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ukimmigrationmatters · 2 years

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21 SMART Money And Energy Saving Tips

With energy bills, fuel and interest rates soaring, there’s never been a more critical time to make savings and learn how to manage our money to the best of our ability. I cover many more tips and money-making ideas in my programme, Master Your Money the S.M.A.R.T Way training. Check it out for free - https://bit.ly/3isugCr.

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Here are some tips to help you save and accumulate more money.

1 Pay yourself and save first, spend what’s left

Pay yourself first is the golden rule and money mindset the rich and well-off follow. Do this and you’re on your way towards financial freedom. Try the 50/30/20 formula and have your salary automatically paid in separate accounts:

50% of your take home pay for your needs (bills, food, minimum debt payments),

30% for fun, play, eating out and entertainment

20% saved for your future, extra debt payments, saving for emergencies and investing.

2 Avoid credit card debt interest

Plan a strategy to get rid of it credit card balances with cash or by transferring the debt to a 0% balance credit card to avoid paying interest for a fixed time (up to 30 months) COMBINED with paying off the balance every month.

Another useful tip set up a direct debit to avoid missing minimum payments and being stung with high charges and bad credit report history. You can also move to another deal if you don’t manage to clear the balance. Pay off purchase balance every month.

3 Track your income and expenditure

‘T’ for ‘track’ is included in my programme, Master Your Money the S.M.A.R.T Way training. Check it out for free - https://bit.ly/3isugCr. Set up a tracking system and also try challenger digital banks like Monzo, which allows you to transfer a set amount of spending money to your card and informs you every time it is used, ore prepaid cards – like Monese and Transferwise – where you can only spend what you load.

You can also do this manually and set your account up by allocating your income into different ‘jars’ for different needs.

4 Start saving and investing

Whatever you are earning or how much you have in the bank, you can start saving a percentage of your income. Apps such as Moneybox let you start with a few pennies by rounding up loose change every time you spend.

You can legally shelter your savings from tax by maximising your £20,000 tax free ISA allowance and using other tax shelters. Pension schemes also enjoy a favourable tax treatment. You can either put money into a cash or investment ISA, which carries more risk. Interest rates have been low for a decade but are now rising, which is good news for saver but bad for borrowers.

Check out www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts for more information. Check for the best cash ISA rates at Moneyfacts. Shop around and be prepared to move your money to obtain the best rates.

5 Emergency or contingency funds

Everyone needs a rainy-day fund. You should aim to have three months’ income saved for emergencies, ideally six if you have a mortgage.

6 Loyalty doesn’t always pay - switch suppliers

If you check out any good comparison site, you are sure to discover cheaper deals on your household bills, as well as savings accounts and insurance. Ofgem calculates that the average household can save £300 a year by switching to a better energy and gas deal. This might not always be possible in the current climate.

Check your latest utility statements and check out comparison sites, such as uswitch or moneysupermarket.

7 Reduce your car insurance

Some of us are using our cars less as a result of working from home, so check your car insurance is still the right fit and inform your insurer. Don’t auto renew, and check for better deals via your existing supplier and comparison websites like CompareTheMarket and MoneySupermarket.

8 Review your mortgage

Over 100,000 people reach the end of a fixed term fixed rate mortgage every month, according to a BBC report. Staying with the same lender could mean paying a ‘loyalty’ penalty of higher interest of up to £1000 a year. Consult an independent mortgage broker about remortgaging to the best deal for you even if your current deal is expiring in 6-12 months’ time.

‘R’ for ‘review’ is part of my programme, Master Your Money the S.M.A.R.T Way training. Check it out - https://bit.ly/3isugCr.

9 Check your tax code to pay less to HMRC

Make sure you’re not paying too much tax. You could even get a nice rebate from HMRC.

Working from home could entitle you to tax relief and you could claim some money back for working from home expenses in the form of tax relief paid by HMRC.

10 Look for old bank accounts and pension policies

Billions is waiting to be claimed in forgotten bank accounts, insurance policies and pension schemes. Have a root through your old papers or contact the ABI (Association of British Insurers).

You can also query your council tax band, check for discounts if you live alone or care for someone.

11 Check for any entitlements to benefits.

There are numerous benefits you can access even if you are working and earning a family income of up to £40,000.

12 Reduce your grocery bill

Buy only what you need and avoid ‘two for one’ offers, which lead to food waste and can cost you more.

Buy own brand food from supermarkets which have often scored higher in blind tests.

Plan your meals for the week ahead and use discount supermarkets and pound stores, which can be significantly cheaper that M&S, Waitrose and Tesco’s.

Explore the ‘world food; aisle in your supermarket which can have savings of up to 75% on cupboard staples including rice, lentils, beans, spices and sauces.

Shop in the late afternoons and evenings for yellow sticker discounts.

Don’t buy plastic bags and make your food, fruit and veg last longer.

13 Avoid wasting food

Use your common sense and avoid throwing away food which is still safe despite passing sell by dates.

14 Explore local charities for help – there is an abundance of food given away by supermarkets

If you are in need, use Foodbanks and the many other charities for help with food and other items including energy. They help everyone from the homeless to working people who just can’t make ends meet, and there is a lot of money and resources out there if you search. Nobody should go hungry in the west.

15 Check your workplace or private pension

Make sure you’re saving enough for retirement and you’re happy with how your pension is being invested according to your individual risk profile.

Checking whether your employer will match pound for pound any personal contributions you make – free money.

16 Check your state pension and NI contributions level

You have until next April 2023 to top-up National Insurance contributions to boost your old age state pension if you have not made sufficient contributions during your working life due to career breaks or time spent overseas. Topping up contributions can be a good investment. Check with a financial adviser.

Women in retirement may have been underpaid and could be entitled to back payments.

Go to the .gov website or Google the links.

17 Use loyalty cards, price match and vouchers and deal finders

Points, discounts and free stuff all add up on loyalty cards like Tesco’s Clubcard or Nectar.

Stores like John Lewis and Currys offer price matching policies, which are subject to change sot do your research and don’t be shy to ask.

Try hacks like VoucherCodes ‘DealFinder’ as a plug-in on Chrome to be alerted to the best deals while buying online.

There are hundreds of money saving apps and discount offers, such as Sweatcoin and BetterPoints, where you can get paid to walk and exchange your steps for store discounts and freebies.

18 Cut energy bills

Check out the Energy Saving Trust for some great energy and money saving hacks. For instance, charging gadgets overnight can cost you more than charging for a few hours during the day. And not filling your kettle up when boiling water for a cuppa and defrosting your freezer when iced up will also cut your bills.

Going paperless and paying by direct debit will save you money.

Insulating your home will keep you warm in the winter and cut energy bills. Check your local authority for tips grants on insulation and solar panels, even if you are a tenant.

19 Sell unwanted stuff on resale platforms

Did you know that the average British woman accumulates an estimated £22,000 of unworn clothes over a lifetime? You can turn unwanted clothes into cash using resale platforms such as Depop, Vinted and eBay.

You can also save money by buying through these sites for top-quality gifts and clothes instead of paying for new. Some items sold on these sites are brand new unused.

You can also clear your garage, loft and spare room of unwanted stuff by selling on sites like Facebook Marketplace and eBay.

20 Mindset – avoid emotional spending and blowing your salary on payday

In my programmes and YouTube Money Tips Podcast videos I talk about money mindset. A recent survey by Nationwide’s Payday Saveday revealed that 1 in 5 people blow over half their spare monthly wages within 48 hours of payday! Shops, restaurants and online stores gear up offers for payday surges in expenditure. Ask yourself if you really need something before you buy and give yourself time to think before parting with your cash.

21 Plan, organise and forecast

The key is in planning and organising your expenditure, work, goals, relationships and life! As in the first tip, prioritise essential expenditure and your savings pot, before spending. That way, you’ll know how much disposable income you really have to last the rest of the month. Use a spreadsheet, app or notebook to map out or forecast your finances and expenditure just like a business does. You should know exactly how much money you have in your account right now and how much is coming in and going out tomorrow.

Finally, searching for the best deals, tracking and reviewing your finances and being mindful of spending money on things to don’t really need will not only help you get through the current crises but help you form lifelong habits that will enable to build wealth.

For more ideas and tips, see out my new training to help you get control of your finances in 28 days!

Click to join: https://bit.ly/3isugCr

#freetraining #savemoney #moneysavingtips #mortgage #creditcarddebt #energybill #costofliving #goals #foodbank #getcontroloffinances #money

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bettsfic · 4 years

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how i got an agent, or: my writing timeline

when i started writing, i had no idea how publishing worked and i had a lot of misconceptions about it. but i just signed my first literary agent so i thought i’d share what my experience has been getting to this point, in case it helps anyone else with their own publication goals. i’m also including financial details, like submission fees and income, because “i could never afford to pursue writing as a career” is something that kept me from taking the idea seriously.

for context, i write mostly literary fiction and i’m on the academic/scholarly writing path. this process looks a lot different for other genres.

i didn’t write this in my pretty nonfiction narrative voice; it’s really just the bare-bones facts of how it went down, how long it took, how many words i wrote (both fanfiction and original fiction), and how much it all cost.

background

2002 - 2005: read a fuckton of books, wrote some fiction, wanted to be a writer but knew it would never happen, journaled every moment of my life in intimate detail

2006: started working full-time (at a chinese restaurant) while still in high school, also started taking courses for college credit; no time to write, and forgot i had ever wanted to be a writer

2007: graduated high school, started college (psych major), still worked at the restaurant, moved out of my parents’ house into an apartment with my boyfriend; my dad got diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer

2008: continued college full-time, quit the restaurant and started part-time as a bank teller, broke up with bf and moved in with a friend at an apartment where the rent was obscenely high; had to pick up a second job altering bridal gowns

2009: continued college full-time, started dating someone else, moved in with him, had to support him, took a third job as an admin assistant

2010: continued college full-time, still had 3 jobs; my dad’s cancer became terminal

2011: my dad passed away; i graduated college with a 3.9 and $31k of debt; quit 2 of 3 jobs; got promoted at the bank; my bf cheated on me and we broke up; moved back in with my mom

2012: a very dark time; also, bought a house (because where i’m from, it’s cheaper to buy than rent)

2013: discovered fandom

2014, age 24

this is the year i started writing and posting fanfic. prior to that i was a compulsive journaler but had no drive or desire to become a writer, despite how much i had written when i was a teenager. it seemed like a very childish dream. at this point i assumed writing was just a phase like all my other hobbies i’d picked up and set down.

but fandom proved to be really healthy for me, and i made some good friends who encouraged my writing and made me want to be better at it. i was really not very good at writing. i don’t think i had any natural creative talent whatsoever, or even a particularly vivid imagination. the only thing i had going for me was the ability to put thoughts into words after a decade of obsessive journaling.

i started writing in spring, and by the end of the year my total word count was 311k. i was making a decent income at the bank, insofar as my bills were covered and i had health insurance. i still had a significant amount of credit card debt from college that i was trying to pay down, and which was eating up all my extra income.

2015, age 25

i continued writing through 2015 and went to visit @aeriallon, whom i’d met in fandom and who told me i should consider applying to MFAs. i was miserable at the bank and knew i wanted to go back to school, but i didn’t think there was a chance in hell a grad program would accept me, since my writing wasn’t very good and i hadn’t so much as taken a single english class in undergrad. she told me to just look around and do a few google searches to see what i found.

when i started searching, i assumed i would probably be more compelled toward an MEd or MSW programs and go the therapy route, which is what the plan had been in undergrad before my dad died and my life got derailed. i never wanted to be a banker, but i’d got a promotion into commercial finance that paid decently, so i took it and told myself i’d work for a year before going back to school. but then i kept getting promoted and one year became many.

i ended up being more drawn to creative writing MFA programs because they seemed to want people with weird backgrounds like mine. also the classes sounded fun and the programs were funded. i didn’t know how i would be able to afford my mortgage payment or sell my house on a fraction of the income i was making at the bank, but i figured i’d apply and see what happened.

it took 6 months to get a writing sample ready to apply to MFAs. it was the only ofic story i’d written as an adult, and in retrospect i had no idea what i was doing because at that point i didn’t read literary short fiction. but i got the sample as good as i could get it and completed my applications. i applied to 6 schools and got accepted into 1.

in 2015 i wrote 250k. i can’t find my application spreadsheet from that year, but i probably spent between $300 and $400 on application fees. early in the year, i had finally managed to pay off my credit card debt and save a little bit of money.

2016, age 26

the school i got into was within driving distance of my house, so i didn’t bother moving. i tried to quit the bank but my boss convinced me to stay on 2 days a week working from home. i agreed to it, because my grad stipend wasn’t enough to cover my bills, and i was counting on what little savings i had accrued to get me through the program. i still had no drive or interest to publish. i mostly just wanted to go back to school so i could learn how to be better at this thing i really enjoyed doing.

in the MFA, as you might imagine, i had to read a lot of stuff and write a lot of stuff, and was encouraged to begin submitting some of the short stories i wrote for workshop. i was not particularly into the idea, considering it seemed like a lot of work for little reward, and also i didn’t think my stories were very good.

i also started teaching english comp. i hated it and decided that after the MFA, i never wanted to do it again. haha. hahahahahaha

in 2016 i wrote 343k. i didn’t apply/submit in 2016 so i didn’t pay any fees, but my grad stipend was $14k for the academic year, plus the income i was making at the bank.

2017, age 27

i did a complete 180 and decided i loved teaching more than anything else in the entire world, and i was willing to do whatever it took to become a teacher. i realized that to become a teacher, i needed to publish. begrudgingly i started submitting to literary journals. i also applied to summer workshops and got into tin house, which i highly recommend if that’s something you’re interested in. at tin house i met my dream agent, who seemed really interested in my work and encouraged me to query her as soon as i had a book done.

a lot of personal drama happened that year. i was still working at the bank in addition to teaching a 2/2 and taking a full course load. in summer i had a long overdue mental breakdown.

2017 was a rough year. i wrote 149k. this is the year i started keeping a dedicated expenses spreadsheet. i spent $174 in submission fees. tin house tuition with room and board was a little over $1500 + travel. i thought it was worth it because i met the agent i thought i would later sign, but that didn’t pan out. (i made some great friends though!!) tin house was definitely an unwise financial decision; i paid for it out of what little i managed to save in 2015.

2018, age 28

early in 2018, i went from teaching comp/rhet to creative writing, which only cemented my desire to teach writing as a career. i realized i was far better at teaching writing than writing, but i knew i had to keep writing to keep teaching (shocked pikachu.jpg), so i kept submitting to journals. i got my first story accepted. i didn’t receive any payment for that publication. i quit the bank early in the year (finally! after 10 years!) and was terrified about money, in part because my student loan payments were coming out of deferment and i was still paying off my hospital bills from my breakdown.

in spring semester, i won a few departmental awards (totaling $500ish) and got a second story accepted (again, no payment). i also got accepted to another workshop which i will not name because i hated it. i graduated in may and defended my thesis in july. the thesis would later become my short story collection, zucchini.

in fall, i stayed on at my school as an adjunct, and started writing training wheels which would later become an original novel called baby.

i wrote 450k in 2018. i paid $373 in submission fees. i was also nominated for an award for one of my publications but didn’t win. the workshop i went to was like $4000 with room and board (it was a month-long workshop). i got 75% of it covered with scholarships and i paid for the rest of it out of my savings, and even though i’d intended to drive there, my mom ended up buying me a plane ticket. again, i met a lot of big-wig writers i thought for sure would help me get an agent. i told myself i was networking, and that publication was all about Who You Knew. but that turned out not to be true for me.

as an adjunct i made $3200 per course, and i taught 3 classes in fall. in winter, i got my shit together and started applying for creative writing PhDs, mostly to convince my family i was doing something with my life, with no expectation that i would get in. in winter i applied to 2 schools. with application fees and the GRE, i ended up paying well over $500.

2019, age 29

in spring semester, i taught 2 classes while i revised training wheels into baby. when i had a completed manuscript, i finally pulled the plug and used all my networking contacts to get my dream agent i’d met at tin house. i queried her, and a very popular and well-regarded author i’d met at the other workshop emailed her on my behalf to tell her good things about me. i thought for sure i had it in the bag. this author also touched base with a few other agents whom he thought would like my work.

i didn’t hear back from any of them. not even a “no thanks.” i set down querying for a while.

i got a third story picked up and published around this time, and i was paid $25 for it. they also nominated me for an award, and i don’t think i won? but i can’t find out who did win so idk.

my grandpa passed away and i decided to sell my house and move in with my grandma so she wouldn’t be alone. i got rejected from both PhD programs i applied to and decided to get a “real job” instead, and began applying for random positions that offered health insurance, because i knew i was drastically undermedicated and it was becoming a Problem.

near the end of spring semester, i moved out of my house, put it on the market, and was interviewing for a community development manager position for a nonprofit. at the same time, i found out about another university that was taking late-season applications, and i applied. five days later, i got accepted. one day after that, i got a job offer for the nonprofit. since i had no idea how long it would take for my house to sell, and being unable to afford both rent in a new city and my mortgage payment, i deferred my PhD acceptance for a year and decided to work at the nonprofit for a while. the risk was that i could only defer my admission, not my funding, so there was a chance that the following year i wouldn’t get the same funding package.

i lasted one month at the “real job” before i had another breakdown and ended up quitting.

my house sold for well under the asking price and i received only $4000 in equity once it was all said and done. that’s a lot of money to me, but considering that i’d been paying on the house for 7 years, i was expecting a lot more.

i had a year to kill until the PhD so i decided to take a break from teaching and apply to artist residencies instead. i applied to 8 residencies and got accepted into 4, but only ended up attending 3, because the 4th was outrageously priced and there was no indication of the cost when i had applied.

in winter i picked up querying agents again. i queried 10 agents every other week. i also got a ghostwriting gig writing children’s books that paid $800 a month.

in 2019 i wrote 417k. i spent $441 in submission fees (to residencies and contests, not agent queries. never pay money to query an agent!!). i ended up teaching 3 classes fall semester.

2020, age 30

i started out the year driving across the country going to residencies. the first cost $100 (no food), the second cost $250 (A LOT OF VERY GOOD FOOD), and the third paid me $500. i was at the third when the pandemic hit.

the query rejections started rolling in. i gave up in february after 60 queries. of those 60, i received 7 manuscript requests for baby, but the consensus was that it was too long and plotless (you got me there.jpg). at the second residency completed and revised zucchini and decided to begin querying with that instead. i could only find a few agents who accepted collections so i only queried 16. i got one request for the manuscript but then didn’t hear back. i gave up in april shortly after the pandemic hit.

when i figured the collection, like the novel, just wasn’t publishable, i started submitting to contests which is the more standard route for the genre. i submitted to 12 in total and was a finalist in 1. i was rejected or withdrew from the rest.

the PhD program reached out to ask if i was still interested in starting in fall, and i said i was, so they put me in the running for funding again and i was accepted. the stipend was $17k per academic year.

like most of us, i got totally derailed in spring and stopped doing basically everything. the ghostwriting gig started paying $1500 a month and i also started my creative coaching business, which slowly but surely began to supplement my income. i also received the $1200 stimulus.

when school started, i quit the ghostwriting gig. i had no intention to continue querying either book, but i saw a twitter pitch event called DVpit (diverse voices) and decided to participate. for those who don’t know, a twitter pitch event is where you tweet the pitch for your book and use the hashtag, and agents scroll through the tag and like tweets. if an agent likes your tweet, you query them.

i got one like, so i followed up with the query. the agent asked for the full MS and a couple weeks later followed up with the offer for representation. we talked on the phone, she sent me the contract, i asked for a couple changes, and then signed!

so far this year i’ve written 375k and paid $518 in submission fees. i’ll give more details when i do my end of year roundup next month. oh, and i finally paid off my student loans.

totals

word count: 2.3 million

agent queries: 77

agent MS requests: 9

agent rejections: 28

agent no responses: 44

short story submissions: 86

short story acceptances: 3

short story income: $25

total submission/application fees: $1472

my (final) query letter

honestly this query letter probably isn’t very good which is why i got such a minimal response, but it got the job done eventually.

Thank you for expressing interest in ZUCCHINI through this year's DVpit event.

ZUCCHINI is a collection that views sex through an asexual lens. It poses inquiries into constructs like gender, sexuality, and love to dissect the patriarchal/puritanical foundations from which our social perspectives often derive. Being a collection about asexuality, each story portrays a relationship that develops from forms of attraction other than physical.

In one story, a grieving widow purchases her first sex toy; in another, a woman uses sex to cope with the death of her abusive father, and later in the collection faces the long road to recovery; an administrative assistant seeks out a codependent relationship with her boss; a masochist hires a professional sadist to lead him toward self-actualization; a woman begins to recover from her sexual assault by staging a reenactment on her own terms; and lastly, two lifelong friends in a queerplatonic relationship decide to get married. Asexuality is an under-acknowledged identity within the LGBTQIA community and is often misunderstood. In seven stories, ZUCCHINI dissects the notion of attraction, explores the intersections of sexual identity and trauma recovery, and conveys the experience of intimacy without physical desire.

Three stories in the collection have been published in literary magazines. “Lien” appeared in volume 24 of Quarter After Eight and was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. “An Informed Purchase” appeared in the summer 2018 issue of Midwestern Gothic and won the Jordan-Goodman Prize in Fiction. “The Ashtray” appeared in issue 16 of Rivet Journal and has been nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize.

Complete at 53,000 words, ZUCCHINI is a collection in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado’s HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES, Lauren Groff’s FLORIDA, and Samantha Hunt’s THE DARK DARK.

If ZUCCHINI is of interest to you, I would be happy to send you the manuscript. Per your guidelines, I've appended the first twenty pages below, which is the entirety of the first story.

what comes next

i’m going to spend january revising the collection per my agent’s feedback. when i send it back to her, she’ll shoot it out to the first round of publishers. my understanding is that the goal is to get multiple offers on it so that it has to go to auction. if there are no offers, she’ll do another round of submissions, and so on, until we’ve exhausted our options. if that happens, we’ll reassess, but by then hopefully i’ll have another novel finished.

meanwhile, i’ll be continuing the PhD which entails teaching a 2/2, workshop, and 2 lit seminars per semester. i’m also still doing my creative coaching, writing fanfic, and working on my original projects. in summer, i’ll finally be moving to hopefully start going to school in person next fall.

the PhD is a 3 year program with an optional fourth year. i don’t see myself finishing in 3 years so i do plan to take the extra year unless something comes up. after the PhD, i’m not sure what i’ll do. a lot will probably change by then so i’m trying not to commit to one idea. i might apply to post-doc fellowships and tenure track positions, or i might leave the country and teach overseas, or i might move to LA and try to get in a writer’s room somewhere. i’ve got a lot of options.

overall thoughts/stuff i learned

first of all, you don’t have to go through all of this to publish a book. you could feasibly just write a book and query agents. the only reason it took me this long is because my PTSD brain was sabotaging me every step of the way and i didn’t start taking anything seriously until i found something i was willing to fight for (teaching). i went the MFA/literary route but other, faster routes are just as good. maybe better. probably better. actually if there’s any chance you can go a different route, you should take it.

reflecting on all of this, very little of it has anything to do with talent or being a good writer. nor does it have to do with being at the right place at the right time. i’ve only made it this far because i took very small steps over and over again, and during that walk met people who could help me -- the authors who have mentored me, the editors who accepted my stories, the agent who signed me. and as i got further along my path, i started being able to help other writers in the way i was helped.

i don’t believe i’ll ever be a great writer. the best thing i can say about my writing is that it’s competent and accessible. everything i write sets out to do something and most of the time it gets the job done. i don’t imagine i’ll ever be able to financially support myself with publishing, and i’ll certainly never be famous or well-known, but i’m good enough to keep making progress. i’ll probably continue to find opportunities that are adjacent to writing and that will keep me afloat, pending my health and provided the country doesn’t devolve into civil war.

probably the most important thing i learned in all this is that having a wide appeal isn’t the goal. you don’t write to be lauded or liked. you have to stay as true to yourself and your interests as you possibly can, so that the people who come across your path can see you and help you. you’ll need those people; no one gets anywhere alone. if you pander, if you’re too concerned with praise and success or being adored, you won’t make it very far. the rejection will eventually kill you.

with all that said, my advice to you is this: never stop writing. the ability to share our stories is the single most precious thing we have. you can’t let anything stop you from telling your stories the way you need them to be told.

#writing advice #the writing life #writing update

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innermort · 3 years

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*** disclaimer: this is a very long diary type of entry that is probably quite boring for everyone else and may be ignored. it's merely a very lenghty epiphany I just had about my life and myself and I had to type it out for me, to lock in the thoughts, if you will. it was pretty therapeutic tho. 🙃 ***

10/Sept/2021

I just had the realization that I'm in the process of redefining every aspect of my self and my life.

I quit smoking cigarettes from one day to another exactly 2 months ago tomorrow and went from a heavy to a casual party smoker.

I rarely ever smoke weed anymore (plus when I did since quitting tabacco, I rolled with herbs) and now made the conscious decision to take another long break, so it doesn't interfere with my weight loss again. I get the worst munchies and have no self control when I'm stoned. I'm talking "5000+ cals in one sitting" type of binges. I'm not tolerating this kind of self sabotage anymore.

I re-discovered edblr. Yes. I know. Not the healthiest habit to get back into but it's the only thing that has actually helped me gain the motivation and willpower to put a stop to my raging sugar addiction and instead, an actual effort into losing weight again. Besides, I'm doing it in a much more careful and "responsible" way now (high restricting, taking supplements, no strict/exact calorie limit, very light to no exercise (okay, to be fair the reason for that is mainly my injured knee but still), letting myself eat/drink more than planned if I feel my body needs it). And let's not forget that I've literally been binging every day for the past 2 or 3 months. My diet nearly exclusively consisted of chocolate, pastries and pizza. Literally. I've gained 10 kgs (22lbs) during that time. That lifestyle was just as unhealthy, if not unhealthier.

I finally got to hang up and use my calender. Due to my ADHD (self diagnosed for now), I'm very forgetful and unorganized - at least in my private life. That's why I made the decision to get a big calender which I can use as a semi To Do/Buy list and appointment/meeting/bill reminder. Since I'm glueing a sticker to each day I got through without binging, I'm looking at it pretty much every day anyways. Plus, it's a motivater to not binge (reward that inner child)! Overall, it's helping me become more organized and put together which are two areas I've been lacking in in the past years. So far, I've been mostly using my phone notes but I usually write something down and immediately forget about it if it's not a grocery list or a To Do list I'm actively working through on that same day.

I have my first appointment at a psych ward since I was a teen. It's just a phone call and first get to know conversation but it's better than nothing and more than overdue. I'm finally taking the first steps towards getting diagnosed and being eligible for therapy. I'm sick of feeling like a victim of my own brain, I just want to be better. I deserve to be better.

I'm hungry for knowledge again. I deleted Tiktok from my phone because of how big of a distraction it was and because I realized that even though I'm being bombarded with new information everyday, I'm not learning anything. Our brains can't even comprehend the amount of information given in that short time span. Nothing sticks. Sure, you find out about some pretty cool stuff on TT depending on what kinda fyp you have but for me personally, it was just hours and hours of mindless scrolling in the end. It's crazy how addictive it is, too. Even despite the fact that I was already at a point where it didn't even give me that quick dopamine quick anymore. It felt boring and repetitive and I was merely doing it out of habit.

So, I got rid off the app. I started watching documentaries again. Mostly about gut health and mental illnesses like ADHD, Autism, BPD, Narcissm etc. Like TED talks or interviews/discussions by and with professionals/experts/diagnosed people. I'm back to not just craving but actually consuming something with substance, something that gives me more knowledge and insight on a topic. Something I actually want to know more about.

I realized and accepted that even though I am a creative mind, a fully creative job might just not be for me. I'm learning that maybe I'm the type of person who does something entirely different in their free time than what they do at work. And that that's very much okay. I noticed that at my job (this was the case for every job I ever had), my mind seems to work differently. When people expect me to do something, I have the needed pressure and motivation to get it done. I could also observe in myself that at work, I enjoy organizing/sorting stuff, I'm a fast and independent learner while I'm also excellent at training new employees, I'm much more detail oriented than in my private life - overall, it came to my attention that I might not actually be the ever chaotic forgetful mess who can't form a logic thought - or I can at least recognize that this is merely a part of me and not what defines and limits me as a person. I realized I actually like straightforward work, I like working alone and I like working precisely. When I was younger I would have never used any of these traits to describe my dream career. I would gag at the idea of working an office job and now I feel like this would actually suit me very well. Especially the working alone part would mean feeling less drained at the end of a work day and still having the energy to hang out with people I actually want to see. This is an extremely valuable lesson about myself that I finally seem to have learned.

After this big sub- and now concious evaluation about myself I'm also finally taking actual steps towards a possible career. I bought a course and worked through the first 2 lectures today, taking notes and writing everything down neatly for 3 - 3 1/2 hours (in total with breaks in between). I even got a notebook specifically for this new life project. I'm excited to learn. I feel scared, too. This is something I've never done before but I'm telling myself that trying won't hurt. I have my main job as a safety net, financially nothing can happen to me. I can only learn, even if I fail. And time will pass anyways, whether I get my ass up and put in the work or continue to be unhappy with what I'm doing without trying to change anything.

Speaking of finances, I also started taking those more seriously now. I stopped using my credit card (I was in negative numbers constantly, big numbers like -300 to -800€ due to constant overspending). I set up standing orders for my monthly fixed costs to make sure bills are always paid on time. Due to my forgetfulness and ADHD freeze I would often forget to pay or postpone paying bills until the reminder came in the mail and led to me having to pay on top or generating debt. I still have a little bit of debt to pay off but it's thankfully not a dramatic amount. I also have a second bank account for savings now where I transfer 200€ to every month. Even the simple act of calculating my fixed costs to see how much I can use for what was something that was desperately overdue. What I still have to do is sort out my receipts and write everything down in a housekeeping/budget book. And my first ever tax return. I am very much dreading both of these. 😃

Anyways. Wow. I really needed to type this out. I have the very harmful tendency to look at all the negative stuff and only focus on what I don't have and don't do. I really needed to take a long, deep look at all the things I've been changing around in the past couple months. A lot of it really passed me by until now. It's crazy but I really feel like a complete failure when my body isn't looking its best and it makes me blind for everything else. So, thank you to myself for reminding me that I am actually making a lot of progress, even if it has been in areas other than my fitness and looks. They're just as important (from a healthy brains point significantly more important, obviously) and deserve to be noticed and celebrated.

Conclusion: ❤️✨YAY, ME✨❤️

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mousedetective · 5 years

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Good News/Bad News

Okay. Good news first! The car is fixable, and it’s not as bad as we expected it was going to be ($300 for the better parts and labor included, which is making me think we got lucky and there was no damage to the rotor). So this left us with $400 after we had spent money on food and stuff. We had paid the utility bill earlier in the week, and I just paid my credit card bill (which will give us one or possibly two tanks of gas later in the month) and put $100 towards paying off the rest of our car insurance for the year.

Bad news? We can’t move the old unit into the new one until next month, and I can only afford to pay the old unit once we cover our rent tomorrow. I also won’t have gas for visits for most of this month with my son, money for the cable bill nor (on a more superfluous note) any money to do something for my birthday. I also need to start paying for my prescriptions again, which is not fun.

We need $400 to cover the new unit and the cable, and another $60 - $120 for gas (though as I said, I should be able to cover two $50 tanks if my math is right). Any help at all would be amazing. We’re prepared to pay the cable late since it’s not due until the 22nd and we can pay it late, but we need to move stuff to our new unit from botht he old unit as well as the apartment so we need to pay it ASAP..

Any help can be directed to [email protected] via PayPal or by clicking this link. Thank you very much for any help or reblogs you can give!

#signal boost #urgent #donate #mutual aid #please help #please reblog #please donate

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j--meat-hook--j · 4 years

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A Trip to the Mainland (Taiyuu cooking event) (?)

@taiyuu-high-oct

A Train from Taiyuu Island to Mainland Japan took a couple hours, hours of ocean, boredom and more ocean. Staring at the TV, Zeke remembered a time before Taiyuu, before Japan even.

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A small town on the coast of Germany, a large building, a small apartment.

A teenager enters, around 17 years old, wiping his feet and looking around, the clock reads 8pm. He spotted his younger brother in the living “room” by himself watching cartoons. The younger one couldn’t be older than 9.

“Hey, kiddo. Where’s Mum?”

“She got called into work.”

Frustrated in his mother’s irresponsibility and lack of note, the older brother tried to keep the conversation going as he made his way to the kitchen.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Watchin TV.”

“Oh, so you found the remote?” “No.” Flick. The channel changed.

Opening the pantry the older brother found… half a loaf of bread and a whole lot of empty space.

“Have you had anything to eat yet?”

“No. Mum was gonna get groceries but she got called into work.”

Biting his fist in frustration, the older brother pounded the pantry door with his head. Silently seething in anger the older brother put on a happy face, the older brother came out and sat next to the younger brother.

“Let’s go out for dinner tonight, just you and me.” “Won’t Mum and Dad get angry?” “They’ll never know, I got a little extra money from work today.”

“I mean… sure.”

“Alright, get your stuff ready and we’ll leave in a few.” The older brother wrote a note for their Mother, if she returned home tonight.

When the two got ready and were almost out the door, the younger brother stopped.

“Umm... Schlaut?”

“What’s up Zeke?”

“Are you sure Mum and Dad won’t find out?”

“Hey, we’ll leave our trash in a public bin, they’ll never know.”

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Finally on the Mainland of Japan Zeke had a couple trips to make.

The first stop for today was to withdraw money, but look like a cool guy, Sunglasses on. Wandering around the Whatever City, Zeke can’t remember what it’s called, he started to get his bearings.

‘Alright, grocery shop’s there, post office’s there and-’

Zeke felt a rumble down to his core.

‘It’s going to be a thunderstorm tonight.’

Finally finding an ATM in Whatever City, that took forever. Taking his “Credit” Card out Zeke approached the ATM, noone was nearby anyway but he still felt he had to play the part.

Feeling the ATM Zeke felt all the different compartments, searching for the most used 4, Zeke found what he needed.

Trying the first one: Whirr, Zzzt And Dispense. 1000 Yen, not quite what he needed.

Next compartment: Whirr, Zzzt and Dispense. 5000 Yen, close but not the notes he needed.

The Third compartment: Whirr, Zzzt and Dispense. 10,000, exactly what Zeke needed.

Grabbing an extra 13 10k Yen bills Zeke had enough to pay for his tuition, with some left over.

That wasn’t right, only take what you need. Zeke remembered when this all became second nature to him, why quickly searching these machines became so easy.

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“That’d be 50 Euros sir.” A cashier lady, in a large mall grocery store.

“I’m really sorry, can you wave it just this once?” Schlaut, now at the age of 19, pleaded to the cashier holding a 20 Euro note.

“I’m sorry sir, if you couldn’t afford it you shouldn’t have picked it up.”

“But this is all we have for the week, we’ll go hungry without this food.” Schlaut

“Then get 20 Euros worth of food or get out of the store.”

“Fine. C’mon Zeke we’re outta here.” Zeke, now 11 years old, followed his brother out of the store.

“What’s the plan now Schlaut?”

“I dunno kiddo, we’ll figure something out.”

It wasn’t long into the usual walk home when they walked past an ATM, it’s screen illuminating the sidewalk. The screen flickered strange colours, reds, blues even a neon green. Schlaut paused, did a slow turn on his feet and paced to the ATM.

“Zeke?” “Yeah Schlaut?”

“Are you doing that?”

Zeke’s stiffened and he turned his face away from his brother.

“Zeke look at me.”

Zeke reluctantly looked at his Older Brother, the pupils of his brown eyes glowing a slight blue.

“Did I do something wrong?” Zeke was looking at the ground in shame.

“No no no no nononono nono, no Zeke. You did something very, very right.” Schlaut hadn’t felt this excited in a while.

“Let’s play a game Zeke, see if you can find some paper in this machine.” Schlaut pointed to the ATM.

“You mean money, isn’t that stealing?” Zeke was willing to do this, but he wasn’t very happy about it.

“Hey, we’re only going to take what we need ok? No more. We’re not villains, we’re survivors. See if you can find a 20 note and a 10 note.” Zeke had found a way to save us!

“Ok. I’ll try.”

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Returning back to the present Zeke held about 2000 Yen too much in his hands. The fridge at Taiyuu was running low, this money seems appropriate for everyone to use.

Zeke went to that small grocery store he passed by earlier. Fresh fruits and vegetables, that’s what Taiyuu needed, none of that instant shit. Apples, carrots, broccoli and one pack of the cheapest Cup Noodles he could find.

‘How would the others at Taiyuu react? I don’t think Sako or Spellman would be particularly fond of me anymore. Ah well, they won’t find out. All the years of pulling this same stunt we were only found out once.’

Zeke paid a total of 1962 yen.

“Have a good day.”

“Yeah, you too.”

‘Only found out once.’

Supermarket (Schlauts Quirk)

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“How’s that Zeke, just enough to get us through this week. Mum should have the day off tomorrow so we’ll cook a whole bunch then.” Schlaut, now 21, said to his brother Zeke, now 13.

“Yeah, maybe Dad’d have time to help as well.”

“I doubt it kiddo.”

RUUUUUUMMMBBBBBLEEE

“We should get going before it rains, seems like a storm is brewing.

Off they were on the usual walk home, Through an empty courtyard, groceries in hand. Not too much, just enough to get by.

“Hey Asshole!”

Schlaut turned, almost like he was expecting this.

“Yes, Gregory?”

A potbellied man, more of a sphere than a man, called out to the two.

“You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.”

“Us?” Zeke panicked.

“There’s about 4 of them, stay behind me Zeke.”

“What, who are you talking about, how do you know these people?”

“It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”

3 other men came up from behind the Sphere Man. One looked too long to be normal, another looked like a leaf man, the last one had spines coming out of his back.

“Yeah, not so tough are ya now there’s more of us.” Sphere man said, he sounded like he was from New York, which is weird because this is Germany.

“Huh, Good one boss.” The Leaf Man said, he had a very deep voice.

“Yeah, good one boss.” The Spine Man said, he had a very snively voice.

“Hehehe, heheh hehehe hehehe” The Long Man said, he had a very creepy laugh.

“You made it easier for me.” Schlaut butted in, sounding far too confident for a 4 on 1 fight.

RUUUUMMMMMMMBLLLLLLEEEEE

Long Man reached over and punched Sphere Man in the face.

“Aaaah, Tony, whaddya doin? Hit him not me!” Sphere Man was both confused and angry

“Heheheh, heheh, Hehehehhe!” The Long Man’s laugh seemed very panicked and confused.

Leaf Man punched Spine Man, Spine Man grabbed Long Man. It was a free for all, none of the assorted goons and henchmen ever came near Schlaut and Zeke, Zeke leaned over Schlauts shoulder.

“What are they doing Schlaut? Why are they here?” Schlaut looked back at his younger brother. “Don’t worry, Zeke, they’re taking care of it themselves.” Schlaut looked at Zeke for a moment, just one moment was all it took for Zeke to notice the slight red glow from his brother's pupils.

It wasn’t too long before the four strangers were all on the ground unconscious. Not once did the 4 even take a step towards the Funkee brothers.

“Let’s go Zeke, it’s all taken care of.” “But… but-” “Let’s GO Zeke.”

RUUUUMMMMMMMBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBLLLLLLEEEEE

They turned to continue on their way home, when Zeke heard skidding. No. Rolling? Turning around in curiosity Zeke saw Sphere Man rolling towards them, like a ball. A very angry ball.

“Schlaut, look out!” Zeke jumped, panicked and….

FLASH

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM

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Not done for the day yet, still gotta send a letter off to Mum back in Germany, quick visit to the Posty and back to Taiyuu. Card, letter, shipping. Totaling 300 yen, that is cheap!

Hey Mum,

Taiyous Taiyuus going great, i think im really hitting it off with everybody here. This place seems more my style than uA anyway. Theres a whole bunch of really weird people here. One person can even shapeshit shapeshift!

Anyway hows things with you, hows the new job in France?

Has Schlaut come back yet?

Love,

Zeke

“Just one letter, wouldn’t a text be better?” The teller was confused.

“It’s just a little tradition we have. Notes and written things are easier to keep anyway.”

Zeke made his way back to Taiyuu, hours on the train, again. The news reports were going on about a villain by the name “The King”. Luckily Taiyuu covered the costs of going back to Mainland Japan. Making his way back to the kitchen area Zeke deposited the fruits and veggies into the communal fridge. However, Zeke kept the Noodle Cup.

Zeke set the kettle to boil and thought of the day everything changed, the day Schlaut left. There was no bang, there was no warning. Around when Zeke was 13 Schlaut just, poof, gone. The whole family thought he was dead for months until Zeke’s 14th birthday, where Zeke got an RC car, brand new and very high end. It came with a note.

Hey Kiddo, Happy Birthday. Sorry I couldn’t be there this year

Noone ever really bothered Zeke again, of course Zeke still had his friends but noone bullied, assaulted or even annoyed him again. The icecream place even gave him a discount. Teachers were a whole lot nicer, even recommending him to hero courses like UA: LA, Shiketsu and Seijin. That was 2 years ago.

The screech of the kettle brought Zeke out of his thoughts. Filling his Cup Noodles with boiling water Zeke had made a shitty meal at Taiyuu.

BOOOOOOOMMMMMM

“Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot.”

Maybe not.

#taiyuu oct #Zeke Funkee #round 2 #cooking event

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random066 · 4 years

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So back in December my father took his medication, one pill got stuck in his throat and that’s where it dissolved. After that, he began having throat pain and was told it was an ulcer. Towards the middle of January, he began having jaw pain, and was told it was an abscessed tooth, that was the final push he needed to get all his teeth removed and have dentures. Only the pain never went away, it spread to the back of his head. He went to the doctor and was told he has a lump pin his neck.

He got an ultrasound and turns out this lump was strangling his only functioning carotid artery, which was causing the pain in his head. The next week he went for a CT scan and it found 3 large, potentially rapidly growing masses in his neck, two near his carotid and one over his voice box. He’s in such extreme pain he can barely eat, but his next doctors appointment is on March 15. I’m the kind of person who’s mind goes straight for the worse case scenario, which would be fatal cancer. I don’t want him to die, but I’m thinking about what’s going to happen to my mother if he does. My mother is early stages Alzheimer's or dementia.

To say my dad is a financial clusterfuck is putting it lightly, this man was raised with no financial responsibility and still has none. When I was younger, my mother talked to him about getting life insurance and his response was “why would I get that? I’ll be dead and have no need for it.” And that’s the attitude he’s had. He is irresponsible at best. My mother finally paid off the mortgage of the house and my dad took another high one out on our house without telling her. He has about $20,000 of debt on his credit cards, bought 2 $15,000 cars that he’s paying off, and just took out another loan, on top of bills that we have to pay. To add to this, my dad’s accountant pulled some shady shit on our family’s business for the past four years without our knowledge, because my dad trusted him so much he let the accountant take care of it, and now we owe $235,000 in penalties and back taxes, something we could pay off if we tighten our belts for the next 6 or 7 years. On top of this my dad wants to spend another $18,000 to buy a backhoe that he’s wanted since before I was born, and to be honest, he can use it for work but most likely it would sit in our back yard and rust. I have about $200,000 in debt and a low paying job. With my student loan payments $2,000 a month and a medical and car payment for $300 each I can’t afford rent, groceries, or anything. This is why when I moved back with my family to take care of my parents they said helping them with everything would be my payment for rent and etc. No I'm terrified my mom will lose her house and everything in it because of the bills that will come if my dad dies. I have no one to talk to this about so I’m just writing to vent.

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kennethherrerablog · 5 years

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The Money Hack for Using the Local Coinstar for FREE

Is it just me or do you love cashing in your coins?

It always feels like free money since I’m never actively thinking about cashing in my jar of loose change. Only once my jar is full and heavy, do I realize that it’s time to finally empty and collect my money.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably asked yourself (or Google), where are the coin machines near me?

However, during your research you may find that Coinstar charges a whopping 12% in fees!

Ouch.

Lucky for you, we have the answer to avoiding Coinstar fees altogether.

Table of Contents

Avoiding the Coinstar Fee

What is Coinstar?

What are the Coinstar Fees?

The Hack to Avoiding the 12% Coinstar Fee

Donate Your Cash With Coinstar

Charities That Partner with Coinstar

How to Use Coinstar

Now, Is Using Coinstar Safe?

Finding A Coinstar Near Me?

Why Use Coinstar?

The Future of Coinstar

The Banks

Banks That Accept Rolled Coins

Credit Unions

Other Ways to Use Your Spare Change

Acorns App

Self-Checkout to Pay for Normal Items

Find and Sell Rare Coins

Donate to a Local Charity

Final Thoughts

Maximize Your Change

Avoiding the Coinstar Fee

If you don’t feel like counting coins one-by-one and then rolling them in those difficult paper rollers, you may want to consider Coinstar as a great alternative.

What is Coinstar?

You know those giant green machines found near the checkout of just about every grocery store in America? These machines allow you to dump all of your loose change into them and then it will count your change for you in a matter of seconds. However, there is a fee associated with the convenience of the machine.

What are the Coinstar Fees?

Coinstar charges a convenience fee of 11.9%! That means for every $100 of coins you put through the machine, you only get to keep $88 of it.

Is it worth it to use Coinstar? That answer is completely up to you, but there is a hack to workaround those hefty convenience fees.

The Hack to Avoiding the 12% Coinstar Fee

If you want to bypass the high fees that come with using Coinstar, there are few hacks you need to know about.

Instead of choosing to get paid out in dollar bills, you can choose to get paid out in Amazon gift cards and bypass the fees associated with Coinstar.

The minimum amount to receive an Amazon e-gift card is $5.00, with a maximum of $1,000.

But, if you’re not an Amazon shopper like me, there is one last option if you’re in a location within a Wal-Mart and some other retailers. You can get your receipt and use the funds toward purchase at Walmart or participating store. While I didn’t see much info online I know I’ve personally used this option at Walmart and Kroger stores in the past.

Donate Your Cash With Coinstar

While the nearly 12% fees still eat most of us, Coinstar does offer another positive alternative to using their services. You can now donate your coins directly to one of the seven charities they have partnered with.

The best part? They don’t charge you the nearly 12% fee!

Not to mention you are donating to a cause you believe in. Plus, it’s a tax write off so it’s a win-win-win!

Charities That Partner with Coinstar

Here’s a quick summary of the main charities that Coinstar has partnered with:

Feeding America: A nationwide network with 200 food banks that help fight hunger in the United States.

American Red Cross: The American Red Cross is where people mobilize to help their neighbors in emergencies whether across the street or across the world.

WWF (World WIldlife Foundation): This charity helps stop the degradation of the environment to help protect and restore animals natural habitats

Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals: Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals raises funds and awareness for 170 member hospitals that provide 32 million treatments each year to kids across the U.S. and Canada.

United Way: Each donation helps fight for education, health, and financial stability for others in the community.

UNICEF: This charity works in more than 190 countries to save and improve children’s lives by providing health care, clean water, and nutrition.

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: They are dedicated to finding more effective treatments and cures for blood cancers so patients can live a longer life.

Who knew that your spare change could be easily contributed to helping such great causes around the world? One thing to note, not all of the charities listed above are available on every kiosk. Make sure to check online to ensure you can donate to the charity of your choice.

Also, make sure to keep your receipt. Donations like these one are 100% tax deductible and want to keep the receipt for your future taxes.

Lastly, you might not have noticed that there is one other option besides an Amazon e-card or certificate. If you’re not a huge Amazon shopper or want to put your spare change to a good cause you have one other option.

How to Use Coinstar

Using Coinstar is pretty straight forward to cash in your spare change. At the kiosk, make sure to check e-gift card for Amazon, cash, or if you want to donate the money. Add your coins to the machine and wait until it is done counting them.

If you have any coins that aren’t accepted or foreign objects accidentally inserted, the coin dispenser will spit them back out in a slot below. Once the machine is done counting you will receive the cash, store certificate or Amazon e-gift card receipt.

Make sure to not lose that receipt it’s small and I’m not sure they have any way to help if you end up losing it.

Now, Is Using Coinstar Safe?

Machines never fail, right? Well, that’s not always the case. When using any coin machine there is always room for error.

A story ran back in 2016 about a TD Ameritrade kiosk being off by $44 off from a $300 total. That’s a huge amount of money you’re not getting back!

Coinstar does appear to be the leader in the coin machine industry and released this statement after people began doubting the coin machines after the 2016 ABC investigation. Here’s what they said:

“Its number one goal is to provide its customers with a satisfying and reliable experience…it has refined technology and implemented regular maintenance schedules to service, clean, calibrate and test the machines to ensure reliability and high accuracy levels…rigorous testing has delivered extremely accurate coin counting and more than 95% machine uptime.”

Finding A Coinstar Near Me?

You can find Coinstar machine at most grocery locations but make sure to check out their locations page here.

Here is a list of the most common stores to help you find a coin machine near you:

Albertsons CVS

Kmart Super Centers

Kroger (This includes a ton of brands underneath it including Fry’s Food and Drug, Pay Less Super Markets, Ralphs, Food 4 Less, Foods Co, and others)

Lowes

Rays Food Places

Target Superstores (these are bigger than normal Target stores and include a full grocery selection as well)

The Food Emporium

Walmart

Why Use Coinstar?

After reading about cashing your coins in a bank Coinstar takes away a lot of the frustration by making it simple and convenient. You don’t have to roll up your coins and make a separate trip to the bank. You can save gas money and combine the experience with a normal trip to your store.

The Future of Coinstar

While Amazon e-gift cards and donations are great the options are kind of limited. Especially since they used to have 5-7 different e-card options until 2018. But Coinstar is about to roll another feature later this year that is a huge benefit for you.

Coinstar and Doxo announced a partnership in April of 2018 that will allow you to pay some of your bills with the kiosk. Through this partnership, you will be able to pay bills including utilities, phone, car loans, cable, certain types of insurance, and more. All of this will be done using your spare change at up to 7,000 Coinstar kiosks by the end of 2018.

Not to mention, Doxo is a huge company so you will probably have access to at least one or two monthly bills that you are already paying. Doxo has a crowd sourced directory of more than 45,000 local and national billers.

The Banks

Did you know that not all banks actually accept coins anymore?

Yes, a government-backed entity like a huge bank doesn’t always accept your legal tender! How crazy is that? Is it even legal? I didn’t go too far down that rabbit hole but this seems ridiculous.

While some banks do have coin cashing machines in the lobby, they are usually reserved only for account holders. Typically, you have to enter your debit card and PIN before it will actually allow you to get cash for your coins. Even if they do have a coin machine it might not always be free, even if you bank with them!

Then there are banks like TD Bank which charges you a fee to use the machine. It’s hard to believe it’s so much effort to get cash for your coins even at banks.

Banks That Accept Rolled Coins

As you can see the list of banks that don’t accept coins that aren’t rolled isn’t many! Most banks choose to only accept them if you have them properly rolled.

This usually means you have to buy the device to help roll or do it manually. Most of the banks will provide wrappers for free but some of the banks will still charge a fee!

1. Bank of America

No fees for Bank of America customers

No fees for non-Bank of America customers

2. Chase Bank

No fees for Chase Bank customers with an unlimited amount

No fees for non-Chase Bank customers until $200. Anything above there are fees which weren’t disclosed online

3. BB&T

Fees vary for BB&T customers. They are free for under $25; 5% for more than $25

10% Fees for non-BB&T customers (Yes, 10% at a bank!)

4. Cape Bank

No fees for Cape Bank customers

No fees for non-Cape Bank customers (and uncapped total amount unlike others on the list)

5. Citibank

No fees for Citibank customers unless you live in the state of Illinois in which there is a 5% of the total amount

No fees for non-Citibank customers unless you live in the state of Illinois in which there is a 5% of the total amount (Sorry Chicago readers)

6. Home State Bank

No fees for Home State Bank customers

10% Fees for non-Home State Bank customers. Yikes, might as well head to Coinstar or a credit union for that price

7. JBT

No fees for JBT customers

5%fees for non-JBT customers

8. Manasquan Bank

No fees for Manasquan Bank customers

5% Fees for non-Manasquan Bank customers

9. Shelby Savings Bank

No fees for Shelby Savings Bank customers

5% of the total amount for non-Shelby Savings Bank customers

10. U.S. Bank

No fees for U.S. Bank customers

No fees for non-U.S. Bank customers

11. Wells Fargo

No fees for Wells Fargo customers

No fees for non-Wells Fargo customers

12. People’s United Bank

No fees for People’s United Bank if you’re a customer

Unknown fees if you’re not a customer

13. Umpqua Bank (Pacific Northwest)

If you’re a customer they do not charge and coins don’t have to be rolled.

Unknown fees if you’re not a customer

If you don’t have any luck finding one of these locations near you, make sure to search for smaller banks and credit unions.

Credit Unions

If you’re not familiar there is a big difference between credit unions and banks, especially big banks like Chase and Bank of America. While banks have customers (and sometimes shareholders), credit unions are membership based. Once you get accepted based to the affiliation of the credit union you can become a member.

Credit unions tend to have more personalized service and don’t give you as much grief for want cash for your change! If you are a member, most of the bigger credit unions won’t charge you any fees. This is definitely one of the biggest perks of using credit unions!

And some credit unions have Coinstar type of machines that will allow you to give them your change without having to spend time rolling them.This is a huge time and money saver for you. Some credit unions do allow non-members to take advantage of their kiosks but they charge around 9-10%. Still a high rate but ultimately lower than Coinstar if you want cash.

Credit unions are also a great fit if you’ve had problems getting loans or credit cards due to a low credit score. They are much more likely to work with you than big banks.

If you don’t want the work of rolling your coins and finding a bank or credit union it’s time to learn about Coinstar.

Other Ways to Use Your Spare Change

If you’re not a fan of rolling coins, using Amazon, or paying 12% in fees, there a few lesser known options to best utilize your spare change.

Acorns App

Acorns is the free app that takes your spare change and not only saves it for you, but invests it for you using roundups from use on any of your debit or credit cards.

If you would like to see exactly how it works, you can check out our Acorns app review which explains in detail how Acorns works and why microinvesting is becoming wildly popular.

Self-Checkout to Pay for Normal Items

This is a method that you might love or hate. Personally, I always get frustrated when people using self-checkouts and are slow. To me, it kind of defeats the purpose entirely.

But, this method does let you save money so I understand. Instead of having to roll your coins for the bank or lose money to Coinstar, just pay for items with coins in the self-checkout.

You won’t have to pay any fees and can easily use self-checkouts at most grocery or retail stores. Maybe keep the total to a minimum not to hold up the line with $50 of spare change.

Find and Sell Rare Coins

I’ll admit this step requires a little more and is kind of a side hustle as much as anything else. Before you decide to use one of these options for your coins, double check to see if you have rare coins.

Sometimes you will be able to find coins that are of more value than the actual amount! Again, I want to preface that this will take more effort on your end and certainly not for every reader.

Here are some of the most common coins you can look for and potentially earn some extra money:

A buffalo nickel (this has a Native American and a buffalo on either side of the coin)

A penny made before 1982. This means the coin is 95% copper and worth more money!

A quarter, nickel, or dime minted prior to 1964. If it is prior to 1964 that means the coin contains silver and worth more money.

Plus if you have any older coins you can always go to a dealer and see if they are worth more to you than sitting in storage.

Donate to a Local Charity

If you don’t want to make a separate trip to find a Coinstar or don’t like the limited options you can always choose to donate your change. Religious institutions, community center, and the Salvation Army are among a few that will accept your donations. If you have international coins from your travels some of these places will also accept them as well.

Final Thoughts

Back in the day, this wasn’t something you needed to ask. Instead, you could just go to your local bank, get cash, and go about your day. Sadly, it’s just not the case anymore when it comes to trading your spare change for cash.

While getting money is always nice, it’s getting harder and harder to get 100% of your change converted to cash. With banks, machines, and high fees, you normally only get a fraction of your money. A lot of cases you only get around 90% of your “free money” after expenses!

It’s a shame that banks and our financial system have made it so difficult for people to get money for legal tender. What’s the point of having a piggy bank if you can only collect 90% of what you save? Probably not a great example from our financial institutions to teach our youth.

Maximize Your Change

But there are some alternatives to help you maximize your change for the full amount. This article will help you minimize those fees and find the best ways to get started.

Start clearing out your couch cushions, car consoles, and every random area of your house. With these methods, you can finally start using that change for something you actually need!

In today’s digital world coins and cash seem to be used less and less. Inevitably you will end up with spare coins that you need to cash out eventually. Besides, it’s not like you’re collecting interest on coins that are scattered throughout your life.

There are plenty of options to get started. Whether you roll your coins and take them to your local bank or take the fees and use Coinstar. And for quick purchases at the grocery store you can always carry your spare change with you. While it is a little of bit of work, every penny counts when it comes to meeting your financial goals!

Hopefully, this helps you deal with coin machines, fees, and the other hassles when finding a coin machine. Make sure you remember to check your Coinstar in 2019 so you can use your spare change to help you pay for your monthly bills.

What method do you use for dealing with spare change? Do you prefer the old school method of rolling them or the convenience of Coinstar?

Let us know in the comments and happy free coin rolling!

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The Money Hack for Using the Local Coinstar for FREE published first on https://mysingaporepools.weebly.com/

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hendricks94 · 7 years

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Tell Me About Yourself

My name is Chris. I am 23 and live in Las Vegas, Nevada. Born and raised. Yes we have suburbs. I graduated at Sanford-Brown College with a Bachelors in Fine Arts. I got a job that I feel like is my dead end. I work long hours and get plenty of recognition from my coworkers and clientele but not my bosses. I don’t drink too much anymore. Gluttony took over and told me the bottle was half empty. Also makes my stomach feel funky. Do smoke a lot more these days. Nothing horrible like poisonous cigarettes…no no. I’m talking about the Devils lettuce. It relaxes me and keeps me sane. I have trouble sleeping at night but never through the day. My health is probably what the average 23 year olds health is or maybe worse. And right now I’m having a quarter life crisis.

I haven’t been doing too much because I work most of the time. When I have a day off I’m usually catching up on my personal adult tasks. When I have days off I try to catch up on sleep and bring my blackened soul back to life by watching my favorite shows or playing video games. It’s starting to feel like an endless cycle. I’m an ex extrovert. Mainly to myself these days because I really don’t want to deal with negativity and ignorance. Don’t have anyone I really call a friend. Quite lonely actually, doesn’t kill my mood though. I enjoy being by myself. I do get lonely sometimes, maybe more than others. I have a girlfriend named Erica and I know she’s going to be my life partner. She’s very beautiful and not too sure why she finds me attractive but she’s finer than wine. She’s all I really need at this moment. I get jealous when she doesn’t give me the attention I need or want. She’s also been very busy though. With school and work she’s pretty limited on time too. I have two cats. Erica brought in her cat, Cat and my 10 year old cat Chase. They live the luxurious life of eating, pooping and sleeping. My main bank account is currently overdrawn but I’m not in any type of trouble. All bills paid and I have multiple investment accounts and other savings. I love to live the luxurious lifestyle with my decent to weak paychecks. I love love love food to the point where I will not be mad if I spend $300 on a fancy meal (to give you an idea of my irresponsible spending). I’ve definitely been doing a lot better with the multiple accounts but can still use improvement.

Due to my work schedule I’ve learned a lot about my past friends. As cliche as it sounds I was there when they needed me but couldn’t get that in return. So I’m a lone wolf. I make decent money with this job and have a generous amount left after bills. It’s starting to slow down and I really have to pick and choose what I need from what I want. I’m currently working on getting a long deserved promotion but I have a feeling that it’s going to fall through putting me through another year of doing the same shit I was doing last year and the year before that. It’s really getting to me because other than this job I’m not focused on much else to push me toward financial freedom. I have a lot in school loans and a personal loan for some mistakes I made a couple years ago, car bill, gas bill, internet, rent, insurance, credit card, Spotify blah blah. I feel like I’m not making enough to get released from these chains. I obviously have to do my part but I really just need a balance of everything in life right now. I mostly just need rest. I want to go back to school and learn something new but then I’d have to cut down on hours at work and then I wouldn’t be making nearly as much and bills would not get paid. So I’m stuck in this cycle while trying to seek a new challenge and a better pay.

I worry for the future of this world. I grew up in a broken home and didn’t really have many opportunities as a young child but various scars of the past. I wasn’t put in any karate classes or fed with a platinum spoon. I could’ve definitely put more into myself when I was younger but didn’t. I’m not interested in having any kids right now because I couldn’t support one and would probably never be home to take care of one.

#friends #real music #music #hot #cold #swag #work #blue #green #alpha #tango #life #money #demons #help #broke

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feral-frugal · 5 years

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Facing the Numbers

April 2019

For the first time since I was 22, I find myself living on a pretty tight budget. For a few years, I had a fairly high-paying job that allowed me to save close to $20,000 – and then leave that job (which was a dead end and not teaching me any new skills) to move to Jordan to be with my husband, freelance, learn some new skills (video) and establish myself a little bit better. My income there was never stable – and I never made more than about $30,000 a year there – but somehow I never had to be that careful with expenses – we lived in a family-owned apartment and paid little rent, Layth frankly covered a lot of our bills, and with my income, I managed to pay for my master’s degree tuition, travel home once a year, buy camera equipment when needed for work, and save up for eventually moving back to the US.

In the end, my savings helped tide me over the 4 months I was looking for work in the US and pay to get set up in an apartment once I had a job. But unsurprisingly, I underestimated how much moving was really going to cost: furnishing an apartment from scratch (I had zero furniture, no dishes, no clothes hangers, nothing), paying for Zipcars to go shopping for things, stocking a pantry with all the basics, and so on – it all added up. Plus there were some other big expenses like paying my tax bill and the fees to start the process for Layth to move to the US.

My income is lower here than what I was hoping for, and the last few months I’ve been really living paycheck to paycheck, feeling more broke than I have in the last seven years. Which is pretty frustrating, feeling like I’m now so many years away from being able to do things you should be doing at this point in life: buying a house, finally paying off student debt, thinking about having a kid. On the other hand, I know people 30 years older than me in far worse shape financially, and people who’ve gone through foreclosure and multiple layoffs and they’re still somehow doing the house and kid thing, so maybe it’ll be alright.

The last few weeks I’ve started trying to think outside the box a little bit and also really take stock of where the money is even going. A couple freelance editing projects a month would help tremendously (oh, what I would give to charge $10,000 to edit a 300 page report on child marriage again for UNICEF). Because when I add up what I think I should be spending each month, I’m fine on paper. The first thing I did was get a loan and consolidate my debt – which let me massively reduce what I was paying monthly (I was making more than the minimum payments, but barely making any progress on it) with a much lower interest rate. It’s also helped me to change my mindset about it a little – instead of it being credit card debt that makes me feel awful about myself, it’s my Moving to America Loan. And I guess it’s the price I’m paying for settling for poverty wages in a developing country for a few years. Oh well.

Then I went back through my credit card statements – I had memorized the card number, set it up with Apple Pay, etc. and it was my default payment for a lot of subscriptions – and went through and canceled a whole bunch of shit: a Kindle subscription I wasn’t using, Netflix, Lynda.com (I get that for free through work now), Adobe software, Microsoft Office (again all through work now), and more things that I had and was justifying as business expenses – which came to about $1500 annually. Not a huge amount, but a chunk of change that will go towards paying down debt.

Then today I finally reconnected Mint to my accounts and wanted to cry and looked at my transactions for April. I spent at least $1000 more than I thought I did, I somehow spent over $500 on food (what the fuck?!), but also had a few one-time large purchases, like a portable AC unit and fan for summer, plus I paid to ship my bike from my mom’s house and had to buy some supplies for it (but this means I now hopefully get to commute by bike most days from now until November or so, and pay less for the bus). In May, I’ll be traveling for two weeks (which means I’m paying for an AirBnB and will have to eat a lot of pre-prepared foods/at restaurants), I have to send a graduation gift to someone, etc.

Next month my gas bill should finally be a lot less, and hopefully running the AC a few hours a day won’t run up the electric bill too much. I’ve reduced my already cheap phone bill (Mint Mobile) so I’ll pay $120 when it renews in June instead of $160 ($80 savings a year). And my next obstacle is to see if I can ditch the cable company – I foolishly signed up with them when I moved in, and I’m not sure how hard it’s going to be to get out of the contract. But if I can, I’ve found another company where I can get internet (no cable) for $50/month instead of $120 ($840 savings per year!).

But if you enjoy making lists and graphs like I do, I think this can be a little less painful and more like a game. Projecting out these expected reductions, I should be able to have close to $1000 left over each month. Thankfully, I already have a pretty decent retirement account set up at work, and that’s quietly running in the background. Now, on the one hand, it might make sense to throw every dime I have left at that loan, but I’ve been riding so close to the edge these past few months, I really want to just let that accumulate for a few months so that I feel like I have some cushion/ an emergency fund and then I’ll start making bigger payments.

I’m flabbergasted that I spent so much on food this month, and I seriously feel like I’ve thrown half of it away. It’s seriously appalling. When I get back, I’m going to start composting (going halfsies with a friend on a bucket of worms with some dirt). And even with New Haven’s seriously lacking grocery store options (all the shopping is in the suburbs, which requires me to rent a Zipcar for $30 for a few hours; inside the city we have three grocery stores), I think I can eat a healthy diet for $25 a week. My kitchen is well-stocked with the basics, and I’ll get my produce from farmers markets on the weekend for the next several months. And things seem to work best when I just buy a few ingredients with one or two recipes in mind for the week.

I DO NOT NEED ANY MORE CLOTHES THIS ENTIRE YEAR. I DO NOT NEED ANYMORE FACE WASH OR SHOWER GEL THIS ENTIRE YEAR. I do need new mascara and will eventually have to get more day and night cream.

I’m writing this to keep myself accountable. If I obsess over it, it might work. The end.

#debt free community #budget #finances #broke millennial

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advancetaxreliefexperts · 6 years

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WHAT DOES BACK TAXES MEAN AND HOW TO GET TAX RELIEF FROM THE IRS

Definition Of Back Taxes:

Unpaid back taxes can be a serious issue for many taxpayers who don’t have the means to pay them. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has recently turned over the collection of unpaid back taxes to a private collection agency. Taxpayers who lack the means to repay taxes may often negotiate a lesser settlement via an offer in compromise with the IRS either directly or through a tax attorney.

NEED HELP WITH IRS BACK TAXES, AUDIT REPRESENTATION OR SMALL BUSINESS TAX PREPARATION?

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What is Back Tax? and How to Negotiate Back Taxes With IRS?

The IRS is aware that taxpayers continue to struggle years after the U.S. economy sunk into recession.The slow recovery means that many people still struggle to generate income, but they also owe taxes from past years.The IRS may be more willing than ever to work with delinquent taxpayers, given the widespread financial pain felt by so many. But taxpayers who want extra consideration need to abide by requirements to contact the IRS to let them know what is happening and to file formal paperwork on time

With the way the economy has been over the last half-decade, one of the most common questions I hear is “I owe the IRS years of back taxes, what are my options?” Many taxpayers gravitate towards the Offer in Compromise (OIC) program, possibly falling victim to the late night television commercials that claim “we can get you a settlement for pennies on the dollar.”

No reasonable person would pass up the opportunity to settle their IRS debt for “pennies on the dollar,” but the reality is those types of resolutions are few and far between. While an OIC may work for some, it certainly does not work, or make sense, for all. The good news is the IRS has many other options available to alleviate an individual’s back taxes. If you cannot pay the IRS taxes you owe, the IRS will encourage you to charge the extra amount on your credit card. This may be a bad idea, because the interest on your credit card will probably be a lot higher than the interest and penalties the IRS will charge if you reach an agreement with them.

cannot pay the IRS taxes you owe,

The IRS particularly focused on the following changes:

-Significantly increasing the dollar threshold when liens are generally issued, resulting in fewer tax liens. -Making it easier for taxpayers to obtain lien withdrawals after paying a tax bill. -Withdrawing liens in most cases where a taxpayer enters into a Direct Debit Installment Agreement. -Creating easier access to Installment Agreements for more struggling small businesses. -Expanding a streamlined Offer in Compromise program to cover more taxpayers. -From a taxpayer’s point of view, it’s great to see the IRS offering more options for Americans struggling to keep up with their tax payments. But if you do fall behind, don’t just stand there – take the following steps to resolve your debt with Uncle Sam.

Suggested Read: What are the best ways to reduce your taxes?

Always File Your Tax Return

If you owe the IRS an amount that you cannot pay in one lump sum with a return, it is important to file the return anyway.

“This will reduce some of the penalties,” he explains. “Occasionally clients tell us that they did not file a return because they were unable to pay the tax due. This usually causes them to pay penalties that are significantly greater than they would have paid had they at least filed the return.”

IRS Problems Gets Worse with Age

It is always best to deal with these issues up front and in a proactive manner. “The IRS will not immediately pursue you for delinquent tax penalties and interest, “In many cases it will take months before the IRS begins collection efforts.”

At first, collection efforts can seem benign, consisting of only computer generated letters. At some point, however, the IRS will begin very aggressive collection tactics, including wage garnishment in which the IRS contacts your employer advising that you have delinquent tax liabilities and that any wages that would be paid to you should be paid to the IRS.

Go For an Installment Agreement

I am always surprised to find out how few taxpayers consider entering into an installment agreement to pay off their IRS back taxes, especially considering it is often the best option for a variety of reasons. The IRS labels a taxpayer in an installment agreement as compliant, which reduces the amount of IRS letters and phone calls in the short-term while showing a taxpayer’s willingness to cooperate in the long-term.

When To Use. The easiest way to answer this question is to list when an installment agreement should not be used, which is when another option is far superior. For example, if a taxpayer has a large balance owed to the IRS and can only afford to make minimal installment payments another resolution option is more desirable because the taxpayer would barely be paying off the principal of their debt. That being said, the fact remains that an installment agreement should always be considered, even if only as an interim solution while considering other methods.

Pros. Makes IRS contact; prevents IRS from taking further collection action; flexible; almost always available.

Cons. Interest continues to accrue; could take years to pay off tax debt; must remember to make payments or else default (not an issue if utilize the direct debit option).

Stick to Your Payments

Do not fail to make your payments on time to the IRS. If you violate the terms of your payment arrangements, the IRS will attach and seize property that you own, including bank accounts and even the mortgage on your home. However, if you speak with them in the event that you are having problems making your payments, you should be able to work through it.

Get Professional Help

A professional representative can usually be of significant help in negotiating the most favorable possible compromise or installment agreement. That said, beware the “pennies on the dollar” firms or 1-800 number firms that advertise on late-night television, “In many instances these firms will simply take a client’s money and perform no or minimal services,” “Many of these firms have been prosecuted in their states of origin for unlawful and deceptive business practices.” If you are interested in obtaining representation, interview two or three potential firms in your city,” . Make sure that IRS tax controversy and IRS collection resolutions are the backbones of their practices. Many attorneys and Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) do tax planning but rarely interface with the IRS. It’s important that your representative has deep experience negotiating with the IRS in back taxes payment cases.

If you haven’t filed your taxes in a few years, you may be wondering what options you have. You may be surprised to learn that filing your tax returns can be the quickest way out of tax trouble. But you need to protect yourself. Here’s how: Back Taxes: Essentials for Preparing and Filing Late Tax Returns

Above all, the one thing you shouldn’t do is to do nothing. Taxpayers who don’t take action will find themselves embroiled in the IRS collection process. Did you know? The IRS can levy your wages and bank accounts, or even place a Federal tax lien on your property! If you’ve received an IRS notice about a levy or lien, it’s still not too late to get tax debt help.

Nobody is saying that the federal government is getting all warm and fuzzy about late tax payments. However, the IRS does offer more programs than ever before for Americans to get back on track with their taxes. The key is to act quickly and find a resolution as soon as possible.

The possibility of losing wages or property is very real. You should take all IRS notices seriously because even if they are the ones who made an error, you are the one who will be paying for it until/unless it’s addressed. You may even want to consider hiring a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) to help you deal with back taxes.

GET TAX RELIEF HELP TODAY

If you think that you may need help filing your 2018 tax return and past due tax returns, you may want to partner with a reputable tax relief company who can help you get the max refund and reduce your chances for an IRS AUDIT.

Advance Tax Relief is headquartered in Houston, TX with a branch office in Los Angeles, CA. We help many individuals just like you solve a wide variety of IRS and State tax issues, including penalty waivers, wage garnishments, bank levy, tax audit representation, back tax return preparation, small business form 941 tax issues, the IRS Fresh Start Initiative, Offer In Compromise and much more. Our Top Tax Attorneys, Accountants and Tax Experts are standing by ready to help you resolve or settle your IRS back tax problems.

Advance Tax Relief is rated one of the best tax relief companies nationwide.

#tax #smallbusiness #taxrelief #taxresolution #freshstartiniativie #form941 #form940 #form1120s #revenueofficer #backtaxes #taxattorneys #bookkeeping #irshelp #taxpreparation #auditrepresentation #backtaxes #audit #taxliens #irslevy #wagegarsnishmenthelp #taxreliefhelp #2018taxbrackets #helpwithIRS #taxattorneynear #taxattorneyhouston #taxattorneydallas #taxattorneyaustin #taxattorneysanantonio

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debtfreeinthree · 7 years

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5 Worst Things to Buy When You're in Debt

If you’re trying to pay off your debt quickly, the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to look at what you’re spending your money on. Most of us think we don’t have any money leftover at the end of the month, but if we peek into our bank statements, we can find some.

After you’ve looked at your expenses, it’s time to figure out where you can cut back. Can you find a cheaper apartment? Can you refinance your loans to get a better rate? Can you shop at Aldi instead of Whole Foods? Some of your expenses – like your utility bill – you can’t change that much. But others you have a lot of control over.

There’s so much you can do to save money, and decreasing your expenses is one of the only ways to pay off your debt early. So here’s my list for the five things you shouldn’t spend money on when you’re in debt.

A New Car

Earlier this year, my husband and I said goodbye to our precious 2001 Toyota Highlander. It was the first car I ever loved driving, and it died on the highway while we were heading to a ski trip. When we were looking for a replacement, I was amazed at how much cars cost. I’ve always had a used car, and the first two I owned were given to me by my parents (side note: I realize how lucky and privileged I was).

When I tell people how I paid off my student loans, I usually mention that I budgeted every dollar and tried to live as frugally as possible. What I forget to mention is that even after college, I drove my 1999 Toyota Avalon.

It was only a few years ago that I realized how for many people, a car payment is normal. I didn’t notice this until one day I parked at work and noticed that my car was one of the oldest in the lot.

I was earning about $30,000 at the time, as were many of my coworkers. I was surprised. How does everyone have a nicer car than me? Am I really that broke?

One day, I was talking to a friend about her budget and she mentioned that she had credit card debt and a car loan. “Oh,” I thought. “That’s how everyone has a nice car. They finance them.”

Car loans have been getting longer and longer. About a decade ago, the average loan was five years long, but now terms are closer to 6.5 years. You can even find ones with 7-year terms.

Here’s why I hate car loans. If you take out a six-year loan for a $19,000 car, you’ll be paying about $342 month with today’s interest rates. that’s $342 you can’t put toward your student loans, retirement savings or emergency fund. After total fees and interest, you’d pay $20,540 for a car.

In my eyes, a car takes you from point A to point B. Sure, it’s great if it has a built-in GPS or it’s in your favorite color. But if you’re saddled with student loans, you do not need to think about that when you’re buying a car.

My new (used) car isn’t fancy. There’s no Sirius XM radio, no camera that tells me when I’m about to hit another car, no Bluetooth capabilities. But it only had 100,000 miles and got a clean bill of health from the mechanic. I know it’ll be a while before it needs some maintenance, and for now, I have no car payment.

Note: I’ll be writing a post soon about how to buy a used car in cash without getting a lemon. Stay tuned!

Eating Out

Most personal finance experts cite eating out as a huge budget killer. I’m one of them. I cannot get over how often people eat out. Part of that comes from a family where eating out was not an option. Even now, I feel a little guilty when I eat out if I could’ve grabbed something at home.

But let’s do the math. The average person eats out between 4 and 5 times a week. At $10 a meal, that’s at least $40 a week. Times 4 weeks a month is $160 or $1,920 a year. Doesn’t sound like a life-changing number?

If you have $20,000 in student loans at 6.5% interest and a $300 monthly payment, an extra $160 a month could help you pay off that balance two years ahead of schedule. Even if you cut back to eating out once a week, you’ll still reduce your term by one year. Now do you see why I’m so insistent about eating at home instead of a restaurant?

I’m also including food delivery services like Blue Apron (see my review of it here). Most of these cost about $9-$10 per meal and when you factor in time, it’s an even worse deal than eating out.

Solution: Making food at home is the best way to save money, but it can also lead to food waste if you’re not careful. Thankfully, the internet has TONS of resources on eating cheap and healthy. First, there’s the subreddit Eat Cheap and Healthy, where Redditors post their favorite cheap and healthy recipes.

One of the best resources is the $5 Meal Plan, developed by my friend Erin Chase. She has four kids and manages to create meals that cost about $2 a person. For $5 a month, Erin sends you meal plans, complete with shopping list. Gluten free or vegetarian? She has meal plans for those. If you find yourself avoiding grocery shopping because you don’t know what to buy or how to make your food last, I recommend giving those meal plans a try.

Leanne Brown has a cookbook, “Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4 a Day” which details how even people living on SNAP benefits can eat well. It’s also available for free on PDF if you’re really looking to save money. Her book became famous because it’s one of the few resources available for people living below the poverty line who still want to eat healthy.

Another favorite is the blog, Budget Bytes. This was one of my favorite inspiration sites when I was paying off my student loans. One complaint is that she doesn’t use enough seasoning in her recipes, so keep that in mind.

Subscriptions

I love reading. It’s one of my favorite hobbies. But I often struggle with getting through books before they’re due at the library (I try to borrow books instead of buying them). Then I’m left with the option of renewing the book, which isn’t possible if the title is in high demand, or buying it, which is expensive given my love of literature. Today, I thought, “Maybe I should sign up for an Audible subscription so I can finish more books.”

I looked up the cost for an Audible subscription. The cheapest plan is $14.95 a month for one audiobook and 30% off any other purchases. If you don’t purchase a book, your credit will roll over to the next month. But here’s where they get you: the credits do roll over, but they can also expire. And when they do, that’s $14.95 down the drain.

I know you might be thinking, “What’s the big deal if it’s only $14.95?”

These types of subscriptions add up. If you have a Netflix, Hulu, Spotify and Audible subscription, you could be paying more than $100 a month for your entertainment. That’s not including any movies, concert tickets or museum exhibits.

Solution: Make a list of the subscriptions you have and rank them by price and how much you use them. When I was paying off my student loans, I canceled my Hulu subscription because I realized I used Netflix more. I also found out I can check out audible books from my libary for free.

New Designer Purses

This is another thing that baffled me as an adult. Why was I dragging around a purse I bought from Target when every other girl had a Kate Spade, Coach or Michael Kors bag? Was I missing out on some sort of 80% off sample sale where you could buy a leather clutch for $30?

Nope, I realized. That’s just what women buy. If you buy one purse and wear it for 10 years, it’s probably a good deal. But I find it hard to imagine that spending $300 on a Marc Jacobs cross body bag is a good idea if you have student loans, especially if you get a new purse every year.

Solution: If you still want a designer purse, at least buy it used through a site like ThredUp or Poshmark where you can save more than 50%. I also bought a Longchamp bag through eBay once for $47 or 60% off.

Salon Services

When I was a kid, my parents took me to the fancy hair salon. Every few months, I went and got a $50 haircut. My parents were middle-class, and I didn’t realize until later that they splurged on haircuts while foregoing eating out and buying designer clothes.

When I started paying for my own haircuts, I realized how expensive they were. Getting a $50 haircut every three months equaled $200 a year (more like $240 once I factored in tips). My solution? Get my hair cut less frequently. I also only got highlights once a year, instead of having them refreshed every time I went in.

I also mostly avoid manicures and pedicures and prefer to buy nail polish and do it at home. This is huge. For $10, you can buy a bottle of OPI or Essie polish (my personal favorites) and do it yourself. Even a cheap manicure will run you $15-$20.

Solution: Now that I’m in the process of dying my hair red, I realize how much money I saved by keeping my hair low maintenance. I could’ve saved even more if I had gone to a beauty school or low-cost salon, but I didn’t want to deviate from my favorite hairdresser. Search for beauty schools in your area to see what you can find. The local Aveda salon only charges $15-$20 for a haircut and $40-$75 for color.

Again, you don’t have to completely cut out manicures or pedicures from your budget. But think about cutting back, from once a month to once every two or three months. If you dye your hair, space out your appointments more. These small changes can add up quickly and can really reduce how long you’re in debt.

My Caveat

Everything I’ve listed here is my opinion. I don’t care about the kind of car I drive, so I think it’s silly to spend a lot of money on one. But if you really value your vehicle, then try to find a balance between your financial responsibilities and that sweet ride. Same for eating out, Kate Spade bags and manicures.

As my good friend Paula Pant says, you can afford anything, but you can’t afford everything. Choose one or two priorities you have besides your student loans and ignore the rest.

5 Worst Things to Buy When You’re in Debt was originally published on Debt Free After Three

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holytheoristtastemaker · 4 years

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It’s been 8 weeks since we are collectively experiencing the dramatic impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Since that time, we’ve all borne witness to how this flu virus impacting our families, our communities and our livelihood. Unemployment is on the rise, in fact, the labor department reported that another 6.6 million people had filed for unemployment benefits last week. Most city dwellers were not prepared for this kind of catastrophic event that caused many jobs. So here is my way of doing a public service to fellow developers and designers specially the to the younger generation. There are plethora of articles about computer programming languages and technologies for web and mobile application development but there are few that talks about the elephant in the room, the real-life struggle of web developers and designers. Whenever I go to hackathons, I meet people who are either unemployed or freelancing. Sadly, some go to this event for free food and temporary shelter because they can sleep and stay overnight at the venue. I also met aspiring coders who just graduated from coding boot camp looking for jobs. My designer and developer job is dispensable, our doomsday does not require an event of biblical proportion, all it takes is to lost a client, get fired or laid-off from our job. If you are living in California our state has labor law called “At-will employment”. It is a term for contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason (that is, without having to establish “just cause” for termination), and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal (e.g. firing because of the employee’s race or religion). The employers can outsource web and software development to programmers from another country for a fraction of the price. For companies who’d rather hire someone onsite or offsite but still based locally inside United States, some would prefer to hire you as an individual contractor, meaning no company benefits (paid sick leave, vacation leave), no health insurance, 401K, and perks that a permanent employee gets. Here are the things freelancers could do in order to survive the uncertainty of financial security and thrive in the tech industry while they are waiting for their big break or seeking permanent employment. Health Insurance This is at the very top of my list. I learned this the hard way. My appendix ruptured years ago and since I do not have medical insurance the doctor does not want to perform surgery, his exact words was “you got no money to pay me, just go home!”. I was in so much pain, my body is being poisoned, the nurse gave me a shot of Morphine to ease some pain but that made me so dizzy and vomit. Thank God, if not for the Good Samaritan who fought for me and my right as a patient to be admitted at the emergency, I will not get my operation. I just want to emphasize how important it is to have a health insurance here in the united states. Make this your priority whether you have a job or not. If you need to get out of your way to do your research and go to different clinics and hospitals to know how you will get a free or low cost insurance, do so. Do not procrastinate on this matter. It will cost you nothing to find a way to obtain health coverage, but it will cost you and your family too much trouble if you end up at the hospital bed—broke. Some Ways To Save Money I think you will say your money is just enough to pay the bills and there is no more left to put aside for savings. I hear you, I’ve been there too. How about cutting down in unnecessary expenses? In my case, I cut down on junk foods. I like to eat something crunchy while I am working. I changed it to banana with almond butter. For me it works because the combination of the two is delicious and it fill me up easily and curbed my craving for junk foods. One banana cost 10–29 cents per piece, and the almond butter will last me for two weeks if I will consume it daily. I also tried to snack on celery sticks and carrots, I never thought I would like them, it gave me the same effect (crunchy) I get from eating chips. Now I enjoy eating beets and fruits for snacks whenever I am craving for something sweet. When I go shopping, I will ask this question before making a purchase. “Is this a need or a want?”. If the answer is need, I will buy it. If not, I will pass. What do I get from this anyway? One time my wheel got punctured by a big nail because I parked next to a house undergoing construction. If I did not cut down on the unnecessary, I will not have the money to buy two new front tires. I asked my dad to give me a AAA Auto Club membership as a birthday gift instead of a purse or clothes. So it did not cost me a penny to get my car towed from the location I got a flat tire all the way to the car mechanic’s shop. Towing company charges around $200–$300 depending on the location, I saved a good deal of money by getting a AAA card and the savings from affiliate stores discount that comes with it. Switch to prepaid cellphone. I used to pay $100/month on my cellphone bill, so I switched to prepaid and it saved me 40% plus I am not tied-up to a 2-year contract which will gravely affect your credit score when you can't afford to pay the bill and the cellphone provider put your account in collection. Low FICO score may affect your employment to big companies when they run your credit, and you will have to pay higher interest when you buy a car, and most often than not, when you decided to get your own place, you will be charged with a higher rent. Your chance of purchasing a home will be gravely affected as well, debt delinquency is a red flag to banks and mortgage brokers unless you are paying cash in full which is quite risky because they will report you to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by possessing hundreds of thousands of money in cash. Did I went too far? I think that's a good thing to know right? They don't teach that in computer science school. If you are subscribed to Netlifx, Amazon Prime, Hulu, or YouTube Red, I wonder how much time do you have in your hands to watch movies from these platforms. Unless they are required to do your work, think about which one you use less often and de-activate it for the mean time until you are making more money. There are numerous ways to save, the key ingredient here is to seek for other options and to cut down in your excess. Food Prepping After my surgery, it took me 6 months to recover. As I mentioned before, my job is dispensable. I got replaced one week after my surgery because I was working on a project that has a strict due date. I was working there for only a couple of months before my medical emergency. The money I was able to save from my two months of freelance work went towards my rent while I was recuperating. With the kindness of my friends from church, they gave me food that lasted for one week. But I do not want to abuse this kind gesture, they also got their own family to support. I did what I got to do — go to food banks. I was lining up there for some months. The thing with food banks is you do not have that much of a choice when it comes to creating a recipe. The first one I went to, they gave me a can of apple sauce, green beans, one box of oatmeal, pickled jalapeño, and peanut butter. So I bought a box of crackers from the dollar store and ate peanut butter and crackers the first few days. Second time I went there, I was able to talk to other people falling in line, they told me that in one day, they will visit 3–4 food banks to come up with a good recipe. I had a car so I volunteered to drive them around because they were senior citizens and I feel compassionate with the ordeal they were going through every week to get food. They cannot find work because they are considered as unemployable because of their age and limited capacity for hard labor. They live with their children who were also struggling. What I learned from this experience is to do food prepping during the time of plenty. Every time I go to the grocery I will buy extra canned and dry goods that has long shelf life. I do not buy in excess because it will only be wasted when the expiration date comes and you were not able to eat them or forgot about them. I will get 2 cans of tuna for example, something not superfluous. One for immediate consumption, the other for the rainy days. If you go to the market every week, then in one month you will be able to save four cans. In one year, you will be able to save up 48 items. That means when you lost your job or income, you know for sure you have food to eat for 48 days, this is what I call a life line, it will gave you sustenance until you find another job. One item is a base number or something to start with. To make it more realistic, get 3 items extra to cover for three meals a day. Since you have free time, cut some coupons for buy one get one or shop at the place where they have a promo. This is doable, so I see no reason not to do it. Fasting The benefits of fasting is it promotes blood sugar control by reducing insulin resistance, it helps fight inflammation and improve blood pressure. You will have a good skin and loose weight as well. Fasting also made me realize that I am not going to die if I will not eat solid food for three days or more. That will get rid of your anxiety of not having food on your table. So you will have the clarity of mind to think about a new game plan in this time of famine. When your food supply is running low, you got to slow down your consumption as well. Once you experienced fasting, you will acquire a discipline to tame down your food cravings. If you are not ready to do a three day fast, you can do intermittent fasting instead. I tried it while I was in a ketogenic diet and I lost 5 lbs in two weeks. It also gives me more energy to spend on important things that I need to take care of. Bus Pass Finding a new job means you need to go to employment agencies or go to job interviews. Based on my experience, parking fees in Los Angeles is common specially if the office is located inside a building or establishments with nearby restaurants and shops. Depending on the location, the cheapest is $2/hr if you will park in meter, while inside a parking lot it may cost from $10 to $30. Not all company provides parking validation. There was a time I only got twenty dollars left and I spent it all by paying a parking fee in this job interview, but I did not get the job. It was painful, it is hard to explain if you have not been into the same situation. So get a bus pass and load it up when you have extra money. Even though I have a car, I will only use it going to places that is not accessible to public transportation, I am saving my gas for something more important. There was a time I gave my friends a hint that what I want for Christmas is a bus pass and not those things that shine and glitter. What I was asking for is practical and essential. This is applicable if you live in a place that have this type of transportation system. My point here is to prioritize what is pragmatic. Sleep in your car This may sound ridiculous but training pays. If you own a car, empty the trunk and fold the back seat (if it can). See if you will fit in there, if not, fold back the front seat as well until you feel the most likely comfortable. It is not going to be comfortable for most cases unless you have a truck, van, or SUV. Depending on the size of your car, get a low height airbed, foam mattress, pillows or anything that will serve as a cushion to protect your back from the hard surface. Your car will be twice colder or hotter than your bedroom. So get your thickest blanket if it is cold season. Get a small luggage or any bag that will fit one week worth of clothes that you will wear on a daily basis, specially if you go to work. I know people who goes to work every day sleeping in their car. I was one of them. Sleep in your car as long as it is parked inside a home or private property. Do not sleep in your car if you are parked in the street without checking the ordinances where you live because your car will be confiscated and it will cost you an arm and a leg to retrieve it at the compound. Sleeping inside a car is illegal in California. Ask your church or neighbor if you can park your car inside their property. Look online where homeless people park to sleep. You may not need the information today, but it is golden when that time comes that your landlord kick you out or change the lock on your door. These are basic necessities provided that you have the resources to start with, your situation could be more complex. Some people sleep at homeless shelter, tent, parks, and anywhere possible. I stayed at a transitional home or sober housing one point in my life (even though I do not drink). The social worker recommended me there because its a house and a safe place. It is not free though, I paid for my rent and bills every month, the only upside is you do not have to come up with a deposit which adds up to the moving expenses. The not so good thing is I got zero knowledge and experience living with people rehabilitating from drugs, crime, mental health, and physical abuse. So it was a challenging and chaotic environment that I have to endure to survive. This chapter of my life was one great story of redemption, you can read it here if you are interested. Knowing you will be able to survive in financial crisis will help eliminate your fears. Because fear block us from pursuing our dream and the ability to thrive. Remember, the main topic of this article is "survival". I wish the rainy days will not come, but there is no security in any type of job. I do understand why you chose this freelancer's life because you want a less stressful job, you want time for yourself and your family, you want stay away from office politics, you are exhausted from long hours of commute and most of all, you are sick and tired of toxic people at work sucking the life out of you. But life will throw us a curve ball. We are here to learn from each other's experiences and to be prepared for our own share of ups and downs. Stay Home Stay Safe and Level Up The company that I joined recently ceased their operation due to COVID-19 pandemic and I am using this free time to learn WordPress REST API at Lynda.com and APIs and Microservices at freeCodeCamp.org. I use freeCodeCamp's curriculum for my Coffee and Code meetups and coding boot camp. My students (kids and adults) likes the Responsive Web Design course. You get praises and kudos every time you completed the line of codes correctly, it is motivating. What I like about freeCodeCamp is you will learn to build real-life projects that you can add in your portfolio, earn certification, and help you prepare you for coding interview. Thousands of coders around the world are using freeCodeCamp and I recommend that you give it a try too. freeCodeCamp Courses Read books The book Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual offer techniques and practices for a more satisfying life as a professional software developer. In it, developer and life coach John Sonmez addresses a wide range of important "soft" topics, from career and productivity to personal finance and investing, and even fitness and relationships, all from a developer-centric viewpoint. In The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, legendary software expert Robert C. Martin introduces the disciplines, techniques, tools, and practices of true software craftsmanship. Martin shows how to approach software development with honor, self-respect, and pride; work well and work clean; communicate and estimate faithfully; face difficult decisions with clarity and honesty; and understand that deep knowledge comes with a responsibility to act. One last thing I'd like to share is that reading helped me during my dark night of the soul. Aside from programming books, I also read about existentialism, stoicism, and psychology. Recently, I read The Plague by Albert Camus, Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. For the past two years, I spent hundred of hours reading the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, if you work in the creative industry like design and film making, his books will tap into your psyche and unconscious, my favorite is Liber Novus The Red Book. I think one of the best thing you can do to survive and thrive as a human being is to practice to be brave. Thank you for reading, I hope it inspires you.

http://damianfallon.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-to-survive-as-freelancer_46.html

#SEO #Local SEO training

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clitorista · 4 years

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So I met this really strong witch Sarah when I was a teenager, through one of the most awful, horrible, abusive people I’ve ever known. He met her while he was away at college, and he was my best friend at the time and had yet to show his full crazy. I was 16 and he was 19, and she was 19 and I was absolutely enamored of her. She was wonderful, she didn’t judge, she seemed very Light and Kind, and I stayed as in contact with her as I could over the years. We only checked in off and on throughout the years after she fell out of touch with Rowan, and he had been growing more and more controlling and abusive over the years towards me, so I wasn’t /allowed/ to talk to people he didn’t like or it escalated his behavior. In 2013 when I was 26 I finally broke free of him because he went to prison for assaulting a toddler. [Long story there, might be kinda tangentially related to my long streak of negative luck, actually. He was a powerful witch, too] When Harmony and I moved out together into our own apartment in 2015, things were hard. They were my PCA, and that was the only income we had besides my SSI, because they were in grad school and finishing it up. They were commuting an hour one way to school each day, spending $400 a month on a commuter rail pass, and our rent was half of our income, our car payment was another $300 a month, and then utilities, and groceries, and the money they had to spend on things FOR school... It was a fucking mess. About two months after we moved into that apartment, Sarah contacted me. She wanted to come by and see how I was doing, and show me some new makeup stuff she had. She was a Mary Kay consultant, and I had [out of kindness, not because I supported Mary Kay, or liked makeup] given a part for her a few years before. She wanted to see about following up with that, and honestly that party she had held for me the few years before had kickstarted my obsession with makeup. I’d already outpacecd the Mary Kay quality stuff, but I wanted to be kind to a friend I’d had so long, and so I let her come and bring all of her goods. We had a little extra money because it was in between both of our birthdays, so we bought some stuff from her and figured that would be it. But then she asked me to join her team. I told her I wasn’t interested, because I wasn’t able to travel to do parties, being a wheelchair user would make it impossible for me to access most people’s houses. She insisted, and talked me into it, telling me I could hold parties at my house, and all of my ordering could be done through my company website. I wouldn’t have to hold any product stock, and I’d be able to /make extra money/ that we so desperately needed. I tried for about a month, and wasn’t bringing in any orders, so she devised a plan. I would be her personal assistant and help her run /her/ Mary Kay business, and she would make orders in my name to keep me active, and then would pay me $300 a month under the table for us to be able to afford groceries because we /weren’t/ at the time, and I kept getting denied SNAP benefits. This seemed like a sure fire thing, so I agreed to try it out. Within the month, she had started shirking her duties of on boarding people, and I was running the facebook launches, and teaching people all of the stuff they needed to know to run their businesses. She kept going to Mary Kay seminars, and I had to transcribe her notes, both from her private notebooks, and from her audio notes. It was fine, because I type quickly and accurately and I’m actually really quite good at that. The problem with everything was, she kept getting more and more erratic. She’s a very powerful Christian Witch who works with the Archangels, and that was fine to us while we were on her good side... She bought us witchy gifts, she helped Harmony hone their craft and bring me back to my practice that I’d let lapse. She slowly stopped going out to do in person launch parties. She would just completely abandon the girls whose parties were supposed to happen the day of them, and leave me to tell them how to run them and to field any texts that came from them, or any vox messages. Her marriage was falling apart, she couldn’t keep a job.... Which was unlike her, and unusual for her. She grew up in a very wealthy family, went to school and got a ton of tech certs, and had always had a 6 figure job. She stopped going to work. She lost at least two jobs in the three months everything spanned over. In those three months, she paid me $100, once. I’ve obviously got serious mental illnesses, and am physically disabled and just couldn’t keep up with running a business, let alone one that was not benefiting me at all. I told her that I couldn’t do it anymore, because it wasn’t working for me and it was driving me into the ground, and she did not take it well. She got incredibly angry, and said some really derogatory things about how poor Harmony and I are, and she got some of her stuff from our house but never came back for others. We thought we had gotten rid of all of it in the immediate aftermath. FFW a little adn Harmony has graduated grad school with a degree in Clinical Psychology. They get hired at a very well acclaimed youth counseling program, and they start working right away. We move into a fancy new apartment that’s huge, and on the top floor of an 8 story building. It’s late June when we move in, and the central air is apparently not working. They tell us to keep our windows open, and fans going because it’s an unbelievably hot outside, even for that time of year. We do so, not knowing our windowscreens are breakaway and our boy cat, who is only a year old at this time, falls out of the window. He broke his pelvis/hip and ended up in kitty ICU for a week, and having a pin put in his hip. He survived, and is just fine now. Harmony and I have always had chronic health issues we’ve tried to be taken seriously about by doctors, and always had them brushed off. In 2016 they start worsening, rapidly. Well, mine didn’t get so bad so quickly, but Harmony’s fucking bottomed out all at once. In 2016/2017 I was 29-30, and Harmony was 24-25 so it was weird /how/ bad it got, how quickly. They were working their high stress job, that was focused very minutely on productivity, and they kept asking for accommodations for their disabilities and being hand waved off. They had been FINE and then all of a sudden were very NOT FINE. They scheduled meeting after meeting with their supervisors and they were told to just find ways to manage, and they did their best to keep up with their unrealistic productivity expectations. People were quitting the company left and right because they were working their people into the ground, but we couldn’t afford for Harmony to quit because I can’t work, and our bills are too much. In 2018 they were finally fired for their disabilities, which their company completely openly admitted. Their last year working there, after Trump changed the tax laws, their job didn’t withhold enough, and they ended up owing $3000 dollars to the government that year. They applied for unemployment, and were told they were entitiled to it. The unemployment agency did /not/ walk them through the paper work the right way, and when they filled it out there was no option given for them to list their part time job as my PCA. They collected unemployment for about six months, and at the end of the six months started looking for another job. Nowhere was hiring, and they took the only job that accepted them, a fee-for-service clinician job. It promised that they were going to have a full caseload of 25 clients within 6 months, and that then they would be salaried. That never happened. They’re still working with a partial caseload, and making barely any money. In the past 4 years, a /ton/ of other fucked up shit has happened to us besides both of our health. [Mine ended up rapidly deteriorating in the past year and a half, btw.. worse than it was before. Even worse in the past six months.]. Our brakes went twice on our car that we’ve only owned for four years as of this month. We hit a pothole so hard and deep that it broke our wheel, and completely fucked up our alignment. Our battery randomly died, more than once, and then finally completely shit the bed January 2019 on the coldest day of the year. Our radiator started leaking antifreeze due to loose hoses. Harmony has had a bunch of weird, wild, fucked up shit happen to their mouth. They’ve broken both of the crowns they got in 2016, they broke a tooth and had to have it extracted. Dental phobia is like their biggest phobia, and they literally can’t even talk about dental procedures. We just kept running into emergency after emergency that cost $500+, with no way to pay for them ourselves. We also ran up our credit cards to completely maxed out, and defaulted on them because we had no other option and needed to use them for groceries and gas and living essentials. This job they’re still currently at [ but leaving at the end of apri ] has never paid more than $500 takehome for two weeks of work. They were getting paid $30 an hour before the past few months when a raise of $2.50 happened. The thing is, as a fee-for-service clinician, they only get paid if they HAVE sessions. They get paid nothing for paperwork, they get paid $17 an hour for collateral work, and for their supervision. We’ve had to fundraise a ton of different times through mutual aid groups, and take money from my parents to make ends meet. There was just a lot of little stuff that went wrong, as well, and a huuuuuge falling out between Harmony and their parents over our Christmas vacation and they haven’t spoken since because of some really passive aggressive ass letters their parents wrote them. We’ve both had a lot of negative interactions with doctors, a lot of health problems, doctors telling us we’re just fat and that’s where all of our problems are stemming from... Obviously that’s bullshit, and we’ve both tested for there being ACTUAL THINGS WRONG but still aren’t getting taken seriously. It got so bad, and we were struggling so hard no matter what we did, we came to the conclusion we had /definitely/ been hexed/cursed. I tried mirror charms, to reflect it back, I tried shielding stuff. I tried some banishing stuff. None of it worked. For the past year Sarah has been sending me emails that have no info in their body, and their subject line is always “Is this still you, Nikki?” And I accidentally opened the first one without realizing it was “empty”, and haven’t opened any since, and have them directly deflected to my spam folder now. On Valentines I was presented with the PERFECT opportunity for some NAME MAGICK. San Antonio Zoo was offering this fundraising effort “Name a cockroach and we’ll feed it to our animals for $5. You can name a mouse for more, and we’ll feed it to our snakes.” I named a fucking cockroach after Sarah, with her last name attached, and things MAGICKALLY started getting better. Just before Valentines is when we found out they weren’t renewing our lease, after Valentines we started looking for somewhere new to live and had a hard time finding somewhere that met our requirements, but as soon as we did and applied with my mum cosigning [because our credit scores suck from tanking them being jobless], we got accepted. Harmony found a new job too, after having been applying to them for months. It’s not a GREAT job, it’s a call center job at Spectrum cable, but it will be stable pay, with the same hours every week, and the same pay every paycheck. Which is what we need the most so we can keep our budget on board. Some random problems have obviously come up with these situations, being that their current day job is basically non-existent because even their boss isn’t answering their calls for their sessions/supervision. They got one session in in their first week of work from home, and their boss didn’t answer their supervision call. We haven’t received our lease to sign yet, despite the fact we’re moving on the 4th, and found out today it’s because they didn’t have some paperwork from my Mum that they didn’t tell us they needed until today, after I asked them about why we hadn’t gotten it yet... We’ve fixed that, and they’ll have them all on Tuesday. But there was a literal air of Negative Anxiety for the past 4 years, we sniped at each other a lot and had to learn a lot of really good communications skills. Now it feels a lot lighter, and more positive, and we’re arguing less even though we’ve been in the house together for 22 days straight. We’re getting along really well, and still being really supportive of one another with all of our anxieties, and traumas. We’ve been so good together, and putting all of the work of the past four years into this month, and it’s working so well. And things are finally looking up. My Tarot and runes keep telling me I’ve got financial stability, material gain, wealth, romantic love, and life stability, home and hearth, and family. It’s fucking w i l d and I don’t know what to make of any of it. It’s also pointing towards the love coming from someone already close to me, which I definitely realized I’m in love with one of our best friends recently, so there’s that.

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damonbation · 5 years

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How to Make a Thousand Bucks an Hour

Another summer evening skate-n-scoot outing with Mini Me

It’s Back to School time here in Colorado, which means both my son and I will be hanging up the swim shorts and kayak paddles and getting back to more serious business for a while.

It has been a slow and endlessly sunny and leisurely summer, and a nice break for both of us, which has been very relaxing and a great time for bonding.

But relaxation has its limits. At some point all that Chilling Out fades its way into Complacency, and our natural Human nature starts to work against us, telling us to conserve energy and not really do much of anything. And laziness begets more laziness, and life actually becomes less fun.

You can see this effect in our activities. I’ve only completed two blog posts over the entire summer holidays, and together we have put out only two YouTube videos. Spending more time at home and less at the MMM Headquarters squat rack has caused me to lose at least five pounds of leg muscle that I had wanted to keep. Little MM has spent a lot less time practicing on the upright bass and putting out songs, and a lot more time playing video games and getting sucked into the “dank memes” and “Trove” channels on Reddit.

It has been a fun break, but as the freshly polished school buses awaken with the sunrise, it will be even more fun to get our own lives cranking into a higher gear as well. And if you’re reading this, it means I am off to a great start!

Complacency Is Expensive

This laziness was affecting my financial life, and your financial life too. I had let thousands of dollars of uninvested cash build up in my checking account, where it was sitting around earning nothing. My credit card bills had come in, been automatically paid, and filed themselves away without me even reviewing them for fraudulent transactions or wussypants spending on my part. And I had a growing mini-mountain of things I need to do regarding insurance, accounting, and legal stuff in both my personal and business domains.

And yet once I got my act together last week, I cleaned up the whole mess and set things straight in less than an hour.

It’s not Just Me, it’s You

When I talk to friends and family, I notice a common theme: they tend to set up certain “hassle” things once, and then ignore them as long as possible unless some absolute crisis comes along and forces them to make a change.

“Oh, I just do all my insurance stuff with Jim Schmidt’s Insurance office downtown, because my parents referred me to him when I first moved out for college.

Even better, his wife Jane runs a loan brokerage, so she handles all our family’s mortgage needs!”

On this surface, this sounds fun and folksy and like a nice way to do business. And that is exactly the way I like to live: keeping my business relationships as casual and fun as I can. But when it comes to money, complacency can come at a price, so at the bare minimum we should find out exactly what price we are paying.

For example, just recently a coworking member came to me and asked for some financial help. And as always, I suggested we start by looking at big recurring expenses. So we dug into the details of her insurance and other major bills streaming in from ol’ Jim and Jane, and found an interesting breakdown:

Required liability coverage on a 2010 Subaru Forester: $580 per year

Optional collision and comprehensive coverage ($500 deductuble): $360 per year

Home insurance on a 2000 square foot house ($500 deductible): $1450 per year

Mortgage interest on a $300,000 loan at 4.85%: $14,550 per year

Student Loan interest on an old $35,000 student loan at 5.5%: $1925 per year

Total: $18,865 per year.

It’s no wonder my friend was having financial stress – she had interest and insurance costs that were soaking up half of a reasonable annual budget before she could even buy her first bit of groceries or clothing.

So, right there we did a quick round of phone calls and online quotes, and streamlined a bit of the insurance coverage by increasing the deductibles. Within 90 minutes (she did most of the work while I had a beer and swept the floors of the HQ), we had the following new set of options:

Subaru liability coverage: $380 per year ($200 savings) through Geico

Removal of collision and comprehensive (in the unlikely event of a crash, they could afford to replace the car with less than two months of income) ($360 savings)

Home insurance on a 2000 square foot house ($5000 deductible): $650 per year ($800 savings) through Safeco

Refinanced mortgage to 3.375% through Credible.com*: $10,125 per year ($4,425 savings)

Refinanced Student Loan (also Credible) to 3.85%: $1347 per year ($578 savings)

New total expenses: $12,502 ($6363 per year in savings!!)

It is hard to even express the importance of what just happened here. My friend just did two hours of work in total while drinking a glass of wine, and dropped her annual expenses by over $500 per month, or six thousand dollars per year. And she will of course invest these savings, which will then compound to about to about $86,000 every ten years.

Even if she has to do this annual round of phone calls and websites once per year to maintain the best rates on everything, she will be earning about $3150 per hour for this work. Hence the bold title of this article, which you can now see is very conservative.

The Optimization Council

The first Optimization Council meeting at MMM HQ

So you’re convinced. $3150 is enough to get you to pick up the phone, but how do know who to call? Who is going to be your coach if you don’t live near Longmont and thus can’t just join the HQ and have Mr. Money Mustache tell you what to do?

The great news is that all of this knowledge already exists, right in your own circle of friends. To extract it, you just need to gather them together and get them to talk about it.

Earlier this month, I floated exactly this idea with the members of my coworking space, proposing that we form a group with the witty name “The Optimization Council.”

The Council would meet every now and then to talk through life’s biggest expenses and opportunities, and harvest the wisdom of the group so we can all benefit from the best ideas in each category.

The response to this idea was overwhelmingly positive. So we called a first “test” meeting earlier this month and a small group of us talked through the first few categories, sharing not just names like “I use Schmidt Insurance”, but details like, “We have $250,000 coverage with a $1,000 deductible and our premium is $589 per year.”

The meeting was so lively that we quickly ran out of time, but resolved to meet again soon to figure out more things together. I served as the scribe using a shared google doc – here’s a snapshot of that to give you an idea of our topics:

So Yes. There is some thinking and work involved. But there’s also an opportunity to drastically improve your short term cashflow and long-term wealth, and break your friends out of their cautious shell to help them get the same benefits.

As we learned long ago in Protecting your Money Mustache from Spendy Friends, most people tend towards complacency, and following along with the group. Which leaves a big gaping void at the top of the pyramid where the leadership role waits unfilled.

If you are bold enough to climb into this spot (which really means just sending a few emails and Facebook messages, procuring a box or two of wine, and making a large tray of high-end nachos for your guests), you can all reap the rewards for decades to come.

And instead of avoiding this little chore like a hassle, dive into it like a gigantic shower of fun and wealth. After all, this is pretty much the core attitude of Mustachianism Itself.

In the comments: we can start our own Optimization Council right here. If you have found a good deal on any of the categories of life, feel free to share a quick summary of your location (state), and details of the company and product/service/price that you found is the best. To avoid spam filtering, please use names but not direct links.

A Note about Credible:

Watchful readers may have noticed I also mentioned this company on Twitter recently. After a few months of skepticism that the world needed yet another financial company, I was convinced by some conversations with the people running it and a Zoom video of the customer experience from a senior employee, with some very candid commentary on their design choices.

I like it because they import the lending models from their large supply of hooked-up finance companies, then run the rate comparisons on their own server rather than farming out your personal information to each separate lender. It saves you from filling out multiple applications when collecting rates, and also saves you from getting on everyone’s spam list (they don’t sell your contact information, which is a rare thing among loan search engines).

It was a hard model for them to get going, because the banks naturally want to have your information so they can spam you. But now that they have a growing presence in the market, lenders are forced to come through Credible to get access to this pool of qualified people. After enough testing with people I knew, I found the experience is worth recommending.

So I also signed this blog up with their referral program – please see my Affiliates philosophy if you are curious or skeptical about how any of that works!

With all that said, if you want to try it out, here are the links:

Mortgages and Refis

Student Loan Refis – $300 bonus with this link

from Money 101 http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2019/08/22/1000-per-hour/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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