

 

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Coupon ethics.

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A couple of young women in Williston, North Dakota were recently busted for fraud after running a coupon scam in the Albertson’s supermarket where they both worked.

They managed to get at least $21,000 in “overage,” or money owed to them for having coupons that were worth more than the on-sale product (in this case, Tide detergent).

These chumps give couponing a bad name.

Worse, when people indulge in fraudulent behavior it winds up costing all of us.

So tempting to think, “Giant Corporation makes billions a year – it’ll never be noticed.” Don’t think that way, unless you’d also be fine with taking money out of a store’s cash register when the clerk’s back was turned. Coupon fraud steals from the retailers (which may not be reimbursed for fake Qs) and from the manufacturers (if they pay out unwittingly).

The money that retailers and maunfacturers lose translates to price increases for consumers. Everybody loses, except the cheaters – and they might, too, if they get caught.

For those who are new to the Q, I’m offering a coupon ethics primer on how to do it right – and also how not to mess it up for everyone else.

 

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What financial health means to me: An evolution.

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(FinCon and the Center for Financial Services Innovation are sponsoring a writing contest: “In 500 words, explain what financial health means to you.” Here are my thoughts.)

My journey to financial health was entirely roundabout, and I didn’t get there until middle age. Financial survival, not financial health, was the focus of my childhood and young adulthood.

Our one-bath, two-bedrooms-plus-attic place housed six. “Lunch” meant peanut-butter-on-bakery-outlet-white-bread sandwiches.

Clothing came down from cousins. We got a few toys at Christmas and a little meat for most suppers. I watched Dad at the kitchen table, printing the household budget. $30 groceries. $10 shoes. $15 Sears.

When my mother moved out it was natural (if not healthy) that I took over, pinching pennies and fretting a hole into my 16-year-old stomach lining. We always broke even – the only kind of money health I knew.

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Here’s my Swagbucks story.

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(I’m taking part in the “Tell Your Swagbucks Story” promotion at the Swagbucks rewards program site.)

When my daughter first told me about Swagbucks, I figured it was just another frugal hack, i.e., a way to earn a few rewards cards and boost my budget.

It was. But it’s become so much more.

Over the years, the Swagbucks rewards program has become a way for me to eat better, slash my gift-giving costs, travel more affordably, send items to people in need and enjoy fresh tomatoes in Alaska – frugally.

Here’s how.

 

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Baby Groot, a tweetchat and my book.

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My friend Linda B. and I went to see “Guardians of the Galaxy 2” on its opening day, and we were not disappointed.

A trash-talking and genetically modified raccoon, a musclebound alien with no social filters, a female assassin with green skin, the assassin’s mostly robotic sister, a (sorta) reformed space pirate and a super-adorable sapling version of the treelike giant alien Groot – what’s not to like?

Given my propensity for finding personal finance lessons everywhere, I went in with pen and paper. Although it was a pretty dark movie (outer space!) I could mostly read what I’d scribbled, and I skipped lunch with Linda in order to go home and write.

 

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Living the ‘pre-solvent’ life.

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(Happy Throwback Thursday, everyone! This article originally ran on July 3, 2015. Its sentiments are as valid to me today as they were back then.)

Here’s today’s neologism, and it’s a great one: “pre-solvent.” It comes from a comment on a Money Talks News article called “The real reason Americans struggle to save.”

The article cited a couple of surveys that put the fault not in our stars, but in our cards: “Lifestyle spending” and “lack of financial discipline” kept anywhere from 44 to 71 percent of respondents living paycheck to paycheck and/or prevented them from achieving financial goals.

I’d like to point out that underemployment, lack of education and impossible-to-pay medical bills can also hinder the ability to save. But I agree that the “buy now, figure out how to pay for it later” attitude is definitely nudging some folks toward insolvency.

Which brings us to pre-solvency. A commenter named “Y2K Jillian” writes that she and her husband lived paycheck to paycheck for years and loathed the lifestyle. But change happened.

How? “Gradually, gradually.” Which is how I’d bet it happens for a lot of people.

 

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When it’s hard to throw things away.

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th-2More than nine years ago my editor gave me a black fleece jacket with the MSN Money logo. The garment has seen some seriously hard use over the years, to the point where it’s no longer midnight-black but rather more of a pre-dawn slate.

A bit worn but still warm, the jacket has reached the end of the line because its zipper is kaput. Yet I’m having a tough time throwing it away, even though it’s no longer wearable and even though I no longer need it. My black fleece Mr. Rebates pullover keeps me plenty warm, thanks; it’s softer and cozier, too.

The other day I tried to throw the MSN jacket in the trash but couldn’t unclench my fingers. Two reasons why:

 

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