Among the exhibits at the 102nd annual Pennsylvania Farm Show will be ones having to do with the state's growing hemp industry, “green” farming methods and agriculture STEM careers.The Pennsylvania Farm Bureau will have a special exhibit for children and families, as well as sections on government affairs, information technology and Farm Bureau membership.The Pennsylvania Farm Show opens Saturday at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg and continues through 5 p.m. [...]
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الثلاثاء، 2 يناير 2018
Gnaden Huetten and Palmerton hospitals officially become St. Luke's campuses
St. Luke’s University Health Network and Blue Mountain Health System officially have become one after clearing regulatory hurdles in December, St. Luke’s said in a news release Tuesday.Effective Dec. 31, Gnaden Huetten Hospital in Lehighton and Palmerton Hospital became part of the larger St. Luke’s network, which now includes nine hospitals and nearly 300 outpatient sites in 10 Pennsylvania and New Jersey counties, the release noted. The hospitals will be known [...]
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Subway’s New $4.99 Footlongs Are Giving Us ‘$5, $5, $5 Footlong’ Flashbacks
New year, new… deal on sandwiches. At least at Subway.
The sub chain just kicked off a new limited-time offer that serves up five cheap but filling footlong sandwich options. The cost? Just $4.99.
Although the new price doesn’t fit as neatly into the old jingle as we’d like — hums “$5 Footlong” jingle to self — we Penny Hoarders know that every penny counts, so we’re happy.
Of course, not every sandwich on the menu is super cheap, but you can order these five sandwiches for just $4.99:
- Black Forest Ham
- Meatball Marinara
- Spicy Italian
- Cold Cut Combo
- Veggie Delite
Before you head to Subway to grab lunch today, make sure that your local restaurant offers this deal.
While most locations will participate, The Washington Post reported that the cost of giving customers this deal cuts into local franchise owners’ profits, and many are not happy about it. That means the restaurant nearest you may opt out. It wouldn’t hurt to call ahead to confirm your local sub joint’s got it.
Subway says the discounted sandwiches won’t stick around forever, but there are also no details on when the promotion will end.
Desiree Stennett is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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One Year in Office: Trump Keeps Defying His Critics
Since the day Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen by some 35 percent, making the last 14 months one of the greatest bull market runs in history.
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Need Help Paying for Your Visual Arts Degree? Check Out This Scholarship
Don’t let the naysayers deter you. A career in the arts can pay off.
In fact, Nikon is investing in budding photographers before they even get their careers off the ground. The corporation known for its professional-grade cameras and photo equipment will be giving away scholarships worth $10,000 each to 10 current college or graduate school students.
The Nikon Storytellers Scholarship is a new program that was created as part of the brand’s 100th anniversary celebration.
“Nikon understands the dedication it takes to pursue and become successful in creative fields, and we are honored to play a role in supporting students’ achievement in academic excellence,” Kosuke Kawaura, Nikon’s director of marketing, communications and planning, said in a press release.
Students who are awarded the scholarships will be able to use the money for tuition, fees, books, supplies and equipment for the 2018-2019 school year.
Apply for the Nikon Storytellers Scholarship
Scholarship Amount: $10,000
Scholarships Awarded: 10
For consideration, applicants must:
- Attend an undergraduate or graduate school program at an accredited, nonprofit college/university or vocational/technical school in the United States or Canada
- Have completed their freshman year by fall 2018
- Major in visual arts, fine arts, journalism, film, photography or multimedia/content creation
- Have a cumulative GPA of 2.5 or higher
- Provide a letter of recommendation from a professor, teacher or academic adviser
Scholarship Deadline: March 1, 2018
From the pool of applicants, Nikon will select a group of scholarship semifinalists by March 12. Those semifinalists have until March 30 to provide a photo portfolio or video submission, along with a description of their portfolio or submission and a copy of their academic transcript.
Nikon will notify the 10 lucky scholarship winners sometime around June.
See here for more information and to apply for the Nikon Storytellers Scholarship.
Nicole Dow is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Legacy.com Is Hiring Remote Content Screeners in IL and IN (Pay Is $13/Hr)
If you’re looking for a work-from-home job and live in Illinois or Indiana, check out this job opening for content screeners at online memorial website Legacy.com.
(I know it’s frustrating when remote jobs are confined to specific states, but those restrictions are usually because of employment tax laws or other job-dependent regulations.)
We found this job thanks to Work at Home Mom Revolution, but if this job isn’t what you’re looking for, head over to our Jobs page on Facebook. We post new opportunities there all the time.
Content Screener at Legacy.com
Pay: $13 per hour
Responsibilities include:
- Screening online condolence messages to make sure they comply with Legacy.com’s guidelines.
Available shifts (Central Time):
- Tuesday – Saturday, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
- Friday – Monday, 2 p.m to 6 p.m.
- Friday – Monday, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Applicants for this position must:
- Live in Illinois or Indiana
- Have no conflicting responsibilities during shifts, such as caring for young children
- Have a high-speed internet connection
- Have a personal computer running at least OSX 10.6 or Windows 7
- Have strong communication skills
- Be self-motivated and have attention to detail
Benefits include:
- Paid time off
- 401(k) plan
- Employee Assistance Program
- Vision discount program
Apply here for the Content Screener job at Legacy.com.
Lisa McGreevy is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She loves telling readers about new job opportunities so look her up on Twitter (@lisah) if you’ve got a tip to share.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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How to align your investments with your principles
Many of us are making more ethical and sustainable choices as consumers, but we can also make a positive impact with our savings and investments.
Almost half of Brits (47%) now want to both make money and make a positive difference to the world, according to YouGov research in September 2017 for the Good Money Week campaign. This should come as no surprise as British consumers are making more ethical and sustainable choices than ever before.
But are we reflecting the same concerns in our savings and investments? The evidence suggests not. More than half (53%) of us are now choosing to avoid buying products and services if we have concerns about the retailer’s activities or the origin or impact of our purchases, according to a survey commissioned by not-for-profit organisation Ethical Consumer and Triodos Bank in 2016.
By contrast, in the investment world, ethical and sustainable investment funds are still niche, representing just 1.2%, or £14.4 billion, of the total assets held by funds in the UK. The ethical banking space is also comparatively small, managing just £21 billion of a possible £125 billion.
So why aren’t more of us aligning our money with our principles? One argument is that investment jargon makes this a confusing area.
What began in the 1980s with a single fund called Friends Provident Stewardship, which didn’t invest in so-called ‘sin stocks’ such as arms, tobacco and gambling, has evolved into a vast array of investment strategies and labels.
“There are so many different definitions – ‘ethical investment’, ‘socially responsible investment’, ‘sustainable finance’, ‘environmental and social governance’ – that most investors must be thoroughly confused,” says Mark Dampier, head of research at fund platform Hargreaves Lansdown.
In the ethical banking space, the entrance of big US hedge fund investors to rescue Co-Operative Bank has also muddied the waters, raising questions over whether ethical banking can be sustainable and profitable.
Another common objection is the subjectivity of the term ‘ethical’.
“Often when I tell people what I do, I am asked: ‘Oh. So what’s ethical then?’ in quite a challenging way,” says Olivia Bowen, co-founder of Castlefield – an investment and advisory business that specialises in ethical investment and saving. This is a problem for Mr Dampier too, who observes that one man’s ethical exclusion is another man’s everyday norm – such as smoking or drinking alcohol, for example.
How do ethical funds perform?
The most prevalent objection to ethical and sustainable investing is the assumption that investors must sacrifice performance for their principles. “In 1984, I was told that buying good companies would mean outperformance, but it didn’t,” says Mr Dampier, who points out that the exclusion of tobacco stocks from Friends Provident Stewardship led to significant underperformance over the years.
Times have, however, changed. Tobacco consumption has slowed dramatically in the developed world – in the UK, it is down 33% since 1976, according to the Office for National Statistics’ Adult Smoking Habits report.
Meanwhile, we now face entirely new challenges such as climate change and mass automation. This shift is reflected in markets and the types of companies we can now invest in – from advanced biotechnology firms, to electric car and wind turbine manufacturers, to internet leaders. Many of the fund managers and investors that recognised this shift have reaped the rewards.
Analysing ethical and sustainable funds as a group is notoriously difficult as the Investment Association, the trade body that represents UK investment managers, has not created a separate sector for them.
We asked fund data firm FE Analytics to do a comparison. It split funds into two groups: generalist funds (excluding funds that invest in only one asset such as gold or oil) and ethical or sustainable generalist funds (excluding those that only invest in one asset class as well, such as solar energy or property). The generalist funds’ universe consists of more than 1,200 funds, while the ethical group contains less than 40.
Over the 10 years to 31 October 2017, the average generalist fund returned 91%, while the average ethical or sustainable generalist fund returned 87%.
More interesting, however, is how this is changing. Over the past five years, ethical and sustainable generalist funds have outperformed their mainstream rivals by 10% – returning 77% compared to 67% – while over three years they have returned 37% compared to 35%. Over one year, they have delivered 13% compared to 11%. In other words, since 2012, generalist ethical and sustainable funds have broadly outperformed their mainstream rivals.
These figures are supported by several pieces of research. In 2014, the Harvard Business School found that companies with strong corporate sustainability practices significantly outperform their peers over the long term. In 2015, global investment index provider MSCI found that environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment strategies (which invest in companies with strong practices in areas such as the environment and human rights) had outperformed the MSCI World index since 2007. Meanwhile, an October 2016 study by Barclays Bank into fixed income found that introducing environmental, social and governance factors resulted in a steady performance benefit.
Click on the table below to see a larger version.
How to choose an ethical fund
The first step to finding the right investment fund is to figure out what type of ethical or sustainable investor you are.
Julia Dreblow, an industry expert who helps financial advisers understand ethical and sustainable funds, suggests the following approach: “People interested in this space usually fall into one of three categories: those with strong ethical views; those who recognise the world is changing and want to align their portfolios for a better return; and those who want to make a real positive impact with their money,” she says.
Type 1: You have very strong views on animal testing or arms
You should focus on traditional ethical funds that filter out the companies that engage in these practices. Both Liontrust UK Ethical and Kames Ethical Cautious Managed are good choices for no animal testing. Unicorn UK Ethical – which has a comprehensive screen that includes all major ‘sin’ areas – and the BMO F&C Responsible Global Equity (from the people behind Friends Provident Stewardship) are also good choices.
Type 2: You want to profit from a world that is changing for the better
You should focus on funds that concentrate on the environmental, social and governance credentials of the companies they invest in (often called ESG). If you have just a passing interest, then a passive fund such as the UBS MSCI World Socially Responsible UCITS ETF might do. However, if you want to combine investing in companies leading in governance with those making active positive change, then the Liontrust Sustainable Future range is a good choice. The investment team is one of the longest established in the industry – having started at Aviva in 2000 – and the funds all have strong performance records.
Type 3: You want to make a real positive impact with your money
For those interested in making active, positive change, funds that focus on a single sector or issue may be useful. One of the newest launches in this space is the Columbia Threadneedle UK Social Bond fund, which lends to small community businesses with social reporting and research undertaken by Big Issue Invest. Other popular funds include WHEB Sustainability – which has a strong environmental focus – as does Jupiter Ecology and Impax Environmental Markets.
Other investment options
You could also consider some niche options – from renewable energy investment trusts, to crowdfunding sites that invest your money directly into local renewable energy projects, to direct investment in start-up ethical and sustainable businesses. However, these are high-risk investments and generally only suitable for more experienced investors.
Good sites to find out more include: Abundance (Abundanceinvestment.com), which offers investments in UK energy projects; Community Shares (Communityshares.org.uk), which features businesses that serve a community purpose; Ethex (Ethex.org.uk), which features businesses that set out to do good; and Trillion Fund (Trillionfund.com), which features renewable energy investments.
Take specialist advice
If you have investible assets of more than £250,000 (as usually anything below this doesn’t justify the fees), you may want to head straight for an independent financial adviser that specialises in ethical investment, such as Castlefield – which has offices in London, Manchester, and Salisbury – which can help you to build bespoke portfolios based on your principles.
For a full list of financial advisers that specialise in ethical and sustainable investment, visit the Ethical Investment Association’s website (Ethicalinvestment.org.uk).
Make your investments tax efficient
The best place to invest in ethical and sustainable funds will depend on your circumstances. However, do consider using a tax-efficient wrapper to hold your investments, such as a Stocks and Shares Isa, where your money can grow free of capital gains and income tax.
Alternatively, if you’re prepared to lock the money away until you’re 55, you could use a self-invested personal pension (Sipp) and get upfront tax relief on the contributions, depending on your rate of income tax.
You can invest in ethical funds within an Isa or Sipp wrapper on most of the major DIY investment platforms, which allow you to open an account and invest anything from £25 a month within minutes.
The choice of ethical and sustainable funds varies across platforms, though, so do check their selection first. Also keep an eye on fees and charges – especially for Sipps – as these can also vary widely. There is more information on which investment platform to choose at http://ift.tt/2yAvO4v.
For the more esoteric investments outlined in other investment options, you can typically open an account directly with the platform or company.
You can also invest ethically through your workplace pension. Although the choice of ethical and sustainable funds is often limited, there are usually one or two options. Those who are interested in switching their pension into an ethical and sustainable fund should contact their pension provider and ask for a list of the funds available, then select the one that is most aligned with their principles.
As Ms Bowen observes, if you are interested in investing this way, the most important thing is to do what you can: “I think it’s about joining the movement. The most important thing is to demonstrate with your money that you support this sector.”
The ethical investor: “I want to make investments that are financially prudent”
Hannah Gilbert, a 42-year-old from north-west London, has been investing in ethical and sustainable funds for more than 15 years.
“I started through my workplace pension,” she says. “There were only two choices: Aegon Ethical Equity and Scottish Equitable Socially Responsible Equity, so I split my fund between the two.”
These days, Hannah has a wide range of different holdings across her pension and Stocks and Shares Isa, as well as some direct investments into the Trillion Fund – a community renewable energy fund – and start-up ethical fashion brand Birdsong. On why she invests ethically, Hannah puts it down to pragmatism. She says: “I want to make investments that are financially prudent over the long term and, over the long term, ethical, social and governance factors are real risks.”
JARGON BUSTER
Ethical Investment: A process of screening out ‘sin stocks’ such as arms, tobacco and gambling.
Socially Responsible Investment (SRI): Investment in companies actively providing solutions to social and environmental challenges.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria: A way of highlighting companies according to how well they follow corporate governance rules, and benefit the environment and society.
TOP TIP: How to analyse ethical funds
To find out more about ethical funds you can use 3D Investing’s Fund Analyst tool at 3dinvesting.com/ ethical-funds/How to align your investments with your principles
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Here’s Why You Need the Blaze Pizza App ASAP (Hint: Free Pizza Is Involved)
When you can’t wait for delivery, there’s Blaze — a counter-service restaurant where you can order up endlessly customizable pizza.
But why go there for one pizza when you could get two? That’s why you should add “get the Blaze Pizza app” to your to-do list.
A buy-one, get-one-free pizza deal is waiting for you.
How to Get a Free Blaze Pizza
Click on “Have a promo code?” and enter workworkwork in the rewards tab of the Blaze Pizza app. (The code is case sensitive.)
Use your BOGO to order whatever pizzas you want (!!). Tell the cashier you have a reward before you pay, and they’ll scan the code on your app to apply the BOGO deal to your order.
Your BOGO reward expires on Feb. 13, 2018.
If you don’t already have the Blaze app, what are you waiting for? You get a free fountain drink for signing up. (It expires one month after you download the app.) You earn rewards JUST FOR EATING PIZZA.
Each time you spend $5 at a Blaze location and scan your app at the register, you earn a “flame.” Ten flames = one free pizza!
You don’t need to add a payment method to use and scan the app, but you might want to add one. The app also lets you place orders online so you can skip the line and feel like a VIP when you pick up your ’za.
Take a friend and split the cost of your first pizza, or purchase two pizzas and put one in the fridge for later!
Lisa Rowan is a senior writer and producer at The Penny Hoarder, where she covers mainly pizza-related topics.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Make $220 in Half the Time it Takes to Watch a ‘Stranger Things’ Episode
Low on funds? Need money fast?
Hey, we’ve all been there. Personally, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve searched my couch cushions and the cupholders in my car, scrounging for spare change.
Don’t do that. There’s a better way.
Spend the next 30 minutes checking these tasks off your list, and you’ll earn $220 — without even leaving your house!
Get out your smartphone or your laptop. Flex your fingers. Focus your thoughts. Follow along and get ready to make money online fast.
1. Collect $5 From PointClub
The folks over at PointClub will actually pay you to take online surveys!
This is a definitely a reader favorite, because of the wide variety of ways to make extra cash beyond taking surveys for money. It’s free to sign up, and you’ll get a $5 bonus when you take your first survey.
You’ll earn points you can redeem for cash via PayPal or gift cards to a number of popular retailers, including Amazon.
Sign up for PointClub here.
2. Collect $25 From JOANY
JOANY is a health care concierge service. It helps people find and compare plans, seek out doctors and navigate complicated medical bills.
To best cater to customers, it needs you to answer some survey questions. It takes less than 10 minutes, with fewer than 50 questions. In return, you’ll pocket $25.
To participate, you’ll need to meet these qualifications:
- You purchased health insurance for 2017 or 2018 through your state exchange, Healthcare.gov, a broker or a plan like Oscar or Aetna.
- You don’t receive health insurance through your employer or school.
- You aren’t on Medicaid, Medicare or VA health insurance.
JOANY promises fewer than 50 questions and less than 10 minutes of your time. Most questions are multiple choice, which makes answering easy. Your answers are private and protected under federal law.
3. Share Your Thoughts With Opinion Outpost
Opinion Outpost offers surveys from all kinds of businesses and organizations. Most of them take around 10 minutes to complete and will earn you points that you can redeem for free gift cards to places like Amazon and iTunes.
What sets it apart from other survey sites is it gives away $40,000 every year. It has a quarterly drawing for a $10,000 cash prize — and for every survey you complete, you’ll get one entry into the contest!
4. Collect $10 From Ebates
Have you heard of Ebates? It’s a cash-back site that lets you earn rewards by shopping online. We love it around here, because it’s an easy way to save on everything you buy.
For example, you’ll earn up to 6% cash back on every purchase you make at Amazon. Plus, you’ll get a $10 bonus to shop at Walmart when you sign up. Here’s how to get it:
- Sign up for Ebates using your email or Facebook account. (It’s free.)
- Use the Ebates portal next time you shop online. It’s connected to thousands of stores, including eBay, Amazon and Home Depot.
- When you spend your first $25 at any of the connected stores, Ebates will reward you $10 on top of the cash-back rewards you earn normally.
5. Collect $150 From Chase
If you’re looking for a passive way to earn some money, a cash-back credit card is perhaps one of the easiest methods.
You just have to be sure you don’t get too carried away with those purchases — and that you pay off the card at the end of each billing period.
Here’s an option we like: It’s the Chase Freedom Unlimited card. Its claim to fame? You’ll earn an unlimited 1.5% cash back on all your purchases. Plus, if you spend $500 in your first three months of opening the card (hi, groceries), you’ll pocket a $150 bonus.
There’s no annual fee, and the cash-back rewards don’t expire. We checked Credible’s annual rewards calculator, and it estimates $417 in annual rewards based on our spending habits.* (You can enter your unique spending habits and see what you’d earn, too.)
Get signed up — with 0% intro APR for 15 months — here.
6. Try Your Luck With Lucktastic
OK, think of this as the cherry on top. If you’ve followed our instructions so far, you’re that much richer. Here’s one more chance at some extra money.
Try out a free app called Lucktastic. Each day, it releases a new assortment of digital scratch-off tickets. Instant wins range from $1 to $10,000. You can also earn tokens, enter contests and play games.
The app is free to download — and play.
7. Collect $5 From Stash
Stash is a popular micro-investing app. It lets you start investing with as little as $5 and for just a $1 monthly fee (first month free) for balances under $5,000.
Automate your investments by allocating, say, $5 per week. You can put your Stash money in over 30 different investment funds reflecting your beliefs, interests and goals.
Bonus: Right now, The Penny Hoarder is teaming up with Stash to fund your first investment so you’ll get a bonus $5 to start.
8. Collect $10 From Acorns
Acorns is another popular micro-investing app. Once you connect it to a debit or credit card, it rounds your purchases up to the nearest dollar and funnels your digital change into a savings and investment account.
Because the money comes out in increments of less than $1, you’re not likely to feel an impact in your bank account. You can also set it up so it doesn’t round up every single purchase.
Sign up through this link, and you’ll get a free $10 when you make your first investment.
9. Collect $10 From Ibotta
Did you know you can get paid cash back just for taking a picture of your receipt? Here’s how it works:
- Sign up for Ibotta here. You just need a name and email address to start.
- Browse through the cash-back offers in your area next time you go to a store, supermarket, restaurant or bar. (The offers change every week.)
- Once you’ve reached at least $20 in earnings, request payment via PayPal or Venmo.
Right now, Ibotta is giving new users a $10 sign-up bonus just for redeeming their first receipt.
You’re already halfway to cashing out.
10. Collect an Extra $5 From Decluttr
If you have a little more time, start shuffling through your old movies or CDs because Decluttr will pay you for them.
Decluttr buys your old CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays and video games, plus hardware like cell phones, tablets, game consoles and iPods.
One user, Gil Flores, sold about 100 DVDs and 75 CDs and made $275 — an average of $1.57 each.
Just download the app, and start scanning the barcodes on your media to get immediate quotes. It’s completely free to use — no listing or seller fees.
Payment is pretty fast — it’ll take a day or two — but shipping is free.
Right now, when you send in your trades, Decluttr grants you a $5 bonus if you enter FREE5 at checkout.
11. Sell Gift Cards
Okay, I’ll admit it: This one will definitely take more than half an hour, so we won’t include the money from this one in our $220 grand total.
We’ve talked plenty about selling unused gift cards online, but that won’t pay up quickly enough for our purposes here. If you want to turn your gift cards into cash right now, you’ll have to venture into the real world.
Ask friends, family, neighbors, co-workers or (if it’s allowed) store patrons if they’re interested in buying your gift card at a discount. They may be happy to buy, say, a $25 gift card for just $20. And you’ll have $20 more in cash!
Finally, consider this: If you still need extra cash and you have more than 30 minutes to spare, check out our guide to 15 smart ways to make money in the next 24 hours. It includes ideas like nabbing a Craigslist gig or selling some of your little-used clothes.
The important thing is to just keep at it. When you’re broke, it can be really tempting to just take a nap on your couch instead of doing anything about it. Then you search your couch cushions for spare change.
Don’t do that. There’s a better way.
Mike Brassfield (mike@thepennyhoarder.com) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. Like you, he could use some extra money.
*Annual Rewards amounts will change based on the amounts you enter. The monthly spending category names and definitions may vary among issuers, and categories may not align one-to-one.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Get Paid to Lose Weight and Be Healthy
By Holly Reisem Hanna Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get paid to lose weight? Sounds way too good to be true, right? Well, guess what? There are plenty of opportunities out there designed to help you earn money while you lose weight! And it’s not just about getting paid to lose weight, either. Many […]
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Fifteen Ways I Plan To Save Money This Year
A few days ago, I posted a list of fifteen things I did in the past year to save money. While this provided a great reflection of many of the positive moves I’ve made in recent times that actually had a positive effect on our finances, it’s perhaps just as important to turn one’s gaze forward and ask what a person might do in the near future to save money.
With that in mind, here’s a parallel list of fifteen items, except these are things I plan to do in the coming year in order to cut our expenses.
I plan to cut the cord and drop cable television entirely. As soon as our current contract expires, we plan to cut out our satellite bill entirely. In fact, I already have the date marked on my calendar. On that day, I’m placing a call and having the service disconnected.
This is a large bill – larger than I’d like – for a service that we scarcely use. We don’t watch a whole lot of television to begin with – far below the national average – and when we do watch, it’s often a selected show from Netflix or Amazon Prime. We simply do not spend much time at all watching cable television.
Our motivation to keep it in the past has been to watch sporting events and live news, but we honestly find other ways to view those things. I typically go to a party or a friend’s house to watch big sporting events and I don’t watch any at home. We catch national and international news via the internet, and we catch the local news via over the air signal. There just isn’t much of a use case any more for cable television, so we’re dropping it.
I plan to reduce the size of my board game collection by 50%, rather than expanding it further. My goal by the end of the year is to reduce the size of my board game collection by 50% through a mixture of game trading and selling online. While that doesn’t mean that a few new games won’t appear in my home, it does mean that the overall number needs to drop.
This isn’t because I don’t like my game collection. I will undoubtedly be getting rid of some games that I do not want to get rid of. Rather, I’m doing this because I simply have more games than it is possible to reasonably play in a reasonable amount of time, and I want to trim it down to the ones that I am most excited to play and feel as though I will actually be able to get to the table regularly.
There will definitely be some proceeds from this selloff, which means that my hobby spending in the coming year will be much less than the previous year and, hopefully, approach neutral ground.
I plan to have at least two “meal prep days” per month. A “meal prep day” simply means that I spend a large portion of a day preparing meals to be frozen and used at a later date. For example, on a meal prep day, a person might make a huge vat of soup and then store it in smaller family meal sized containers for freezing so that, at a later and busier time, that bag can be thawed to provide a very quick family meal.
We’ve done this several times in the last few years, but I want to make it even more regular in the coming year. Having those meals in the freezer has been a godsend at times and I’d like to reach a point where they can just be completely banked on a night or two a week (at least) instead of just filling in a gap here or there. Sadly, our meal preps weren’t always enough to cover our needs for quick meals and we ended up utilizing local restaurants a few times, something I want to change. To make that happen, I need a more regular commitment to meal prep days.
My first one is coming up very soon. Much as I noted above, I’m going to make a giant vat of soup (actually, a chili recipe) and then put it in gallon freezer bags in sufficient quantity to feed the family and make enough leftovers to cover lunch for Sarah and myself the subsequent day.
I plan to store most of our extra garden produce rather than giving most of it away. In the past few years, we’ve been so flooded with produce that we ended up having to give some of it away. We didn’t really plan ahead very well for huge piles of cucumbers and tomatoes, so we didn’t end up utilizing them very well.
That’s changing this year. As soon as the plants look anywhere near their harvest, we’re coming up with a concrete plan to process and store all of it – or as much as possible. I have plans for making salsa, pasta sauce, and pickles in copious quantities, and I’ll be penciling in a weekend to do it as soon as our harvest dates become more clear in the spring and summer.
This isn’t because I mind giving some produce away – I don’t – but we gave away so much that I’m sure at least some of it quietly went to waste on the tables of our friends. That’s a mistake that I don’t want to repeat.
I plan to go through a very deliberate process to replace our SUV and pay for it in cash. As proud as I am of the fact that we managed to get ten years of driving out of the SUV that we bought used off of Craigslist, it really is reaching the point where it needs to be replaced. We have a brilliant mechanic who has done a great job of keeping things going, but the list of repairs that are coming up around the bend is large – new shocks and struts, a new flywheel, a new transmission, a new starter, a new circuit board for the instrument panel, a new radio, and several kid-related cosmetic issues – and the vehicle is now over the 200,000 mile mark. It’s time to replace it.
I am very glad that Sarah and I have been saving for this situation (and for the replacement of her commuting car in a year or two). We have the freedom to shop slowly for what we want, on our own terms, and buy accordingly.
Later this month, we’re going to sit down together, figure out exactly what vehicles and features we are targeting, and simply tell several local dealerships exactly what we want. We have no interest in shopping around for anything less. The one that comes in with the lowest price within a few weeks will get our business.
I plan to integrate even more low cost staples into our meals. In the past couple of months, I have really come to appreciate our rice cooker. I think I finally reached a level of proficiency with it where the rice comes out pretty much exactly how I want every single time and I can prepare lots of variations to boot.
Because of that, we’ve been eating more rice in our diet as of late, and that’s great because rice is really inexpensive and reasonably healthy.
In the coming year, I want to expand on that. I want to really master the art of cooking all kinds of beans – not just the black beans and pinto beans and lentils that I’m good at preparing, but other kinds of beans as well. I want to get really efficient at it so that it doesn’t become an obstacle.
I want to dabble into ways of making really high quality versions of other low cost staples, too. For example, I want to get back into making sizable batches of homemade pasta, which is dirt cheap and delicious but time-consuming unless you attain a high level of proficiency.
You might call these things a “hobby,” but they produce some amazing meals at an incredibly low price.
I plan to make large quantities of vegetable stock with our leftover vegetable scraps instead of just disposing of them. We often end up with a lot of vegetable scraps – a few spoonfuls of unused steamed broccoli or part of an onion or a few bits of green pepper. In the past, I was in the habit of throwing them into a gallon Ziploc bag in the freezer and then eventually making stock out of them, but somehow I fell out of that habit.
In the coming year, that’s a habit I hope to reclaim. I want to avoid wasting even a single usable scrap from our home, so what I’m going to do is just put all of it in a fresh new gallon bag and, when it’s full, dump it in the slow cooker in the morning, turn it on low, add some salt and pepper, and let it simmer all day. In the evening, I just strain it and put it in another container to freeze until we need it. It’s as simple as that.
Why do this? Vegetable stock is an amazing flavoring for all kinds of things. You can use it instead of water to make mind-blowing rice. You can use it as the basis for soups. You can use it to deglaze pans while you’re cooking to add even more flavor. You can use it in almost any dish that calls for a little water to add a spike of flavor. It’s so versatile and makes cooking at home so much tastier!
I plan to redo the caulk around several windows. During this current cold snap, I’ve noticed that the caulking in a few of our windows is weak, so I’m going to fix that, probably by the time you read this. This is my money “resolution” that will likely see the first action of the year.
Taking care of a little air leak around a window is easy. You just need a tube of caulk, a putty knife with a rounded corner, and a caulking gun. All you do is strip off any caulk in place with the putty knife, put fresh caulk there to replace it with the gun – it’s like spreading toothpaste on a toothbrush – and then smooth it out and let it dry. That’s it.
The caulk then blocks cold air from coming through the window, which keeps your house warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer, and ensures that your heating and cooling doesn’t run nearly as much, which saves a ton of energy.
I plan to price book the multitude of new grocers that have opened near our home in recent months. In the last few months, a bunch of groceries have opened up within fifteen minutes or so of our home. While I definitely rely on the old standby of the discount grocer that’s really close to our home, I want to make sure that we’re really getting the best prices on the things that we buy and eat.
How do I do that? I use a simple price book. I have a list of 25 or 30 things that we routinely buy – things like dry beans, pasta, certain fruits and vegetables, milk, and so on. I just go to each of the stores and check the regular prices on each of those items. How do they compare? Then, I add up how much we’d spend on those items over the course of a month. If one store is clearly ahead, that one becomes our default store.
With the number of new grocery stores around, particularly given that two of them are heavily promoting their low prices, I feel it’s time to do this type of price comparison and see if I can find a more cost-effective place to shop. My guess is that I won’t, but one can never be sure.
I plan to use items on hand to build a standing desk for free rather than buying one. I’ve been considering a standing desk for a long time, but nice standing desks can be pricy. They need to be very stable, for one, so you typically can’t go to your local low-end store and pick one up that’ll work well.
Instead, I’ve decided to just place a very stable desk we already have on a raised platform to function as a standing desk. This saves us the cost of having to purchase one.
Why a standing desk? The simple reason is that I need to move around more for my own health and the shifts and movements one makes while at a standing desk serve that purpose. I am considering eventually making it a treadmill desk.
I plan on not buying any new books for a year. The only books I will buy in the coming year will be from gift cards or other forms of store credit.
Why am I doing this, given that I am such an avid reader? It’s simple. I have a big pile of unread books at home, plus the library is an infinite source of additional books to read for free, plus I am on the dock to borrow several books from friends and family members.
Simply put, I have a ton of reading to do in the coming months without buying a single book… so why buy more books?
I’m sure that throughout the year I am going to find books that I am passionate about reading. Those books will go on a wish list or onto my library reserve queue.
I plan on adopting a diet even more heavily based on plants. This is a simple change. I just want fruits and vegetables to take up a higher percentage of my plate this year as compared to previous years. I can do this by being more conscious in the meals I’m preparing.
How does that save money, though? Well, for starters, countless studies have shown that plant-heavy diets have a huge benefit in terms of long term health, which reduces long term health care costs. At the same time, the costs of fruits and vegetables and grains is quite low compared to the costs of things like meats. Go to the store and compare the cost of a steak to what you can get from the same price in the produce section or even the frozen or canned vegetables area.
This is a dietary shift that’s already been a part of my life but one that I hope to push even farther in the coming year.
I plan on vacationing with another family to split expenses. We’re planning a road trip vacation this summer, which wouldn’t be all that expensive on its own, but to make it even less expensive, we’re planning on doing it with others and sharing a lot of the costs along the way
We’re using one very large vehicle for all of us rather than using multiple vehicles. We’re combining our lodging, too. Along the way, we’re all cooperating on meals and plan on using the kitchens at the places we’re staying more than eating out, which saves even more.
This is going to be an interesting and exciting and relatively low cost summer vacation, and I can’t wait.
I plan to get a November Project started near me. A “November Project” is simply a regular day, time, and place for people to get together and run a 5K. My plan is to try to get one started in the spring in our town park, where people meet up regularly in the early morning to run a 5K around town.
My hope is to get the Parks and Recreation department on board – which shouldn’t be too hard, as there’s no cost – and then use their resources to promote it. The goal would be to schedule one early in the morning so that people are done before work and school and to schedule it a couple times a week to accommodate varying schedules.
I’m not exactly a good runner, but the idea of building a community of people towards a positive health goal with no cost sounds quite appealing to me. I hope to write a really successful article about this in several months.
I plan on having a giant yard sale in the late spring. Our town has a community-wide yard sale each year in the spring and this year I hope to participate in it with a large family yard sale, perhaps in cooperation with an interested neighbor.
We have a lot of accumulated possessions from the past decade, particularly toys and clothes that our children have outgrown, that need to either be sold off or donated, as well as collections of DVDs and lots of other random items. I’m in the process of downsizing some of my possessions for personal reasons as well (besides just the aforementioned games).
A yard sale in the spring gives me (and everyone else in our home) something of a timeline to work toward in terms of processing our possessions and doing some conscious downsizing. Plus, it can produce some revenue for us along the way.
These tactics – and many other little ones that I’ll find and use along the way – give me great optimism that the coming year will be a wonderful one in terms of securing our financial future and enjoying many of the other life benefits that come from doing so, such as healthier lives and a better sense of control over our possessions. I hope you’ll stick around on this journey with me.
The post Fifteen Ways I Plan To Save Money This Year appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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This Might Be the Best Way to Actually Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions
It’s that time of year.
It’s time for most of us to make New Year’s resolutions, vowing to better ourselves in some way.
- I’m going to quit smoking.
- I will spend less money on stupid crap.
- I will learn a new skill.
- I will travel more.
- I will stop drinking so many tequila shots.
But more than any of those other options, people are making this resolution: I’m going to lose some weight.
Nearly 70% of people making New Year’s resolutions said they were resolving to lose weight or to generally stay fit and healthy, according to a 2015 survey by Nielsen, a global market research firm.
The next most popular resolutions were “enjoy life to the fullest” at 28% and “spend less, save more” at 25%.
Most of Us Won’t Beat the Odds — But Some Will!
Yup, everybody wants to lose a little weight. Unfortunately, the brutal fact is most of us fail to keep our New Year’s resolutions.
I know, I know — bummer. I’m not even sugarcoating it a little here. Sorry.
The odds are stacked against you. Approximately 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by the second week of February, reports U.S. News.
Hey, now wait just a minute here! So why do those other 20% succeed at it? Who gave those people permission to succeed like that, huh? Look at them, there they go, just succeeding all over the place.
How do their minds work? What’s their bloody secret, anyway?
Well, the American Psychological Association has some thoughts about that.
Start Small and Set Realistic Goals
“It’s important to remember the New Year isn’t meant to serve as a catalyst for sweeping character changes,” says the American Psychological Association.
Instead, “it is a time for people to reflect on their past year’s behavior and promise to make positive lifestyle changes.”
“Setting small, attainable goals throughout the year, instead of a singular, overwhelming goal on Jan. 1 can help you reach whatever it is you strive for,” Lynn Bufka, Ph.D. told the APA. “Remember, it is not the extent of the change that matters, but rather the act of recognizing that lifestyle change is important and working toward it, one step at a time.”
To improve your odds, the APA offers these tips:
- Start small. Make resolutions you think you can keep. For example, schedule three days a week at the gym instead of seven.
- Change one behavior at a time. Unhealthy behaviors develop over the course of time. So eliminating them also requires time.
- Talk about it. Share your experiences with family and friends, or consider joining a support group, such as a workout class at your gym.
- Don’t beat yourself up. “Perfection is unattainable,” it says.
- Ask for support. Accepting help from others strengthens your resilience and your ability to manage the stress your resolution can cause.
Keep Your Resolution by Betting on Yourself
If you’re ready to get serious about shedding some pounds, you’re going to need motivation. We’re betting cold, hard cash would do the trick.
Consider making a bet with a company called HealthyWage, which will pay you to accomplish your weight-loss goals. Enter how much weight you’d like to lose (10 to 150 pounds) in its calculator, how long you’ll take (six to 18 months) and how much you want to bet ($20 to $150 per month).
Each month, you pay your promised amount into the program. In return, HealthyWage provides support through expert advice and weight-tracking tools.
If you stick to your goal and lose the weight you say you’re going to, the company pays you. It’s as simple as that.
You start and end your challenge with a video-recorded weigh-in to demonstrate your weight loss. Throughout the challenge, you also log weekly weigh-ins, but not on video. These help ensure you’re losing the weight in a healthy way, not through extreme measures.
If you don’t hit your goal, your money goes to support HealthyWage, including prizes for others who achieve their goals.
Teresa Suarez lost 68 pounds — and made over $2,400. She bet $125 per month she would lose 60 pounds in six months. When that final weigh-in confirmed her success, Teresa won $2,415.28.
Depending on how much you have to lose, how long you give yourself to do it and how much money you put on the table, you can win up to $10,000 with HealthyWage. You can play with the calculator until you get your goal and prize just right.
It’s 2018, people. It’s a whole new year.
It’s now or never.
Mike Brassfield (mike@thepennyhoarder.com) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He, too, would like to lose some weight.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Hard Inquiries and Soft Pulls on Your Credit Report: What’s the Difference?
Sometimes, having your credit reports pulled can lower your credit scores. Other times, a credit inquiry won’t affect your credit scores at all.
The question is, do you know how to tell the difference? The answer comes down to the difference between hard and soft credit inquiries.
Soft and Hard Credit Inquiries: The Basics
The term “inquiry” describes the event that occurs whenever some party is granted access to one or more of your credit reports.
If you’ve taken the time to review your credit reports lately, you may have noticed a list of credit inquiries on those reports. On some credit report formats, the inquiry section is called “Companies that accessed your credit report,” or some reasonable variation. Your credit reports will display the name of any company that has pulled your credit profile, as well as the date of the access.
These inquiries can sometimes lower your credit scores. Yet, there are other times when credit inquiries won’t impact your credit scores at all.
There are two different categories when it comes to credit inquiries: hard and soft. Here are some examples of each…
| Hard Inquiries | Soft Inquiries |
|---|---|
| Credit card applications | Checking your own credit report |
| Mortgage applications | Pre-approved credit offers |
| Personal loan applications | Employment screening credit checks |
| Auto loan applications | Account maintenance credit checks by current creditors |
| Collection agency skip tracing | Credit checks by insurance companies |
Hard inquiry: May lower your credit score
Hard inquiries are those that do have the potential to lower your credit scores. You may have noticed a pattern in the above table that hard inquiries generally occur whenever you take the action of applying for new credit.
On the surface, it may seem unfair that merely allowing someone to check your credit might somehow lower your credit scores. However, credit score developers like FICO and VantageScore can clearly show a correlation between how frequently someone applies for new credit and the level of credit risk they pose going forward. That’s the answer to the question, “Why can inquiries lower my credit scores?”
How long do hard inquiries stay on your credit report and impact your score?
As a rule, you’ll want to avoid having your credit reports pulled unnecessarily. But it’s also helpful to remember that while hard inquiries typically will remain on your credit reports for two years, credit scoring models will only consider them for their first 12 months.
Also remember that, of all the factors that contribute to your credit score – including your bill payment history and outstanding balances – credit inquiries have the lowest impact. So if you have a few of them already, don’t freak out.
Soft inquiry: Will not lower your credit scores
Soft credit inquiries, on the other hand, will not impact your credit scores in any way.
As you can see from the table above, checking your own credit report falls into the soft inquiry category. This means you should never be afraid of damaging your credit scores by checking your own credit reports, despite myths to the contrary.
In fact, not only will soft pulls never hurt your credit scores, these inquiries will only show up when you’re checking your own credit reports. If a lender pulls your credit report, the soft inquiries will not even be visible. You’re the only one who can see them.
Don’t Make This Mistake
After 26 years in the credit industry, I’d like to believe I’ve heard it all… including the following mistake: If you have a friend who works at a car dealership or as a mortgage broker, don’t ever ask them to pull your credit for you.
Their credit report terminals are hard-coded so that every single credit report they pull results in a hard inquiry from either their car dealership or mortgage broker. To the outside world, it looks like you just applied for auto financing or a mortgage loan, and your credit score may temporarily suffer for it.
What’s more, unless you actually applied for a car loan or a mortgage, then your “friend” just caused his or her employer to violate the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s Permissible Purpose provision, which says that credit reports can only be accessed for legitimate purposes. Having a buddy pull your credit reports, outlaw style, is not a legitimate purpose. Just sayin’.
Related Articles:
- A 12-Month Plan to Raise Your Credit Score in 2018
- Does Taking on More Debt Boost Your Credit Score?
- Which Debts Should I Pay Off First to Raise My Credit Score?
The post Hard Inquiries and Soft Pulls on Your Credit Report: What’s the Difference? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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True money stories from smart people: Bright young things will find jobs when robots malfunction
As artificial intelligence takes over ever more of our jobs – from researching stock market trades to making pizzas and even stacking dishwashers – the cold hand of fear is quietly gripping the hearts of working age people.
“Could I be next?” we ask. The machines replaced factory workers decades ago but now they’re kicking out accountants, lawyers and even surgeons. Is nothing sacred?
And, when I say: “Could I be next?”, I do mean me as well. There are already robo-journalists producing (somewhat dubious) content across the net. And I don’t just mean Katie Hopkins with her mask slipping. I mean actual computer programmes creating articles, scripts, spoken-word reports and videos to entertain and befuddle unwary consumers.
The only chink of light is the fact that new jobs are being created that weren’t even dreamt of just a few months ago.
In fact, several jobs being done by real people for real money right now have only existed for five years or so.
At the start of 2010, no one had heard of a ‘cloud services specialist’. Now they’re commanding annual salaries of between £42,000 and £47,000, which is decent given that most are in their 20s. But then, in the words of one of them, they do have to “write code for hypervisors, write provisioning scripts using Python or DevOps tools, such as Chef, Puppet and Ansible, and write code for enhancing the capability of PaaS, using C or Python”. Yeah… me neither.
Then there are the ‘beachbody coaches’, who are neither coaches nor people with Kardashian-stacked bodies. In fact, they’re just souped-up salespeople, ‘distributing’ (pushing) fitness products produced by the American company, Beachbody.
According to the website, “you are not required to be certified in any way, and it is not required to be an expert on health and fitness”. I’m guessing you’re not required to lose that 20 stone of blubbery fat before popping round to see your exercisers either, which is handy. Money comes through commission, so, in essence, it’s another sales job. But at least it’s a job that humans are generally best at. Suck on that, robots!
Happily, robots aren’t that good at dancing either, so human beings are now becoming pole dancing instructors, training City workers, mums and even retirees in the august art of shaking their bootie around a fi xed pole. Others are making decent money per hour as Zumba instructors, shouting manically at groups of slaves…sorry, customers… to enjoy themselves while dancing the flab off.
Another, more sedentary, role that has only sprung up in the last couple of years is that of the ‘Admissions Consultant’, an essential addition to any high-mileage middle-class parent’s armoury. These professionals help to coach their little darlings to excel at finger-painting and sand-pit play so that they get into the right pre-school. They also oil the wheels to help them into schools and colleges that will set them on the road to fame, fortune and a place in the next Cabinet.
IOS and Android developers are a big noise nowadays, but would not have been heard of when mobiles first became mainstream. These are the clever (ie annoying) people who create the plethora of smartphone apps we have but never use because we forgot what they were for as soon as they were downloaded. Average annual pay is around £38,000 and the look tends to be colourfully spectacled.
Many of these brave new jobs are tech-based, creating and serving the artificial entities that are increasingly taking over our employment. There is not much for those of us who quite enjoy dealing with the public and sorting out their issues.
But there is another consolation as you ponder a ‘Terminator’ future when robot-creating robots take over every aspect of our lives: machines break down and, the more advanced they are, the more spectacularly and annoyingly they are likely to malfunction… just when you don’t want them to.
Every computerised device anyone has ever had has, at some point, has decided to seize up for no good reason and had to be rebooted. “Have you switched it off and on again?” is the opening gambit of any computer help desk.
So where there’s a problem, there’s a job opportunity. In the future, thousands of bright young things will be employed as ‘emergency malfunction operatives’, spending their days scooting around in flying cars (when they work) to mend (well, kick) robots when they judder to a halt for absolutely no reason.
Jasmine Birtles is a financial journalist and founder of MoneyMagpie.com. Email her at columnists@moneywise.co.uk
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