Achieving your lofty personal finance goals is tough, but it doesn't have to be impossible. Follow these strategies to hit your financial targets.
Source CBNNews.com http://bit.ly/318sFaZ
الثلاثاء، 4 يونيو 2019
Want to Get Paid to Deliver Food? Here’s How to Get Started in 3 Minutes
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The workplace as we know it is changing… and now I’ll tell you the sky is blue!
Seriously, though, as you’re well aware, the gig economy is booming. That means earning a paycheck doesn’t have to happen within the walls of your 9-to-5. In fact, some people do away with it altogether and take up several side jobs, instead.
One of our favorite options? You could get paid to deliver food with Postmates, one of the few app-based side gigs that will pay you 100% of your earnings.
That means there are no annoying service fees, booking fees or transaction fees to deduct from your pay — the money you worked for goes directly into your pocket. All of it.
And because there will always be someone who wants a milkshake but doesn’t want to drive to go get it (ahem… me), your money might add up faster than you think.
Getting started only takes a few minutes.
Land Your Next Side Gig In Only 3 Minutes
It took us about three minutes to sign up when we tried it. But it could be less, honestly, if you happen to speed through it.
What’s great about signing up to join Postmates’ fleet is how simple the process is. You don’t need to stress about the hassle of scanning in forms of identification, and you can forget about finding the right lighting to get a photo of your license verified.
So what do you need?
Just your driver’s license and Social Security card nearby — unless you already have both those numbers memorized, in which case you’re a God-tier human.
After that, you’re all set to provide this basic information and authorize a (free!) background check:
- Email address
- First and last name
- Full address and phone number
- Vehicle type and drivers license number
- Social Security number and date of birth
Then, you upload a selfie, and you’re done. Fini. Terminado.
Once you complete the sign-up process, Postmates will ship you a welcome kit (a free delivery bag and a prepaid card to make your purchases) to help get you set up for deliveries. Link the card to the Postmates Fleet app, and you’re off to earning extra money.
Postmates lets you decide how much or little you want to drive, and when. So in a way, you’re your own boss.
And because this is so epic, I’ll say it again: you get to keep 100% of your earnings, tips included. (That’s where it differs from other apps.)
Pro Tip
To maximize your earnings, deliver during Postmates’ recommended weekday peak hours of 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Demand is always high on weekends, so log some hours then, too!
Whether you’re on two wheels or four, you’re welcome to deliver takeout, groceries or alcohol. Just, you know, make sure you have enough room to hold the requested items.
So, Cliffs Notes: You can get started in three minutes or less; you get to keep 100% of your money; and no one even has to get in your car. No awkward small talk, for the win!
The Postmates Fleet app is free, and it’s available on iOS and Android. Creating an account is easy, so you’ll be making extra money before you know it.
Beep beep!
Farrah Daniel is an editorial assistant at The Penny Hoarder. She tested the sign-up process for this article and is excited to receive her welcome kit.
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.
source The Penny Hoarder https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/get-paid-to-deliver-food/?aff_id=178&aff_sub3=MainFeed__make-money/get-paid-to-deliver-food/
Financial Goals and the Arrival Fallacy
When I was an undergraduate, I had a dream of getting a job doing the kind of data mining that I was really interested in. I had a wonderful mentor that lit a deep interest in the subject under me and I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. Things will be good then, I thought. Then I got a data mining job.
For the first year or so of our financial turnaround, Sarah and I were focused on a pretty singular goal: paying off our debts and achieving debt freedom. Things will be good then, I thought. Then we got there.
As I started to build The Simple Dollar into something more than a way to figure out my own finances and into something that I hoped could earn money, I had a pretty singular goal: turn The Simple Dollar into my full time gig. Things will be good then, I thought. Then I got there.
Later, Sarah and I decided to buy a small home for our burgeoning family, taking out a mortgage to do so. We were scared to be back under that debt load, but it provided us with a pretty clear goal: get rid of that debt. Things will be good then, I thought. Then we got there.
Each time, I thought that when I achieved my big goal that I had set for myself, lasting happiness would be the inevitable result.
Each time, when I actually managed to achieve that goal, it felt great… but lasting happiness was elusive.
Getting a job in the field of study I enjoyed didn’t bring lasting happiness.
Paying off all of our debts didn’t bring lasting happiness.
Turning The Simple Dollar into a full time gig didn’t bring lasting happiness.
Paying off our mortgage didn’t bring lasting happiness.
Each time, I thought that achieving the goal would bring lasting happiness. It never did.
This phenomenon of believing a goal will bring lasting happiness only to find that it didn’t bring lasting happiness when you finally achieved it is called “arrival fallacy,” and it’s covered wonderfully in this recent New York Times article by A.C. Shilton, discussing the work of Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, who studied and coined the term.
This pretty much sums it up:
The problem is that achievement doesn’t equal happiness — at least not over the long term. But this isn’t a message that most of us are familiar with. In fact, it’s almost antithetical to the American dream, which tells us that hard work and achievement deliver a happy life. And so we push our children to become captain of the travel soccer squad, a first-chair player in the orchestra and student body president, because we want them to be successful. We want them to be happy.
And then, when they’re 34, fresh off a big achievement and so deeply unhappy that they find themselves sobbing in their truck in a Walmart parking lot (hello again, it’s me), they could end up feeling as though something is inherently broken within them.
Part of the problem is that we’re good at predicting how events will make us feel, but bad at predicting how long that feeling will last and how strong that feeling will be:
“Affective forecasting is our ability to predict how events will make us feel,” Dr. [Jamie] Gruman [, a professor and senior research fellow at the University of Guelph in Canada,] said. He pointed to a study from 2000 that showed that college sports fans overestimated how happy they would be a few days after their team won a big game.
“We tend to be pretty good at knowing what things are going to make us happy and unhappy,” he said, “but we’re not very good at predicting the intensity and the duration of the effect of events.” That can leave us feeling let down after the fact.
In each of those situations in my own life, I knew that achieving that particular financial and career goal would make me happy, and I was absolutely right. Each achievement did make me happy.
Where I was wrong was that I thought the happiness would persist for a very long time, that it would make me feel like a better and more complete person. It didn’t last.
Rather, what happened is that my life just settled into a somewhat different but still pretty familiar routine – and sometimes the routine didn’t really change much at all. It was a better routine, sure, but it quickly became the new baseline in my life.
Rather than being Trent, the college student with no prospects, I was now Trent, the data miner. Still Trent.
Rather than being Trent, the person with a lot of debt, I was now Trent, the person with no debt. Still Trent.
Rather than being Trent, the data miner, I was now Trent, the writer. Still Trent.
Rather than being Trent, the guy with a big mortgage, I was now Trent, the guy without a mortgage. Still Trent.
I still woke up in the morning and stretched my same old body. I still had a pretty similar pile of responsibilities. I still had really similar hobbies. I still ate the same foods and hung out with many of the same people.
Sure, I had achieved a big goal, and it was great, but that lasting happiness and transformative change that I thought such a big goal would bring simply wasn’t there. It was the same old me with one new achievement, one that didn’t really alter as much of my life as I thought it would.
Before you think that this is an argument against setting and achieving goals, it’s not:
To be clear, acknowledging the power of arrival fallacy does not mean we should settle for a life of mediocrity.
“We need to have goals,” Dr. Ben-Shahar said. “We need to think about the future.” And, he noted, we are also a “future-oriented” species. In fact, studies have shown that the mortality rate rises by 2 percentamong men who retire right when they become eligible to collect Social Security, and that retiring early may lead to early death, even among those who are healthy when they do so. Purpose and meaning can generate satisfaction, which is part of the happiness equation, Dr. Gruman said.
So, let’s look at the big picture here. Setting goals and working toward them brings us purpose and meaning, which generates satisfaction, which is a key component of overall life happiness. Yet achieving goals doesn’t bring happiness. How does that add up?
Well, the article offers several suggestions for finding happiness outside of achieving goals.
Their Suggestions for Bridging Goals and Happiness
The first suggestion the article offers is to give our life relationships real time and focus, because good strong relationships are a very strong indicator of personal happiness. People often think that having friendships and a social life and good familial relationships is easy until they wake up one day and realize that they’ve not actually fed those relationships or built any new ones in a long while and they no longer have any good friends or strong family ties, and that’s a serious punch in the gut that many people feel after a decade or two in adult life.
Don’t let that happen to you. Intentionally put aside time and energy and attention in your life to shoring up friendships and good family connections. Have people over for dinner. Contact people out of the blue to ask how they’re doing. Invite people to do all manner of ordinary things with you, things like meal prepping or going on walks. Go out in the community and check out groups of interest – start by reviewing the community calendar and Meetup. If you find it hard to socialize and connect, use Dale Carnegie’s advice, for starters. Build and feed those relationships, and make such effort into a normal routine for you. This doesn’t mean daily posting on social media, as that does very little to build lasting relationships. This means one-on-one contact at a bare minimum, and ideally face-to-face time, particularly time spent doing things together that is of mutual interest.
Another vital suggestion from the article is that income matters, but only up to a rather low point, then additional income ceases to impact happiness very much. Once you have your basic needs covered – basic food, clothing, basic shelter, and things like that – additional income is all about buying things you want, and that really doesn’t bring any additional happiness. That minimum income threshold varies a lot from area to area and from family size to family size, but it’s not nearly as high as you think and the average American family is definitely above that level. Most of the time, more income won’t make you happier – it might buy things that make you happy for a while, but it comes with things that suppress joy and it doesn’t change what’s going on inside of you.
A third suggestion – and I think this one is the best one from the article – is to have lots of big goals spread across all of the areas of your life. This is something that I’ve personally found to be incredibly impactful over the last few years. Having a major goal or two for each area of your life gives you that constant feeling of purpose and progress that makes each day feel important and worthwhile. I have some big many-year life goals, like full financial independence, and some multi-year goals like getting a black belt in taekwondo, and some shorter-term goals that center around things like reading or dietary experimentation or building relationships. At any given moment, I’ve got somewhere around seven to ten ongoing goals of various timeframes, and the feeling that I’m moving forward on multiple goals each day fills me with a deep sense of purpose and progress.
Start setting some good goals for yourself – short term ones, long term ones, goals in different parts of your life. Aim to read five challenging books by the end of summer. Aim to lose 20 pounds by year’s end. Aim to pay off your credit card by next February 1. Aim to develop a plan for earning a promotion or raise at work, then complete that plan by your next performance review. Then simply check in on those goals each day and do something to move forward with each of them while avoiding, to the best of your ability, any backtracking on each of them. You’ll feel a strong sense of purpose coursing through each day when you start doing this, and it feels good.
A Few Additional Suggestions from Me
A few additional tricks work well for me to help myself avoid the arrival fallacy.
First of all, when I achieve a goal, I don’t bask in the success for very long; rather, I set a new goal in that area pretty quickly. In fact, I’m usually thinking about that new goal before the old one is even completed.
Why don’t I relish in a success? It’s because of the arrival fallacy – while a success does bring a burst of happiness, it doesn’t last very long at all. What brings lasting happiness, I’ve found, is the journey and the very gradual improvement in your life that comes from achieving lots of goals. Individual goals don’t radically shift your life, but each individual goal nudges it a little, and completing lots of goals ends up changing the course of things quite a bit.
There’s always a new mountain to climb.
Second, I recognize that achieving a goal, even a monumental one like financial independence, isn’t going to radically change how my life feels. All it’s going to do is remove an obstacle or two from my environment, giving me more potential paths to consider going forward. It’s still up to me to find a meaningful path forward – achieving the goal itself isn’t going to do it.
What will actually change in my day to day life if I achieve this goal? Usually, the changes are pretty minor, and even if the changes seem like they’ll be big, they usually won’t be as big as they seem.
Rather, what I’m looking for is the slight improvement in every single day, rather than the big transformation. I’ve found that, over the years, little improvements in your daily routine that repeat day in and day out end up being the real thing that makes your life better. There’s almost no goal that completely transforms your life; rather, a better life is built by achieving lots of little goals, each of which nudge your daily life a little.
Finally, if you’re still struggling to find happiness in your life, make sure that you’re in a physically and mentally healthy place. Make sure that you’re getting plenty of sleep at night, eating a healthy diet with plenty of vegetables and fruits, practicing good hygiene, and getting at least some exercise and getting outside at least a little. Also, make sure that you have some blocked-off room in your life for leisure activities, meaning that you’re doing something beyond just sitting there staring at a television or at your phone or at a computer screen, whatever that might be.
If you’re doing those things and you still can’t seem to shake the blues, talk to a doctor. There may be physical or psychological issues going on that merit some investigation.
Final Thoughts
Achieving your financial goal – or any other big life goal – won’t bring you lasting happiness. It won’t transform a life that you feel is miserable into one filled with wonder and joy.
What it will do is unlock some doors in your life that were previously closed. You still have to walk through them.
It will make bigger goals that once seemed absurdly impossible now seem within reach. You’ll have new exciting mountains to climb.
What you will find, though, is that the journey itself is the deeply fulfilling part, and the reward, while not transformative, is just another step in building a daily life that you really value.
Good luck!
The post Financial Goals and the Arrival Fallacy appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
Source The Simple Dollar http://bit.ly/2XoNcWo
How Car Insurance Can Save Your Retirement
Your auto insurance does more than safeguard you while you drive. It can also protect some (or all) of your savings, including your retirement.
But only if you have enough coverage. If not, you could lose a big chunk of your retirement in the event of a serious at-fault accident. Up to 25% of your paycheck could also be garnished, maybe for years, should a court judgment exceed your maximum liability.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act prohibits creditors from accessing some “qualified” plans, such as pensions and employer-sponsored IRAs. However, not all retirement plans have that protection.
Whether your individually established and funded retirement plans are protected depends on where you live. In the following eight states, laws protect a traditional IRA but not a Roth IRA: Alabama, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The other 42 states and the District of Columbia generally protect both types of IRAs – but even so, exceptions may apply. For example, in Ohio there’s no protection for either SEP or SIMPLE IRAs.
In states like Georgia, California, Maine, and Missouri, part of an IRA can be withdrawn to cover a legal judgment against the owner. While it’s stipulated that enough be left to support the owner’s household, “enough” is determined on a case-by-case basis. According to Nolo.com, this could become an issue if your IRA balance is high, have another income source, or are fairly young (and thus have more time to contribute to retirement).
Planning the right insurance level
Some drivers carry only the state-required minimum, which can be as little as $50,000 total for injuries and property damage. Talk to your agent about the pros and cons of going with the bare minimum coverage. After all, if you get sued you’ll be required to pay for anything that remains after your insurance is tapped out.
How much could that be? According to the Insurance Information Institute, the median personal injury award for vehicular liability in 2016 was $42,089. But there must have some spectacularly high judgments or settlements that year, since the average award was $722,614.
For this reason, you should protect your assets by getting automobile liability coverage that’s at least as high or higher than your net worth. However, insurance companies do limit the amount of coverage you can buy; typically that’s $500,000.
‘Rainy day’ coverage?
As your net worth rises, an “umbrella” policy could be the way to go. This coverage adds more liability coverage, to be accessed if regular coverage were exhausted.
It isn’t prohibitively expensive. According to the Insurance Information Institute, a $1 million umbrella policy will cost between $150 and $300 a year. Learn more by reading, “What Is Umbrella Insurance – and Do You Need It?”
Here’s one scenario: Suppose you caused a serious accident resulting in a lawsuit and a legal judgment of $1.2 million. However, your regular auto insurance policy covers only up to $300,000.
What’s next? Possible payment sources would include sale of assets, garnishing of wages, most or all of your ready cash, and, in an unprotected state, possibly withdrawals from your self-funded IRA.
In other words: You stand to lose everything you worked so hard to get. Compared to this kind of risk, that annual $150 to $300 for an umbrella policy sounds like chump change.
Unacceptable risks
What’s the likelihood of being in an accident with a judgment that high? No one can say. To avoid losing everything you’ve worked for, however, it’s smart to carry enough insurance to cover at least your net worth.
In fact, some experts suggest insuring from two to five times your net worth. Doing this would help protect you in the event of a judgment like the one noted above. It would also shield future earnings, i.e., you wouldn’t have up to 25% of your wages garnished for years to make up the difference. Think of the opportunity cost of those dollars, especially since you might have to rebuild your finances from scratch.
Social Security is not enough to retire on. It’s vital to save or invest for retirement as well – and to protect those savings in order to live in comfort and safety when you’re too old to work.
If you live in a state where IRAs are not protected, talk with your insurance agent about getting sufficient vehicle coverage. Your financial future could be at stake.
Award-winning journalist and veteran personal finance writer Donna Freedman is the author of “Your Playbook for Tough Times: Living Large on Small Change, for the Short Term or the Long Haul” and “Your Playbook for Tough Times, Vol. 2: Needs AND Wants Edition.”
Read more:
- Car Insurance Rates Are Up – Here Are Eight Ways to Get Yours Back Down
- Best Car Insurance Companies
- Don’t Make These Seven Car Insurance Mistakes
The post How Car Insurance Can Save Your Retirement appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
Source The Simple Dollar http://bit.ly/2Z0ykxQ
Long-term care: how will you fund it?
Moneywise reviews the ways that you can pay for care in old age and the recently proposed national insurance increase for the over-50s, which is intended to help fund a fairer system
The care system is currently in crisis, with many people forced to sell their homes to pay for care in later life.
As the population ages, more of us will need care support when we are older.
Even though many people save into a pension to cover the cost of living in retirement, many are not prepared for the expensive fees they may face if they need care.
There are currently more than 400,000 people in care homes in the UK and this is expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2040.
Most people who need care will end up paying something toward the costs, but this will largely depend on individual circumstances.
Paying for residential care can be expensive, especially for those who have to sell their property in order to fund it.
Fees are around £600 a week for a care-home place and more than £800 a week for a place in a nursing home, depending on where you live.
According to charity Age UK, in 2016/17 London was the most expensive area to fund a care-home place, at £741 a week, while the North West was the least expensive, at £511 a week.
Funding for care is means-tested by local authorities and could be the biggest cost you face in retirement if your capital and income exceeds the threshold.
When assessing your finances, the council will look at your assets such as your property, savings and income.
Currently, if your assets are more than £23,250 (£28,000 in Scotland and £50,000 in Wales), you will have to pay for your own care, which may not leave you with much left in the pot to pass on to family members.
If your assets are below this figure, you will be eligible for help from your council.
However, your house will not be included in the assessment if you arrange care and support at home or if you live with a partner, child, or a relative who is disabled or over the age of 60.
While it may be tempting to sell, or even give, your house to a relative in order to avoid the full cost of care, this might not be such a good idea.
It could be seen as a deliberate deprivation of assets, and the council could calculate your fees as if you still owned the home, reclaiming the care costs from the person to whom you transferred the property.
Lucy Harmer, director of services at the charity Independent Age, says: “We hear a lot from older people who find it hard to understand the care funding system.
“Combined with the chronic underfunding from government, you can see how people find it difficult to navigate. Investment in the care system is not high enough to provide the quality of care for the number of people that need it, and therefore a radical solution is necessary.
“That is why we are calling for free personal care to eliminate the costs people face, as it will allow them to plan ahead.”
Other options for funding care
Equity release
If you plan to receive care at home and do not qualify for local authority support, you can use an equity release scheme to fund your care.
A lifetime mortgage allows you to take out a loan that is secured against your property.
You can extract cash in a single lump sum or in smaller amounts over time through what is known as drawdown.
Unlike conventional mortgages, you don’t make monthly repayments – instead, interest rolls up and the loan plus interest is repaid when the property is eventually sold.
Downsizing
Many pensioners are asset-rich but cash poor, and because of this downsizing provides another way to raise funds.
While you may not be able to raise as much this way as with equity release, it is sometimes more cost effective because you won’t have to pay interest. You may also want to live in a smaller home more suited to your needs.
Deferred payment
If you don’t want to sell your home immediately, another option is a deferred payment scheme that allows you to delay paying the costs of your care.
Your local authority will pay for your care, which you can repay when you sell your home.
To be eligible the value of your savings and capital – not including your home – must be less than £23,250.
Annuity
A care annuity, which is also known as an immediate needs annuity, is an insurance policy that provides a regular income to pay for care in exchange for an upfront lump sum.
It is bought at the point of need and designed to cover the shortfall between your income and the cost of care. It is paid tax free directly to the care provider.
The amount you pay is based on your health and life expectancy, and annuities provide an income for life.
However, your heirs won’t be able to claim back any of the money you spent on the annuity.
Start saving young
With no guarantee as to what social-care funding will look like in the future, it makes sense for younger people to start planning for their care early.
Boosting pension contributions can help you to build a savings pot you may need for care later on.
However, the minimum auto-enrolment rate of 8% is unlikely to be enough, warns Steve Cameron, pensions director at Aegon.
He says: “It is very difficult to plan ahead when you just don’t know how much you will need.
“By saving into your pension, once you get near to retirement age and you understand your needs, you can then allocate any savings accordingly.”
Care funding alternatives
With adult social care in the UK currently at crisis point, radical solutions are needed to fund the system sustainably.
Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green MP recently proposed a 1% national insurance (NI) hike for the over-50s costing around £300 a year to help fund social care. The winter fuel allowance would also be taxed.
Mr Green argues that the care system should adopt a similar model to the state pension system. Everyone would be entitled to a similar level of support, but individuals would be encouraged to top this up from their own savings or housing wealth.
This would be boosted by the care supplement – a new form of insurance that would pay for “larger rooms, better food and more trips”.
Mr Cameron says: “A 1% increase in NI would be palatable for most people if they thought that in return for that their core care costs would be paid for.
“With the increasing number of people facing social care in later life, the government needs to put in place a stable and sustainable way of sharing costs between the state and individuals, based on their wealth.
“The government’s share needs to be adequately funded, ensuring good quality care across the country, with an end to the current geographical lottery. As our society increasingly enjoys longer lives, this inevitably comes at a cost.”
He says that individuals need to have a clear understanding of what they will be expected to pay if they need care, with a cap on care costs.
“Under the plan, it would effectively be setting a cap on care costs without having to pay anything unless you want to upgrade.
“There needs to be incentives for people to plan ahead for an event that could be 20 or more years into the future.”
Joel Lewis, policy manager at Age UK, says: “It is an opt-in system, so it does not require you to pay in, but will members of the public be willing to pay for care they may or may not need in the future? It is a tough one to predict whether people will do it.
“It is a bit of a strange one to plan for if you are in good health. It would probably be simpler to have savings and a pension pot built up to pay for eventualities later in life.”
Social care green paper
The government is expected to propose a cap to prevent rising care costs in its upcoming green paper. This would limit how much people pay for social care.
Policy ideas it will consult on include more means-testing for care charges, an insurance contribution model, a ‘Care Isa’ and tax-free withdrawals from pension pots.
Rachael Griffin, tax and financial planning expert at Quilter, comments: “One of the many problems with the current social care system is the complexity and uncertainty around the provision from the state.
“Worryingly, people sometimes bank on the public purse to pay for their care or at least part of it. Even those who don’t are left scratching their heads as to how much they need to pay in before state funding kicks in. The whole thing leaves people confused and vulnerable.
“This is nothing new and is something the government has committed to tackling for years. However, to shift the current structure we need the social care green paper, which continues to be talked about as some sort of mythical being that never reveals itself.”
The social care green paper was originally due to be published last year but it has faced numerous delays and remains unpublished at the time of writing.
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