Honeywell and the U.S. Army have announced a $29-million modernization project at Tobyhanna Army Depot. The project will provide facility upgrades that are expected to lower the army depot’s annual energy consumption by more than 20 percent and water consumption by more than 8 percent the Depot said in a statement. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s calculator, such a reduction in energy consumption each year results in a reduction in greenhouse gas [...]
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الخميس، 2 يونيو 2016
Happy National Donut Day! Here’s Where to Get Your Free Donuts on Friday
Mmm… Donut…
You don’t have to be Homer Simpson to enjoy a good donut. And do you know what the best kind of donut is?
A free donut.
This Friday, June 3, is National Donut Day.
Unlike some other National [Blank] Days (really, National Cheese Souffle Day?), National Donut Day has an actual historical background. It was established in 1938 by the Salvation Army in honor of the men and women who served soldiers coffee and donuts to boost their morale during World War I.
From this noble tradition, we gained another All-American phenomenon: getting free food just for showing up at restaurants on certain days.
You may or may not have had a chance to snag some freebies on National Pretzel Day, Tax Day or National Pancake Day, but now’s your time to get on the free donut train. So make like the Simpson family patriarch and run out to these fine establishments to get your free deep-fried, drool-worthy treat.
Where to Get Free Donuts on Friday
Krispy Kreme
Krispy Kreme is making National Donut Day international — locations across the globe will be giving each customer a free donut of their choice on June 3, no purchase necessary.
So whether you’re in Canada or Indonesia, whether you prefer powdered, glazed or filled, stop on in to grab your free donut. (Unless you live in Connecticut, which, weirdly, is excluded.)
Dunkin’ Donuts
Dunkin’ Donuts is also going global, offering customers in America and worldwide a free classic donut of their choice with the purchase of a beverage.
Giant Eagle
Flash your Giant Eagle Advantage Card when you buy any hot or cold beverage on Friday, and you’ll get a free donut. But that’s not the most fun option.
If you use your card to buy six donuts, you’ll get six more free donuts.
But if you dress up like a superhero, you’ll get a coupon for a free dozen donuts. You have to use the coupon on June 3 and you can’t wear a mask, but hey, when you show up with a dozen donuts, you’ll definitely be your office’s or family’s hero.
Fractured Prune Doughnuts
With around two dozen locations nationwide, this small but celebrated chain (it’s been on the Food Network and “Roker on the Road”) is giving away one free donut to each customer on Friday, no purchase necessary.
Not all locations are participating and some are doing their own variations on this freebie, so check with your local franchise for specifics on what they’re offering.
Cumberland Farms
This South Florida chain is handing out one free donut to anyone who purchases a hot coffee, iced coffee or “Chill Zone” beverage from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Friday.
Shipley Do-Nuts
Participating locations from Kentucky to Texas are giving away one free glazed donut per customer, no purchase necessary, from 5 a.m. to 12 p.m. on June 3.
Tim Horton’s
It’s not a free donut, but the Canadian chain is offering six donuts for $2.99. Just present this coupon to nab the deal.
The coupon’s actually good through July 31, 2016, so if you miss all the freebie madness on Friday, you’ve still got plenty of time to snag this deal.
Don’t Forget to Go Local
Plenty of small-town bakeries are participating in this freebie bonanza, so be sure to do a search for your town plus “National Donut Day freebies” to uncover additional deals near you.
Win Free Donuts for a Year (and Help Charity)
But wait — there’s more!
Entenmann’s is partnering with the Salvation Army to use National Donut Day to raise funds to help families in need around the world.
This year, for every person who enters their “National Donut Day Free Donuts for a Year” Facebook sweepstakes, Bimbo Bakeries (Entenmann’s parent company) will donate $1 to the Salvation Army (up to $35,000 total).
Entries are open through July 2, so get yours in now for the chance to be one of 10 lucky winners to celebrate National Donut Day every day for a year.
Your Turn: Will you snag a free donut (or donuts) on Friday, June 3?
Kelly Gurnett is a freelance blogger, writer and editor who runs the blog Cordelia Calls It Quits, where she documents her attempts to rid her life of the things that don’t matter and focus more on the things that do. Follow her on Twitter @CordeliaCallsIt.
This post originally appeared in 2015. Editorial intern Kelly Smith helped research and update it with this year’s deals.
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This Site is Actually Hiring a Work-From-Home Bacon Critic
Want to literally bring home the bacon? You could get paid to eat, write and dream about your favorite crispy treat.
Even better: You’ll get to work from home.
Extra Crispy, Time Inc.’s new website about all things breakfast and brunch, is hiring a Bacon Critic.
Yes, a Bacon Critic. This is a real job.
This writer will spend three months being the envy of the journalism/foodie world — or just America in general.
Bacon Critic Job Perks
To truly capture the spirit and art of America’s favorite mealtime, you obviously need to study bacon.
In addition to its clear upsides (living, breathing and writing about bacon), this three-month freelance gig is remote; no big, stressful move necessary.
At the end of your tenure, you’ll declare “America’s Best Bacon” — and have the most interesting resume around.
Bonus (or challenge): You get to negotiate your pay.
How to Apply to Be a Bacon Critic
Who doesn’t love some healthy (or artery-clogging) competition?
If you’re over 21 and want to apply, submit an essay detailing a bacon-related memory (be it funny, quirky or engaging) in under 600 words, along with your name and phone number, to Bacon@ExtraCrispy.com.
This contest is open until June 24.
In the meantime, we Penny Hoarders will be eagerly awaiting an influx of bacon news and information.
Your Turn: Will you apply to be a bacon critic?
Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. After recently completing grad school, she focuses her time and energy on saving money — and surviving the move back in with her parents.
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Best Personal Finance Software
I’m going to let you in on a secret: I used to hate Mint.
Every time I felt like I needed a better financial plan, I’d open up that Mint account I’d created a few years ago — and every time, I’d see that dashboard and all of those ads asking me to sign up for credit cards and I’d say, “No way.” (Then I’d check my online banking app to make sure I had enough money to pay the rent.)
But a lot of people love Mint. In April 2015, Mint reported that it had “more than 20 million registered users.”
Now, that number is “more than 20 million and one.”
“Online banking is a great tool to pay bills and reduce paper statements. However, it cannot establish a budget or categorize your expenses. A financial tracking software gives you the ability to review how you are spending your money,” explains Dan Crimmins, a financial coach with his firm Crimmins Wealth Management in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. (He also has an award-winning financial blog called Roots of Wealth.) He’s also just one of the financial experts I consulted as I worked on figuring out what makes the best personal finance software, what these programs can teach us about personal finance, and if they can really help me — and you — do more with our money.
The Simple Dollar’s Top Picks for Best Personal Finance Software
It took me about 25 hours of research and testing to choose the best personal finance software. I started by identifying 43 potential candidates and narrowing them down, one by one. I ended up with a Top 10, and created accounts with each of the programs to do some hands-on testing. After trying out the programs, my Top 10 quickly became a Top Three — with two honorable mentions.
- Mint: Comprehensive and easy-to-navigate software that’s great for beginners.
- YNAB: Hardcore budgeting for people who want to know where every dollar is going.
- Personal Capital: Net worth is what counts in this investment-focused app.
- Honorable Mentions: Quicken and Prosper Daily
Mint has a robust suite of features that are easy to learn.
Once I started testing Mint’s functionality — instead of logging on, seeing an ad, and immediately closing the tab — I realized what a great program it was. Mint gave me everything I needed to organize my spending, create and stick to a budget, and include my long-term goals in today’s financial decisions.
I’ve been using Mint for about a month, and I’m already more aware of where my money is going — which means I’m spending less of it. I’m also checking the app every morning to see how every new transaction fits into my estimated monthly budget, which is something I thought I’d never do.
I love Mint. I think a lot of you will too. Here are some of the parts I love the most:
Mint makes setup incredibly easy.
I didn’t have to hunt around for anything when I set up my Mint account. Everything’s right on the dashboard: Here’s where to add your bank accounts; here’s where to add your credit cards; here’s where to add your investment accounts.
Mint also makes it really easy to figure out where to click if you want to categorize transactions, create a budget, or set a goal. Of all the personal finance software programs I tested, Mint was by far the easiest — and that was one of the biggest reasons why it became my favorite.
Mint understands that you need flexibility in your budget.
Here’s the other reason why Mint quickly became my favorite personal finance software program: It let me set up a budget that made sense with my expenses. I don’t know about you, but I don’t buy the same stuff every month. I pay rent and I buy groceries and I pay my bills, but some months I go out to eat five times and some months I only go out once. Some months I buy clothes, and some months I don’t. Some months I see Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens twice.
I can’t predict any of that spending in advance, and when a friend says, “Hey, want to go see Star Wars tonight,” I don’t want to say “I’m sorry, I already hit my one-movie-per-month budget quota.”
Mint understands. With Mint’s budgeting system, you make categories for every expense you have to pay — rent, bills, and so on — and once you’re done making your categories, everything else goes into a category literally called “Everything Else.”
That’s your “see Star Wars twice in one month; buy a new jacket next month” fund.
If you know that you spend $150 on clothing (or movies, or restaurants, or whatever) every month, make it a budget category. If your spending is as variable as mine, use that Everything Else category. It’ll let you know exactly how much money you have left to spend on… well, everything else!
Mint helps you plan for those every-few-month expenses — and those long-term goals.
I’m a freelancer, which means I need to save money for quarterly estimated taxes. (I pay a lot of taxes.) I’m also saving up for a three-month emergency fund.
Mint makes the process easy. Its budgeting system lets you clarify when your budgeted item will come due, so you can budget a little bit every month for your quarterly estimated taxes even though you won’t actually have to pay those taxes for a while.
The software’s goal function also lets you decide how much you want to set aside every month to achieve your long-term financial goals, and takes that money out of your available spending pool. I always put 10 percent of my income directly into savings, so the more I earn, the faster I reach my three-month emergency fund goal — and I’m hoping I reach it well before February 2017.
Mint isn’t the only personal finance software that does this, by the way. YNAB lets you budget for both long-term expenses and long-term goals. (Quicken does not, and neither does Personal Capital.) But Mint’s process was the easiest to figure out — I could click “Goals” and set a goal, instead of reading through YNAB’s Think Long, Act Now handbook to learn about its different types of goals and how they worked — which was why I liked Mint the best.
Mint even lets you know whether you’re going to run out of money before you run out of month.
I’m still finding great new features in Mint, like the part of the iPhone app that shows you how much money you’ve spent this month — and how many days you’ve got left. A lot of us have big expenses like rent at the beginning of each month, so it’s okay if your money bar outpaces your month bar by a little bit. Below, you can see my money/month bar in mid-May (top) compared to the last few days of the month (bottom), where my money and month bars are almost perfectly lined up.
Mint does slip in ads — I noticed one for Future Advisor at one point, which made me smile because I used to write for Future Advisor. (I write for a lot of financial blogs.) These ads are how Mint makes money — and it’s not the only software to do it. “Most free financial softwares make money by providing product recommendations or having advertisements within the software or app,” Dominique Broadway, CEO and personal finance expert at Finances Demystified, explains.
And yeah, the ads are still kinda annoying — but I’ll deal with them just to get the chance to log into Mint every day.
I love YNAB nearly as much as I love Mint.
Maybe exactly as much. Just because you aren’t using a particular personal finance software yourself doesn’t mean you can’t love how perfect it is for someone else, right?
YNAB stands for You Need a Budget, and the name fits because this app is all about budgeting. You aren’t going to connect your 401(k) or your mortgage the way you do with Mint and Personal Capital. You aren’t going to track your net worth. All you’re going to do is take every dollar you earn and — as YNAB puts it — give every dollar a job.
What do I mean by “give every dollar a job”? You’re going to figure out exactly where you will spend each dollar, starting with your most immediate expenses (rent, mortgage, bills, food) and working down to your discretionary expenses (dining out, music, Fun Money).
YNAB is great for people who have a lot of steady, recurring expenses. It’s also great for people who like to get really detailed about their budgeting. (It would never let you get away with piling $650 into an “Everything Else” category.)
Here are a few other things YNAB does really well:
YNAB only lets you budget money you’ve earned.
Not money you’re going to earn someday. Money you’ve earned. If you get a bi-monthly paycheck and that second paycheck hasn’t hit your account yet, YNAB won’t let you budget it. This forces you to deal with the money you actually have, not the money you think you’ll get in the future.
YNAB doesn’t let you go over budget.
If you spend more than you budgeted in one category, YNAB makes you take money out of another category to cover that overspending. There’s no, “Oh, I spent a few dollars extra; it’ll be okay” in YNAB. Those few dollars count, and you have to account for them.
YNAB encourages you to plan for future expenses.
Some people automatically think that any money left over after you budget is “fun money.” YNAB encourages you to think of that extra money as “cash you can put toward future expenses.”
YNAB calls this plan “Age of Money.” Essentially, if you earn money today and give it the job of paying your phone bill 15 days in the future, that money will be 15 days old when you spend it. If you follow the YNAB system and give every dollar a job, more and more of those jobs will be 15 or 30 or 60 days in the future – and your Age of Money will grow.
So will your financial security, by the way. Imagine knowing that you’ve already assigned dollars to the job of “paying rent two months from now.” If you lose your job tomorrow, you’ll still be able to pay your rent for the next two months because you already have dollars assigned to those jobs. Your money is, as the saying goes, working for you.
YNAB completely re-imagines the savings account.
YNAB also wants you to think of your savings account as “cash you can put toward future expenses.” Every dollar gets a job, so start dividing those savings dollars up into “vacation” and “home repair” and “holiday gifts” and everything else you might need to spend them on in the future.
With YNAB, you don’t save just to have dollars in the bank. You save so you can get things done and live the life you want.
YNAB’s free webinars are super-inspiring — and help you understand the YNAB system.
Unlike Mint, YNAB isn’t free. You get a 34-day free trial and then you’re paying either $5 a month or $50 a year. Before you start your YNAB trial, be sure to take the free Get Started webinar. I tried using YNAB without taking the webinar and I was hopelessly confused; then I took the webinar and was all, “Okay, this is amazing; I’ve never thought of money this way before.” (Seriously. If my income and expenses were a little more predictable, I’d use YNAB in a heartbeat.)
Personal Capital focuses on your net worth, not your budget.
A lot of personal finance apps focus on what’s in your checking account and how much you put toward small, everyday expenses. Personal Capital goes to the other extreme and looks at your total net worth: the amount of wealth you have when you add up all your assets (cash, retirement accounts, home, etc.) and subtract your liabilities (mortgage, loan, credit card debt, etc.).
I came very close to choosing Personal Capital instead of Mint as my personal finance tracking system. (I also came very close to choosing YNAB. The decision was hard.) I really liked checking my net worth every day, and I appreciated that the software was less about “did you spend two extra dollars on food this month?” and more about “what does your entire financial picture look like?” But right now, I’m still kinda painting my financial picture: paying off debt, getting that emergency fund set up, and planning for the years in which I’ll be able to take those paycheck dollars I’m currently putting toward debt and emergency funds and start putting them toward investments. Maybe then Personal Capital will be right for me.
Here’s everything else I liked:
Personal Capital focuses everything on your net worth.
Did you spend $500 on groceries this month instead of $450? Did you see Star Wars three times instead of two? Who cares? If your net worth is higher this month than it was last month, you’re doing fine.
Yes, Personal Capital gives you the option to compare this month’s spending against last month’s spending, in case you want to look at trends (or figure out exactly how much money you spent on movie tickets). But all Personal Capital cares about is the BIG NUMBER: your net worth. All of your assets, minus your liabilities, in one big pile. That’s the number you want to grow.
Personal Capital knows you might not need a budget to be financially healthy.
True confession: Every time I’ve tried calorie counting, I’ve gained weight. Why? Because I eat right up to the amount of food the app says I can have and then I eat more because something unexpected happens. Maybe someone invites me to brunch, or maybe I decide that I’m still hungry after my app-allotted cube of cheese.
Some people are like that with budgets. If your budget planner says you can spend $150 on clothing, you’ll always spend $175. That’s a quick way to overdraft your checking account — but it’s also a quick way to always feel terrible about yourself, the way I’d feel when I’d eat that second cube of cheese.
The only way I’ve ever lost weight is by listening to my body, eating when I’m hungry, and stopping when I’ve had enough. That might be what budgeting is like for you. Personal Capital makes it possible to stop focusing on, “I can spend $150, so I need to spend $150,” and start asking yourself what you really need, and if you have enough.
Financial health isn’t necessarily about spending less, either — just like physical health isn’t necessarily about eating less. Personal Capital looks at your total financial health: your assets, your liabilities, your cash, your investments, and your net worth. That’s what matters.
Personal Capital shows you whether your investments are going up or down.
If you’re interested in what’s happening with your investments, Personal Capital is ready to break it down. Check the performance of individual stocks, or sum everything up with the You Index, which shows you exactly how much money you’re gaining or losing, both in percentages and in real dollars.
Mint has this feature too, but Personal Capital puts it front and center — and it’s one of my favorite parts of the software.
Like Mint, Personal Capital is free. If you’re interested in checking out your You Index or taking a look at your net worth, give it a try.
Honorable Mentions
Quicken is a downloadable software program that’s been around for decades. It’s owned by Intuit, the same company that owns Mint, and a lot of the basic functionality is similar. However, it’s designed for a slightly more experienced audience. Quicken doesn’t teach you how to set financial goals, for example; it trusts that you’ll figure out how to incorporate long-term goals into your monthly budget.
Because Quicken is a paid downloadable program, you won’t get stuck staring at a dashboard full of ads. However, you will pay for the privilege: The software runs at $75 for Mac and $30–$95 for the Windows editions. (I tested the Mac version, so I can’t speak to the Windows options; if you need help deciding which Windows edition is right for you, Quicken has a guide.)
Prosper Daily is a free mobile app that only tracks your spending — but it does it really well. When you visit Prosper Daily, you’ll see a list of your recent transactions. Swipe right to approve, and swipe left to flag as potentially fraudulent. Prosper Daily also shows you spending by category and lets you compare expenditures to previous months. It’s a fun tool, but it isn’t a full toolbox.
Prosper Daily lets you compare spending from month to month (left) and breaks down your spending habits by category (right).
The best personal finance software options have four things in common.
It’s easy to use, so you’ll want to check it every day.
The top personal finance software programs sync directly with your banks and credit cards, and some even sync with your investment accounts, student loans, mortgages, and so on. When you make a change to one of those accounts — say, a payment on that credit card — you don’t have to re-enter that transaction on your personal finance software; it’s automatically added to the system.
The best personal finance software programs also have easy-to-use interfaces that allow you to quickly categorize transactions, check transactions against your budget, and see how much money you have left to spend. They also track your progress, so you can log in every day and see how your good habits are leading to better finances. (I check Mint every morning, because I’m so excited to see my new numbers.)
It motivates and teaches you how to do money better.
The best personal finance software programs don’t just provide an interface — they also provide motivation to keep going. Mint, Personal Capital, and YNAB all send out regular emails offering financial tips and reminding you to check in on your accounts. Mint offers a tour of its features, just so you don’t miss anything. YNAB has 10 different webinars to teach you about budgeting and saving. (It knows its audience, too; there’s one webinar titled, “Budgeting for Busy People,” and another titled, “Is Food Eating Your Budget?”)
It uses bank-level security.
If you’re worried about connecting your bank accounts to third-party software, here’s what you need to know. “Any software is hackable, especially when the IRS’ system can be hacked,” Broadway tells us. “However, these softwares put a lot of effort into their security.”
My three favorite financial software programs all use bank-level security, and their websites explain exactly how they keep your data safe. Here are a few excerpts:
Mint: “We use strong security measures designed so only you can access your info. Rather than just a login and password, we also verify who you are from a second source or with information only you will have, like special security questions or a code from a text message or email.”
YNAB: “Your data is encrypted at rest when stored on our servers. That means that even IF someone could break in and steal the hard drives where your data is stored, they couldn’t read it.”
Personal Capital: “Our website’s encryption is rated A by the world-renowned Qualys SSL Labs, a stronger rating than most major banks or brokerages.”
It goes where you go.
You never know when you’re going to need to know how much money you have. That’s why you want personal finance software that works on both desktop and mobile devices. Use your smartphone to check in with your finances while you ride the bus to work, so you know if you have enough money to go to happy hour afterward. Use the desktop interface to categorize transactions and update your budget. The best personal finance software goes where you go and works with your devices to give you accurate, up-to-date information about your money whenever you need it.
Choose your personal finance software based on your financial needs.
Which one should you choose? I’d advise you to think carefully about what you hope to get out of a financial program, and pick the one that’s most likely to help you get it.
For example: I’m a freelancer who earns approximately $60,000 a year — but I don’t earn it in even $5,000-month installments. (Some months I’ll get $3,000 in checks, and some months I’ll get $9,000.) I need a budget planner that will help me stick to roughly $5,000 per month in expenses, including setting aside money for freelance taxes, debt repayment, and savings. Mint is the best of the top three programs to solve that problem, which is why I’ve chosen it as my own personal finance app.
You may be someone who has trouble making a budget or knowing how much to set aside for upcoming expenses. In that case, YNAB may be the best program for you because it solves that problem really well. If you’re a person who is less interested in making a budget and more interested in growing your net worth, check out Personal Capital.
Getting started is easy, but fully setting up your software takes time.
“Investing time in the initial setup is crucial to having the system work for you,” Crimmins says. And Broadway agrees: “There’s a lot of prep work involved in setting budgets, making goals, categorizing transactions, and so on.”
Your setup process will include four major components:
Account sync
5 to 15 minutes (depending on the number of accounts)
That’s the easy one. Type in the name of your bank account (or credit card, or investment brokerage); drop in your password; and you’re done. Repeat until all of your accounts are connected. Some banks may require special access codes that you can find on their websites, but even that’s pretty easy to figure out.
Categorization
30 minutes to 3-plus hours (depending on the number of transactions and whether you want to categorize just this month’s transactions, or do what I did and categorize previous months as well)
Here’s where it starts to get time-consuming. You’re going to need to go through your previous transactions and categorize them into “restaurants,” “groceries,” “clothing,” and so on. Mint and Personal Capital try to guess the categories for you, but they’re not always right. (They both categorized my recent trip to Domino Beauty Boutique as “restaurants” because they assumed I had ordered a pizza, not a haircut.) YNAB makes you categorize everything, at least when you start out.
However, Mint and YNAB have the capacity to learn. I don’t use separate categories for “groceries,” “household goods,” and “beauty products,” for example. I want all of my Safeway and Walgreens purchases categorized under “groceries,” even if there’s a box of Kleenex or a lipstick in there. These programs learn your quirks and follow them, and now my Walgreens purchases always come up pre-categorized as “groceries.”
Budgeting
30 minutes to 1 hour (I actually did all of my budgets pretty quickly, because I had already been tracking my monthly expenses by hand, so I knew how much I was spending on groceries, public transportation, and so on.)
Once you’ve started making decisions about what categories you want to track — like deciding whether you want to track groceries and household goods separately, or call all that spending “groceries” — then it’s time to make a budget that makes sense with your income, your expenses, and your goals. “You should give yourself at least a half an hour to fully set up your budget in the software,” Broadway advises. Don’t rush this — figuring out how you’re going to spend and save your money is one of the most important parts of personal finance.
Revise Against Reality
5 to ∞ minutes (You can always revise and update your budgets or your transaction categories as your finances change.)
I guarantee that, in your first week of using your new personal finance software, you’ll find at least one thing you want to change. Maybe you do want to separate out groceries and household goods. Maybe you realized you didn’t budget enough for gas.
Reality — your actual, day-to-day spending decisions — is going to show you what your budget should be, which is probably different from what you initially wanted it to be. Or, as Crimmins puts it: “Determining where you are spending each month can be surprising.”
Yes, it’s going to take some time to go back and change your budget or re-categorize those transactions. But that’s what you’ll need to do to make sure your personal finance system truly reflects your finances.
Couples get the challenge of financial communication.
If you’re part of a couple, you get to decide how to do personal finance software together. None of the top programs on my list includes options for couples — although YNAB has a Join Forces handbook to help you and your partner budget together — but you can work around it. “Couples who share finances will have one login for their software and people who do it separately will have separate accounts; just depends on the couple,” Broadway explains.
This is going to take a lot of communication, but that’s a good thing. Talking about finances with your partner can help you both do money better.
“The problem couples have is not around the tool; it’s around the communication of how they use the tool.” Lesley-Anne Scorgie says. She’s a personal finance expert who founded MeVest, has been featured on Oprah, and is the bestselling author of Modern Couple’s Money Guide, Well-Heeled, and Rich By Thirty. She gave me so much good advice about how couples can improve their financial communication. “I recommend a weekly conversation. Ten minutes at minimum. This is a habit-forming exercise at first, where for 10 minutes you talk specifically about money. Where it went that week. What’s upcoming. What you need to be conscious of. Having that 10-minute conversation and adding it to your habits is very important.”
Personal finance software can show you data, but only you can change your habits.
YNAB, Mint, and Personal Capital all want to help you. They’ll send you emails with financial tips. They’ll send you alerts to warn you about your spending. But only you can make the decision to spend or save those dollars. No matter how good a personal finance software program is, the only person who can change your finances for the better is you.
This means you need to check in with your personal finance software regularly, to make sure you’re on target. It also means you need to adjust your spending — or your budget — if you aren’t. “Once you’re all set up, make sure you actually look at the software,” Broadway explains. “Many people will take the time to set it up and never look at it again.”
Now that I’ve started using Mint, I am very aware of where my money is going and how much cash I have left before I hit my target $5,000/month spending and saving. I’m also spending less because I don’t want to go over that limit. Instead of buying the fancy tortellini at the grocery store, for example, I’m cooking up the box of couscous I already have in my cupboard. Sure, you could call that a bit of a drag, but I’m getting closer to my goals and I get to eat delicious couscous, which sounds like a win-win to me.
The Bottom Line
I check Mint every day. (Sometimes multiple times a day.) But I also think that YNAB and Personal Capital are great tools — and even Quicken and Prosper Daily have a lot to offer. Your personality and your financial needs are going to be huge factors in which personal finance program is best for you, so use this review as a guide to find your perfect personal finance software. Then start using the tools it gives you to help you reach your financial goals.
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Free Burritos = Life. And Moe’s is Giving Them Away Right Now!
Free burritos make everything better.
And right now, you can get one from Moe’s Southwest Grill — all you have to do is download its rewards app.
Here are all the delicious details.
How to Get a Free Moe’s Burrito
1. Download the Moe’s Rockin’ Rewards app on iTunes or Google Play.
2. Create an account with your email address or Facebook account. (Using Facebook will earn you an extra 50 points.)
3. Click on “Offers” in the bottom right-hand corner of the app, and you’ll see your coupon for a FREE burrito, which you can redeem at the Moe’s nearest you.
4. You can also enter another user’s promo code (many have left theirs in the app’s reviews) to get an additional 500 points — which I’d say is worth it, because 1,000 points will get you $10 in store credit.
The promo runs from now until August 14.
Once you sign up, you must redeem the offer in-store within seven days… But I doubt you’ll wait that long when a free burrito is calling your name!
Want more amazing deals like free food?
Here’s an epic list of 95+ freebies you can get with just your email address.
Your Turn: What’s your favorite thing to order at Moe’s?
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 Free Burritos = Life. And Moe’s is Giving Them Away Right Now! appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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Federal Regulators to Crackdown on Payday Loans
Federal Regulators to Crackdown on Payday Loans
Source CBN.com - CBN News http://ift.tt/1RQGa1j
Source CBN.com - CBN News http://ift.tt/1RQGa1j
HSBC launches £200 current account switch offer - but you need £21k to get it
Current account users who switch to HSBC’s Advance or Premier accounts by 10 July can bag £200 cashback, but there is a catch.
To get the accounts, you need to pay in at least £1,750 a month or a minimum of £10,500 every six months (not including internal transfers) – which equates to a whopping £21,000 a year.
Source Moneywise http://ift.tt/1RQISE7
Why Shopping Is the Enemy of Your Wallet … and Eight Strategies for Reducing Your Shopping Trips
Once a week, I go to a community board game night that’s in an open meeting room that’s conveniently next door to a local board game store. (In fact, that store is the reason that location is used for the community game night… imagine that!)
While there’s nothing for sale in the actual meeting room, many people will actually “meet up” beforehand in the game store because, frankly, it can be kind of boring if you’re the first person to show up as you’re just sitting around waiting for others, and if you’re at a game night going next door to the hobby store.
So, probably once a week or so I find myself in this local game store. I rarely even want any games when I go in there, but I’ve come to notice a few things while I’m in there, things that explain why shopping is bad even if you don’t buy anything. These things hold true regardless of the type of store you’re in.
First, being in a store makes it easy to fulfill minor wants that you would have never otherwise fulfilled. For instance, perhaps there’s a board game (using this board game store example) that I am somewhat interested in playing. I wouldn’t buy it if I didn’t happen to be in that store, but there it is, sitting on the shelf. And look – it’s 15% off today! Suddenly, I find myself strongly drawn to fulfill this minor want.
This can happen in any store. I’ve watched it happen with my wife in a bookstore, my father in a hardware store, and my children in a candy shop. There’s something in the back of your mind that you want that you wouldn’t normally fulfill, but when that item is sitting right in front of you, that want starts singing loudly and becomes a much stronger impulse than before.
Second, wandering around a store makes it easy to generate new wants out of thin air. This is the entire purpose of retail displays – they’re designed to make you look at products, pick them up, and churn yourself up into wanting it.
This works at all kinds of stores. I’ll go into a grocery store, for instance, with a shopping list in hand and no interest or desire to buy anything else, but then I’ll see something on a display and I’ll want to buy it. Regardless of whether I actually decide to buy it at that moment or not, the seed is planted and it might grow up into a purchase later on. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a worthwhile purchase or not, it’s something I didn’t need and didn’t even consider until the store convinced me that I wanted it.
Third, it’s really easy to impulsively buy small things. That’s why there are so many candy and soda displays near the checkout aisle at a grocery store. It’s so easy to just grab one of those items and add it to your cart on the way out, completely impulsively. After all, it’s inexpensive, right?
The stores do this because they know that if everyone buys an inexpensive impulse item or two on each visit, they’re going to be rolling in the dough. Similarly, if you buy this kind of inexpensive impulse item on each visit, you’re going to be spending a lot more money than you think.
It’s clear from all of this that simply visiting a store, regardless of what you might spend in there, is something that has infinite potential to cost you money, whether now or later on. It generates new wants, pushes the desire of your already existing wants, and makes impulse buys so easy. All of those things eventually sap money right out of your pocket.
So, what’s the solution? The solution is simple: reduce your total number of shopping trips in a given month or year.
After all, the fewer times you visit a store, the fewer opportunities you’ll have to generate new wants, have your current minor wants pressed into major desires, and give in to impulse buys.
Before we go any further, let’s stop for a minute and look at what actually constitutes a “shopping trip.” I define a “shopping trip” as any interaction with a business trying to directly sell you something that you choose to participate in. Any time you visit a store, that would be a “shopping trip.” However, any time you visit an online retailer, that would also be a “shopping trip.” Any time you watch a home shopping channel, that’s also a “shopping trip.” Any time you leaf through a catalog would probably be a “shopping trip.”
Since each shopping trip effectively saps money from your wallet directly or indirectly, the key to keeping more money in your wallet is to reduce your shopping trip count, but how do you do that?
Here are eight powerful strategies for reducing your shopping trip count. The goal of each of these strategies isn’t to keep you from buying things that you need or to force some kind of deprived life upon you. The goal is to keep your money in your pocket by simply reducing your wants, many of which are generated and inflated by the shopping experience.
Strategy #1 – Find a New Social Outlet
Many people go shopping in groups as a form of social interaction or group entertainment. You’re hanging out with your friends, you’re bored, why not go to the store to wander around together?
The problem with this picture isn’t hanging out with friends. Social interaction is one of the best parts of life. The problem is with going to a store as part of that social interaction.
When you go to the store in a social way, whether as “retail therapy” or simply a normal social excursion, you have all of the challenges of a shopping trip noted above, as well as the social pressure and social cues that come into play when doing something with your friends.
The easy solution is to simply find a different social outlet than shopping. If you get together with your friends to shop, find something else – pretty much anything else – to do. Go to a state park and walk around on the trails. Have friends over for a movie night. Help each other with home improvement projects. Train together for a 5K run. Have a board game or card game night. There are countless things you can do socially without shopping, so do those things instead of shopping.
Strategy #2 – Find a New Hobby or Emotional Outlet
If you have a routine of engaging in “retail therapy” whenever you feel unhappy with your life, you’re likely subscribing to a routine that actually makes your problems worse over time. If you’re stressed out by money issues and use “retail therapy,” you’re literally making the problem worse. If you’re stressed out by career issues and use “retail therapy,” you’re locking yourself even tighter into your career path because you’re setting yourself up to need more money down the line.
The solution to all of this is to find a new “therapy” for your troubles, one that doesn’t encourage you to spend money and doesn’t encourage you to cultivate material desires.
One of my favorite hobbies is reading, for example. I go to the library, check out an armload of books, and then when I want to de-stress, I just get lost in a book. I also like playing board games and, although that hobby can be expensive in its own right, few things de-stress me more than playing one of my favorite games that already resides on my shelves.
If your main hobbies or your main emotional outlet involves going to a store, put in the time and effort to discover new things that can help you deal with your emotional twists and turns. Try doing things like hiking or vigorous exercise or meditation or something that completely mentally engages you, whatever that might be (for me, board games and books do this).
Strategy #3 – Be Patient With Your Wants
It’s perfectly normal and healthy to have material wants and desires. The problems come in when you’re too quick to give into those material wants and desires.
The reality is that you don’t really need the things that you might be wanting. I don’t need a new board game. I don’t need that delicious looking piece of gruyere cheese at the store. I don’t need a bomber of that new flavor of craft beer. I don’t need a new pair of shoes.
Those things are wants.
The trick is to get those wants under control and to be patient with them, for three reasons.
First of all, if you’re patient and selective with your wants, you’re going to shop a lot less. You have fewer reasons to go into stores if you’re not giving into your wants constantly.
Second, your appreciation of each desire that you fulfill grows greater if you fulfill fewer of them and fulfill them less often. If I get a new board game each week, I don’t appreciate them. If I get a new one once every three months, I really appreciate the new one.
Finally, many wants fade with time. That’s because most wants are fueled by something external to ourselves – we’re influenced by a friend or a magazine article rather than an authentic internal desire. If we’re patient with our wants, most of them simply fade away because in reality they don’t matter to us very much at all.
I like to use the “thirty day rule” when it comes to things that I want. If I decide I want something, I simply jot it down somewhere and don’t buy it right now. Instead, I give it at least thirty days. If that desire is still on my mind in a serious way after thirty days,
Strategy #4 – Plan Ahead for “Necessity” Shopping
It’s a familiar story for a lot of people. They’re on their way home and they realize that they need an item or two to make supper with, so they stop at the store and pick up those items, but before long they’ve added several extras to the cart and the bill is suddenly $40.
If you tend to shop for the things you need on the spur of the moment, you’re making a significant money mistake, because, as I discussed earlier, every shopping trip is loaded with opportunities to fuel wants and desires and to make impulse buys. Grocery stores are particularly nasty in this regard, especially if you stop in while you’re hungry.
A much better approach is to simply plan ahead for necessity shopping. The most obvious way of doing this is to simply plan your grocery store trips in advance by making a meal plan (ideally one that’s based on that week’s grocery store flyer) and then making a list from that meal plan. Then, when you go to the store, you can just cruise through it following your list. The best part? You’ll only need to go to the store once every seven to ten days or so.
For all of our food and household supplies, we go to the grocery store about once every ten days and to a warehouse club about once a month, meaning that we make four grocery/household supply trips in an entire month. This means that there is far less opportunity for us to give in to impulse buying because we’re simply not in the store that often.
Strategy #5 – Delete Easy Access to E-Commerce
Another expensive avenue for shopping comes from online stores like Amazon. Sites like Amazon make it incredibly easy to browse through mountains of goods and then make a purchase without even hardly thinking about it. In fact, when I’m logged into the site, I can go from looking at an item to having the item on its way to me in about ten seconds, and I can do that from basically anywhere on my phone.
That’s not a good thing. It makes fulfilling impulses far too easy.
My strategy for counteracting this is to never, ever store login information for e-commerce websites on my phone or my computer. My password is fairly long and complicated, but I don’t store that password and I log out every time I’m done using the site so that I have to type it in again. This makes it substantially more time consuming to shop online.
I also don’t store credit card information at most online retailers. If I’m going to shop at those sites, I’m going to take the time to get out my card and type in the number again, which also takes up some time.
That extra time is often enough “pushback” to keep me from making less important purchases. I’ll decide that I can just do it later and then the desire to buy that item slowly subsides.
Do a little bit of planning for your store visits. Think about what you’re going to buy in advance and try to coordinate things so that you’re not making routine visits to the same store. A good grocery shopping routine is a great step here.
Strategy #6 – Reorganize Your Home
Many people go shopping out of boredom. They have a feeling that there is nothing new in their life and they use shopping as a tool to seek out that sense of “newness.”
What I’ve found, time and time again, is that there often is something new in your life already, but it comes in the form of things you’ve forgotten about that have found their way into the back of the closet or in a box or in the dark recesses of a storage area.
Likely, you have clothes stowed away in your closet, perhaps even from a few years ago, that you’d be excited to wear except that you’ve forgotten them. You probably have books or DVDs or other items socked away in the back of the closet, items that weren’t intended to be hidden and forgotten but just turned out that way. Most houses are littered with these kinds of things.
Go through your closets, your pantry, your cupboards, your storage places, your junk drawers, your cabinets. Pull everything out and see what things you discover.
It’s highly likely that you find something that surprises and delights you without the need to go to the store, spend money, and be enticed into desiring new things.
Strategy #7 – Find Entertainment Outside of Mass Media
Like it or not, the things you see on television, in magazines, and in many movies are littered not only with advertisements, but with product placement directly within the entertainment. Companies pay quite well to stick advertisements all over the place, but they pay just as much to sneak their product right into the articles or right into the television program or right into the movie, ideally in a way that highlights how great that product is and thus encourages you to buy it.
While this isn’t strictly a “shopping trip” per se, it certainly does have the effect of increasing the strength of material desires. The whole purpose of marketing is to make you want to buy things, and much of modern entertainment mostly seeks to deliver that marketing right to your door.
So just skip it. Find something new to entertain yourself with.
Like what? Read a book. Go hiking. Play soccer. Go fishing. Listen to some music and dance. Watch an independent movie. Start a garden – or tend to the one you have. Do something community-related. Play a board game. Build something with your bare hands. Just avoid things that are supported by advertising or are littered with product placement.
Strategy #8 – Focus Your Energy on Practical Self-Improvement
The response that many people have to these ideas is that it’s going to leave them without many of the things they do regularly. It’s going to be boring. It’s going to result in a lot of unfilled hours.
That’s not a sad thing. That’s opportunity to build a better life.
Fill some of that time with new hobbies, sure, but also fill some of it with things that improve you. Take some classes so that you can earn a degree or certification. Get some exercise and improve your body and energy level. Read some challenging books that really stretch your mind. Redecorate your home and make it inviting to guests so that it’s much more fun to have a house party or a dinner party.
If you’re having to cut shopping trips out of your life, don’t just sit around with nothing to do. As the saying goes, the devil finds work for idle hands to do. Instead, fill that extra time and use that extra energy to make your life better, not just today, but over the long run.
Final Thoughts
One of the best moves I’ve made in my life over the last several years is to simply cut down on my number of shopping trips. Because of that, I actually want a lot less than I used to. I simply don’t have any desire to go shopping at all and I can’t even really name anything that I want to buy.
Having that kind of mindset makes it very easy to not spend money needlessly and instead use it for better things, like a financial life that’s free from debt and well along the path to financial independence.
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This Guy Has 100,000 Maggots in His Backyard. And It’s Making Him Money
What would you do if your husband told you he was going to start breeding maggots?
Probably be grossed out, right? Or at least skeptical?
Paul Rabaut’s wife sure was.
But now she’s totally on board with his hobby — because she’s realized A) It’s really not gross or dirty, B) It’s good for the environment and C) It earns them some extra money.
Seriously? He earns money with MAGGOTS? As soon as I heard that, I had to learn more.
So, along with our video producer and photographer, I drove out to the suburbs of Central Florida, where Rabaut lives with his wife… and 100,000 maggots.
Keep reading to learn their unique story — and how you could start a maggot farm that brings in an extra $100 per week.
Maggots? Yuck! Why?!
Though Rabaut now earns a small side income with maggots, that wasn’t what motivated him to start breeding them.
As a biology professor, his main goal was to reduce food waste.
In his verdant ecosystem of a backyard — filled with chickens, tilapia-farming tanks and more than 50 edible plants — he explained his outlook.
“With our current model (in the U.S.), we take all this waste, and we throw it into a landfill,” he explained. “It just sits there and rots and creates methane gas. It’s highly toxic to the environment.”
Maggots, however, change all that.
“These guys take all those food scraps and turn them back into food for other plants or animals,” Rabaut said.
He told me that’s also why his compost bin doesn’t smell.
“They eat it so fast that it doesn’t really have a chance to rot,” he explained. “They also mix it, which adds oxygen, so it doesn’t break down aromatically.”
And, before you get grossed out, know this: When maggots turn into flies (called soldier flies), they don’t spread disease.
“A normal house fly lands on some poop, eats some of that poop, then lands on your sandwich,” Rabaut explained. “By doing that, they transfer things like E. coli and salmonella. But since soldier flies don’t have a mouth, they don’t do anything to you.”
Even better, they actually reduce the numbers of disease-ridden flies in your backyard.
“These guys eat so much stuff so quickly, they outcompete all the other bad flies,” Rabaut said. “Their pheromones also ward off other flies, so they act like a giant fly repellent.”
Who on Earth Would Pay for Maggots?
Fine, so maggots are a lot cooler and cleaner than I initially thought.
But still, who would PAY for them?
Lizards. Or, more specifically, their owners.
Because maggots are chock full of protein and calories and pretty much the filet mignon of lizard food.
Charging $10 for a container of 200 maggots, Rabaut has no problem finding customers among owners of ornamental lizards, like geckos, chameleons and bearded dragons.
Want to Become a Maggot Farmer?
I don’t know about you, but becoming a maggot farmer is sounding more and more appealing — especially because it’s easy to do on the side of a full-time job.
If you’re interested, it’s imperative to first understand the life cycle of a maggot/soldier fly.
Source: http://ift.tt/1Xkxw3X
Note the pupae stage is when you’ll sell the maggots, as this is when they’re most calorie-dense.
Got all that? Time to don your farming cap!
Here’s how to start your maggot-breeding biz:
1. Build a Maggot Bin
What the heck is a maggot bin? I’m so glad you asked!
Here’s a photo of Rabaut’s maggot bin, which cost him about $100 in supplies.
When maggots are ready to pupate, they seek dryer surfaces (ie: not the pile of food waste); the sloping sides facilitate their climb.
“These angled sides kind of push them into these holes,” Rabaut explained.
“When they want to form into a cocoon, they walk up the plank and fall into those cups — and then I collect them. That way, I never have to fish for them in the bin.”
Brilliant, eh?
2. Fill it With Food Scraps
Now, where does one find maggots? Is there a maggot catalog you can order from?
Nope, for better or worse, maggots are free.
Fill the bin with food scraps, and “they’ll find you,” Rabaut said.
You may have “Flymageddon” for a while. But as explained earlier, the maggots will soon take over.
3. Collect Your Pupae
If you’ve built your bin like Rabaut, it’ll be a cinch to collect your money-makin’ maggots.
You can then put them into a plastic container and cover them with wood chips. As long as they’re not exposed to light, they won’t turn into flies — and you can keep them in your house until you’re ready to sell them.
Bonus? “They don’t eat, so you don’t have to provide them with any food or water,” Rabaut said.
4. Find a (Regular) Buyer
So far, Rabaut has only used Craigslist to sell his maggots.
“Every time I put up an ad, I get a bunch of hits,” he said. But, he warned this process is “very effort-intensive.”
He’s stuck with it because he doesn’t sell his maggots very frequently, choosing instead to feed them to his chickens and tilapia.
If you want to scale your business, he recommended finding regular customers — like lizard breeders or pet stores.
5. Keep Feeding Them
Yes, those are tortilla chips.
You’d probably also want to create a relationship with a local source of food scraps, since the amount you and your family create is probably not enough to feed 100,000 maggots.
You could ask local restaurants or businesses. Rabaut, for example, takes food waste from the college he works at.
Though his maggots could eat about 80 pounds of food waste per day, “they’ll survive on whatever I give them.”
“That’s what’s really nice about them,” he explained. “If I don’t feed you for two weeks, you get angry; if I don’t feed them for two weeks, they just slow their metabolism.”
On average, he feeds them about 100 pounds of scraps per week.
How Much Money Can You Earn With Maggots?
With that amount of food, Rabaut harvests around 10 pounds of maggot pupae per week.
So, if you sold your maggots at $10 per pound, you could earn around $100 per week.
For not a lot of work, either. If you lined up a regular customer and source of food waste, Rabaut said the ongoing maintenance required would be “super little.”
“Anyone can do it,” he said…
Will you?
Your Turn: What do you think about maggot farming? Cool or gross?
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 This Guy Has 100,000 Maggots in His Backyard. And It’s Making Him Money appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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How to Answer 20 of the Most Common Job Interview Questions
In about 14 years of working, I’ve sat through a dozen or so job interviews.
While every job may be unique, the interviews often are not.
Some companies may throw you a curveball or even engage you in a candid conversation — but most job interviews will simply guide you through the same series of basic questions.
It sounds boring (and it can be), but you can actually use this repetitiveness to your advantage!
Before heading to your next job interview, arm yourself with answers to these common questions:
Why is the interviewer asking for your work history with your resume sitting inches away?
They may just want to hear how you frame your work history.
Or maybe they want you to explain any gaps in employment or frequent job-hopping.
This is your chance to paint the picture of your work experience in a more useful and interesting way than the mundane list on your resume.
Time to show off!
You applied to this job because you believed you could do it. Why was that again?
Prepare ahead of time, and think carefully about this question.
Every interviewee is going to tout their strong work ethic, ability to be a team player, experience in the field and other generic traits necessary to do the job well.
Stand out by showcasing your unique strengths.
What do you bring to a team that most people don’t? What made you shine in previous jobs? Why do your friends love being around you?
Also make sure you know what the company is looking for. Read the job description carefully.
It tells you exactly what they’re looking for — and even includes some buzzwords they might want to hear!
What you really want to say is, “I didn’t come here to talk about that.”
What you might think you should say is, “Sometimes I’m just too excited about my job.”
What you actually should say is… something real.
Everyone enters a job with some kind of weakness. Let the interviewer know you recognize yours, and explain how you’re working to eliminate it.
I’ve had to bluff my way through plenty of food service job interviews asking me to explain what was so special about the giant, hamburger-slinging corporation I was trying to work for.
If I could conjure an answer other than, “You pay money and don’t do drug tests,” you can prepare a few reasons you’d love to work for your potential employer.
What do you love about the company’s mission and the work it does? What about its culture appeals to you? Do you have any special connection to their services as a customer or community member?
You might have your life together better than I do, but at 30 I don’t know how to answer this ubiquitous question.
In an interview, I’m not afraid to say, “I don’t know,” and it hasn’t disqualified me from a position yet.
If you want to be (or at least appear) more decisive, mention your future dreams and aspirations. What the interviewer really wants to hear is you have goals and working here will help you achieve them in the long run.
Your answer to this question should be pretty straightforward.
But if parting with your current or latest job wasn’t amicable, expecting this question in advance can help you prepare the, er, most “flattering” way to present the truth.
This is your chance to brag!
Take a breather: This is one of the more simple job interview questions.
You can probably even tell the whole truth this time.
Gah! I’ve been blindsided by this one.
It’s not a problem to acknowledge past mistakes in a job interview — but it can sting to be surprised by this one.
Present a mistake, then follow it up with what you learned or how you fixed whatever problem you might have caused — at work, school or in life.
Can you guess the best way to prepare an answer for this question?
Ask your boss and co-workers!
If your job doesn’t offer feedback while you work, ask for it. It’ll help you improve in your current position and prepare yourself for the next one.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a Midwest-raised introvert.
I don’t excel at explaining my special tics to a stranger — without sounding like a weirdo.
But that’s sort of the point. This is a chance to showcase your personality and why it’s a good fit for the company.
You don’t have to lean too hard on your qualifications yet — save that for the next question.
By this point, an interviewer knows your work history, experience, qualifications and even a bit about your personality.
What they want to know now is Why should they hire you and not someone else?
Explain what you alone bring to the position and why no one else can do it like you will. Explain how you’ll uniquely fit into the team.
If you’re intimidated by the idea of talking about money, you’re not alone.
But ultimately, your job comes down to money, so you can’t avoid it.
Research your industry and position before you start to interview, and determine your comfortable salary range.
Keep that number in mind, along with any accompanying benefits — and be prepared to explain why you deserve them.
If you have a long work history, bragging about your work ethic might be easy.
If you’re interviewing for your first job — or your first professional job — this could take some digging.
Consider any experience in which you took impressive initiative on a project — in a volunteer role, on a class project, as a part of a student organization or even in a church group.
If you can’t think of one now, start taking some initiative!
When an interviewer asks about a disagreement with your boss, what she’s really asking is, “How do you resolve a disagreement with your boss?”
Don’t harp on the details.
Focus on how gracefully you handle tricky situations.
This question is less about selling yourself to a company — finally! — and more about determining whether you’ll jive with potential co-workers.
Be honest.
If you can’t stand a Chatty Kathy and hate Happy Hour with the staff, mention it (kindly).
Explain what kind of team you’ll excel with, so you can avoid being stuck with a group you can’t stand.
Why does your future employer care whether you’re into basket-weaving or kickboxing on the weekends?
I can’t say for sure.
But I suspect this is just one more way to get to know you and your personality.
Use it to showcase your passion — an employer wants to know what gets you up in the morning, and what lights a fire under you.
Like talking about your preferred co-workers, describing your ideal workday can help the interviewer understand how you’ll fit in — or not — with the company culture.
Go beyond your preferred schedule for the day.
Explain when and how you work best, so they understand you know how to capitalize on your (and, eventually, their) time.
Some people thrive on looming deadlines and a packed-to-the-minute schedule.
Some shut down the second the pressure’s on. Which are you?
There’s not a set right way to manage under pressure, so you don’t have to bluff.
Instead, consider this pending question motivation to learn how to keep your cool and stay productive when work gets tough, so you can brag about your skills in an interview.
We love this one in journalism, too.
It may sound like a cop-out — ‘scuse me, but aren’t you the interviewer here?
Actually, asking what questions we haven’t asked is a smart interviewer’s way of learning what’s important to an interviewee.
Take this opportunity to point out uncommon successes and relevant experiences that they wouldn’t think to ask about.
The most common interviewing advice I hear across industries is, “Have something to ask them.”
It didn’t always make sense to me when I was first starting to work. It felt forced.
And, anyway, what questions was I going to ask? I did my research before applying for the job.
But showing your curiosity and interest in the company is important. Ask away!
Prepare for your next job interview by right-clicking the full checklist to save it.
Your Turn: What job interview questions have surprised you? Share them in the comments to help other readers prepare!
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).
The post How to Answer 20 of the Most Common Job Interview Questions appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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