money

See a penny? Pick it up!

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thDuring my recent trip to Austin I continued my habit of picking up stray coins. A penny at the drugstore checkout. Two pennies and a nickel behind a bench at the bus stop. A dime on the airport floor.

No matter where I go, I’m an inveterate coin-grabber. Except maybe Phoenix, Arizona, where picking up a coin in high summer can burn like the dickens. I learned this important safety tip from my daughter, who lives in Phoenix and blogs at…

(wait for it)

….I Pick Up Pennies.

I carry an old prescription bottle in my suitcase just for found money, which amounted to 24 cents on this trip. When I got home the coins went into an old pink vase that my daughter once got from the “free” box at a yard sale. My change purse gets emptied into a pink piggy bank that was a Christmas gift from Will Chen at the Wise Bread blog; this money gets wrapped every so often and deposited into savings.

According to a November 2013 survey from Coinstar, the average respondent figured he had a little over $26 in spare change lying around the house. In fact, the average trade-in at a Coinstar kiosk is $56.

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You know what’s hot? A money date.

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thHey, all you single men and women: Want to attract a mate? Work on your credit scores as much as your abs.

Of the 1,010 married adults surveyed by Experian, 95 percent rated “financial responsibility” as more important than “physical attractiveness” (86 percent) and “career ambition” (77 percent).

Not that romance is dead: “Personal compatibility” was the most important attribute in a potential partner, ranking at 98 percent.  

Financial compatibility is important, too; in fact, at 96 percent it edged out “sex and intimacy” (95 percent) and trounced “religion and spirituality” (69 percent). The thing is, plenty of people don’t talk about finances before they marry – and that’s a huge mistake.

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6 financial lessons from “Godzilla.”

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th-2To be honest, I’d hoped for more from the “Godzilla” reboot. The trailer sure made it look like a big ol’ popcorn romp.

Sure, plenty of stuff happened: buildings stomped flat, nuclear facilities collapsing, trains bitten in half, EMPs causing quarter-slot machines to malfunction.

But despite high production values and a handful of really swell actors (Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn) the film had a marked sense of detachment, as though nothing we were seeing really mattered much.

On the bright side, Linda B. and I saw the film on cheap day ($5.25 all shows) and we paid with discounted gift cards, which brought the cost down further. Not that it matters: I’m taking the price of the ticket as a business expense  because – as usual – I  found money lessons in the film.

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Go win these gift cards.

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thWhenever I see a chance to win gift cards I tend to enter. Sometimes I even win.

Whenever I see a chance for readers to win gift cards, I tend to share. Here are two chances to win Home Depot and Amazon.com cards. The former is pretty easy; the latter takes a bit of work but there’s a chance at a pretty decent payoff.

Savings.com will be giving away $3,000 worth of Home Depot e-gift cards today through Wednesday. Between 9:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. EDT each day, go to the Home Depot page at Savings.com and enter your e-mail address.

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Between the (budget) sheets.

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thRecently a financial company called Yodlee sent me a study about how financial worries influence sex habits. An astonishing (to me) 48% of U.S. students over age 18 find that concerns about cash affect their intimacy with romantic partners.

In fact, more than one-third (36%) of people aged 18 to 34 said that money woes affect their sex drives.

And here I thought that sex was one of those inexpensive things that could help take your mind off your bank balance.

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Two ways to get free credit monitoring.

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thTarget 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.

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Time is something we can’t do over.

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thThe 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.

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Sweating the cost of summer fun.

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thLate 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.

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Fix your finances with this LearnVest offer.

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th-1Note: This post was originally published on May 24, then removed due to a coding error. The offer is now good through June 3.

Having trouble managing your money, paying off debt or planning for the future?

Having trouble with all three of those things? LearnVest can help.

Normally there’s a one-time setup fee of $299. But for the next seven days LearnVest will waive that fee, which includes your first month’s membership.

Face it: Money choices can be bewildering, especially if you feel that you don’t earn enough of it. But you don’t have to go without in the short term to succeed in the long term — a certified financial planner will help you personalize a spending plan.

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Giveaway: “Deal With Your Debt.”

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thOn Tuesday I participated in a Tweetchat sponsored by FT Press, an imprint of Pearson and publisher of books by my MSN Money colleague Liz Weston. If you missed the event, at least some of the Tweets can be found in the publisher’s Tweetchat room. A spokeswoman for the company says a .pdf summary of the questions and discussion is in the works.

To promote the chat, FT Press gave out a few copies of “Deal With Your Debt” to random questioners. (Did any of you win? Tell us!) Now it’s my turn to hand out the revised and updated version of this book, which I can happily say is written for people in the real world.

Just check the description: “Award-winning personal finance expert Liz Weston reveals why it’s simply impractical to ‘just pay off every dime’ and ‘live forever debt free’ — and why trying to do so can actually make you poorer. It’s smarter to control and manage your debt, and Weston shows you how.”

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