Private community bill advances to Senate

A bill approved by the state House that would mandate the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office to investigate or mediate homeowner disputes in common interest communities won’t advance in the Senate before mid September.The bill sponsored by state Rep. Rosemary Brown, R-189, would require the AG’s Bureau of Consumer Protection to investigate or mediate complaints filed by a unit owner against his or her property owners association alleging violation of community [...]

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Maintenance crews work on improvements at East Stroudsburg schools

Summer break is heavy maintenance season for schools with many projects happening at once. East Stroudsburg Area School District staff is working on a number of projects including new windows in the library and improvements at a cost of $4,100 and improvements to the rifle range at South High School.Located near the football stadium concession stand, the indoor rifle range had been showing some wear and tear damage- especially at the target area on the steel back stop where, for years, [...]

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Hideaway makes its presence felt in Cherry Valley

Some restaurants craft their business plan on being a destination, others on being a location for local residents.But Tom Modzelewski and wife, Maureen Mullins-Modzelewski, regard the CherryCreek Hideaway on Route 191 in Stroud Township as a blending of the two. They took ownership of the restaurant in October 2015.“We had a lot of people at the bar from the area last night,” said Tom recently. “Half of our business is out of Cherry Valley where some people [...]

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Deeds done, Sunday, July 24 2016

Chestnuthill TownshipRonald T. and Deborah J. Myszka to Sean P. and Suzette M. Mott, Lot 22, Fox Croft, $240,000Jackson TownshipDenise Scarlatos to Tyree and Danielle E. Waters, Lot 605, Section 1, The Woods at Mountain Spring Lake, $265,000Davin J. and Alison A. Carr-Chellman to Robert J. and Donna M. Hall, Unit 450, Phase 5A, Northridge at Camelback, $225,000Middle Smithfield TownshipDE&S [...]

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Our Family’s Strategies for Saving a Mint on the Back-to-School Season

It’s an annual tradition of sorts for parents all across the country. The summer starts to wind down. They get a letter from the school telling them about their student’s enrollment for the next year and who their teacher is. They start seeing hints of “back to school” at the store and in their mailbox. Their children are dressed in clothes that are almost too small and are worn from a summer of play.

It’s time to start thinking about going back to school.

When I think about the fact that we have three school-aged children (our youngest starts first grade this year), I can’t help but wonder where the time has gone. Here we are, though, with our children chattering at the dinner table, comparing thoughts about teachers and letting their younger siblings know what to expect in the coming school year.

This, of course, means that our three children are going through the “back to school” process all at once. That means buying school supplies, replacing grubby shoes, purchasing clothes that are appropriate for the fall and early winter here in Iowa (the temperature starts dropping in September and we can have some really cold days by mid-October), and so on.

No matter how you slice it, it’s an expensive period. School supply shopping and clothes shopping for three children at once? Ouch.

Over the years, though, we’ve developed a number of strategies that really help with cutting down on the back to school expenses, and this year, more than ever before, we’re putting them to the test.

We Utilize Tax-Free Holidays

Many states offer tax-free holidays throughout the year on certain types of goods. These tax-free holidays offer a chance to shop for particular types of goods without paying any sales tax on your purchases, which saves money buying locally. On top of that, many stores offer sales on the tax-free items on those days.

In Iowa, for example, the state offers a tax-free holiday on clothing and footwear on the first weekend in August. Because of that, many people buy school clothes on that weekend and retailers often offer big sales to attract all of those buyers. It’s a perfect time to buy things like shoes and some clothes.

Other states offer tax-free holidays on other items, from clothes and computers to school supplies and shoes.

Because of this tax-free holiday and its timing, it sets the schedule for our back-to-school shopping, at least in the clothes and shoes department. We use a few additional strategies in the days before the tax-free weekend to minimize our spending during that weekend.

We Actively Swap and Hand Down Clothes

At some point just before the tax-free holiday, we spend some time evaluating our clothes. What still fits? What’s worn out? What can be handed down from our older children to our younger ones? What can our youngest one hand down to younger relatives? What hand-me-downs from older relatives are finally the right size for our children to wear?

This kind of evaluation helps us figure out what we actually need. It also allows us to get plenty of use out of the clothing that they wear, plus we are able to “pay it forward” with regards to the clothes that were handed down to us.

Surprisingly, this process doesn’t take all that long. We just take out all of the clothes and make several piles – one “keeper” pile for each child and a “hand-me-down or giveaway” pile. We then figure out the “keeper” pile for each child and see what’s needed.

We Shop for Clothes Secondhand First

Before we jump into buying new clothes during the tax free holiday, we do some shopping at secondhand clothing stores first. We try to fill the holes in wardrobes there first, as the prices are far lower than what we’ll find during the tax-free holiday.

We can afford to be really selective when doing this, but at the better local used clothing stores, there is usually a lot of good used clothing almost every time we visit. Yes, some of it is worn and, yes, some of it doesn’t suit our children’s tastes or sizes, but all we have to do is find one or two items and the trip is well worth it.

On a typical used clothing trip, we find three or four outfits for each child, which drastically reduces our tax-free holiday clothes buying needs.

We Shop for Supplies at Home First

What about school supplies?

Our first tactic is to simply “shop at home.” We go through all of our art supply boxes and closets, looking for school supplies from previous years, and determine how many of them are still usable.

Things like pencil cases, backpacks, erasers, pencils, pens, rulers, and so on from previous years can almost always be reused. We also often have new supplies from previous supply shopping trips (see below), so there’s even more savings.

We usually just collect everything that might be reusable, dump it all out on the kitchen table, and mark the reused things off of their school supply lists.

We Take Advantage of Summer Yard and Garage Sales

Our area tends to have constant yard sales all throughout the summer. Different cities and towns host city-wide yard sales all throughout the spring and summer and many individuals have yard sales outside of those dates, so if you’re willing to visit sales, you can often find them.

What do we buy there? Everything that works for back to school. We’ve picked up clothing, binders, rulers, art supply boxes, and protractors at yard sales in the past year or two, all of them for literally pennies and all of which wound up being used by our children at school.

As always, going to yard sales is like rolling the dice as you don’t know what you’re going to find or at what quality, but I seem to always find a handful of gems during a day of hitting yard sales.

We Use Flyers

A lot of stores – both clothing stores and more general department stores – issue flyers in the week or so before Iowa’s tax-free weekend and they’re virtually always loaded down with clothing sales. So, a few days before that tax free holiday, we sit down with those flyers and plot out where we’re going to shop for clothes.

A few weeks after that, the department stores start in with strong back to school sales on their school supplies, so, again, we’ll sit down with the flyers and see what’s on sale that matches up well with their school supply lists. We often end up hitting multiple stores because of the quantity of items we’re buying; it actually warrants two or three stops if the biggest bargains at each store are different.

Honestly, it’s not always the same stores. Sometimes we have a gift card for a particular store, which swings the balance. At other times, we’ll have a coupon that gives us a certain percentage off at a certain store, which also can really swing the balance. Sometimes, we buy many of our supplies at a dollar store. It really just depends on what’s going on this year, and we figure that out by looking at lots of flyers.

We Use Coupons, Too

Often, there are coupons in other places besides flyers for back to school items. For example, we’ll browse Target’s Cartwheel coupon app looking for additional coupons. Although Target might not be the best choice overall, coupons can certainly help if you’re choosing Target for other reasons (such as a gift card or a percentage discount) or because they have one or two specific highly discounted items in their flyer.

For us, coupons are the icing on the cake rather than the main course for saving money on back to school shopping. Coupons represent a small additional discount – I liken it to printing off dollar bills if we’re buying lots of items – but the bigger discounts come from planning around tax-free holidays and finding the best bargain prices from the flyers. Coupons just add additional discounts to the pile.

We Get Plain Notebooks and Folders and Allow Children to Decorate Them with Stickers

Stores love to sell notebooks and folders with popular cartoon characters and pop culture figures depicted on them. Of course, stores also love to mark up those items to an absurd degree compared to the plain-covered items right next to them. It’s pretty hard to justify paying $2 for a notebook with Pokemon on the cover when there are functionally identical plain notebooks stocked right next to them for $0.10.

Unsurprisingly, though, our kids gravitate straight toward the notebooks with characters on them. They want to have the “cool” notebooks at school, and I understand that.

One way we “compromise” on this issue is by buying just plain notebooks and folders, and then letting the children pick out a pack of stickers with which to decorate the folders and notebooks, however they’d like. If they’re into Star Wars, for example, they could buy a pack of Star Wars stickers and put the stickers all over. They can also use art supplies at home to add whatever decorations they’d like to their notebooks.

Doing this gives our children a great deal of creative freedom, creates a great art project for them to work on in the days before school starts, and also saves us quite a lot of money as the much cheaper notebooks more than subsidize the cost of a few packs of stickers.

We Limit the Items where Children Can Choose

With many of the items that we’re buying during the back to school season, there are loads of potential items for our children to choose from. There are infinite variations on shoes, shirts, pants, notebooks, and on and on and on.

Naturally, our children want at least some input into this conversation. They don’t want to wear shirts in colors they dislike or carry a notebook with a popular culture figure on the front that they dislike, either. My oldest two children have somewhat more specific tastes as well – my oldest one has very, very specific tastes in pants, for example.

Our way of handling this is very simple. We tell them that we’re going to do the selecting of the items, but if they find similar items at the same price, we’re happy to substitute them as long as the other items aren’t offensive in some fashion (for example, we won’t let our children wear shirts with offensive slogans or clothes with tasteless cuts or something like that).

This gives our children significant freedom of choice. At the same time, it also teaches them to look at the prices when they’re picking out clothes and other items. They can’t just grab the one that they want – they have to think about the prices, too. It doesn’t cost us a dime and it makes everyone involved happier.

We Allow Them a Small ‘Budget’ for Items Beyond the Minimum

Of course, sometimes they spot an item that they “must have.” Maybe it’s a new backpack that’s nicer than the model that we chose for them. Perhaps it’s a sturdier and higher quality notebook (something I personally can identify with). Perhaps it’s a pack of really nice gel pens. Maybe it’s the coolest t-shirt they’ve ever seen.

We handle this by giving each kid a small “back to school allowance” that they can use to “upgrade” any of the items that we might purchase for them. For example, if we’re going to spend $8 on a shirt that they don’t like and they spot one for $15 that they love, they can “upgrade” that shirt for $7 out of their “back to school allowance.”

This allows us, as parents, to come up with reasonable shopping lists for each child that are reasonably balanced from child to child. We don’t spend more on one child than another (outside of the variances in their back to school lists), so any situations where one child has something “nicer” than another child is solely due to their own choices.

It also helps us to teach our children how to budget and how to not be jealous of the things that others have while also keeping our overall back to school spending in line.

We Buy Extras of the Items for Our Older Children If the Bargain Is Big

As our children grow older, the items they need for back to school purposes become more consistent. They need pencils. They need pens. They need notebooks. They need erasers. Those things pop up year after year after year on their lists.

Our children are also progressing through the same grades at the same schools as their older siblings, so the “back to school” list one of them had one year is usually identical to the list that their younger sibling will have in a year or two.

Because of that, we keep our eyes peeled for huge loss leader discounts, like boxes of pencils for a quarter or notebooks for a nickel or composition books for a nickel or rulers for a quarter. When we find those sales, we’ll buy two or three or five or ten of the item right now, knowing that we’ll be able to use them for the next few years during back to school time.

We keep these extra items in a box with our other art supplies so that when the back to school period happens, we can just pull out that box of unused school supplies and use them to take care of a healthy portion of our list before we ever leave the house.

Basically, this allows us to stretch those top-notch sales across multiple years of back to school shopping.

There’s a secondary benefit to this approach, too. Often during the year, our children will come home and announce that they’re out of pencils or that they lost their ruler. In those situations, we can just turn to that box of very cheap supplies we bought in bulk and pull out the exact items that they need (most of the time).

We Watch for Potential Art Boxes

One item that often pops up on our school lists is the art supply box. They need something to keep their markers, colored pencils, scissors, glue and other such materials in when they’re not actively working on an art project. The teacher usually gives some free reign regarding the specifics of the box.

Of course, if you actually buy an art supply box at the store during the back to school rush, they tend to be fairly high priced unless you buy a very simple and basic one.

Our solution is simple: we’re always looking for potential art supply boxes. We don’t just use the ones that are placed out with the other back to school items. Instead, we watch for all kinds of variations on the idea, from lunch boxes to interesting plastic containers, and sometimes those items fall into our laps for free.

For example, we were given some great little plastic containers with hinges on them when a friend brought some cookies and told us to just keep the container. That container became an art supply box for our daughter the next year and she decorated it herself with some of her “back to school” stickers (see earlier in the article).

Final Thoughts

For some, it might seem a little early to start thinking about “back to school” needs, but the reality is that school starts for many children within the next few weeks and many of the best back to school strategies require a little bit of time and patience. It takes time to shop for clothes at several different stores, for example, and it takes time to look at the flyers from several different stores to figure out which ones offer the best deals on the items you need.

What’s the reward for all of that effort? The reward is that you’re going to save a bundle of money on the back to school shopping that every parent seems to have to deal with. You’ll have plenty of supplies for now, supplies tucked away for the future, and plenty of well-fitting clothes in good shape, all purchased at very low prices.

It just takes a little bit of time and planning to save a lot of cash.

Good luck!

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Should You Ever Refinance a Car Loan?

More than half of used cars and a full 86.3% of new cars were purchased with a loan in the first quarter of 2016, according to Experian. The average new car buyer borrowed $30,032 for 68 months for their new ride, while the average used car buyer borrowed $20,723 for 66 months.

Compare those figures to last year’s, and you’ll notice an expensive trend. Each year, Americans commit to borrowing more money to buy both new and used cars – and to repaying their loans for an even longer stretch of time. Remember when most people took out a car loan for 48 months or less? These days, people are spending so much on cars, they’re forced to drag those monthly payments out longer than ever – and even up to 84 months.

Worse yet is the amount of interest we pay collectively. As the Experian study notes, the average interest rate on new cars was 4.79% early this year, while used cars financed at a dealership carried an average rate of 7.81%. Used car loans using independent financing, on the other hand, came with an average interest rate of 12.22% that quarter.

Imagine a $20,000 loan at 12.22% for 66 months. After forking over $418 per month for five-and-a-half-years, you’ll have paid $27,566 for a car that is now worth just a few thousand bucks.

Heck, even at 4.79%, you’ll pay a lot of interest to drive your new car off the lot. With the average new car loan of $30,032 set at 4.79% for 68 months, you’ll wind up spending $34,352 and forking over $505 per month for almost six years of your life.

Either way you cut it, that’s a high price to pay for a depreciating asset.

Should You Ever Refinance a Car Loan?

If you find yourself with a car payment you can’t really afford, you have several options to consider. Unfortunately, none of them are all that attractive.

First, you can attempt to sell your car or trade it in for something cheaper. If you owe more than your car is worth at this point, however, dropping your car is much easier said than done unless you’re willing and able to make up the difference in cash.

The second option is to bite the bullet and pay off your car. It might take a while, but you can save money on interest and speed up the payoff process by making additional payments towards your car loan. As long as your auto loan doesn’t come with prepayment penalties, this is a smart option to consider. Unfortunately, if you’re struggling to make your monthly payments in the first place, it’s pretty unlikely you’ll be able to pay more each month.

Lastly, some people also consider refinancing their car loan. While that might not seem like a great idea, there are times and situations where doing so actually makes sense.

• Related: Best Auto Loans for 2016

Three Situations When Refinancing Your Car Loan Might Make Sense

Just like refinancing your home can help you save money on interest and lower your monthly payment, the same situation may apply to your car. Here are a few instances when refinancing your car loan might make sense:

• Interest rates have dropped. If interest rates have dropped considerably since you purchased your vehicle, you might save money by refinancing your car at today’s low rates. This is especially true if you believe you can get a loan with a rate that is considerably lower than what you’re paying now.
• Your credit score has improved since you took out your loan. If your credit score has improved dramatically since you purchased your new or used car, you might qualify for a much lower interest rate when you refinance, which could help you save quite a bit of money. Consider that 12.22% interest rate in the above example — that’s what many people are paying if they’re unable to qualify for dealer financing, probably due to less than perfect credit. If your credit score improves enough to secure a more reasonable rate, such as 5%, the savings would be tremendous.
• You need a lower payment to avoid default. If you’re struggling to afford your car payment and worried about defaulting on the loan, refinancing into a new loan with a lower rate or longer term can help provide some breathing room. Just remember that extending your loan for a longer period of time will typically cost you more in the long run, not less. However, that’s a trade-off worth making if it spares you a default.

What to Consider When Refinancing a Car Loan

Refinancing a car loan can make sense in the situations described above, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t risks involved. Before you pull the trigger and jump into a brand new loan, you should consider these potential disadvantages:

• Extending the length of your car loan can lead to paying more – not less – on your loan. While lowering your monthly payment can improve your cash flow, that doesn’t mean it will help you save money in the long run. By refinancing your car loan and extending the length of repayment, you can wind up paying more for your car than if you had simply stayed the course with your original loan.
• Lowering your monthly payment could leave you ‘upside-down’ on your loan longer. If your auto refinance extends your repayment period, you might build equity at a much slower rate. Meanwhile, your car will depreciate in value. As a result, you might owe more than your car is worth, or be “upside down” on your loan, for a longer period of time.
• Watch out for prepayment penalties. The vast majority of car loans don’t charge a prepayment penalty, but that doesn’t mean that yours doesn’t. Make sure your existing car loan doesn’t charge a fee to pay off your loan early. If it does, you’ll need to factor the cost of that fee into your decision.
• Refinancing isn’t always free. Most of the time, you can refinance your auto loan without incurring any additional fees for doing so. Still, you should always inquire about fees or charges with your chosen lender before you pull the trigger.

If you’re stuck with a car loan that doesn’t fit in with your lifestyle, refinancing is one option to consider. If you choose this route, however, it’s important to remember that refinancing won’t automatically leave you better off.

To benefit as much as possible from your refinance, you should opt for a new loan with a lower rate and an equivalent or shorter repayment timeline if possible. That way, you’ll get the benefit of a lower rate without paying on your car loan longer.

If you have to extend the length of your loan to qualify for some reason, you can always continue paying the same amount you paid before — with the peace of mind that you could make a smaller payment one month if money gets tight. As long as your new loan doesn’t come with prepayment penalties, you can pay it off as quickly as you want – and still save money on interest along the way.

The Bottom Line

Refinancing an auto loan can be a smart move in certain situations, but other times, it might only extend the pain. Make sure to run the numbers and consider both your short-term and long-term financial goals before you get tied up in yet another loan you’ll have to pay off.

It might also pay to ask yourself why you keep borrowing money in the first place. If all you need is basic transportation, buying a used car and paying in cash might leave you wealthier in the long run.

Related Articles:

• The Simple Dollar Guide to Auto Loans
• Two-Sided Coin: Should You Always Buy a Used Car?
• Best Bad Credit Car Loans of 2016

Have you ever refinanced an auto loan? How much do you owe on your car, and what is your monthly payment? 

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Dealing With Debt? Here’s What You Need to Know About Collection Agencies

Did you know your debt can take on a life of its own?

John Oliver dived into the the lifespan of debt earlier this summer on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” by purchasing — and then forgiving — nearly $15 million in medical debt.

To show how easy it was to buy the debt for less than pennies on the dollar, Oliver created a company and paid $60,000 for 9,000 people’s debt.

Here’s our piece on the Debt Buying industry from last night. Your move, Oprah… https://t.co/yhZfbCuY5f

— John Oliver (@iamjohnoliver) June 6, 2016

Lucky them.

When you stop paying off your debts, they don’t just go away. Aside from wrecking your credit score, unpaid debt can unleash a torrent of pesky collectors, including some who don’t play by the rules.

But there are certain points along the way — especially early in the process — where you can take action and stop your debt from morphing into a nightmare.

Here’s what you need to know.

Addressing Debt Earlier is Better

Pamela Moore/Getty

The first three to six months are critical in your debt’s lifespan. Within this timeframe, your debt is still in the hands of its original owner — your bank, your credit card company or another lender.

However, if you default on a loan or stop making credit card payments and the original creditor can’t get you to pay up, it’ll eventually sell your debt to a debt collection agency.

And this is when things get trickier.

“A lot of people that come to us have kind of put their head in the sand and they just ignore the problem,” says Thomas Nitzsche, a spokesman for ClearPoint Credit Counseling, a nonprofit finance education group.

“That can limit their options as far as what they can do through debt management or credit counseling or an in-house financial hardship program with creditors.”

When the original creditor owns your debt, it’s easier to get on a payment plan or negotiate lower interest rates. You may also be able to negotiate with your creditor to waive late and overdraft fees.

“It’s a night and day difference, early acting,” Nitzsche explains. “Our average client that starts a debt management program increases their credit score by 106 points within the first 36 months, but typically that is only successful if the person reaches out before their debt goes to collections.”

Your lender will sell your debt for a discount because it wants to get so-called bad debts off its books and because it can write off the debt as a loss come tax season.

Nitzsche says if you’re making monthly payments, but they fall below the minimum payment amount, your lender will consider it a missed payment and eventually notify you that it’s sending your debt to collections.

How Do Debt Collectors Get My Debt?

SasinParaksa/Getty

Now a debt collection agency has your debt.

This third-party company you’ve probably never heard of will begin contacting you — sometimes frequently and aggressively — to get you to pay.

They’ll likely report your debt as “in collection” to the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian — which will hurt your credit score.

These debt collection agencies pay the bank a fraction of the amount you owe to take the debt off its hands. However, they aim to make money by recouping the entire amount.

Anyone who obtains the right licenses from their state can become a debt collector. These licenses typically come with steep fees and bond requirements, sometimes between $5,000 and $20,000, and the ability to obtain financing in order to buy thousands of dollars of debt at once.

Debt collection agencies are going to make much more of an effort to get you to repay your debt than the original creditor.

An agency may file a lawsuit and hope you don’t show up in court. In this case, the agencies win by default and can start garnishing your wages, so don’t ignore any legal paperwork you receive.

There’s no limit to the number of times your debt will be bought and sold. It will keep getting passed along from agency to agency, each time for a lower price. The longer you go without paying, the less your debt is worth to these companies.

Here’s another opportunity for you to stop debt dead in its tracks. Debt collectors sometimes have more flexibility than your original creditor to offer you a settlement or a monthly payment plan.

Let’s say a deceased relative leaves you $1,000, but you owe $2,000. If you offer the collection agency $1,000, it may just take it. After all, some money is better than none.

Be careful, though; forgiven debt can have income tax implications.

Watch For Debt-Collection Scams

Hero Images/Getty

No matter what stage your debt is in, watch out for scams.

If you’re looking into debt consolidation or debt counseling programs, do your research. It’s as simple as Googling the company’s name to see how long they’ve been around and what kind of reviews they’ve gotten, Nitzsche says.

Consider working with nonprofits, which typically don’t have big advertising budgets. In other words, you won’t see a “Get out of debt fast!” infomercial on late-night TV from a legitimate debt counseling organization, he says.

Also, if you’re judgment proof, it’s much harder for debt collection agencies to come after you. When you’re judgment proof, you don’t have any wages for them to garnish, or your income comes from the government in the form of public assistance.

Knowing the statute of limitations for debt is also important. Nitzsche says this varies by state and type of debt, but generally ranges from three to 15 years.

After the statute of limitations has passed, debt collectors can’t sue you, but they can still ask you to repay the money.

Know Your Rights

There are a few things debt collectors can’t do under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

If you suspect a creditor is playing outside the law, submit a complaint with the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau or your state’s attorney general.

For starters, debt collectors can’t contact you at an unusual time or place — like late at night, early in the morning or at work if you’re not allowed to take personal calls.

Agencies cannot harass or threaten you with violence or arrest. Or use profane language. Or call repeatedly.

Collectors can’t pretend to be law enforcement or any other government official.

A debt collector can contact other people, but only to ask how to reach you — not publicize your debt or discuss how much you owe. The only people an agency can speak to about your debt is you, your spouse and your attorney.

If a collector knows you have an attorney, it cannot contact you instead.

If you tell one in writing to stop contacting you, it has to honor your request, except to tell you it will stop contacting you — or to inform you it’s taking legal action against you.

Agencies are also required to tell you some basic information about the debt, including the name of the creditor, amount owed and how you can dispute the debt or verify it.

Your turn: Have you ever been contacted by a debt collector?

Sarah Kuta is an education reporter in Boulder, Colorado, with a penchant for weekend thrifting, furniture refurbishment and good deals. Find her on Twitter: @sarahkuta.

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