Your worst taxpayer nightmare may have nothing to do with the amount of income tax you owe. You could find yourself a victim of tax return identity theft. Taxpayers' rights advocate Dan Pilla says there are steps you can take to fight back, but you have to act fast.
It’s not where I expected to move to take a job with a tech startup, but I’ve gotta tell you: I love St. Pete.
One of the main reasons? I live a 10-minute walk from Tampa Bay.
And I take advantage of it: You can catch me there at least three or four days a week, taking in a breathtaking, Lisa-Frank-colored sunrise.
Well, me and my dog Odin.
Odin watches the Tampa Bay sunrise in Vinoy Park, St. Pete
I got Odin about a year and a half ago, a week before the first (and only) Thanksgiving I spent in grad school.
I’d only been in the program a month and a half, but it had become abundantly clear how ill-suited I was to both the program and the town. In rescuing Odin, I was also rescuing myself.
And one of the best parts of the rescue mission was taking long, winding walks — or at least as long and winding as Odin’s stereotypical greyhound laziness allows.
So I was excited to discover Walk for a Dog, a Wooftrax app raising money for dog shelters and other animal-related charitable organizations — just by taking the morning walks Odin and I already cherish.
Walk for a Dog is available for both Android and iPhone, and it’s simple and quick to get started.
After you register, you can customize your dog’s profile and upload a picture of your pooch.
Then, just tap the “start walking button” and get to wandering. Your smartphone’s GPS tracks your time and distance, and you earn money for your chosen organization!
Best of all? Your proceeds go to a local charity.
The app prompts you to choose your state and city, then populates a list of participating organizations. Fittingly, I chose Tampa Bay’s chapter of Greyhound Pets of America.
You can walk even if you don’t have a dog — just choose to walk “with” Cassie, CEO Doug Hexter’s rescue mutt.
Walk with Cassie! Also pictured: my inability to type Odin’s name before 7 a.m.
Once your walk is complete, you’re rewarded by the sponsors behind those donations you’re racking up. Provide an email address, and you’ll get coupons and freebies delivered right to your inbox.
It doesn’t matter how long your walk is or where you go — but you do need to log on and walk at least once a week to remain an active walker.
Your organization of choice gets paid depending on how many active walkers have chosen it as their beneficiary. So get your friends in on it to really make an impact!
Whether or not you’re an animal lover, this app is a sweet and easy way to do some good — without spending any actual money!
Plus, the app could get you started with a new, healthy activity — and what better motivation to get walking than cute, happy puppies?
Your Turn: Will you use Walk for a Dog to start raising money for animal shelters?
Jamie Cattanach (@jamiecattanach) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems. Odin is a big, floppy dog whose favorite things in life are cuddles, couches and peanut butter. In that order.
The post This Cool App Donates to Animal Shelters Every Time You Walk Your Dog appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
Complaints about Vodafone’s mobile service rocketed in the three-months from October to December 2015, new data reveals.
Telecoms regulator Ofcom says it received 32 complaints per 100,000 customers about the provider – up from 20 complaints in the previous quarter (July to September 2015) when it was also the most complained about.
The biggest time-suck for many Americans is commuting.
And their biggest money-suck? Housing.
A few companies are trying to solve the problem — and kill two birds with one stone — by paying their employees to live closer to work.
Not only does this help them recruit employees who otherwise wouldn’t want to live in high-rent areas, it also improves work-life balance — and retention rates.
Though many of us won’t be able to swing a housing benefit at our current jobs, or switch to a company offering one, it’s still interesting to read about.
Plus, being informed could help you negotiate for other perks.
Here are three tech companies that help employees with housing costs.
An investment management technology company with offices in Mountain View, Chicago, New York and Salt Lake City, Addepar pays employees to live nearby. For example, living within a mile of the Mountain View office gets you $300 a month.
“If you live within 15 minutes of the [New York] office you get $300 a month, within 30 minutes $150,” Lisa Minkin, VP of People at Addepar told CBS2.
If a Facebook employee buys or rents a home within 10 miles of its Menlo Park, California, headquarters, the social media behemoth gives them a one-time bonus of $10,000 to $15,000.
This voice, video and chat messaging startup offers employees $500 per month to live within five miles of its Palo Alto, California, office.
In addition to the tech companies, a few cities have launched their own housing initiatives.
Through the city’s Live Downtown project, employees at Compuware, DTE Energy, Marketing Associates, Quicken Loans and Strategic Staffing Solutions can get big perks for moving downtown.
These include up to $2,500 toward the initial costs of renting, even up to $20,000 to use to buy a house.
In Harrisburg, the city offers public servants $2,000 toward closing costs, reports PennLive, and PinnacleHealth gives full-time employees $5,000.
Thirty miles south, York College provides employees with up to $8,000 to buy houses within city limits.
Who knew these types of benefits were available? I sure didn’t.
If your employer doesn’t offer a housing benefit, consider asking for a raise instead.
And if you want to relocate, check out these awesome cities for working parents, or these cities that will pay you to move there.
Your Turn: Do you know of any other companies or cities that help with housing costs?
Susan Shain, senior writer for The Penny Hoarder, is always seeking adventure on a budget. Visit her blog at susanshain.com, or say hi on Twitter @susan_shain.
The post 11 Places That Pay Their Employees to Live Closer to Work appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
I know you want it…
More organic search traffic.
Who doesn’t want free, high quality traffic, that comes in month after month?
That’s why SEO is such a big deal and one of the main topics I focus on—here, on Quick Sprout.
I believe that most marketers should be dedicating a significant portion of their time and resources towards SEO.
There are many things you can do that have a direct impact on your search traffic.
However, there is more to marketing than just SEO, and you probably know that.
The thing is, they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Just because some of your marketing isn’t specifically done to improve search traffic, that doesn’t mean that it can’t.
And this type of situation is more common than you might think.
In this post, I’ll go over four ways that can indirectly improve your search rankings.
This means that the primary benefit of these marketing techniques is not to improve search traffic, but there’s a good chance that, if done right, they might help you with your search traffic too.
This is a great place to start because there doesn’t seem to be an obvious connection to SEO.
But I assure you there is.
Getting feedback from your customers is always a great idea, but it can eat up a lot of time.
Some businesses figure they don’t have the resources to follow up continuously with customers and would rather dedicate them all to sales/marketing channels such as SEO.
However, if you get customer feedback and use it correctly, it can lead to some great backlinks in a few different ways.
Here’s the simple 2-step process you’ll need to follow:
Step #1 – Contact customers immediately after the sale: You have very few opportunities to open up communication with customers without annoying them.
After the sale is one of them.
Once someone purchases something from you, they’re usually excited to hear from you and possibly want reassurance that everything went well.
Send them an email that confirms their order and lets them know whom to contact if they need help.
Step #2 – Follow up after they’ve had time to use your product: The more important part, when it comes to potential SEO benefits, is to follow up with customers again.
Once they’ve used the product, they can tell you if they’ve had any problems or complaints. This is the main reason why you’d want to follow up—these issues are important to address if you want to retain happy customers.
In addition, ask for their feedback on their experience.
If someone says that they’re thrilled, that’s great. Then you should ask them to share their experience with others. Since they enjoyed your product or service so much, you’ll get a high percentage of these customers willing to help you out.
You have a few options that can help with SEO.
If you’d like to ask for a simple favor, ask them to leave a review on a big review site in your niche. For most niches, this will include sites such as Yelp and Yellow Pages.
Let’s look at an example of a search for a carpenter in New York:
The top result is a Yelp business page, while the second result is Yelp’s internal search results for carpenters (another search listings page).
The second is most interesting here:
This page orders businesses based on several factors, e.g., the number of reviews they have and how positive the reviews are (in addition to price).
As long as you fall into the default filters, the more good reviews you have, the higher your profile will appear.
Why does this matter for SEO?
Because the more prominent (higher) a link is on a page, the more weight it has.
This page has a lot of search engine authority (that’s why it can rank at #2), and it passes that authority mostly to the top profiles that it links to.
Those profiles all have links back to their corresponding websites, which, of course, improves those websites’ search authority.
Not only will reviews get you more direct business on these review sites, but that extra link power can help your rankings in search engines. Not by a ton, but by enough that you will notice it after a while.
The second option, which is best for high priced products, is to create a case study of the results your customer got.
Brian Dean at Backlinko does it all the time, both for his readers and actual customers:
Case studies are typically really easy to promote, and they can get a ton of traffic and links.
I’ve created an extensive guide to creating effective case studies that you should read if you take this approach.
Just about every industry has several conferences throughout the year. No doubt you can find a few local events to attend if you wanted to.
Now, conferences can be a huge waste of time, but they can also be incredibly valuable.
Obviously, you go primarily to learn, but a huge secondary result can be the relationships you come back with.
Events are a great way to meet other people in your industry and explore opportunities to work together.
But guess what else happens?
When you email them down the line, asking them to check out your latest piece of content, most will be happy to read it and give feedback.
What’s even better is that if they have a chance to link to it within their own content, they usually do. These links can have a big impact on your search rankings if you make several connections per event.
Finally, even if your connections don’t manage their content, they can introduce you to the content manager for their business. You can explore collaboration opportunities or offer to create guest posts for them (which will give you more links to your site).
All of these potential benefits are important if you have to convince your boss that it’s worth sending you to conferences.
Finding conferences is easy: I won’t spend much time on this, but I’ll show you quickly how to find conferences.
Start by Googling:
(industry) conferences (year)
You could also try “events” instead of conferences:
Typically, you’ll find a roundup of all the best events, often multiple.
Each of these results will give you a listing of events, separated by date, location, and audience:
I recommend going through more than one list so that you don’t miss any good ones.
Remember that conferences can be either worthless or extremely valuable. The difference depends on how you spend your time at them.
That’s why I wrote the Beginner’s Guide to Conferences in the past. Give it a quick read.
If you’re truly creating “epic” content, chances are that you’re not doing everything on your own.
In most cases, you’re hiring freelance writers and designers to help fill in any gaps in your skillset.
Obviously, if you’re hiring the best freelancers you can afford, it’s because you primarily want to create great content.
That kind of content is the easiest to get to rank.
However, the very act of hiring freelancers will make it easier.
Let me explain…
Type #1 – Writers: Whether you hire a freelancer or offer them an attractive opportunity to collaborate, these relationships will often get you some extra high-quality backlinks.
A good set of examples are my ultimate guides (sidebar of Quick Sprout). For these guides, I teamed up with experts in each of the subjects.
I had some help from Kathryn Aragon writing The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing, for example:
When someone helps create a piece of content of that quality, they, of course, want to show it off.
How?
By talking about it and linking to it.
It makes them look great to say they wrote or co-wrote an amazing piece of content.
Because of this, I didn’t have to ask Kathryn to link to the guide; she’s mentioned it dozens of times in her posts on other sites and social media (linking to it most of the time):
Essentially, your writer will help you with the content promotion.
Type #2 – Designers: More commonly, marketers hire freelance designers to help create images for content.
The exact same principle applies here:
If you hire a freelancer to create something great, they will want to show it off in their portfolio, leading to great backlinks for your content.
Continuing with the example of my guides, I needed professional help to design them.
My designer had accounts on sites such as Behance and Dribbble, both of which are authoritative sites in the design niche.
Of course, they shared the images with links to those guides:
Those links are the indirect benefit of working with great freelancers.
Creating a great user experience on your site and with your products is valuable for many reasons.
Typically, the main motivation for working on improving your users’ experience has to do with the conversion rate. It’s a good reason.
What most don’t consider is that this often inadvertently plays a big role in improving search rankings.
There are a few reasons why, but most applicable here is the concept of pogo sticking.
Basically, if a Google user clicks on your page but then goes right back to the search results for another, it indicates to Google that your content didn’t satisfy the user.
Conversely, if most users stop on your page, you did a good job and are rewarded with better search rankings.
If you improve the user experience of your website, you’ll usually end up increasing the number of visitors that you fully satisfy, decreasing pogo sticking. This can indirectly improve your rankings.
User experience is extremely complicated, but there are three common factors we can focus on and look at the ways they affect pogo sticking.
Factor #1 – page load speed: Studies have shown that people will not wait for pages to load.
Even a fraction of a second can affect 5-10% of people who will leave before they even see your content.
Ideally, you want your pages to load in less than 2 seconds.
You can test page load speed by using the Quick Sprout tool or a tool such as GTmetrix.
Improving page load speed will have a huge effect on pogo sticking, but it’s also a direct ranking factor confirmed by Google.
It’s not a huge one, but factoring both of these aspects together, speed can make a big difference in rankings.
Searchmetrics found a huge correlation between a quick load time and the top Google positions:
Factor #2 – clutter: One thing that makes a big difference in user experience is the amount of clutter on the page.
Most people are looking for one specific thing, so everything that’s unrelated on the page only serves as a distraction.
Compare that to a site like Medium, where the content is essentially the only thing on the page:
It’s no surprise that Medium posts rank well in Google. When a user clicks through, they easily find exactly what they’re looking for, leading to less pogo sticking.
Try to declutter your layouts as much as possible, taking out anything that your visitors don’t need to see.
Factor #3 – site architecture: Site architecture refers to the way all the different pages of your website are organized in relation to each other.
For our purposes, good site architecture essentially means you have organized internal linking.
Here’s what a good structure looks like:
Everything is organized into topical silos.
When search engines crawl the site, it will be easier for them to determine the relevancy of your pages, which often leads to better rankings.
By all means, you should spend a lot of time and resources directly on SEO.
However, you can still focus on other areas of your business while also getting SEO benefits.
I’ve shown you four great business practices that accomplish valuable things plus give you indirect improvements to your search rankings.
I encourage you to incorporate as many of these as you can, without fearing that you’re neglecting your SEO work.
If you have any questions about the subject of this post, let me know in a comment below.
I recently came across an interesting article from Richard Eisenberg at Forbes entitled The Dicey Retirement Gamble Americans Are Making. in it, Eisenberg pieces apart the 2016 Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. This study takes a look at the confidence people feel about where they’re headed in terms of retirement and compares that to their actual financial state.
Let’s be clear: the gamble Eisenberg is talking about is the gamble that you’ll somehow be able to make things work when you reach retirement age if you’re not saving for retirement. As the survey shows, that’s a gamble that a lot of Americans are taking.
Eisenberg is not impressed: “Unfortunately, from my reading of the survey, workers are far more confident about their prospects for aging into retirement than they have a right to be.”
First of all, Eisenberg notes that the study indicates a high level of retirement confidence among Americans: “The percentage of workers who are “very confident” about having enough money for a comfortable retirement has ratcheted up from 13% in 2013 to 21% this year, essentially plateauing from 22% in 2015, after sinking to record lows between 2009 and 2013. Similarly, those saying they’re “somewhat confident” have risen to 42% from 36% in 2015. Altogether, 63% are now confident they’ll have enough for a comfortable retirement.”
However, that confidence doesn’t reflect reality: “In this year’s EBRI survey, roughly four in 10 workers — 42% — said they and their spouses have less than $10,000 in savings and investments; 27% of those age 55+ (in fairness, however, another 26% have saved $100,000 or more). Of those without retirement plans, a stunning 83% have saved under $10,000, which makes a pretty strong case for requiring all employers to offer all employees retirement plans, either through a federal or state program.”
What will they do about this? Not much, unfortunately. “39% say they need to save at least a fifth of their income to retire comfortably. And how do the workers who say they’re putting away less than necessary plan to right their retirement ship? Well, 20% say they’ll need to save more later; 15% say they’ll need to work in retirement; 14% say they’ll need to retire later and 13% ‘don’t know what the impact will be.'”
What about the plan of working in retirement? “[R]oughly two-thirds of workers (67%) said they expect to work for pay after they retire. But just 27% of retirees actually do. Similarly, 37% of workers said they expect to retire after 65 (up from 11% in 1991), but only 15% of retirees actually did.”
Here’s what I took away from all of this.
First, there’s a pretty healthy slice of Americans that believe they’ll be fine in retirement but haven’t saved a dime yet. Unfortunately for those people, they almost assuredly won’t be fine in retirement. If you want to be in good retirement shape, you should start saving the first second that it’s possible to save, because the more you put it off, the harder it’s going to get.
Second, if you don’t have a retirement plan at work, it’s likely you haven’t saved anything at all. 83% of Americans who do not have a workplace retirement program have saved less than $10,000 for retirement. That’s a recipe for disaster, right there. The thing is, it’s not even that hard to save for retirement on your own, as almost every investment house offers a Roth IRA which makes retirement savings quite easy.
Finally, many people plan to work in retirement, but most do not. If you’re banking on working in retirement to supplement your lack of retirement savings, the truth is that it’s very likely something will keep you from working in retirement. Maybe it’s your health. Maybe it’s caring for someone else. Maybe it’s something different entirely.
That picture does indeed add up to a gamble. Many Americans are simply gambling that some kind of financial miracle will occur to make retirement easy for them, whether they think about it that way or not. Unfortunately, that financial miracle is pretty unlikely to happen.
This seems like a bleak picture, but it’s a bleak picture with an incredibly easy solution. Just start saving for retirement now. That’s really all you have to do.
What this study indicates – and what I’ve heard from many other people – is that the one thing that holds them back from saving for retirement is the concern that retirement savings is going to eat into a budget that’s already very tight. If you’re already struggling to make ends meet – and depending on how you look at it, as many as 76% of Americans are struggling – putting aside even a sliver of your money each week or each month can seem like a very challenging and very risky proposition.
It’s not.
For starters, when you start saving for a big goal like retirement and have that money taken out automatically right off the bat, you really don’t miss that money. Instead, you just stop spending money on less important things, but you do it in a way that you barely even consciously notice. Maybe you have a couple cheaper meals here and there, but you forget about it five minutes later. Maybe you skip out on a treat from a convenience store, but it’s forgotten within ten minutes.
For another, not having that money in place guarantees that you’ll have a bunch of hard decisions to make when you approach retirement age. The fact of the matter is that Social Security alone creates a very tight living situation, one where you’ll likely not have enough money to go around. Take a look at your most recent Social Security statement – could you live a pleasant life on that amount?
The way I look at retirement savings is simple. I’m putting aside a little bit of my money right now to pay for my life when I’m old and no longer able to work. Like it or not, I’m going to grow old. So are you. There’s going to come a point where work becomes a pretty miserable proposition, and when that time comes, every single dime you put aside is going to be a godsend.
But what if you can’t possibly afford to save for retirement? What if your financial state is so precarious that you can’t handle saving $6 out of every $100 in your paycheck?
If that describes your situation, you’re already in a tremendously risky state. You’re walking on the high wire, hoping that nothing comes along and causes everything to fall apart. If your financial state is that tight, something as simple as an illness or a job loss or even a car problem can cause everything to come crashing down.
If you’re in that kind of high wire situation, your primary focus shouldn’t be on retirement. It should be on getting your day-to-day finances in good enough shape so that there isn’t an ever-present threat of losing everything if one or two little things go wrong.
Once you step off of that day-to-day high wire, it suddenly begins to look really easy to save a little bit for retirement. It no longer seems like a dicey proposition at all.
So, how do you step off of that high wire? How do you undo this “gamble”?
Again, it’s easy. The immediate solution is to cut your spending in some way. Spend some time figuring out where every dollar of your income goes, then figure out what you can cut out of that. Maybe you can start taking the bus to work to save on gas and parking. Maybe you can cut your home energy bills by turning off the A/C and/or furnace and opening the windows. Then, don’t spend that saved money immediately; instead, channel it into other things that will improve your finances, like installing LED light bulbs (which will cut down on your electric bill) and paying off your credit cards (which will cut down on the finance charges and interest that you pay). As you can see, it all starts to snowball.
At the same time, do what you can to earn more. Maybe this means trying to get more hours at work, or taking on a second job. Maybe it means trying to start a side gig of some kind, such as mowing lawns or creating Youtube videos. If you can turn your spare time into something that’s cash-positive, then you’re going to be headed in the right direction.
If you do these two things together, you’ll slowly find yourself stepping down from the high wire. You’ll slowly find yourself with more breathing room. And you’ll slowly find yourself with the means to start saving for retirement.
The only gamble when it comes to retirement savings is not saving at all. Don’t take that risk.
The post Is Retirement Really a Gamble? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
Between my boyfriend and me, I help manage three checking accounts and two PayPal debit cards. We’re about to add two credit cards to the mix.
Tracking expenses across multiple payment tools is tough. It means I never know exactly how much money I’m working with or just how much I’ve spent for the month.
How am I supposed to tighten my budget and start saving money if I don’t even know what I’m working with?
Streamlining to one main payment method could make this easier.
We won’t prescribe one method over another. You have to decide what works best for you.
Do you manage your expenses well with a credit card and pay off your balance each month? Choose a card with rewards you can use, and stick with that.
Are you, instead, prone to spending beyond your means when you charge it?
If you’re racking up interest and poor credit, you’re probably better off skipping the rewards until you can budget better. Restrict spending to your debit card.
And if you’re being hit with overdraft charges or losing track of your budget even with the one debit card?
Try sticking to cash.
You can’t spend it if you don’t have it — that’s the simplest budgeting trick there is.
If you decide you need variety in your life, use tools to help track your expenses across multiple sources.
Try these to get a snapshot of your budget in one place, regardless of your payment methods:
Level provides a graphic view of your income and expenses, and lets you know how much you can spend on a given day, week or month.
Mint lets you see all your accounts, cards, bills and investments into one place.
Mvelopes is a web and smartphone app that sorts your budget into digital “envelopes” to manage spending.
Your Turn: Do you use multiple cards and accounts, or just one? What tips can you add for sticking to a budget?
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes about writing, life, comedy and love and attempts humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).
The post This Simple Strategy Makes Budgeting So Much Easier appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
House prices rose by 13.5% in the capital over the year to February, bringing the average price to £530,368, according to the latest official data.
Meanwhile, property prices in England and Wales rose by 6.1% annually taking the average price to £190,275.
Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) remains the most complained about financial product, with complaints rising by 6% between July and December 2015, according to new data.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says financial services providers received 932,298 complaints about PPI during the second half of last year.
If you’re in debt and desperate for a way out, those first few steps can feel overwhelming. Not only do you have to face the reality of what you owe, but you have to figure out how in the world you’ll pay it back. A lot of times that can mean completely reinventing your budget – and drastically cutting your expenses so you can pay “extra” on what you owe.
Of course, there are books, spreadsheets, and apps you can use to further your goals. And if you’re particularly tech-savvy, an up-and-coming product might help you get on the right track without too much stress on your part.
Still, many resources you find online cost money – real money. And when you’re trying to get out of debt, shelling out cash for a new product, book, or service might be the last thing on your agenda.
But, you don’t have to get all technological or spend money on a product if you want to get out of debt. And if you strip the software programs, apps, and courses down to the details, you’ll find that the path out of debt is actually quite simple.
While it’s not always as easy as it sounds, it’s not rocket science, either. To begin a journey out of debt without all the hype, let’s get down to the basics. Here are a few surprising tools you can use to get out of debt that work – and best of all, they’re entirely free.
While there are plenty of software programs that promise to streamline the budgeting process and help you get out of debt, most people can accomplish the same thing with an old-fashioned pencil or pen and a piece of paper. It all starts with tracking your expenses from the previous few months – taking special care to tally up each category of your spending on a piece of paper.
Once that step is completed, you can use another piece of paper to create your ideal budget for the next month. Create a list of your regular monthly bills and your estimated expenses – things like groceries, utility bills, transportation, and miscellaneous. Then, as the month progresses, you can use the same written budget to check off bills and expenses as you pay them. By the end of the month, you should end up with a budget full of “checked off” items and a fairly low bank account balance. Then, you’ll simply rinse and repeat.
If you’re carrying high-interest debts, paying them off as quickly as you can is the smartest move you can make. However, one type of credit card – a balance transfer card – can help you speed up the process tremendously, and all while helping you save money in the process.
The best balance transfer offers come with 0% APR for a period of 12 to 21 months, which means you’ll pay zero interest during the length of your promotional period. Best of all, at least one balance transfer card doesn’t charge a transfer fee if you move a balance over within the first 60 days.
To get the most out of a balance transfer offer, you’ll need to transfer all of your high-interest debts onto a card with the most attractive 0% APR introductory offer. Then, you’ll use that timeframe – whether it’s 12 months, 15 months, or longer – to pay down your debts with fervor. And don’t put any new purchases on the card until you’ve paid off the entire transferred balance!
Of course, you don’t have to complete a balance transfer to lower the interest rate on your debts. If you’re not in the mood for a new card, many credit card issuers might offer you a lower interest rate if you pick up the phone and ask them for their best offer.
Tell your card issuer that you’re considering transferring your balance to another bank with better terms. If they want to keep you as a customer, they might consider dropping your APR to a rate that is competitive with what you’ll receive elsewhere. The less interest you have to pay each month, the more money you can devote to your balance — and the faster you’ll be able to pay off your outstanding debts and put them behind you.
Will you really be able to get a lower interest rate just by calling and asking for one? It’s hard to tell, but you can (and should) give it a shot. The worst they can say is no.
Photo: Nate Steiner
Most of us have more clutter in our homes than we realize or would like to admit. But having extra stuff laying around makes it much easier to get out of debt. You sell stuff you don’t need or want on Craigslist, eBay, and Facebook yard sale groups, but you can also have a good old-fashioned garage sale.
Thanks to all of the free options available online, you can typically advertise your garage sale for free. Once your sale is up and ready to go, post ads on your neighborhood or city Facebook pages, on Craigslist, and on any other online message boards you belong to.
Once you’ve earned some extra cash for your old stuff, throw it directly at your highest interest debt for the biggest impact.
If your grocery budget is one area you struggle with, there are plenty of cooking and shopping strategies to consider. A few of those strategies – once-a-month batch cooking and bulk shopping – work best if you have plenty of room in your freezer, or an entire deep freezer you can use.
With make-ahead meals, you’ll set aside one day per month to create multi-ingredient dinners and lunches that can be frozen ahead of time. By having plenty of meals stashed away, you shouldn’t be tempted to go out to eat when you’re in a hurry or don’t have time to go to the store.
Meanwhile, making meals in batches allows you to buy the ingredients in bulk. Purchasing in bulk and freezing larger portions, meats, or other foods is also a smart option if you have a chest freezer. If you have the storage space, you can stock up on hams, turkeys, and other ingredients that freeze well when they’re on sale. By purchasing these expensive items at the lower bulk rate or when they’re on sale, you’re bound to save money over time.
If you want a budgeting system that is technology-free (and also free), you can always consider the envelope budgeting system. Trent has written about this strategy before, outlining both the pros and cons.
Using this strategy requires some basic planning and — like almost any budget — a dose of self-restraint. At the beginning of each month (or on payday) you’ll withdraw the money you’ll need to cover your expenses for a set amount of time. Then you’ll divvy up the cash and stuff it into different envelopes, each labeled to show what category the money inside is earmarked for.
So you may have one envelope labeled “Groceries – $150/week,” and another that says, “Rent – $800/month.”
The system works well if you start on a payday. Assuming you get paid weekly, you’d put $200 in the rent envelope each week, $150 in the groceries envelope, and so on.
Then comes the hard part: Only use the money in the envelope for its stated purpose. So if you go grocery shopping, bring your groceries envelope, and pay with only the cash inside it — nothing else.
You can use all cash, or adapt this strategy to work with checks or even paper slips, since it can be difficult to pay every bill in cash. But whatever strategy you use, all you should need is a box of envelopes and a simple written budget. After you have those tools squared away, the rest is on you to make it work.
With all of the new technology out there, getting out of debt is getting more complex than ever. But if you’re not used to technology – or simply don’t like using it – there are plenty of old-school tools you can use to get out of debt instead.
The most important thing to remember is that you have to take that first step – whether it’s downloading a new software program or whipping out your old bank statements to track your spending for the first time. At the end of the day, the path you choose to get out of debt doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that you made it a priority.
What everyday tools did you use to get out of debt? Do you prefer complex software programs, or do you like keeping your budget fairly basic?
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The post Six Surprising Tools to Get Out of Debt appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
When you buy new shoes, a purse or a camera, do you notice that tiny pouch inside the box?
It’s a silica gel packet.
Most of us are probably aware of them, and their general purpose: They keep our new purchases fresh through shipping and stocking at the store.
You open the box, claim your new purchase, then toss everything — including that little bag — into the trash.
But hanging onto this unassuming object could actually help you save money!
The silica gel bag is filled with silica dioxide, which will dry anything around it. And its uses go far beyond keeping your new purse or shoes fresh.
We found four ways to save money with those little packets you’re just throwing away.
Make your gym bag and clothes last longer — just toss a silica bag or two inside.
The bags will suck up moisture in the bag and keep it fresh, so you’ll be able to use it longer.
Don’t waste your rice drying out a wet phone. That’s healthy food!
Instead, keep a stock of silica gel packets around, and place your phone inside a bag or other container filled with the bags to dry out.
If you have boxes or albums of photos stored in a closet, attic or basement, they might be at risk of damage from musty, moist air.
Store them with a few silica bags in the boxes to absorb moisture, and you can avoid lost memories — or the cost of restoring them.
If you’re not loaded with silica gel bags, you can also digitize those old photos you don’t need in paper form to save space.
Do you find yourself throwing away razors that have rusted in the somehow-always-wet environment of your bathroom?
First of all, gross. We feel your pain.
Second, silica bags can help! Store your razors in a plastic container with one or two of these miracle bags to keep the moisture at bay.
Add a subscription to Dollar Shave Club, and slash your razor budget.
All of these are great money-saving tricks. As a bonus, use silica gel bags to defog your car windows faster!
Place bags in a row under your windshield from the inside, and watch them wick away the moisture.
Reduce your wait on chilly mornings, and get to work faster.
So start stocking up.
If you don’t buy new shoes often enough, don’t worry — you can always supplement your stock with SilicaGelPackets.com (yeah, that’s a thing).
The packets don’t have an apparent shelf-life. You just use them until they’re “full,” or can’t soak up any more moisture.
Some savvy hackers recommend warming them in an oven to dry out and re-use… but since the bags are often made of paper, and I haven’t tested it myself, I can’t recommend that.
Your Turn: Have you ever saved silica gel packets to use around the house? What tricks can you add?
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more.
The post 4 Genius Ways to Save Money With Something You’ve Been Throwing Away appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
If you’ve lived on planet Earth for a while, you probably already know having a child is one of the biggest expenses a person will ever have in a lifetime.
When we think about the cost of raising a child, we tend to focus on the usual suspects: child care, the cost of food and clothing, education and other expenses.
But what didn’t cross my mind before I had my first child were the whopping hospital bills I received after I delivered my baby.
About a month after my baby was born, I received the first bill from my doctor for the labor and delivery.
A week later I received my epidural bill — and a week after that, another bill for room and board.
I ended up with a stack of bills for thousands of dollars — even after my insurance paid a portion.
While many of the expenses were necessary for my baby’s health and safety as well as my own, I could’ve skipped a few of them. Here are five ways to save money on hospital bills after having a baby.
Of course, every pregnancy and childbirth experience is different. What works for one may not work for another, so consider what’s best for you and your child.
Like any other service, prior to delivering a baby, you can shop around and get quotes from doctors to get an idea of what you’ll owe.
Many doctors’ offices charge a flat rate for delivering babies and can provide the information at your first visit.
If you plan to follow this strategy, I highly recommend shopping around and settling on a doctor before the end of your first trimester. Most doctors won’t take new patients past that stage in their pregnancies.
My doctor charged $4,500 for delivery. It’s no small expense, so it’s worth looking around.
If you’re a brave soul, opting out of the epidural will shave a few dollars off your hospital bill.
These days, more women are opting for natural ways to relieve labor pain, such as meditation or rhythmic breathing.
I must warn you, childbirth will probably be one of the most excruciatingly painful experiences of your life. So if you know you don’t handle pain well, this may not be for you.
But if you think you can handle it, go for it. You’ll be my hero.
Skipping the epidural would’ve saved me more than $400.
Studies find there are some health benefits to circumcision, but not enough for doctors to recommend it, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Circumcision is a heavily debated topic and it’s a deeply personal choice for parents to make. If the procedure is important to you for religious or cultural reasons, that should take precedence over everything — including saving money.
But if you’re on the fence and leaning towards not circumcising, consider the savings a benefit. You can save $400 to $500 dollars and your baby boy will still be perfectly healthy.
Most hospitals offer new parents the option to have professional baby photos taken in the hospital — for a fee.
But you probably have a pretty decent camera on your phone. Do yourself a favor: Channel your inner photographer and take your own baby pictures.
I went on Pinterest and found a ton of tutorials on how to set up a newborn photo shoot. I ended up with some really adorable pictures — for FREE.
If you insist on having photos done professionally, wait. Leave the hospital and visit a photography studio — or find a friend who’s handy with a camera.
If you’re a healthy person under the age of 40, you probably don’t visit the doctor very often — and a health savings account (HSA) isn’t something you think much about.
But if you’re preparing to have a baby, saving pretax dollars in an HSA will be your savior — especially if your HSA includes an employer contribution.
Each pay period, I put away $50 on top of my employer’s $25 contribution. By the time I gave birth, I had saved more than $2,400 in my HSA and used it to pay some of my medical bills.
If you don’t have access to an HSA, deposit money from each paycheck into a separate savings account dedicated to saving for medical expenses.
You can even take advantage of new account signing bonuses to jump-start your savings.
Your Turn: If you found a way to save money when you had a baby, we’d love to hear about it!
Candace Berry is a new mommy who loves writing about all things related to motherhood. In her free time, she can be found crocheting, binging on Netflix series and enjoying life with her hubby and baby boy.
The post Would You Skip the Epidural to Save $400? appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
