Federal manufacturing requirements and laws and production technology were only some of the topics touched on Thursday while U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright and state Rep Rosemary Brown toured the Vigon International Inc. facility.Tucked back on Airport Road in Smithfield Township, the business manufactures ingredients for flavors and fragrances and cosmetics, which are then shipped around the world, said Steve Somers, owner and president of the company.As Somers guided a small group [...]
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الخميس، 31 مارس 2016
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This Stay-at-Home Mom Turned a Simple Idea into a $4 Million Business
Debra Cohen had a killer job.
She was vice president of a Spanish-language aviation magazine in Manhattan, which sent her all over the world — an “amazing adventure.”
She was on a business trip to Paris when she found out she was pregnant with her first daughter.
Cohen was faced with the working mother’s dilemma: Could she keep her corporate career and have the kind of family life she valued?
That was 20 years ago.
Cohen’s response to this common dilemma ultimately led to her version of “having it all” — the chance to raise her (now, two) daughters and grow a home-based business that’s grossed almost $4 million.
Leaving a Successful Career
“My husband and I had a heartfelt conversation one night about how I was missing out,” Cohen explains.
“He said, ‘quit your job.’ [It was about] quality of life over quantity of money.”
Cohen’s company accommodated motherhood as best it could. After maternity leave, she was even able to work at home some days.
But when she did go to the office, the commute meant she was away from home for 12 hours. And the position still required travel, which Cohen says was the hardest part.
“I didn’t know what she was eating, what she was doing [throughout the day],” she says of her newborn.
Cohen and her husband ultimately decided the best move for their family would be for her to stay at home full-time.
But adjusting to life on one income wasn’t easy. They cut down to one car, eliminated eating out and didn’t need daycare, but bills were piling up. Her husband took a second job, but money was still tight.
What’s worse, she says, “I was getting more bored by the minute.”
About three months into full-time motherhood, she was ready for a new solution.
She looked for part-time jobs, but they’d all require childcare, pretty much canceling out any earnings. Full-time work wouldn’t allow the flexibility she needed to be the mother she wanted to be.
“I had worked my entire life,” Cohen says, “and I have a good head on my shoulders.”
She knew she could put that to use and design the work and lifestyle her family needed.
The Aha! Moment
In addition to starting their new family, Cohen and her husband had just purchased their first home.
“As new homeowners,” she says, “we quickly realized how difficult it was to find reliable home improvement professionals.”
The final straw was a pregnant squirrel in the attic.
The family lived in a 75-year-old house the critter easily crawled into. The couple went through several contractors to remove the squirrel, but she kept coming back.
Cohen finally asked for a referral at the local hardware store and connected with someone new.
He educated the couple: Once a squirrel has a litter somewhere, she’ll return to it forever. To get rid of her, you can’t just shoo her out of the space. You have to displace her across a body of water.
He did just that — and 20 years later, he’s still their go-to contractor.
Cohen was so impressed with the man’s work, she wanted to spread the word. She asked him whether he’d pay a commission if she could land him jobs, and he said he would.
“The network grew from there,” Cohen says, and Home Remedies was born.
Home Remedies is a Homeowner Referral Network (HRN) that pre-screens and refers a network of more than 50 home improvement contractors (i.e. painters, plumbers, carpenters, general contractors, architects, etc.) to local homeowners.
Contractors in the network pay a pre-negotiated commission for work secured — and the service is free to homeowners.
How to Start a Business as a Stay-at-Home Mom
“I’m a networker by nature with a passion for decorating and home improvements,” Cohen says. “I decided to put all of my talents to work and create a business that would fill this need in our community and allow me to work around my daughter’s schedule.”
I launched Home Remedies on an old farm table in my basement with a $5,000 loan from my husband’s retirement savings plan, a refurbished fax machine, computer and a phone.
When she says she’s a Penny Hoarder, she’s not kidding.
To launch the business, the couple took a $5,000 loan from her husband’s 403(b) teacher retirement account. The loan came with 1% interest and had to be repaid within five years, she recalls.
They paid it back in six months.
Cohen remembers being so afraid to fail, she wouldn’t even pay for a second phone line. Home Remedies operated under the family’s home phone number until it simply became too busy.
For extra money, she worked part time the first summer in a friend’s decorating store. The job not only helped ease the family’s financial woes, but also let Cohen network with local contractors, movers, painters and others involved in home renovation.
During the first year, expenses were minimal. Most of the business was built with Cohen’s own sweat — networking in person and making phone calls to let the community know she was there.
Did I mention this was 1997? She launched the business completely offline.
Home Remedies launched long before Craigslist or Angie’s List became household names. People thought Cohen was crazy, wondering, “Who would use a service like that?”
But she saw the need and powered forward. With its founder raising an infant and squeezing in work during early morning hours and naptime, Home Remedies made $28,000 its first year (equal to about $41,000 today, with inflation).
Home Remedies Today
From an individual referral network in her own community, Cohen has grown Home Remedies to the nationwide Homeowner Referral Network, a cottage industry of more than 300 independent business owners who follow her original model.
While she shares her knowledge with newer entrepreneurs, Cohen says she also benefits from this growing network.
“Working from home can be isolating,” she admits. Consulting with new business owners helps her connect with people who share her situation, and their innovation helps her learn better ways to do business.
Despite its growth, Home Remedies remains the grassroots, community-focused business Cohen started 20 years ago.
Even though the network has moved online, Cohen says, the success of a business is still dependent on word-of-mouth referrals.
Networks are based on quality and trust, so each contractor is personally screened before she’ll make a referral. No one can pay an advertising fee for a preferred listing — they simply have to do impressive work.
Being a Work-at-Home Mom
Cohen’s oldest daughter is now 20, and her second is just about to leave the house for college.
“I’m glad I’ve been working this whole time instead of being out of the workforce,” she says. “This way I have something to do now that the kids are grown.”
She wouldn’t prescribe any one lifestyle to other mothers, though.
“I see women who are so happy not working and being home, and I see women who crave work and are better mothers for [doing] it,” she explains.
For Cohen, starting a business helped her find her balance. Her family needed more money than they had on a single income, and she thrived in work too much to be satisfied without it.
Will her daughters follow in her footsteps?
When I asked Cohen if she thinks her entrepreneurship would rub off on her daughters, she replied, “I don’t even think my daughters realized I was working. It was such a part of our routine.”
To them, Cohen says, she was just… Mom.
She was able to do what she set out to do: be a mom to her kids. She got creative and figured out how to put her family first — without ignoring her own talents.
“[My daughters] will have to reinvent that [balance] depending on their own careers,” she says. “But they’ll have a better sense of what’s right for them.”
Because of the environment they were raised in, Cohen believes, her daughters will understand their options. They won’t be forced to choose along strict lines between work or family.
Their mother had it all — why can’t they?
Your Turn: Are you a parent with a home-based business? How do you balance your priorities?
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 Stay-at-Home Mom Turned a Simple Idea into a $4 Million Business appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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125 Innovative Companies That Let You Work From Home
A lot of us dream of working from home.
But it’s tough to figure out where to find remote jobs. It’s not as if you can look for openings in a specific city, since your location ultimately doesn’t matter.
Thankfully, FlexJobs recently published a list of 125 virtual companies that embrace remote working.
“The companies on this list make it possible for the majority or all of their team members to telecommute 100 percent of the time,” writes Brie Weiler Reynolds, Director of Online Content for FlexJobs. Sah-weet!
Keep reading to see the full list of 125 virtual companies that offer tons of remote jobs.
125 Virtual Companies That Let You Work From Home
This list, which FlexJobs publishes annually, has grown astronomically. There were 26 companies in 2014, 76 in 2015 — and now, 125 in 2016.
Remote working is clearly the way of the future.
Many of the companies are in tech, human resources and education. But other industries — including accounting, health, law, marketing, nonprofit, news/media, sports and travel — are also on the list.
Here are the 125 companies. You’ll be earning money in your yoga pants before you know it!
Didn’t find a company or position that struck your fancy? No need to worry.
Lots of brick-and-mortar companies offer remote positions… or you can always consider working for yourself.
Here are a few posts that might help:
Good luck — and let us know how you manage to achieve your work-from-home goals!
Your Turn: Will you apply to any of the companies listed?
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 125 Innovative Companies That Let You Work From Home appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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Oh, the Places You’ll Go: The Best Cities for New Grads
If you’re a new graduate — or about to be — please accept our hearty congratulations!
Finishing college is a huge milestone.
But after you get done tossing your cap, you may find yourself feeling a little overwhelmed. You need a job, a place to live, a way to make friends… a life.
And like your shiny new copy of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” says, you can steer yourself any direction you choose.
How do you pick?
The Best Places to Live for New Grads
Luckily, NerdWallet just released a new study of the 100 largest cities in America, analyzing tons of data about the 25-29 crowd.
It included information about median income, unemployment, available jobs in the fields you probably studied and the percentage of the population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher.
So, picking a city on this list is a solid bet for finding a place to live where you’ll both fit in and succeed.
And some of the top 10 cities might surprise you.
Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Madison, Wisconsin, all make the cut.
And number one? Arlington, Virginia: a well-educated Washington, D.C. suburb that boasts high employment rates and incomes.
Our own St. Petersburg is a ways down the list at #76… but we’d like to contest that, at least within our little Penny-Hoarding corner!
Our open-air loft-style office space features a fully stocked beer fridge, shuffleboard table and a snowless sidewalk year-round — and it’s filled with awesome people. We think it’s perfect for ambitious new grads, and we’re hiring!
Besides, even Los Angeles only ranked #69.
Check out the full study here to see how your city fared — and to scope out new prospects on your horizon.
After all, you’ve got brains in your head and feet in your shoes.
Which direction will you choose?
Your Turn: Where does your city fall on this list? Which of these cities would you love to move to?
Disclosure: A toast to savings! Thanks for allowing us to place affiliate links in this post.
Jamie Cattanach (@jamiecattanach) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems. She loves St. Petersburg, no matter what NerdWallet says.
The post Oh, the Places You’ll Go: The Best Cities for New Grads appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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A Walkthrough of Our Weekly Meal Planning Routine
A couple of years ago, I wrote a very popular post called Meal Planning for Busy Families, in which I outlined the exact strategy that my own family uses to plan and prepare meals at a reasonable cost.
But what does that strategy actually look like in the real world? I thought it might be interesting to show you exactly how we implement this strategy in our own life. I’m going to do this by walking you, step by step, through our entire grocery shopping experience this week.
The reasons for using this strategy are numerous.
First, it saves us a lot of money. When I walk into a grocery store, I’m going to be spending money. Ideally, I want to be walking into that store with a great plan in my hand that I can follow as I’m walking through the aisles. This plan consists of a very clear grocery list that includes everything I need at home so that I don’t get distracted by browsing (and end up throwing unnecessary items into the cart).
Second, it saves a little bit of time, believe it or not. It takes some additional up-front time to get a good grocery list prepared, but the time spent on that grocery list is saved when I’m actually in the store – and more. I don’t have to waste any time at all making decisions in the store unless it’s deciding between two different versions of the same exact item. I don’t have to think about what meals need to be made, what staples we need, or anything else when I’m in the store.
Third, it makes evenings much more efficient. Our family is a busy one, with both parents having active careers, three children involved in a handful of activities, and the various additional community responsibilities that Sarah and I have, plus our own social and hobby interests. That can make for a very busy schedule and can make for very busy evenings. Meal planning helps a great deal with this, as we know what we’re having each evening without having to think about it. We can just take the necessary steps to prepare.
Here’s how I go about making all of this happen.
Step 1 – Scour the Store Flyers
We tend to go grocery shopping roughly every seven to ten days, depending on the exact situation at home. Usually, a grocery trip is triggered once we hit the end of our meal plan and there are no other leftovers to be consumed, as leftovers are a fairly regular meal at our house.
The first step in the system, though, is to simply check the sales flyer of the nearest grocery store. In our case, that’s Fareway, a discount grocer a little under a mile from our house. The next nearest grocery store is about ten miles away, so Fareway gets a lot of our business. It helps that Fareway’s prices are pretty consistent across their whole chain and Fareway acts as though the stores in nearby towns are competition because, honestly, they are competition: many people in our community work in the larger cities nearby and are completely willing to do their grocery shopping there.
I scan the grocery flyer for fresh fruits – which make for great snacks around here – and vegetables – which serve as the basis for a lot of meals – as well as other staples for meals that our family likes. Here are the items in this week’s flyer that stand out to me.
Starkist chunk light tuna – $0.79 per can
Store brand lasagna noodles – 2 for $3
Mini sweet peppers – $1.99 per pound
Lettuce – $0.88 per head
Brownberry wide pan bread – $2.88 per loaf
General Mills cereal (think Cheerio’s) – 3 for $5
This actually wasn’t the best week for the flyer. Many weeks, I’ll have a list of ten or more items to buy, but this week was a pretty weak week overall.
The last two items on the list – Brownberry bread and General Mills cereal – aren’t necessarily items I would normally buy. Instead, they’re items that I would compare to the store brands that I normally buy. If the sale makes the prices comparable – especially if there’s also a coupon involved – I’ll try the name brand, especially in the case of Brownberry, which is pretty good bread.
Step 2 – Build a Meal Plan
From those key ingredients, I’ll build a meal plan. What I try to do is identify meals that use the ingredients mentioned above and things that we have on hand. I usually use a mix of Paprika and Google for finding these recipes, as I’ll just search for recipes based on that key ingredient.
I write down these meals on a whiteboard in our home. This whiteboard hangs on a wall next to our kitchen so that we can quickly see our meal plan at any time as we walk through the kitchen. This keeps it accessible for both Sarah and myself and also makes it easy to modify, since modification just requires a quick erase and a new note with a dry erase marker (which is attached to the whiteboard).
As I make this meal plan, I often stick to a backbone of meals that I’m familiar with for the busiest nights and make more adventurous meals on easier nights, but it turns out that this entire upcoming week is pretty busy. Thus, we stuck to simpler meals.
Here’s the meal plan I came up with:
Dinners
– Wed. – tuna noodle casserole / vegetables / salad (uses tuna and lettuce)
– Thu. – vegetable chili (uses sweet peppers)
– Fri. – pizza & movie night (uses sweet peppers)
– Sat. lunch – Leftovers
– Sat. supper – Spaghetti, breadsticks, and salad (uses lettuce – might be an “eat out” night)
– Sun. lunch – Leftovers
– Sun. supper – grilled black bean burgers and grilled vegetables (uses sweet peppers)
– Mon. – slow cooker lasagna / salad (uses sweet peppers and lasagna noodles)
– Tue. – vegetable soup (uses sweet peppers and leftover lasagna noodles)
Breakfast options
– Toast, jelly, and tea (uses bread)
– Cereal (uses cereal) x 2
– Oatmeal x 2
– Scrambled eggs and toast x 2 (uses bread)
As you can see, I noted which ingredients on sale at the store are used in each meal. This week, we’re having a number of side salads and I’m also looking for a lot of ways to use those cheap sweet peppers, too.
We’re not doing anything unusual for us or anything extravagant because, as I noted, this is a pretty busy week for our family. There are soccer practices, soccer games, taekwondo practices, and several other little things going on, too, that make it much harder to prepare anything exceptional for meals this week. However, it doesn’t look like we’re going to have to rely on any of our frozen meals, which is a great thing.
A quick note on the frozen meals: when we have a free weekend afternoon, we’ll often make some complete meals and stow them away in the freezer for future use. In fact, this week, I might actually make some extra tuna noodle casseroles when making the normal ones and stow them away for the future, as that’s a meal that my children really like. So I’ll probably get quadruple ingredients for tuna noodle casserole, as I’ll plan on making four batches of it.
There is a little bit of flexibility here. I’d say there’s some likelihood that the Saturday and Monday dinners get swapped depending on what our Saturday schedule ends up looking like. There’s a very good chance that dinner on Wednesday night is a “leftovers” dinner, allowing us to wait until next Thursday for our next grocery shopping trip.
Our “breakfast options” list exists to give our kids a number of options for breakfasts in the morning. Since we’ll have ingredients for all of those things, we let our kids choose each day which breakfast they want and cross off that breakfast once it’s consumed (or erase the “x 2″ part).
For lunch on weekdays, Sarah and I usually just eat leftovers, so there’s no additional meal expense or meal planning cost there.
This whole process took about six minutes from start to finish. I had to look at our family calendar while planning out the meals and also come up with a few ideas based on the ingredients that were on sale.
Step 3 – Build a Grocery List
Now that I have this meal plan, it’s time to build a grocery list from it. I basically just go through each planned meal and check whether or not we have the ingredients for it. I’ll look in the refrigerator and go through the meal plan while looking around, noting anything that’s missing, then I’ll do the same with the pantry. This takes maybe five minutes at most.
While I’m doing this, I also look for staple items that we’re running low on. Do we have adequate amounts of milk, for example? Our children drink milk with many meals. Are we running low on any spices, especially salt and black pepper? I put black pepper (and hot pepper sauce) on a lot of the foods that I eat. Do the children have granola bars or other items for their after school snacks? If I don’t think there’s enough, I’ll add a box of granola bars to the list.
Once that’s complete, I’ll go through our house looking at the state of various household supplies. We usually buy most of our household supplies during a monthly trip to a warehouse club, but sometimes we’ll buy small packages at the store if we’re running low on any one item. I’ll check under the sink for things like garbage bags, dish soap, and dishwashing detergent. I’ll glance in the laundry room and check the state of our laundry soap. I’ll check all the bathrooms for toilet paper, toothpaste, and other toiletries. Anything that’s running low gets added to our grocery list (and also to our other list of items to get at the warehouse club). This takes maybe five more minutes>
This little routine catches so many items that I wouldn’t have thought about at the grocery store.
I build my grocery list on my phone using the Paprika app. I actually do the meal planning on my laptop near the whiteboard so I can add the meals directly into the app (all of the recipes are saved from previous weeks) and that puts the ingredients automatically into a “shopping list.” I then go through and remove the stuff I know we have on hand and remove a few more while I’m looking through the cupboard and pantry. This leaves me with a grocery list that’s organized by section, which matches up really well with Fareway’s layout. I can almost always just walk from section to section in the store, following my list, and find exactly what I need in each section.
Step 4 – Look for Coupons
After this, I sit down at the computer and look for coupons. I visit only a couple of sites – namely Coupons.com and Redplum – and see what coupons happen to be available this week.
Both of those sites essentially allow you to page through a small flood of coupons. I simply save every coupon that I think might be relevant, then print off all of those coupons at once. I cut them out quickly, usually by just cutting the sheet into eight or so pieces without really trimming them, and I take the ones to the store that I know I’m going to use this week.
The only great match this week was a coupon for $1 off any two boxes of General Mills cereal, which means that it stacks perfectly with the store sale, taking the price down to 3 boxes of General Mills cereal for $4. That’s definitely in a price range that’s competitive with the store brand and probably lower, so it’s likely that my cereal purchases this week will be the name brand cereals because they’re cheaper, and my kids will like it because there will be more variety in the options.
I found several more coupons that might be useful in the coming weeks but don’t match up well with my list right now, so I print those, too.
This process takes maybe another five minutes at most. It really doesn’t take very long to do this at all. I usually wind up printing off somewhere around $15 in coupons.
What about the other coupons, the ones for items that I think I’ll use soon but don’t actually have on my list? I put those in an envelope, but before I do that, I go through the coupons that are already in that envelope, trash the expired ones, and grab the ones that are useful this week. I usually find two or three coupons that match up with items that are already on sale. This takes maybe one more minute, and I found two coupons that match up – one for Brownberry bread and one for Starkist chunk light tuna. Both of those help lower the price on those items to the point that they’re going to be notably cheaper than the store brand, so I’m happy to take them with me.
At this point, I have three coupons in hand and a grocery list on my phone, so I’m ready to go to the store. This whole “prep” took me about twenty minutes, all told.
Step 5 – The Grocery Shopping Experience
So, what’s the benefit from all of this prep work? It happens in the store.
I walk in the door with coupons in hand and a grocery list that’s organized by store section on my phone, so I can get right down to business. There’s basically no backtracking – I just go from section to section, grabbing the things I need from that section and putting them in my cart.
What’s amazing about this is that it seems like all of the items that are on my list just happen to be on sale in the store. It’s like I walk from sale to sale to sale, putting tons of discounted items into my cart.
It’s planned that way, of course, but it’s really hard not to see the savings become tangible when you’re going through the store.
It’s also really quick. I can just completely trust my grocery store list, so I don’t have to dawdle or wander around or look for particular items or think about meals or anything like that. It’s pure business when I’m in there. I’m just grabbing the items that are on my list and moving on.
That means that unplanned items very rarely make it into my cart. I just don’t have any reason to look for things that aren’t on my list.
The end result is that the time spent in the store seems very short. It’s really hard to say how much shorter it is, but I know I’m saving at least fifteen or twenty minutes on this shopping trip, which means that the time I spent on planning for this trip is recovered by the reduced time spent in the actual store.
When I get to the checkout, the savings become real, too. Items fly over the scanner, with the total bill going up nice and slow thanks to all of the sales that I hit. There aren’t that many items, either, so the total is pretty low at the end of the trip – just over $100, in this case, which is pretty good for a week’s worth of groceries for a family of five. When I hand over the coupons and they’re scanned, the total goes down to just ba handful of nickels over $100.
Sweet.
Step Six – Cooking Meals
Of course, the final step is actually preparing the meals, but that becomes pretty easy. All I have to do is look at the whiteboard to see what’s planned for each day, then hit Paprika if I need a recipe (usually, I don’t), then start cooking.
I usually check the whiteboard in the morning in case a slow cooker recipe is on order for the evening. It also helps me to estimate when I’ll need to start working on meal prep (I usually make a note of this on the whiteboard, too). I also check it in the evenings and look ahead a couple of days, because if we’re having a meal from the freezer in two nights, I’ll go ahead and pull it out and put it in the refrigerator to thaw.
Most evenings, this all comes together really smoothly because we’ve thought about all of this in advance. All I have to do is trust that whiteboard and make the meals on the nights that it suggests. The ingredients are already there because of the smart shopping list, and it’s a meal that’s appropriate for the time available to me for preparation.
It all just works out like a well-oiled machine.
Final Thoughts
This system is one that Sarah and I have polished for our needs over many years. We put a high priority on family meals at the dinner table with as many of us together as possible (most nights, that’s all of us), even if it means a quick dinner.
That doesn’t come together without some planning. Ordinarily, this kind of planning would add time to the equation, but it seems to me that the planning done here saves time. The time spent on the planning is actually recovered in the grocery store, and then on busy evenings everything runs smoothly, so even more time is saved.
Of course, the big reason behind all of this is saving money, and a lot of money is saved by this procedure. I don’t buy many unplanned things at the store, I’m putting a lot of sale items into my cart, and I end up buying a lot of lower cost store brand items or name brands when a coupon and a store sale stack together to make it very cheap.
It all just works out, but it only works because of the time spent on advance planning. Without spending that twenty or so minutes at the start of all of this, none of this would work out.
The time invested here pays a lot of dividends, both in terms of money and in terms of time later on.
Good luck!
The post A Walkthrough of Our Weekly Meal Planning Routine appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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7 Times People Took Low-Cost Living Situations to Extremes
There’s nothing wrong with nice homes, new cars, vacations and dining out.
But a big lifestyle often comes with big rent or mortgage payments, and may require big jobs and more stress.
Maybe you prefer a less conventional way to put a roof over your head, in terms of both how you pay for it and what kind of roof it is. And maybe you want less expensive and more interesting ways to live in general.
For example, you could spend your life as a house sitter and caretaker to get the advantages of living in nice homes without the financial obligations of owning a place.
Or, if you want a more temporary change, you might live in a bus and travel the country for a year before settling down.
Whatever your goals, here are some real-life examples of alternative living. Would you try any of them?
1. Camping as a Lifestyle
Nancy Bolam says she was paying $500 per month for an unheated bedroom in a trailer outside Aspen, Colorado — and it didn’t have a closet or a door!
So she decided to try camping for a while, instead.
She bought a fabric dome, and ran power to it from a friend’s nearby garage. She heated it with a woodstove and carried in the water she needed.
After living this way for more than three years, she had saved enough for a down payment on a house.
But, she says, “I will greatly miss camping as a lifestyle.”
2. Living in a Truck
After discovering how expensive rent was near his new job at Google, 23-year-old Brandon (last name withheld) bought a box truck to live in, reported Business Insider.
His 128-square-foot living space includes a bed, dresser and places to hang clothes. He showers and eats on the Google campus and leaves the truck parked there, as well.
Brandon says this works because he really only sleeps in the truck. And he figured he’d quickly recover the $10,000 he paid for the truck because he’ll save more than $2,000 on rent each month.
He details everything on his blog, FromInsideTheBox.com.
3. Being Homeless by Choice
A truck is a pretty minimal shelter, and a fabric dome even more so, but Daniel Suelo doesn’t even own a tent.
He doesn’t even use money, according to The Atlantic.
Suelo is homeless by choice — and sometimes lives in caves near eastern Utah, or in the Sedona, Arizona area.
He forages for wild foods or searches dumpsters, cooking his meals on stoves made of discarded cans. He drinks from streams.
He’s had some trouble with the law due to the 14-day limit for camping in any one place on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) lands, but mostly he stays out of sight so he’s left alone.
Suelo sometimes works as a house sitter. He’s also spent time living with anarchist squatters in Portland, Oregon, and in communal homes. But he spends most of his nights outside, and he’s been living this way for more than a decade.
4. Living in an RV
Bob Wells lives in his RV on a $1,100-per-month pension, and says he knows “dozens of people who live in their vans and make much less than $1,000 per month.”
It can be costly to travel much in an RV, so he suggests alternating between working and traveling — while still living in your RV, of course.
Here are some of the ways you can make money on the road, according to Wells:
- Be a campground host
- Make and sell crafts
- Sell things on eBay
- Create websites
- Paint houses
- Provide handyman services
- Provide animal-grooming services
Check out our list of 103 ways to make money at home for more ideas to work from your home on the road.
5. Living on a Sailboat
Yes, you can live on a sailboat inexpensively — if you do it right.
HoboSailor.com’s Leann and Chad say it means buying a cheap used boat, sticking to free places to anchor and budgeting well. Their lifestyle, which includes a cat and a large-screen TV on their small sailboat, runs about $1,000 per month.
Because of the work involved with living on a boat, it may be best to do it as a couple. And Chad says it’s “a great pre-marriage test that I would recommend to anyone.”
6. Living in a Storage Unit
Nobody is likely to recommend living in a storage unit as a permanent housing solution, and there may also be legal issues.
On the other hand, people do sometimes choose this lifestyle out of necessity for a few months at a time.
Consider Becky Blanton’s story. When her freelance writing income declined, she put a bed in her 10-by-20-foot storage unit and moved in. The managers of the facility chose to say nothing.
After four months working various jobs and eating at cheap buffets, Blanton saved up some money and found more conventional housing.
7. Living as a Nomad
Britany Robinson says at the age of 27, she’s part of “generation rent.”
She has no plans to buy a home. In fact, she recently decided to drive around the country and look for a new place to live.
“I’m addicted to the freedom of renting over buying, as are many of my friends and peers,” Robinson says. For a while, she’ll be living in hotel rooms.
There may be a trend toward more-nomadic lifestyles, thanks to the many options for working online (and due to less job security). Of course, the cost of such a lifestyle depends largely on what kind of places you rent.
Your Turn: Would you consider any of these low-cost alternative lifestyles?
Steve Gillman is the author of “101 Weird Ways to Make Money” and creator of EveryWayToMakeMoney.com. He’s been a repo-man, walking stick carver, search engine evaluator, house flipper, tram driver, process server, mock juror, and roulette croupier, but of more than 100 ways he has made money, writing is his favorite (so far).
The post 7 Times People Took Low-Cost Living Situations to Extremes appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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Two-Sided Coin: Is College Worth the Cost?
This is the first in a series of posts called the “Two-Sided Coin,” where TSD’s Jon Gorey and Holly Johnson take opposing viewpoints on a number of personal finance topics.
Holly: College Isn’t Always Worth the Money
Most of us have been told the same story our entire lives: If you do your best in school, you can get into a good college. And if you put in the work and graduate in good standing, you’ll be rewarded with a great career and a lifetime of financial security.
Sadly, history is showing that this narrative is no longer as true as it once was.
The graduating class of 2015 left school with average student loan debt of over $35,000. When it comes to paying off those loans, the struggle is real – and sometimes, catastrophic. According to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, more than 7 million borrowers were at least 12 months in default on their student loans as of late 2015. That’s 17% of student borrowers who are desperate and may never dig their way out.
In addition to those in default, another 2.8 million students were in some stage of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or income-driven repayment as of 2015. While PSLF requires only a 10-year commitment in a public service position before loan balances are wiped clear, existing income-driven repayment plans can request 10% to 15% of your discretionary income for up to 25 years. For many people in these plans, that means making payments on their student loans until they are age 50 or older.
In the meantime, millennials are experiencing record levels of unemployment and underemployment. According to data shared by the New York Federal Reserve, as many as 44% of college graduates in their 20s are stuck in low-wage, dead-end jobs. To add insult to injury, 40% of our nation’s unemployed are millennials. That figure translates into 4.6 million young people struggling to find work and earn an income, many of whom are also struggling with student loan debt.
So is a college degree worth it? Most signs point to maybe.
As these sad events play out, students and their parents are right to wonder if the investment is still worth it. While many studies have proven that, overall, a college degree is generally a good investment, I would argue that all families should take a close look at their options – and the potential costs – before sending their child off to school.
A lot of people will say that higher education is always worth it. “It’s good debt,” they’ll say. Or they’ll spew out this lie: “College is a learning experience that all young people need to go through.”
Or, they’ll simply point out that many professional jobs actually require a four-year degree. When you hear someone argue that, unequivocally, college is always a good investment, ask yourself these questions:
- If a college degree was always worth it, would there be 7 million student borrowers in default?
- If college degrees always paid off in spades, would nearly 3 million borrowers be in some phase of loan forgiveness or income-driven repayment?
- If college was always a good investment, would 44% of new college graduates be working as baristas or waiters?
Obviously, the answer to these questions will always be “no.” That’s why anyone who says a college degree is always worth it is either unaware of reality or promoting their own agenda. Sadly, it’s always the students who pay when they believe this advice without doing some research on their own.
How to decide if your college degree is worth it
When an adult tells you that college is always worth it no matter what, don’t listen. Instead, let the research you do on your own serve as your guide.
In an article I wrote last May, I showed how future college students can research the variables of their potential major before making such a huge decision. With sites sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, it’s fairly easy to research employment projections and salaries for any college major and corresponding career trajectory.
While there are numerous ways to figure the future return-on-investment of your college education, a cursory look at the numbers can give you a really good idea of what to expect. If your projected out-of-pocket costs for a private school are $40,000 per year, for example, and you plan to pursue a career as a kindergarten teacher, you can easily see that starting salaries for that profession (salaries in the 10th percentile) were only $33,460 in 2014.
If you find that spending well over six figures to begin a fairly low-paying profession no longer strikes your fancy, run from this option as fast as you can. Or, at the very least, weigh the pros and cons of a state school that charges a fraction of the cost.
Likewise, let’s say you decide to pursue a two-year degree in diagnostic medical sonography. After determining the program at your community college will cost you less than $10,000, you find that the starting wage in this profession was around $46,930 nationally, but grew to $68,390 on average. Most people would say that’s a winning combination.
At the end of the day, both sides of the equation matter – not just what you borrow to attend school, but how much you’ll earn once you graduate. Most of the time, the wider the disparity, the worse off you’ll be.
Consider these options, too.
While the idea of attending a technical school or learning a trade may not excite you, it’s important not to sweep these alternative options under the table, either. In the real world, a technical education can serve as low-cost alternative to a pricey four-year degree, but with better job prospects and even higher pay to boot.
We’ve written about the fact that a two-year degree is the ultimate investment before, and it still rings true. While pursuing a career in healthcare, dental hygiene, masonry, or any number of technical fields may not make you feel as fancy, you could experience exceptional job security and good pay for life. And maybe, just maybe, you could avoid walking away from school with so much debt that you’ll be stuck paying it off until you’re 50.
While many people still insist that college is always worth it, the numbers say otherwise. In the real world, the value of your college degree will depend on an array of factors, some of which may not be in your control. Never believe anyone’s advice on college without doing some research on your own. Due to growing costs and economic uncertainly, the landscape has changed. If you truly want to get ahead without spending your entire life in debt, you have to mold your goals to change with it. And sometimes, that means ignoring the advice of your elders and forging your own path.
–Holly Johnson
Jon: College Is Worth the Price (Most of the Time)
I was fortunate enough to get a partial scholarship to my college of choice, as well as a pretty cushy work-study position in the campus snack bar circuit (free chicken tenders and all-you-drink coffee!). This was back when college tuition was only extremely expensive and not insanely expensive.
But truthfully, looking back, I would have paid just about anything for the experience. In fact, if Syracuse sent me a bill right now for $1 million, I would understand.
At today’s tuition rates — which averaged $9,410 a year for in-state students at public universities and $32,405 annually at private colleges in 2015, not even including room and board — it’s only natural (and smart) to second guess whether a college education is worth all that money.
The thing is, even at that price, it usually is.
Photo: TSD/Amazon.com
There is such a thing as ‘good’ debt.
As Holly pointed out, the average student loan debt for the class of 2015 was $35,000 (that’s among students who graduated with loans; some do not). Okay, that’s a ton of money, and it’s admittedly lousy to still be paying for something 10 or more years after you bought it.
But here’s the thing: The average American takes out almost as much debt — $29,000! — just to buy a stupid new car. Many people stretch out that debt over six or even seven years.
And what do they get at the end of it all? An aging vehicle that has lost almost all of its value. When it conks out, they’ll take out a new car loan all over again.
A college degree, meanwhile, remains the single best way to boost your long-term earning potential — by about a million dollars over the course of your lifetime, compared to someone with just a high-school diploma.
Think about that: An extra million dollars, over the course of your career. That’s essentially a winning lottery ticket, where you forego the lump sum in favor of annual payments.
Would you take out a $35,000 loan if it returned an average of $1,000,000 over the next 40 years? Yeah, I would, too. That’s good debt.
It’s not always about the career – at least, not right away.
College doubters also point out that nearly half of 20-something college grads work in dead-end retail or restaurant jobs.
To that I say: So what? Many of these grads were probably liberal arts or communications majors. Engineering may be the best major to land a job the week after graduation, but not everyone wants to leap straight into 9-to-5, wall-to-wall math for the rest of their life. That sounds like my nightmare.
Working a crap job in your early 20s is a time-honored tradition among the creative class. After graduation I worked at a bookstore, and then as a van driver for a radio station, both at minimum wage and while splitting housing costs with literally a dozen different roommates, before finally landing a (similarly poorly-paying) job in my field as an editorial assistant. But those mundane jobs were some of the best I’ve ever had.
Now I have a real job on the straight-and-narrow path of adulthood, on the road to retirement — and frankly I miss those carefree days of driving a gaudily painted van around town and ringing up beach reads and bestsellers. You’re only young once, but you’ll have 30 years or more to act like a grownup and work in a cubicle or some other professional environment; God knows there’s no need to rush into it.
It’s not always about the classes.
This will sound trite and cliche, but college isn’t all about academics or degrees, either. There were only a handful of classes I took that truly formed the foundation of my professional skills, such as Intro to Graphic Design. But the breadth of classes I took and the variety of personal and shared learning experiences I had made me a more curious and successful person in the long run.
What’s more, surrounding yourself with other thoughtful people is the incubator of innovation. Steve Jobs famously obsessed over where to locate bathrooms and common areas to try and manufacture more serendipitous encounters among employees. Physical proximity matters.
Economist Edward Glaeser once summed it up like this, in an ode to New York City’s human soup: “Homo sapiens are a social species; almost all of what we know we learn from each other. Dense cities, like New York, succeed when they take advantage of this fundamental aspect of our humanity. They thrive by enabling us to connect with each other, which then promotes learning and innovation.”
Immersing yourself in such an environment is simply a smart and intellectually inspiring professional decision. Friends of mine from college went on to do amazing things. They author books and work on major television shows and write for Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers. I’ve literally gotten jobs in large part because of my college connections, and vice versa.
And this who-you-know phenomenon isn’t limited to fancy-pants private schools: Your big, state university already has thousands of alumni working in managerial positions all over the country, and one day some of your friends will hold those positions, too. When you inquire about a job or go in for an interview with such a person, you have an automatic ice breaker at your disposal — especially if your alma mater miraculously made it to the Final Four.
But not every college is right for everybody every time.
Not all colleges are worth the cost, though. If you get into Harvard or Stanford, by all means, take out the loans you need to go. But there’s no sense in paying private-school tuition rates at a college that’s no better than your state university or even your local community college — and unfortunately, plenty of people do just that. By and large, the in-state tuition at your public university system is going to give you the best bang for your buck.
In particular, don’t throw your money away at a for-profit college. That is and always was a terrible idea, and the only way they’ve survived this long is through predatory marketing practices. Millions of the student borrowers Holly mentions who are defaulting on their debt hold loans not from a state university or community college but from these questionable institutions.
Plus, there are plenty of people who just don’t need college. If you’ve always wanted to be a carpenter, you don’t need to go to college: Go to trade school or better yet get into an apprenticeship program, where you’ll make money as you learn the trade. (I would argue that a college degree from a state school is still not going to hurt, even if you have to take on some debt, since you’ll learn the skills to turn your trade into a full-scale small business later on.)
If you simply hate school and always have, then good lord, don’t pay all that money for more of it. Find a career that inspires you, where you can work with your hands or work with people. Many good, growing jobs don’t require a college degree at all.
Likewise, not everyone is ready for college at the age of 18. My brother struggled during his first bout with college, and dropped out of school after a year and a half. He found a regular, decent-paying job, and only several years later went back to school to finish his degree part-time in the evenings. And that time around, he absolutely crushed it. He was focused on what he wanted to do for a living, and responsible enough to take it seriously. Now you can barely fit his income on a calculator screen.
In the end, smart and driven people like my brother will probably be successful no matter what they do. But a college education can go a long way toward ensuring and amplifying that success over the course of a lifetime. On the other hand, some people may struggle to make ends meet even with a college degree, especially if they go to an overpriced school that leaves them saddled with debt, or go at the wrong time in their lives.
So what I’m saying is: Don’t blindly go to college because you think you’re supposed to. It’s not for everyone at all times. But don’t blindly discount it as a rip-off either. In fact, if you’re interested in a professional career, it’s pretty much the best investment you can make.
–Jon Gorey
Related Articles:
- College Decision Time: How to Compare Financial Aid Offers and Pick the Right School
- Why I Sometimes Regret Choosing Harvard over Community College
- 20 Colleges Well Worth the Money
The post Two-Sided Coin: Is College Worth the Cost? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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Government called to 'urgently' address 'outdated' funeral support
The support available to bereaved families is ‘outdated’, while the funeral industry may not be operating in a way that serves vulnerable people well, a report published by the Work and Pensions Committee has claimed.
Government called to address 'outdated' funeral support
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The support available to bereaved families is ‘outdated’, while the funeral industry may not be operating in a way that serves vulnerable people well, a report published by the Work and Pensions Committee has claimed. The Committee says it heard “distressing evidence” of one mother who was forced to freeze her son’s body for months while she saved enough to pay for a funeral, and of bereaved people who were denied their relative’s ashes because of a shortfall in the final payment. Currently those on certain benefits can claim help from the state for funeral payments. These payments can help to cover the cost of burial fees, cremation fees and travel costs, while an extra payment of up to £700 is also available for funeral expenses, such as the funeral director’s fees. But the Committee’s report raises concerns that while the £700 limit has been fixed since 2003, funeral director fees have risen “well above the rate of inflation”. As a result of this, the report says the £700 no longer covers the cost of a simple funeral. Royal London, for example, recently estimated that the average cost for a funeral in the UK was £3,702 in its 2015 National Funeral Cost Index Report. In addition, the Committee says the application process for funeral payments from the state must be simplified – it says the application is 23 pages long with 12 pages of guidance. The report also flags that the bereaved currently have to commit to funeral expenses without having a clear idea if any payment from the state will be received. On the separate issue of bereavement benefits, which are based on the deceased’s nation insurance contributions, the Committee says the approach to support for the children of widowed parents where the benefit is only paid if the parents were married, not co-habiting or in a civil partnership – is “particularly outdated” and “should be addressed urgently”. Funeral costs are ‘leading’ people into debt Frank Field MP, chair of the Committee says: “We heard clear evidence of the distressing circumstances and debt this is leading people into, at a time when they are grieving and vulnerable. We do not want a return to the spectre of miserable ‘pauper’s funerals’. “We urge the Government to conduct a cross-departmental review of burials, cremations and funerals, with outcomes that will address the factors driving up funeral director fees and work to reduce funeral poverty.” On bereavement benefits Mr Field adds: “The support for widowed parents is also badly outdated, with benefits denied to cohabiting parents. Penalising a child on the grounds of their parents’ marital status is as unjust as it is anachronistic. “The costs involved to right this wrong are small and the Government should do so as soon as possible." What does the Government say? The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) says it will respond to the Committee’s report in due course. However, it does confirm that while the bereavement benefit system is being changed from April 2017, it has no plans to extend eligibility for bereavement benefits to those who are not married or in a civil partnership. It adds that the extra £700 currently available to cover funeral costs is a fair amount. A DWP spokesperson says: “We are modernising bereavement benefits, introducing a simpler and fairer scheme that will better assist people in what can be an extremely difficult time. “The planned new Bereavement Support Payment will provide a higher lump sum payment than currently is offered and more people will be able to claim this full support now we have removed the lower age limit.”
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NS&I cuts interest rates and premium bond prizes: switch for better rates
NS&I (National Savings & Investments) will cut the number of Premium Bond prizes it offers, while it will also slash the interest it pays on a range of savings accounts this summer, the Treasury-backed savings organisation has announced.
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Did You Get Your Full Paycheck? Watch Out for These 5 Payroll Mistakes
As I was sitting in an HR class listening to my professor explain the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees, it hit me:
I was being screwed over by my company. Big time.
When hourly employees worked more than 40 hours a week and should have earned overtime, the company treated them as salaried — so they didn’t get the extra pay.
On the flip side, when someone had a doctor’s appointment and had to leave early, the company only paid them for the actual hours they worked.
This is illegal, and the higher-ups knew it. They were taking advantage of their employees’ lack of knowledge.
Unlucky for them, I was getting my degree in human resources. They had messed with the wrong employee!
I contacted the Department of Labor to file a complaint.
While my coworkers and I eventually received back pay for all the overtime hours we worked, the damage had already been done. Many of us quit, knowing we couldn’t work for an employer that could deliberately do that to its employees.
5 Money Mistakes That Could Affect Your Paycheck
Most companies don’t willingly deceive their employees. But mistakes do happen.
I know because I’ve worked in HR for more than 10 years. Human error is inevitable.
You work hard for your money and it’s important to understand where it’s going. Here are five items to watch out for:
1. Exempt vs. Non-Exempt
An exempt employee is paid a salary, which doesn’t fluctuate.
Let’s say you work 50 hours in a week. Those 10 hours over 40 don’t matter; you receive the same amount of pay as if you worked 40 hours.
Conversely, if you work 35 hours, you still get paid as if you worked 40.
A non-exempt employee is eligible for overtime for any time they worked over 40 hours in a week.
Overtime is paid at time and half, so if you normally earn $10 per hour, you would earn $15 per each hour worked over 40 hours in a week. Conversely, if you only worked 35 hours in a week, you’ll only be paid for those 35 hours, unless you used vacation or sick time.
If you’re not sure which category you fall into, ask your HR department for clarification.
I’d recommend scheduling a short face-to-face meeting to address any questions, then following up with a short email summary of the outcome. This way you have proof in case you ever need it.
2. Overtime Pay
Many companies have automated timekeeping systems, and employees believe their pay is being calculated correctly.
For the most part, it is — but not always.
I once worked for an employer whose system calculated overtime incorrectly; we had to manually override it with the right information.
Another company I worked for had employees write down their overtime on a sheet of paper — talk about room for error! Sometimes we couldn’t decipher the handwriting, and occasionally the sheet went missing altogether.
If your numbers don’t seem to add up, stop by your HR or payroll department. They can walk you through the calculation.
One employee would come in every payday and ask me to go over her paycheck with her. While this may seem a little extreme, I sat down with her each time until she was satisfied everything was calculated properly.
Diligent employees catch errors.
3. Benefits Changes
Once a year during open enrollment, most companies change certain aspects of their benefit plans.
Rate changes, plan changes, election changes… there’s a lot of change going on, which means more chance for error.
Always check your first pay stub after open enrollment. Make sure your plan, number of dependents and rates are all correct.
4. Raises
During my first year in HR, I had to calculate and import raises for my company. I messed up — badly — and gave 400 people the wrong raise.
I thought for sure I’d be fired.
Out of those 400 people, only about 25 noticed the error and came to HR. That means 375 people didn’t notice they’d received the wrong amount of money.
Don’t be one of those 375 people!
Make sure to get your salary change in writing and check that your first “new” paycheck accurately reflects the change.
As for me, I felt awful. By the next payroll, though, I’d resolved all the issues and, thankfully, wasn’t fired. (My takeaway: I never touched payroll again.)
5. Tax Exemptions
All of us complete a W-4 form when we start a job.
Based on the number of exemptions you choose, the W-4 impacts the amount of tax taken out of each paycheck. If you take fewer exemptions, more money will come out of each check; when you take more exemptions, less tax comes off the top.
Don’t look at this form as a static document — you should revise it as needed.
When you first fill out your W-4, you’re at a certain point in your life. Six months or a year later, things may have changed.
Life happens: People get married, have children, get divorced and their children grow up. All these events may affect your taxes.
You can make changes at any time to a W4, and I suggest reviewing it at least once a year. I do so at tax time; I’m already looking at all my tax-related documents, so I might as well make sure everything is updated correctly.
While many companies try to do everything properly, mistakes can happen. Make sure you’re knowledgeable about where your hard-earned money is going — so you can keep more of it in your pocket.
Your Turn: Have any of these money mistakes affected your paycheck?
Laura Niebauer Palmer is a coupon-aholic who works in HR and just started her own blog at www.centsofpower.com. She enjoys finding creative and fun ways to make and save money, including mystery shopping and being a contestant on “Wheel of Fortune”!
The post Did You Get Your Full Paycheck? Watch Out for These 5 Payroll Mistakes appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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