Money Talks News - Surviving and Thriving

13 ways to save money on bread.

April 14, 2022 by Donna Freedman

We save money on bread by making our own, with flour and yeast bought in bulk at Costco. Each time, DF writes the date and the price paid on the bag. (He saves those 50-pound sacks to use as yard waste receptacles.)

That’s how we know that between March 2021 and March 2022, the price went up 51.5 percent. In one year! And that’s why I suggested an article for Money Talks News called “13 ways to beat the rising cost of bread.”

This baker’s dozen of ideas includes our rustic bread fetish, of course. It also features tips for those who don’t bake. One or more of these tips could help you save money on bread, too, so check it out.

Some readers have specifically asked me to run links to pieces I’ve written* lately, which is why I’m doing this roundup. Note: Some of my recent work is either fairly boring (useful, but eye-glazing) or else it’s unsigned. Thus these roundups focus on stuff that won’t put people to sleep, or out the folks for whom I ghost-write.

Another piece for Money Talks News is a topic that regular readers might find familiar. “11 ways to turn table scraps into delicious meals” starts with a sobering stat from the U.S. Department of Agriculture: Almost one-third of the U.S. food supply winds up going to waste. Maybe more, since this was an older study.

So what do frugal people do? Repurpose it! Boiling bags, gleaning, liquid assets, turning “bad” dairy into good ingredients and other tactics help us get the most out of every ingredient.

Giveaway: Stacy Johnson’s retirement course.

October 31, 2019 by Donna Freedman

Do you know whether or not you’ll be able to retire comfortably, or at all? According to the Federal Reserve Bank, 25 percent of U.S. workers have neither pension nor retirement savings.

Now that’s scary. And just in time for Halloween!

Instead of the defined benefit retirement plans that many of our parents received, most U.S. residents rely on things like 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts (IRAs), which can be fee-heavy and which require you to invest your own money. Some employers offer a match, but mostly it’s on you.

Social Security is available for most of us, but it likely won’t be enough to live on. (And in fact it may not be fully funded by the time you retire; see Liz Weston’s recent article on this topic.)

Oh, and there’s always personal savings. Right? Or wrong. Some people don’t have a dime in liquid savings. Worse, some of them don’t have any kind of retirement plan other than Social Security.

Stacy Johnson, founder of Money Talks News, is concerned about two big issues surrounding retirement in this country: skyrocketing expenses and a shrinking safety net. That’s why he created a “retirement boot camp” for people aged 40 and older: a 14-week video course designed to teach you how to judge what you’ve already got and accomplish what you’ll need to have a secure, comfortable retirement.

Stacy is a certified public accountant and has also earned licenses in mutual funds, life insurance, stocks, commodities, options principal, securities supervisor and real estate. He has generously donated a copy of “The Only Retirement Guide You’ll Ever Need” for me to give away on my site. Who’s in it to win it?

How many credit cards should you have?

March 10, 2019 by Donna Freedman

This is not a fun topic to tackle, since so many people hate credit and the credit scoring system. But in a recent post on The Simple Dollar, “You need at least two credit cards: Here’s why,” I take on the issue of how many credit cards you should have, and also our love/hate relationship with plastic.

You need at least two forms of payment in case of fraud, robbery or card loss. And no, debit card use is not a good substitute; it puts your personal cash at risk and does not help you build a credit score.

Who cares, you ask? Isn’t cash king? Ideally, maybe: We would all buy only what we could afford and pay cash on the barrelhead instead of running up debts.

But to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, life is never pure and rarely simple. Less-than-ideal things happen all the time.

The post explains what might happen when you lose a card or it gets hacked and you have no other form of payment, and also what could happen to those who use debit only.

It also points out the benefits of rewards credit cards, one of my enduring frugal hacks. Every time I cash in points for a birthday gift (which I recently did), a home improvement project or some kind of entertainment, it reminds me how much I like being rewarded for buying something I was going to buy anyway.

What would you pay to relive your first kiss?

February 6, 2019 by Donna Freedman

Assuming it was worth reliving, that is. For some, the first kiss is pretty dreadful.

A company called Bid On Equipment decided to survey a couple of thousand people to find out what certain once-in-a-lifetime moments would be worth to them. A few examples of average payments:

Relive the birth of first child: $100,622

Attend a Tupac Shakur concert: $4,991

Be at the “Star Wars” premiere: $11,757

Hear the Gettysburg Address: $26,896

It wasn’t clear whether we’d get to relive childbirth knowing then what we know now about things like epidurals.

Where I’ve been.

January 20, 2018 by Donna Freedman

To quote a recent headline from my daughter’s website:

Blah.

As in, “I haven’t written much lately and I apologize. But things have been so busy that when I finally stop for the day my mind is, well, pretty blah.”

Can’t focus on brilliant new blog post ideas. Heck, I can barely focus on anything except putting out freelance fires and after that, hanging out with DF for a little while and going to bed.

Maybe it’s the long spell of gray, gray days. Maybe it’s age-related fatigue; where I once could write from morning until the midnight hour, now I just want to get away from the screen after a few hours. Whatever the reason, I just haven’t felt creative enough to write anything.

Yet I hate to have 10 days go by with nothing new up on the site. I miss you guys when I don’t post!

Your governor earns HOW much?!?

October 23, 2017October 22, 2017 by Donna Freedman

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.

In your 40s? Do these things or risk dying broke.

September 12, 2017 by Donna Freedman

Your fifth decade can be swell, since that’s when you’re in your prime earning years and when your kids (if any) are likely to be adults or nearly so.

If you were careful (and lucky) in your 20s and 30s, you’ll start to see some real rewards in your 40s.

Not every life is lucky, of course. Issues like un- or underemployment, divorce, chronic illness and a lack of financial education can derail your dreams. Nearly 30 percent of Gen Xers, who are currently in their 40s and early 50s, have zero retirement savings.

The painful truth about your emergency fund.

June 16, 2018August 8, 2017 by Donna Freedman

Last year I fully intended to promote my book and also my daughter’s book at the Financial Blogger Conference. What happened instead is that Abby became seriously ill and we both missed most of the programs.

No networking for us!

Not only did we not have the chance to promote our work, the experience wound up costing us. She had to take extra time off work, and as a contractor, she doesn’t get sick days as such. She just doesn’t get paid.

I wound up spending about an extra $1,000 on extended hotel and rental car costs plus the change fee for my plane ticket. Wheeee!

Did any of that matter? No. And yes.

That’s the subject of my post today on The Simple Dollar, a piece called “The Painful Truth About Your Emergency Fund.” Obviously I would have done anything to help my daughter recover. Yet I learned something from the experience: that using your EF is really irritating.

Living the ‘pre-solvent’ life.

June 16, 2018May 4, 2017 by Donna Freedman

(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.