The number of fraud cases continues to rise, with identity crimes posing the biggest risk to consumers, according to new research.
Data published by fraud prevention service, Cifas, shows there were 325,092 cases of fraud reported in 2016, a 1% increase compared to 2015.
Mother’s Day is one of those holidays that always approaches too quickly.
It never fails; I’m always scrambling on Saturday…
What the heck can I get Mom that’ll show her how much I love her?
My answer is always nothing — mostly because she’s impossible to shop for.
But also because nothing will show her how much I love her; it’s that much.
A solid backup plan is to buy her flowers.
Cliché? Perhaps. Thoughtful and beautiful? Sure.
However, they’re always more expensive than I’m expecting.
So here it is: Seven ways to save money on Mother’s Day flowers.
If you don’t already use Ibotta while grocery shopping, where ya been? The app is an easy way to earn cash back on your purchases. (I’ll spare you the details right now, but you can read more about it here.)
The best deals for Mom:
Ebates houses more than 10,000 coupons for more than 2,000 stores and offers up to 40% off any given purchase.
It acts as a portal, so all you have to do is go to the site, find a deal and shop through the “Shop Now” button.
You can cash-out on cash-back opportunities or simply find coupons.
The best deals for Mom:
Search through the options yourself. Just visit Ebates and search “flowers.”
Remember how the Sunday newspaper contained a Holy Grail of coupons?
Well, not many people subscribe to their local paper anymore. (Sad.) But Retale keeps weekly ads in its system online.
Search ads by your area to find the best discounts.
The best deal for Mom:
When you shop through MyPoints, you earn points, which you can cash out for gift cards.
Right now, if you stack up 1,590 points, for example, you can get $10 for Amazon, Home Depot or a number of other retailers. (See all the reward opportunities here.)
The best deal for Mom:
Did you know you can order Mom flowers through Amazon? I didn’t either, but I order everything else in the world on there, so why not?
(It even has unicorn-inspired blooms.)
If you opt for Amazon, be sure to utilize Paribus. You’ll go about shopping normally, but Paribus will monitor your purchases. If the item’s price decreases after you click submit, you’ll receive the price difference.
And if your order doesn’t show up on time, Paribus can help you automatically get full or partial refunds of shipping costs, or even store credit for the inconvenience.
It offers this deal at other retailers, but I don’t think you can order flowers from Home Depot, Zappos or Nordstrom. But then again, you can order rocks, so I wouldn’t be shocked.
The best deal for Mom:
The deal is going to depend on whatever Amazon’s up to that day, so it’s worth giving Paribus a try.
Got AAA? I do, but I don’t take advantage of its discounts nearly as often as I should, but it has a pretty solid discount on flowers.
The best deal for Mom:
Want to know some other unexpected AAA discounts we found? Check ‘em out here.
If you have a BankAmericard Cash Rewards Credit Card, this deal is for you (except if you have an AAA card, use that instead). Bank of America offers cash back from certain retailers when you claim the offer and use your card to make the purchase.
The best deal for Mom:
Other tips: Don’t wait until the last minute. Shipping will get the best of your bank account.
And if for some reason your mom doesn’t receive her flowers on Sunday — when you very clearly said they needed to be to her by then — contact the company you ordered through.
Chances are, you’ll be able to get some type of credit or discount good towards your next purchase.
Disclosure: Here’s a toast to the affiliate links in this post. May we all be just a little richer today.
Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, one of the largest personal finance websites. We help millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. In 2016, Inc. 500 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the No. 1 fastest-growing private media company in the U.S.
Over the weekend, rapper Nicki Minaj lit up Twitter by offering to pay fans’ tuition and student loans.
It happened incidentally. Minaj was promoting a contest and mentioned how she had enough money to fly out winners from any country in the world. That’s when one follower decided to hit the rapper up with a request to pay tuition.
Hey, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Show me straight A’s that I can verify w/ur school and I’ll pay it. Who wants to join THAT contest?!?!🤷
♀️ Dead serious. Shld I set it up? https://t.co/czH715u64a
— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) May 7, 2017
Minaj’s response: “Show me straight A’s that I can verify w/ur school and I’ll pay it. Who wants to join THAT contest?!?! Dead serious. Shld I set it up?”
That sparked fans to tweet Minaj with additional requests to pay tuition, plus pleas for her to finance summer courses, books, supplies and student loan bills.
Minaj responded to over two dozen tweets agreeing to cover the costs, or in some cases asking the fan to provide proof of grades or loan information.
She ended the whirlwind of giving by promising fans she’d be back to do more of the same in about a month or two.
But in case you miss the next sporadic Nicki giveaway — and if you’re in high school and don’t have a tuition bill to show just yet — you still can get rewarded monetarily for making good grades.
Raise.me, a micro-scholarship platform, partners with over 220 colleges and universities to help high school students prepare for the cost of higher education. Participating schools include Temple University, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon University, Northeastern University and more.
Students in grades 9 to 12 can sign up for the site for free, get information about schools they’re interested in and earn money for getting good grades or for participating in extracurricular activities.
The colleges and universities themselves pay for the students’ stellar performances. Students can rack up micro-scholarship offers from different institutions, but they will only get the money pledged from the school at which they end up enrolling. They also must be “following” the college on Raise.me to receive the funds.
Raise.me says the average annual scholarship earned via the platform is $5,000. The platform’s terms of use state that the funds awarded will be distributed evenly throughout the student’s first four years in college, unless the individual school makes alternate arrangements.
The amount given out for grades and extracurricular participation depends entirely on the participating colleges and universities. One might pay out $100 for an A in physics while another pays out $200.
Either way, that’s good incentive for making all As.
To be eligible to receive scholarship money, students must set up a portfolio after registering for the site. In the portfolio, they’ll outline the courses they’re taking and log the grades they make each quarter or semester. Students must include the name of their school and each teacher for reference purposes, the site says.
Students can also include on their portfolio what clubs, sports or other extracurriculars they participate in and whether or not they hold leadership roles. All that can equal additional scholarship funds.
Some colleges will also reward students for perfect attendance and for work experience or family service, like taking care of younger siblings, so there’s room on students’ portfolios to add those details.
While you’re out looking for ways to fund your college education, check out this list of 100 scholarships, as well as this list of 12 scholarships that reward students for their community service.
And if you’re a parent looking to bulk up your kid’s college tuition fund, try these 32 legitimate ways to make money at home or this month-by-month guide to save up $1,000.
College is expensive, and every little bit can help!
Nicole Dow is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She thinks kids these days have so many options when it comes to paying for school. Twitter wasn’t even a thing when she enrolled in college.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, one of the largest personal finance websites. We help millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. In 2016, Inc. 500 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the No. 1 fastest-growing private media company in the U.S.
When it comes to higher education, I only have good things to say about community colleges.
They’re a money-smart education option that can save you thousands. Some will even pay you to graduate on time.
Unfortunately, not all community colleges are created equal. Some are a better value than others.
Student Loan Hero compared the costs of college credits at schools across the nation to find out which states offer community college students the most bang for their buck.
Here are the top 10 states where community colleges are a money-saving option, as well as how much students can save on tuition by attending for two years compared to attending only a four-year college:
Be sure to check out Student Loan Hero’s interactive map for data on all 50 states.
“Based on our findings from this study, prospective college students should seriously consider attending a community college and then transferring if they want to offset their overall educational costs. Not to mention avoid taking on more student loan debt than may be necessary,” says Student Loan Hero columnist Elyssa Kirkham.
In an ideal world, your local community college would offer the biggest tuition savings and also happen to intersect with schools whose alumni make the most money after graduating.
But what if the community colleges in your area don’t hit one or both of those sweet spots? Try not to stress out too much.
First, check to see if any of the colleges around you offer free tuition.
No? What about a college with a proven track record of making poor kids rich?
Perhaps an alternative certification is the way to go?
If a four-year university turns out to be a better bet than community college after you’ve priced out both options, keep these money-saving tips in mind.
Lisa McGreevy is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She loves telling readers about ways to save money on college tuition. Look her up on Twitter (@lisah) if you’ve got a hot tip to share.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, one of the largest personal finance websites. We help millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. In 2016, Inc. 500 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the No. 1 fastest-growing private media company in the U.S.
Just as your midday slump kicks in this Friday, Peet’s Coffee will be ready to give you a free caffeine fix.
The California-based coffee chain is giving away free drinks from 1 to 3 p.m. on Friday, May 12. Customers who arrive during that time frame can enjoy any drink in any size without spending a penny.
The Friday giveaway kicks off a summer long buy one, get one free special that will run from 1 to 3 p.m. every Friday from May 19 through Aug. 25 at participating Peet’s Coffee locations.
This deal will promote the coffee chain’s new line of specialty cold brew summer drinks, which include:
The drinks range from $2.85 to $4.70 depending on the type and size you choose.
You can choose one of the new drinks on free coffee days or stick with an old favorite if your order’s set in stone.
Desiree Stennett (@desi_stennett) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She is a self-proclaimed coffee addict.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, one of the largest personal finance websites. We help millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. In 2016, Inc. 500 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the No. 1 fastest-growing private media company in the U.S.
Google can be really frustrating sometimes.
If you’ve been in SEO for anytime at all, you know exactly what I’m talking about!
Google’s success and global search market dominance have largely hinged upon its ability to perpetually evolve and provide the best user experience possible.
As a result, SEO is in a constant state of flux.
It’s literally always changing!
But one thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that quality links are the foundation of nearly every successful SEO campaign.
Although many people have been predicting the demise of links as a primary ranking signal for years, link-building is still very much alive and quite well.
According to First Page Sage, links are still the number one ranking signal in Google’s algorithm in 2017.
As they point out,
inbound links have been the primary currency Google uses to determine its level of trust for a website since the search engine established itself in 1998.
It worked for them then, and it still works for them now.
So, yeah… Link-building is kind of a big deal, regardless of what the naysayers may think.
And this means one thing.
You need to have your link-building on lock.
Unfortunately, many link-building campaigns are full of holes due to misconceptions and misunderstandings as to what Google is really looking for.
It can be especially brutal for noobs, who are just getting their feet wet.
Here are some of the most common link-building mistakes SEO marketers make and how to resolve them.
The great anchor text debate has raged on for a few years now.
Okay, maybe that sounds overly epic, but employing anchor text is one of the most misunderstood aspects of link-building.
Back in the day, you could often outrank the competition by simply being obnoxious and going crazy with exact match anchor text (the keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for.)
But Google quickly discovered that way too many people were gaming the system and launched a counterattack with Penguin in 2012.
They tweaked their algorithm, and the sites that went overboard on exact match anchor text were penalized.
Of course, SEO marketers didn’t want to incur the wrath of Matt Cutts and his minions, so they did the only sensible thing.
They went the opposite direction.
Many people ceased to use exact match anchor text altogether.
And I can totally see why.
To be honest, I’m still a little sketched about using exact match anchors.
But here’s the thing. Doing anchor text the right way can be encapsulated in one word: natural.
If it’s natural, you’re good to go.
What exactly do I mean by natural?
You want to make sure you’re diversifying your anchor text and not going overboard with any particular format.
When you break it down, there are six main types of anchor text:
If this still seems a little vague, here are examples provided by Ahrefs:
Speaking of Ahrefs… They performed some extensive research on anchor text fairly recently (mid-2016) to determine its impact on SEO.
There’s a ton of data, which can be a little confusing if you’re not an SEO nerd.
Allow me to give you the key takeaways.
First of all, anchor text continues to play an integral role in link-building, and SEO in general, and is unlikely to change any time soon.
Second, it’s completely true that you need to be careful when using keyword-rich anchor text.
Going overboard can definitely get you penalized.
However, this doesn’t mean you should never use keyword-rich anchor text.
It’s actually okay—as long as you don’t go crazy with it.
Ahrefs suggests “using exact match at around 2 percent and phrase match at around 30 percent.”
And that sounds about right to me.
The bottom line with anchor text is that it needs to be natural.
To achieve that natural effect, you want to use a variety of different formats.
This graph from Search Engine Journal offers their version of ideal anchor text diversity:
It’s usually all right to throw in some keyword-rich anchor text, but you need to be smart about it.
If you follow this formula, you should be good to go, and you can construct hyperlinks—both internal and external—the right way.
For more insight, check out the article from Ahrefs I referenced above.
In my opinion, it’s one of the best currently out there on anchor text.
Ah…directories.
Most SEO marketers cringe at the mere mention of them.
And I totally get it.
I remember back in the mid-2000s, directories were popping up everywhere, and they were a cheap way to get links.
Most had little to no credibility and looked incredibly spammy. And quite frankly, many were.
So, of course, when you ask your average SEO marketer whether or not you should ever get links from directories, most would adamantly say “no!”
But I disagree (sort of).
Now, let me preface this by saying you shouldn’t get links from highly-questionable, spammy, irrelevant directories that have absolutely nothing to do with your niche/industry.
That’s a recipe for disaster.
However, Rand Fishkin of Moz made a really great point in one of his Whiteboard Friday sessions.
He basically said that there’s an ongoing myth that you should never get links from directories.
But this just isn’t the case.
There are plenty of high quality directories that can be very beneficial to your link-building campaign.
Here’s a screenshot of an example he provides about a monthly list of bars in Portland, Oregon:
The point here is that you should definitely take a link like this.
It’s legit and going to help your SEO.
Once again, I’m not condoning getting spammy links from low-quality directories.
But in many cases, the right directories can be quite beneficial.
Just use your best judgment.
If you look at it on paper, it might seem more sensible to get a high volume of so-so links rather than only a handful of high-quality links.
I get it. It’s much easier to grab the low hanging fruit and take the path of least resistance.
But like with many areas of online marketing, you’re much better off opting for quality over quantity.
Just like it makes more sense to create one in-depth, longform, high-quality blog post than three or four mediocre, generic 500-worders, a single high-quality link can be much more valuable than dozens of low-quality links.
Think of it like this.
High-quality links do much more than just improve your link profile and provide you with SEO juice.
They can enhance your brand equity and bring in quality referral traffic as well.
If you’ve had a quantity over quality mindset up until now, it’s time to change it.
One of the other great SEO debates is just how big of a factor social signals are.
Some people seem to think social signals are a significant ranking factor, while others believe they’re just a waste of time.
I’m in the camp that believes they’re a substantial ranking factor. At least nowadays.
While I’m not saying they’re super high on the totem pole, you definitely don’t want to overlook social signals in your link-building.
In fact, Backlinko includes social signals in a recent list of Google’s 200 ranking factors.
More specifically, they mention the following social signals as having a considerable impact:
You get the idea.
A few years back, Moz broke down the potency of some of the more powerful social signals:
I know it’s a little outdated (2012), but I think this data is still fairly relevant today.
The bottom line here is that you should do everything within your power to maximize your social signals.
This starts with creating epic content that outperforms that of your competitors (see the skyscraper technique).
You should install social media buttons if you haven’t done so already.
This is super easy to do if you’re a WordPress user. Just install a plugin.
Also be sure to ask your audience to share your content.
Sometimes that’s all it takes!
And don’t forget that social signals do much more than just boost your SEO.
They can also have a considerable impact on your brand’s reputation and whether or not readers will stick around and read your content.
Just think about it.
Which brand would you take more seriously?
One with an article with a high volume of social shares like this…
Or an article with only a handful of shares?
I rest my case.
Like it or not, link-building is essentially the lifeblood of SEO.
And I really don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Until Google radically changes its algorithm, links are likely to remain one of the top ranking factors.
But like with many other areas of SEO, what constitutes proper link-building can be a little confusing.
There’s plenty of room for misunderstanding even for the most adept of SEO marketers.
By acknowledging any mistakes you’re making, you can tighten your link-building and make your overall campaign run like a well-oiled machine.
Can you think of any other common link-building mistakes SEO marketers make?
When people first become acutely aware of their personal finances, they’re usually hit with a cavalcade of seemingly incompatible goals. They usually have a number of debts that they’re facing covering a variety of different interest rates. At the same time, there’s usually a strong demand to start saving for retirement or saving for a child’s college education or saving for a down payment. There may also be other goals on the horizon, like a career switch or a return to school.
How does a person even decide how to juggle those priorities?
Most financial gurus agree on one thing: High-interest debt is horrible and should be eliminated first. If you have debts with interest rates above 20%, you’re going to want to get rid of those as fast as possible. Simply sitting on a $1,000 debt with a 30% interest rate means that $300 of your money each year is evaporating into smoke without even touching the balance of that debt. There’s no question about it – that’s a financial disaster and you have to deal with that as soon as you can.
On the flip side of the coin are zero-interest loans. You borrow $1,000 from someone and they charge you no interest on that loan. They only require that you pay it back at a regularly scheduled rate. With that extreme, there’s no real incentive to pay back that loan with any speed at all. You’re better off just sticking the money in a bank account and paying it off as slow as possible and just collecting the bank interest for yourself! It makes virtually no sense to prioritize paying off this debt early when you have any other savings goals at all.
Those scenarios represent two extremes. Most people have debts that are somewhere in the middle of that. They have a credit card at 12%, a student loan at 6%, a car loan at 3%. How do they figure out which debts should be addressed as a top priority and which ones should lag in line behind other financial goals?
In other words, what is that “magic” interest rate above which you should prioritize paying off that debt and below which you should prioritize other savings goals beyond a simple emergency fund?
The difficulty with this question is that you’re going to get very different answers from different financial writers. Some are going to strongly prioritize debt elimination and will suggest a very low “magic” interest rate, prioritizing rapid pay down of even fairly low single-digit interest loans like car loans. Others will prioritize aggressive investing and will basically tell you to not bother rapidly paying of anything in the single digits or low teens.
They’re both right. They’re both wrong, too.
A person’s “magic” interest rate isn’t based on something set in stone. Instead, it’s one of those things that puts the “personal” in personal finance. There are a ton of factors that play into which debts you should prioritize before a strong focus on saving for the future and which debts you should wait on. (In fact, there’s a good argument that you should prioritize some savings in different ways, but we’ll not worry about that here.)
Here are five factors that make up a key part of this number.
If you’re struggling to come up with enough cash at the end of the month to even cover your bills, you need to be focusing on debt repayment rather than saving for goals. When you’re in a situation where you’re walking a tightrope each and every month, your mission should be to maximize the gap between your income and your expenditures as quickly as possible. You have to prioritize debt repayment.
If you’re not struggling to come up with enough cash each month to pay the bills and you can actually handle some career and life setbacks without financial armageddon, then you don’t have to put as much emphasis on debt repayment.
Most Americans are in the first category; remember, 76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. In my experience, most financial writing tends to target people in the second category, and thus they tend to focus more on savings than on debt as compared to the average American’s needs.
In summary, if you’re struggling to keep the bills paid, your “magic” interest rate should be lower, not higher.
Once you’ve really committed to spending less than you earn, the choice to repay debt is a lot like investing in something with a guaranteed tax-free return. For example, if you’re paying down a 15% debt, that’s a guaranteed 15% return on your money after taxes. That’s a better return than stocks or real estate can provide in most years.
This is really the big argument for paying off debts until one starts to approach the long-term average annual returns of stocks or real estate, somewhere around 7% or 8%. Above that, it’s pretty hard to argue that investing is going to improve your finances as quickly as eliminating debt.
The issue starts to get trickier in that 7% to 8% range. Some people simply do not have the stomach for the volatility of many investments. Watching their retirement savings drop by 20% or 30% in value over the course of a year can cause them to make panicked moves out of stocks, which only guarantees their losses. They’re not tolerant of the risk.
Ask yourself honestly what you will do the next time the stock market lurches and you have a healthy amount in stocks within your retirement plan. Are you going to stay put as you watch the value of your retirement drop by 3% per month for several months, or are you going to get nervous and bail? If you’ll truly stay put, your risk tolerance is high and thus your magic interest rate should be 1% or 2% higher than average. If you’ll bail (and many people will), then your magic interest rate should be 1% or 2% lower than average.
If you’re planning on making a major career switch or other major life change that will either drop your income level or put your income at risk, then cash flow becomes paramount. And when cash flow is paramount, the most important things for you to do are to eliminate debts and have cash in hand (from savings in a savings account).
In other words, your risk tolerance becomes very low because you can’t afford to lose much money in the coming years, thus you definitely lean toward paying down debt and your “magic” interest rate drops through the floor, down to as low as 2% or 3%.
If you’re hoping to keep things on track and are aiming to progress in your current career and perhaps build income, then preparing for the long term is what matters most and you can actually bolster your “magic” interest rate a little bit because of the long term power of compound interest in your retirement plan and other long-term tools. After all, you’re moving in a direction where you won’t need to tap it for a very long time.
If you have variable-interest loans, such as an adjustable-rate mortgage, a student loan with variable interest, or a credit card that can adjust the rate, projections of future interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve should definitely impact your “magic” rate. If the Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates in the coming year, your “magic” interest rate should go up by that same amount when evaluating variable interest loans.
This has no impact on fixed-rate loans. Most mortgages and car loans and many student loans fall into this category. Thus, if that makes up the bulk of your debt, you really don’t need to worry much about this factor at all.
This is another “cash flow” issue. If you’re close to retirement, the most important thing in the final few years as you coast into retirement is to ensure that you have your bills as low as possible so you can make ends meet on your already existing retirement savings. That’s because, with such a short time frame, most retirement investments are very volatile and may not retain value for you.
Never dump cash into the stock market or real estate if you’re going to need it in the next few years. So, in this situation, your “magic” interest rate should be really low.
On the other hand, if you’re far from retirement, anything you save for retirement has a ton of time for the power of compounding to work in your benefit, so you should actually raise your “magic” interest rate a bit in this case.
For most people, these factors are going to be pointing in a bunch of different directions at once. If that describes your situation, then I’d keep my “magic” interest rate somewhere close to the long-term expected return of the stock market – around 7%. If your debts have a higher interest rate than that, focus primarily on paying those debts off. If your remaining debts have an interest rate below that, then focus on your savings goals and use any extra to keep making progress on your debts.
If most of the factors point toward a higher “magic” interest rate for you, bump it up by a few percentage points and switch over to saving once you’ve eliminated all debts above 9% or 10%. On the other hand, if most factors point toward a lower “magic” interest rate, focus on paying off all of your debts that don’t have a zero interest rate.
The key thing to remember is that this isn’t an exact science. You’re simply trying to make the best moves for you, and these are factors that can push you one way or another. It’s also important to remember that simply spending less than you earn and doing something productive with the remnants is the only truly important thing here. It doesn’t matter too much what you decide to do regarding a 7% interest rate debt because paying off that debt early and putting money away for retirement are both good moves, and you’re not really going wrong either way. This just gives you some guidelines when you’re trying to decide which one to choose.
Good luck!
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The post Your ‘Magic’ Interest Rate: Figuring Out Debt vs. Savings appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
While I have wanted a summer garden for what seems like forever, I never made the time to build one until we moved into our current home four years ago.
That first year, I was insanely pumped for all the goodies I planned to grow. After borrowing a rototiller from a neighbor and carefully sectioning a garden spot with adorable picket white fencing, I was off to Lowe’s to stock up on seeds and plants.
Sadly, I didn’t do a ton of research ahead of time. And the stuff I bought to plant didn’t really mesh well, either. Across a tiny plot of land (maybe 8 by 10 feet), I planted everything from tomatoes to squash to strawberries, cilantro, cucumbers, onions, sweet potatoes, cabbage, basil, and eggplant.
Basically, I went a little overboard.
Over the course of the summer, some of my plants grew rather well. The tomatoes did okay, for example, as did the zucchini… which is easy to grow anyway. I also did okay with the cabbage heads I grew (although they never got very big), and my cucumber plants were absolute breeding machines!
But, the strawberries lived a short and rather sad life. The cilantro turned a crazy color and died shortly after. The eggplant and carrots I planted failed to launch.
And the sweet potatoes… why did I plant those again?
After picking what I could at the end of summer, I spent an entire day digging beneath the ground to find randomly sprouted sweet potatoes that were delicious, but still not worth all that work.
Keep in mind, I’m not a professional gardener, nor do I want to be. I have no desire to spend my summers meticulously creating ideal plant habitats, testing soil samples, or watering my garden by hand.
And while my initial goal with gardening was to save money on produce, our main objective now is fun. Not only do I enjoy having a little garden, but my kids get a kick out of the process, too. They love picking plants or seeds, watering them with the hose extension, and watching baby plants grow into hearty, fruit-bearing adults.
But, after our first go-round with gardening, I realized something important – that perhaps, as I’ve found in many other aspects of our lives, less is more.
If I could focus on just a few plants instead of 10, I thought, we could enjoy the benefits of gardening without the hassle of figuring so much out – or the stress of plants dying all the time.
So, my thought process was this: I would eliminate plants that didn’t work well that first year, along with plants that didn’t produce enough to justify the work. I would also eliminate vegetables that are relatively cheap to buy.
For us, that meant getting rid of:
That left us with:
While growing fewer things has made our garden a lot less diverse, I believe it’s been a smart move. With only four vegetables brewing at any given time, my gardening life has become a lot simpler.
That first year, for example, I would get a random eggplant or cabbage and wonder what the heck to do with it. Then, I would struggle to build a meal around it, and potentially buy more ingredients just to use it up.
With just tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and basil, on the other hand, I never have that problem. Why? Because we eat these foods all the time. For example:
Basically, we’ll eat cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, and basil in about a million different ways. We’ll eat them as a main dish, use them to create a side dish, or cut them up and eat them plain. And no matter what, I can always find a way to use these four foods if a bunch of them become ripe at once.
Further, I believe that farming only four foods probably saves us money. Because we’re growing only foods we know we’ll inhale, we never, ever have any waste from our garden. These last few years especially, we’ve almost always harvested and eaten our fresh vegetables all on the same day – as in, I’ll walk out to the garden before dinner, see what’s ripe, and make a meal or side dish out of it daily.
If you’re someone who wants a garden but finds the idea overwhelming, consider a gardening shortcut. By growing only what grows easily in your climate — and what you know you’re sure to eat – you can have access to fresh foods minus the hassle and stress.
For us, this strategy has been a real game-changer. Instead of trying to be good at everything, I decided to learn how to grow four easy foods well. And now that summer is approaching, I can’t wait to do it all again.
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.
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The post Why I Only Grow Four Things in My Garden appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
O2 has become the latest mobile provider to announce the imminent launch of free mobile roaming in Europe.
From 15 June, pay monthly O2 mobile customers can use their minutes, texts, and data allowance for free in O2’s ‘Europe Zone’, which covers 47 territories.
NatWest customers should beware a scam text message doing the rounds this morning, which asks users to verify their account.
Savers are confused about where to turn for financial advice and are not always sure which are the most trustworthy sources.
This was the conclusion of research from the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment ahead of its annual Financial Planning Week.
