The eighth birthday of the current bull market ended on Wall Street without much of a celebration.
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الخميس، 9 مارس 2017
Calling All Rule-Breakers: This Contest Pays $250K for Being Disobedient
I’m not a rule-breaker.
I’ll never forget the time my middle school teacher sent me to the principal’s office for passing a note during class. I cried.
But MIT Media wants to reward you for breaking the rules… sort of.
Nominations for the MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award are now open. The person or group who “engaged in what we believe is an extraordinary example of disobedience for the benefit of society” will win $250,000.
Here’s How You Can Win $250,000 for Breaking the Rules
“You don’t change the world by doing what you’re told,” says Joi Ito, director of MIT Media Lab.
These words are driving this contest.
Just like me, many others strive to do what’s right and to fit into a bubble of rules. But sometimes that suffocates creativity, flexibility, and ultimately, change.
“With this award, we honor work that impacts society in positive ways, and is consistent with a set of key principles,” the contest’s website states. “These principles include non-violence, creativity, courage, and taking responsibility for one’s actions.”
The whole idea is to celebrate and support the “disobedience-robust work” that’s taking place across the world.
So no, you won’t win by passing notes while the teacher’s lecturing. But if you want some ideas, here’s a timeline of those from history who have broken the rules — for the better.
How to Nominate Your Favorite Rule-Breaker
The contest opened March 6 and will remain open until May 1, 2017.
Here are the eligibility requirements:
- The recipient has to be alive.
- The recipient can be an individual or a group.
- The recipient needs to have taken a risk to bring about positive change for a better society.
Fill out the online application. You’ll be asked a number of questions; however, they’re all straightforward.
The MIT Media Lab plans to announce the winners July 21, 2017.
Your Turn: Do you know someone who’s breaking the rules for positive change? Nominate them!
Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder.
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How Quitting Your Job Could Help You Make More Money
Are you feeling undervalued in your position at work?
Negotiating for a raise might be a smart move, but research shows there may be a smarter one: Quit your job.
Full-time employees changing jobs get a higher raise than those who stay with the same company, according to the 2016 Workforce Vitality Report from ADP.
Employees who quit one full-time job and move to another a new one see an average 6% wage increase, compared with 4.6% for those who stayed in the same job.
Industry, Age, Tenure and Gender Matter
Unsurprisingly, a jump to a new company is significantly different depending on your age.
For employees 25-34, a new job means a 10% wage increase; while at 35-54, it’s only 4.9%; and just 2.2% for those 55 or older.
Similarly, how much time you spent at your last job influences how much of a raise you can get at a new one. Job hop too often or not often enough, and your prospects are far worse.
Those who spend two years or less at a previous job see only a 2.7% raise in a new job, Quartz reports. Stay 10 years or more, and the raise is just 2.2%.
The sweet spot for changing jobs is after three to five years. Full-time employees see a whopping 8.3% raise with a new employer after this time.
Stay six to nine years, and the average raise is still relatively good at 6%.
A little more surprising is the gender difference in wage growth.
In the same report for 2015, women showed overall greater wage growth than men. For women staying at the same job, wage growth was 6%, compared with 5.6% for men.
But men saw a much more significant jump in wages when switching jobs: a 10% increase, compared with 7.9% for women.
The difference might be related to types of employment. Female-dominated industries like education and healthcare show smaller raises for job-switchers than male-dominated industries like finance, information and business services.
Overall, most industries show a higher increase in wages for taking a new job. But these are the best industries for job-hopping:
- Leisure and Hospitality: 10.1% raise (vs. 5.7% for staying in place)
- Trade, Transportation and Utilities: 9.8% raise (vs. 4.3% for staying in place)
- Information: 7.5% raise (vs. 6.4% for staying in place)
- Finance and Real Estate: 6.7% raise (vs. 5.3% for staying in place)
In construction or manufacturing, you’re better off staying put and negotiating a raise. Employees in these industries get average raises about 1.5% higher when they stay put compared with job-hopping.
Employees know the benefits of quitting. Nearly 2.8 million employees voluntarily quit their jobs in January, up 17% from the year before, CNN Money reports.
This shows workers are more confident in their value.
When you know how much you’re worth and your employer knows you’re willing to leave if you don’t get it, you can be stronger in salary negotiations.
How to Know When to Quit Your Job
If you’ve been thinking about taking the leap, but are worried about throwing yourself into the uncertainty of a job hunt, this information could be just the push you need.
Job security is nice, of course. But these data show you could be missing out on better opportunities if you never make a leap.
Even if you’re satisfied with your job, you could use this trend to your advantage in salary negotiations. Read our story about how one IT professional got his boss to offer him a 45% raise after he started a hunt for a new job.
More generally, note that company loyalty isn’t always the most lucrative path anymore.
When you’re willing to demand what you’re worth — and willing to leave over it — you’re much more likely to get it.
Your Turn: Have you considered changing jobs for higher pay?
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a senior 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).
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Want to Be Better at Your Job? This Study Says Having More Sex Could Help
The results of a new Oregon State University study suggest a good sex life could lead to an increase in job satisfaction.
While the results are titillating, they may not be enough to get your boss to let you take an hour of paid time off each week to get frisky.
But you should ask anyway.
Three Cheers for Validation
OSU researchers surveyed 159 married workers twice a day for two weeks.
“They found that employees who engaged in sex reported more positive moods the next day, and the elevated mood levels in the morning led to more sustained work engagement and job satisfaction throughout the workday,” the OSU College of Business reports.
Maybe it’s just me, but don’t those results seem rather, well, obvious?
After all, one of the fundamentals of a healthy and happy relationship is a mutually satisfying sex life. If your personal life is going well, your good mood will spill into other areas of your life — including work.
On the other hand, any research that validates and promotes a healthy sex life is worth its weight in oysters.
Bring Sexy Back
Glaringly self-evident or not, the results are illustrative of the impact our personal lives have on our jobs and make a very compelling case for making sure we pay attention to our work-life balance.
“This is a reminder that sex has social, emotional and physiological benefits, and it’s important to make it a priority,” says researcher Keith Leavitt.
“Just make time for it.”
That means turning off the TV, crating the dog for the evening and, for the love of all things sexy, logging out of your work email and messaging platforms.
After all, you can’t unwind if your pump is constantly primed to be on the lookout for messages about the next client meeting or job training event.
Don’t Stress If You’re Single
This study may have only assessed married people’s sex lives, but I’m reasonably certain the results can be extended to anyone having regular sex, regardless of marital or relationship status.
In fact, researchers note that respondents “reported increased positive affect at work the following day, independent of the effects of marital satisfaction.”
The takeaway message here is sexually-fulfilled employees are happier, more productive employees, but single workers shouldn’t feel like they’re at a disadvantage.
The research found a connection between sex and increased job satisfaction. The fact that respondents were married is incidental.
And remember, while surveys provide interesting data points, the results are always open to interpretation.
Your turn: How do you maintain a good work-life balance in your life?
Lisa McGreevy is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She won’t be able to look any of her co-workers in the eye for the rest of the month in case any of them seem overly happy. It’ll just be awkward.
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'You'll Be Safe': Trump's Promise to Smaller Banks, Small Businesses
Speaking at a meeting with community bank executives Thursday, President Trump vowed to come up with ways to ease burdensome regulations enacted after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
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If You Have a Birthday, Walmart Wants to Give You a Free Cupcake March 12
Birthday freebies are just so sweet.
I mean, being born is kinda a big deal. Admit it — it’s nice to feel a little more special than usual on the one day a year you get free goodies.
Walmart is going to give you an extra birthday this year, though — because waiting 365 days to feel extra special is pure torture, and we all know it.
Walmart Celebrates Everyone’s Birthday on March 12
Walmart will give away free cupcakes at its Supercenter locations on Sunday, March 12, to celebrate everyone’s birthdays, regardless of when they actually are, according to Delish.
Each customer can choose from one free vanilla or chocolate cupcake with buttercream or whipped frosting. To grab yours, simply head to the bakery and ask for one. It’s that easy.
The retailer expects to give out at least 3 million cupcakes that day — that’s a lot of sugar!
Head to any participating Walmart Supercenter location between noon and 4 p.m to get your birthday treat. If you’re out running errands, you might as well, right?
And don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone if you hit more than one store that day.
What’s better than celebrating YOU? Celebrating you for free. Go get ’em.
Your Turn: Will you snag this freebie from Walmart?
Kelly Smith is a junior writer and engagement specialist at The Penny Hoarder. Catch her on Twitter at @keywordkelly.
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Rising rents hit vulnerable tenants
Tenants on benefits are being pushed out of the private housing market due to rising rents, according to a new survey.
Private rents unaffordable to homeless
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Wells Fargo Wants to Give You $250. Here’s What You Have to Do
Wells Fargo really wants your business, and it’s willing to pay you $250 for it.
The third-largest bank in the U.S. is offering new customers $250 when they open a new Wells Fargo checking account and make 10 debit card purchases or payments (no, ATM withdrawals don’t count). .
The deal appears to be fairly simple and straightforward, although there are some details you should be aware of.
What You Need to Know
Here’s what you need to know about the offer:
- The deal is available through March 24.
- You need a minimum opening deposit of $25.
- You must open the account through this web page on Wells Fargo’s website, not at your local bank branch.
- You can’t already have a Wells Fargo checking account, or have received a consumer checking bonus from Wells Fargo in the last 12 months.
- You have to make the 10 debit card purchases or payments within 60 days of opening the account to get the bonus.
- The direct deposits must be from your salary, pension or Social Security, and your employer or an outside agency must electronically send them to your Wells Fargo account. Transfers from one bank account to another don’t count, nor do deposits made at an ATM or bank.
- You get the $250 bonus within 45 days of qualifying for it.
- Wells Fargo will charge you a monthly service fee of $10 for your checking account unless you do one of these three things each month: maintain a $1,500 daily balance, make $500 in direct deposits or make 10 debit card purchases.
Wells Fargo’s Very Bad Year
The deal follows a rough 2016 for Wells Fargo.
Its CEO resigned due to a scandal. The bank got slapped with a $185 million fine for secretly opening millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts without its customers’ knowledge. By the end of the year, it acknowledged that business was suffering, with noticeably fewer new customers opening accounts.
For its part, Wells Fargo says it has changed its ways. Among other steps, it fired 5,300 employees and overhauled its employee compensation plan that led to the scandal.
Your Turn: Would you open a new Wells Fargo checking account for $250?
Mike Brassfield (mike@thepennyhoarder.com) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. When he’s not working, he’s reading or being a dad.
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Obsessed With Chipotle? 6 Ways to Get a Bigger Burrito for the Same Price
Leave it to interns to hack the fast-food industry and figure out how to get more food for less money. Interns always know the best tricks for getting free food.
Thanks to one intern at ApartmentList.com, we now know six ways to get at least 15% more ingredients — and in some cases, up to 86% more — in your Chipotle burrito.
Dylan Grosz visited the restaurant several times over two weeks and ordered five burritos each visit to determine where the biggest benefits were apparent.
He toted his haul back to the office to separate and weigh the ingredients, which is quite noble — I probably would have gotten four minutes into this experiment before aimlessly eating all the variables.
How to Get More Food in Your Chipotle Burrito
“Burrito legend has it that the bowl’s lack of tortilla constraints influences servers to give burrito bowl customers huge portions in general,” Grosz noted.
So instead of getting those fajita veggies wrapped, ask for a bowl, and wait for the goodness to be heaped on.
You can still get a tortilla — just ask for it on the side. The intern found that asking for a bowl-plus-tortilla over a wrapped burrito yielded 15% more food in his belly.
Another surefire method is one I see a lot in the Chipotle line, so I know servers don’t balk at the request: two meats.
Grosz’s tests showed that by asking for two meat options in your burrito — half chicken, half pork, whatever your craving — you won’t get a true half-and-half split. You’ll really get three-quarter scoops of each meat. The intern says that you get 54% more meat, resulting in a 9% increase in total burrito weight.
The intern warns that you’ll be charged for the more pricy of your meat choices, but what’s a couple of cents when you’re getting almost two scoops for the price of one?
Remember to get those two meat options in a burrito bowl to maximize the generosity of Chipotle’s serving spoons!
Foil-Busting Burrito Fun
If you use these two Chipotle hacks plus the other four ordering tricks the intern suggests, you’ll have a gigantic meal, a burrito so large that you’ll have to double-wrap it with two tortillas ordered on the side. In fact, you’ll get a burrito that weighs up to 86% more than a normal burrito from Chipotle.
Splitting your giant burrito bowl with a friend is kind. Saving it for yourself to eat for two meals is smart spending. But such simple schemes were not enough to determine the fate of the many, many burritos brought back to Grosz’s office.
After parsing out and weighing the ingredients of each burrito during the experiment (going to guess he used a few forks for this, not his hands), Grosz reassembled the burritos and left them for the masses in the office kitchen.
“They all mysteriously disappeared within a few minutes,” he says. I guess you could say he was paying it forward.
Visit the ApartmentList.com Rentonomics blog for all the money-saving Chipotle hacks before you place your next order.
Lisa Rowan is a writer and producer at The Penny Hoarder. She orders a veggie bowl so the guac comes free.
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31 Days to Financial Independence (Day 30): Getting Your Family and Friends on the Same Page
“31 Days to Financial Independence” is an ongoing series that appears every Thursday on The Simple Dollar. You might want to start this series from the beginning!
Last time, we looked at what you can do when your goals change, even in the midst of working toward a major personal finance target. Today, we’re going to look at a much different but also incredibly vital part of personal finance change: getting your family and friends on board.
Up to this point in the series, we’ve mostly treated personal finance change as something that a person can choose for themselves in a bubble. However, anyone who is in a long-standing relationship or has children – or even anyone with a tight-knit social circle – knows that such choices have an additional social impact. Your choices do involve the people around you and they’re not always going to be fully on board with the changes you’ve decided upon for yourself.
If you’re single, you have a bit of an advantage when it comes to making major life changes. You don’t have anyone in your life that’s directly dependent upon you other than yourself. Your major financial initiatives don’t alter anyone’s life other than your own. The biggest impact that others will have on you come from your extended family and your social network, and although there are certainly challenges in those areas (which we’ll discuss near the end of the post), you do get to skip over one major area of personal finance challenge.
On the other hand, people in long-term committed relationships face quite a different challenge when it comes to fixing their finances. Almost always, their individual personal finance choices are deeply connected to the personal finance choices of their partner. If a person has children, the personal finance choices of the parent often impacts the child as well; though children are a more passive part of the equation, they are still a significant consideration.
The challenge, of course, is that your partner and your children might not instantly be on the board with major changes in spending habits, even if it’s something that you’re deeply excited about at the moment. Different people have different financial goals and desires and even if you deeply love those people they form a core part of your life, that doesn’t mean that they will instantly share your changing financial goals.
How do you resolve these concerns? Let’s take a look.
Exercise #30 – Getting Family and Friends on Board with Your Money Changes
If you’re reading this, it’s very likely that the financial principles you now hold in your heart are different than the ones that your friends and family abide by. Those differences will manifest themselves in many ways, some big and obvious and others small and subtle. The biggest factor is how big of a stakeholder those people are in your decision, which basically adds up to how much you value that relationship and how big the differences are in your financial perspectives.
First and foremost, compromise is likely going to be a part of balancing your financial changes with your personal relationships. No matter how excited you are about personal finance, no matter how confident and sure you are about your financial path going forward, you are not the only stakeholder in your life and to respond to the uncertainty of others as if they have no input whatsoever will damage a lot of relationships. This is particularly true with your partner, but it remains true to a smaller extent with your children, social circle, and extended family. You can’t expect everyone to come to you; you have to meet in the middle, at least a little.
Let’s look at four classes of relationships and how your financial changes will impact each of them.
Your Spouse/Partner
If you’re in a long-term committed relationship, this relationship is undoubtedly the one in your life that will be most impacted by changes in your financial mindset. It’s also, for many people, the single most important relationship in their lives, the one that matters above all others. Thus, whenever you find your values changing, you’re opening the door to potential conflict in the most important relationship in your life. That’s something that needs to be handled with extreme care.
The first and most important tool you have in your relationship when one of you is changing in some way is communication. You need to sit down together and talk face-to-face about these changes, because when one of you is changing in some significant way, that changes the dynamics of the relationship and, often, the dynamics of the household.
This can be a difficult conversation, and it’s often the start of a long series of conversations about how your change in financial perspective affects other aspects of your lives – your spending choices, your career choices, and so forth. Talk about all of these things, openly and without fear. Explain where you’re coming from, but at the same time, listen to where your partner is coming from, too. Listening doesn’t mean just sitting there formulating what you’re going to say next while your partner is saying something that you’re not really paying attention to. It means actually focusing on what your partner is saying and doing your best to put yourself in your partner’s shoes.
Your partner might be on board with this overall change and most of the little changes that it represents. If that’s true, then you have a very easy road ahead of you. Your conversations with each other about money will largely be supportive and positive and the only real conflict will be in resolving minor issues. That’s the “best case.”
However, in many relationships, the two partners have differing views on financial change. Often, you’ll find one partner committed to change while the other partner pays “lip service” but isn’t really committed to changing anything other than the minimum needed to keep their partner happy. In other situations, you’ll find a partner that’s absolutely opposed to the changes and doesn’t want to change their lifestyle at all.
In the first case, where the partner wants to keep you happy but isn’t internally committed to financial change, compromise can be really effective. Your partner will likely agree to some changes that are relatively low impact for him or her while preserving some aspects of his or her current life that are highly valued. That’s compromise. Don’t expect your partner to fully change tons of aspects of his or her life just because you’ve changed your mind; at the same time, your partner shouldn’t expect you to betray what your goals are or what you believe in with regards to all areas of life, either. Find areas where each of you can change things to the way you want them to be.
One valuable compromise that many couples use is the idea of a “free spending account.” It’s a separate checking account for one spouse (though each spouse can have one) where money can be spent freely without question on hobby and entertainment expenses. A certain amount goes into that account each month.
However, if your partner is openly against the idea of financial change, you have a much harder road to travel. Your best strategy is to implement changes that have minimal lifestyle impact, which means you’ll have to step up and take charge of many aspects of household finance. Start making purchasing decisions on behalf of both of you that are smarter ones and then start diligently putting away that saved money for future goals – debt repayment and so on. That means taking over things like grocery shopping and household supply shopping and vacation planning and so on. Bargain hunt for those shared expenses, then put aside the money you saved through that bargain hunting. Implement a lot of low-impact savings strategies around your house, such as switching to LED bulbs and sealing up air leaks in the windows, and then automatically start saving the amount you’ve cut your energy bill with.
You should be able to convince your partner to change somewhat in some areas simply because it’s something that’s important to you, but there will be conflicts as you find that fine line between compromising and demanding.
In the end, communication is still the key here. You have to discuss these things openly without fear of reprisal or attack. If you feel you can’t discuss finances openly with your partner, then there is a deeper relationship problem going on that’s outside of the scope of mere financial issues. Money problems in marriages usually come back to a root problem of being unable to communicate well with each other and without that key communication part, differences can grow and grow until a marriage falls apart.
Your Children
When your children are young, significant financial changes aren’t really going to have a major impact on them. They might notice offhand that they don’t get as many new toys or that you’re not going out as often, but it’s not going to have a major impact on their life.
As children grow older, the impact of your financial changes will be felt more and more. Teenagers and young adults will definitely notice it when you make financial decisions that impact their daily life and, usually, the reaction will be a negative one because it means a reduction in some treat or other element that they value. If your vacations move from luxury to camping, for example, they will probably voice some pushback against that.
My recommended approach is to simply talk to your older children frankly about the changes. Treat them as adults, but also voice the changes in terms of the impact on their lives. You are making these changes so that over the long term there is much less risk of you becoming a financial burden to them later in life. They might not have a fancy vacation right now, but when they’re in their forties, you’re much less likely to have to move in with them or accept financial help from them out of financial need. In other words, make a conscious effort to voice these changes in terms of cost and benefit for your child as well. Your financial change is going to have a short-term cost for them, so what’s the benefit for them?
One big financial change that parents make when their children are adults is to cut off “outpatient financial support.” In other words, you simply stop giving them money to help them “get started” in adulthood. The response to this from your children depends a lot on their maturity and their reliance on that financial stream. If they’ve made smart choices along the way and are not dependent on that money, then this won’t be a problem – they’ve anticipated that this would eventually happen. Some adult children, however, make financial choices that rely on those changes. If that’s the case, give them a deadline when the financial support will stop so they can make necessary changes in their life.
Those conversations might be difficult, but they go right to the source of the one true solution for almost every familial crisis: communication. When you talk freely, openly, and frequently with your loved ones about these issues and make sure that they know you’ll respond to their comments without judgment or negative emotion, it becomes much easier to talk through these problems together. You can even build a stronger relationship through such challenges if communication is healthy.
Your Social Circle
Your financial changes will also have an impact on your social circle, mostly due to the changes that will occur in terms of your social interactions. Things like going out for a night on the town or going out for dinner or going to a movie are suddenly different value propositions for you and may not be “worth it” any more.
So, how do you explain that change to your social friends? You have a number of options.
The easiest option is to simply not explain it at all. If you follow that route, you can simply avoid it by cutting back on your expensive social obligations and suggesting different low-cost obligations. So, for example, you might choose to reduce the number of times that you go out to eat with some of your friends by half and instead replace some of those dinners with potluck dinner parties at your house.
Another option, of course, is to talk openly about it. You’ll probably find this easier in a series of conversations with individual friends or couples. Simply lay out the fact that you’re making some financial changes to your life. You don’t have to directly describe the changes going on, but you’re giving them some context that will explain some of the things you’re doing.
Some of your friends will be fine with this. Others might not be and you may find a bit of distance growing in that friendship, in which case you can either talk frankly with them or accept that change in friendship.
If you find that many of your friends aren’t on board with your changes, you’ll find that changing your financial strategies and spending choices opens the door to many new opportunities for building friendships. For example, my own spending changes as I went through a financial overhaul resulted in spending less time with my previous circle of big-spending friends and more time at lower-cost activities in the community (found via Meetup and the community calendar). I retained some of my earlier friendships, but many of them simply drifted away over time and were replaced with new friendships, a transition that wasn’t all that painful as we didn’t end our friendship and we’re still on good terms.
To summarize, make the changes you need to make and be open to new friendships and social opportunities as you try new things. Your strong social bonds will remain, while the ones that weren’t all that strong to begin with will slowly fade.
Your Extended Family
During a period of financial change, many people with tight-knit extended families struggle with those relationships as well. Those relationships often include conversations about topics that might be more personal than you would expect from friendships or professional relationships and thus you can wind up in some pretty awkward situations when it comes to family occasions.
For those types of families, here are three key pieces of advice.
First, be open about the changes in your behaviors if they come up, but don’t bring them up and don’t talk about dollars and cents specifically. Some of your astute family members may be noticing the personal changes you’re making to achieve your financial goals and they may come up in conversation. Don’t hide those changes, but try your absolute best to not discuss specific dollars and cents with anyone. Just state that you’re trying to spend less money in order to achieve other goals, which brings us to the second piece of advice.
Second, don’t emphasize that these changes are intended to build wealth. You’ll find that people who are perceived to have money in the bank are often targeted by financially struggling family members for help or loans (more on that in a bit). You can avoid a lot of that interaction by couching your financial changes in terms of the goals you hope to achieve with it. You need to clear out debt. You’re thinking of a career change. You’re thinking of having children. Your financial changes are simply steps to make your life ready for other changes.
Finally, don’t loan money to family members. If a family member comes to you for money, either give that person non-financial help in some fashion or give that person a one-time financial gift. You do not want to wind up in a situation where you’re the lender and they’re the borrower, because if anything goes wrong in that lender-borrower relationship, you’ve suddenly poisoned a lot of family events and relationships. It’s not worth it. It’s never worth it.
Remember, these people may be loved ones, but they’re not a part of your day-to-day life and they do not have the right to pass judgment on your decisions (unless you come to them privately for advice because you view that person as a mentor, but that’s a one-on-one relationship that you chose). If they criticize you, just let it roll off your back and remind yourself that they’re passing judgment based on their own financial experiences and choices, not yours. If they want to know specifics, just avoid the conversation because it’s none of their business.
Next time, we’ll wrap up this series with some final thoughts, along with a full directory of all of the entries in the series.
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Households in Northern Ireland to be hit with gas price hikes
Thousands of households in Northern Ireland are to be hit with energy price hikes, as the two gas providers supplying the region have announced forthcoming price changes.
From 31 March, about 80,000 Firmus customers will see gas prices rise by 12.2%.
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NS&I’s 2.2% saver to launch – can this rate be beaten?
Chancellor Phillip Hammond has confirmed the launch of a new three-year savings product from NS&I.
Mr Hammond called the NS&I Investment Guaranteed Growth Bond “a welcome break for hard-pressed savers”, but is this the best way to stash your cash?
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14 Savings Hacks That Don’t Always Work
Have you ever jumped through hoops to save money, only to find you paid more – or, wasted a bunch of time?
Maybe you misread the terms on a coupon, signed up for a fake or deceptive promotion, or just made a poor decision. Either way, it’s frustrating when you discover your money-saving efforts weren’t worth it, or that you were purposely misled.
Despite the fact I can read and count, I’ve been there more than once. But there’s one incident in particular that still stings.
When my husband and I were first married, we were invited to a cookware presentation with the promise of a free $300 travel coupon. All we had to do was sit through the presentation to earn $300 off travel, they said. And no matter what, we didn’t have to buy anything.
We were young and dumb at the time, so we assumed the $300 voucher would come in the form of a gift card. We sat through the entire high-pressure sales pitch feeling extremely uncomfortable, only to find the “$300 voucher” was only good toward a small list of crazy, overpriced vacation packages we would never want in the first place.
So basically, we wasted two to three hours of our lives for nothing, all under the guise of “saving on travel.” Lesson learned, and I know I’ll never do that again.
Unfortunately, these types of things happen all the time. Whether it’s because we fail to read the fine print or we make a short-sighted decision based on few facts, there are plenty of savings hacks that just don’t work.
If you want to avoid wasting your time and money, it’s smart to explore certain money-saving hacks ahead of time to see if they’re legit – and if they’re actually right for you. Here are some other savings hacks that don’t always work the way you think they will, according to more than a dozen financial bloggers.
#1: Investing in actively managed funds without taking fees into account
Paying more for an actively managed mutual fund instead of an index fund in hopes of better returns usually doesn’t work out, says Larry Ludwig of Investor Junkie. “Statistics show that after five years, 80% of actively managed mutual funds don’t beat the index. In addition, the amount you pay in fees is typically equal to or greater than the return the mutual fund generated above the index,” he says. “It’s a fool’s errand trying to figure out which mutual fund will be the best performing fund.”
#2: Using coupons to save money without a plan
“I loved using coupons and for years they helped us get out of debt,” says Lauren Greutman. “They became a problem when I started buying things that I didn’t need just because I had a coupon for them. The result was spending more money.”
#3: Taking advantage of introductory deals without watching the post-promotion terms
“We recently switched our electricity supplier to take advantage of a very inexpensive six-month fixed rate, which resulted in immediate savings,” says Jim Wang of Wallethacks.com. What we didn’t realize was that after six months, the rate would be variable and it ended up being twice the regional average!”
#4: Working too hard for too little
“In an attempt to earn us some extra cash, I signed us up for this home scanner that will earn you gift cards after you’ve made a certain amount of scans every month,” says Jessi Fearson. “It was ridiculous of me to think that, as a mom of three kids under three years of age, I’d have the time or the energy to scan every single thing that we purchased to earn a measly $10 in gift cards. I was putting in way more time and effort than that $10 gift card was worth.”
#5: Using travel deal sites without checking prices
“I’ve signed up for travel alerts in order to find good deals on hotel stays. Rather than uncover great deals, though, the sites typically don’t offer prices better than basic searches deliver and end up wasting time,” says Julie Rains of Investing to Thrive. “For me, it’s generally easier to book cancellable reservations directly with a hotel. If my travel plans change, I don’t owe money; and if prices fall, I can rebook to save money.”
#6: Paying off a mortgage early to save money on interest
“I paid off my mortgage early because it reduced the total interest costs on the loan. However, the next year my investments doubled and then doubled again after that,” says Todd Tresidder, wealth coach at FinancialMentor.com. “I would have been far better off investing the money and just paying the mortgage interest according to schedule.”
#7: Falling for a wonky rebate
“I saw an ad for an electronic device that had a reasonable price (about $200), plus they gave vouchers of $90,” says Assaf Katzir, co-founder at CreditPilgrim.com. “Sounds like a great bargain. Only later when I wanted to use the vouchers, I found out that the vouchers were split over six months – meaning each voucher had the value of $15 and could be used only in the specified month on the voucher.”
#8: Justifying a purchase because it’s on sale
“I think we’ve all been guilty of this at least once in our life. We decide to purchase something we really don’t need and justify it because it was such a great deal we couldn’t pass it up,” says Kansas City Financial Planner Clint Haynes. “Well, just because you saved some money doesn’t take away the point that you actually just spent money as well. Remember, even when you purchase items are on sale, you’re still actually spending money.”
#9: Trying a new type of budget without assessing your needs
“The best example of a savings fail was using the envelope system. This was for the son of a friend of mine,” says Neal Frankle of WealthPilgrim.com. “The young man was a chronic spender. The problem was, once he had the envelopes for the variety of expenses, he’d invade them all and use up the money long before the month was over, and of course then he was unable to pay his bills. What he needed instead was a daily allowance – not monthly.”
#10: Investing your emergency fund for short-term gain
“A few years back I had several thousand dollars saved for a big move I was making across the country. I figured it may be a good idea to invest that money (which I wouldn’t be spending for a few months) in a portfolio of ETFs that looked great at the time,” says Seattle-based financial advisor Josh Brein, author of The Art of a Plan.
“‘I’ll just stash the money here and let it grow until I need to take the money out in a few months’ was the rational I used to justify this idea,” Brein says. “My plan didn’t work out so well. We hit a volatile patch in the market shortly after I invested, and by the time I needed to take my money out to spend it, I had lost about 20% of my savings for my cross country move because of market volatility that I could have avoided by not being greedy and trying to grow my emergency fund in the stock market.”
#11: Using Coinstar as part of any savings plan
“My wife and I had a saving plan to keep all our spare change in a paint can, and we successfully saved over $300. We found out that our bank and credit union wouldn’t accept the change unless it was rolled. So, we took our spare change to the Coinstar machine,” says Jose V. Sanchez of LifeInsuranceToolkit.com.
“The fees are incredible – you pay $11 for each $100 you save,” says Sanchez. “To avoid the fee, we accepted the eGift Card, spent some of the money, and the rest (six years later) has expired. Net result, we saved zero.”
#12: Speculating about government laws and currency
“In college, I got into saving pre-1972 pennies because they were made of more than 90% copper. The plan was to amass a large amount of copper pennies and then one day melt them down and sell the copper (the copper inside a penny is worth more than $0.01),” says Nick True at Mapped Out Money.
The trouble is, it’s currently illegal to melt pennies and nickels. “I was spending hours sorting through thousands of pennies by hand all in hopes that it will one day be legal to melt discontinued pennies,” True says. “It was a major waste of time on a very unlikely policy change.”
#13: Saving money by performing tasks you’re not qualified to do
“When I launched my business, I did everything I could to cut corners and reduce expenses. One of those corners was doing things on my own instead of outsourcing them,” says Taylor Schulte of Stay Wealthy San Diego.
“For instance, I figured I could save around $200 a month by doing the bookkeeping myself. While technically I was ‘saving money,’ the time I spent playing bookkeeper (and graphic designer, and editor, and administrator) was taking me away from actual revenue generating opportunities. It used to seem backwards, but I’ve now learned that spending money to create more time for things I’m good at makes a much bigger impact on my bottom line.”
#14: Price shopping without considering value
“When my wife and I got married, we were naturally looking to consolidate our auto insurance. She had the same agent for years who was captive with a major auto insurer. Being a ‘wise’ financial planner, I figured this wasn’t the best we could do,” says David Wilson of FinancialTruths.net.
“I matched hers against the cheap car insurance I bought online; her agent’s price was better – and still is. His agency now handles all our stuff,” Wilson says. “When I call, someone answers. When I buy or sell a car, or add a teenager (yikes!), it’s never a big deal. I recently needed info on my homeowner’s policy. I emailed, and the declaration page showed up in my email box within five minutes.”
At the end of the day, Wilson says, value is more than just price. “If you’re getting great service and a fair price, don’t waste time and energy price shopping like I did!”
The Bottom Line
It’s a crazy world out there, and we’re bound to make mistakes. Fortunately, most small money mishaps won’t know your entire financial plan overnight.
Still, it’s important to stay diligent out there. Not all “deals” are worth it, and some are even predatory. Before you employ a new strategy to save money, make sure to run the numbers and read all the fine print.
Holly Johnson is an award-winning personal finance writer and the author of Zero Down Your Debt. Johnson shares her obsession with frugality, budgeting, and travel at ClubThrifty.com.
Related Articles:
- 14 Simple Life Hacks that Have Each Saved Me $100
- 10 Ways to Trick Yourself into Saving Money
- Hacking Six Normal Life Routines to Save Time and Money
Have you ever tried a savings hack and failed miserably? Please share in the comments below!
The post 14 Savings Hacks That Don’t Always Work appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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