A few years ago, Sandy Smith of YesIAmCheap.com entered an online challenge proposed by another personal finance blogger. The contest worked like this: Each participant would invest $1,000 for the duration of 2014 through various strategies. At the end of the year, whoever earned the greatest return would win bragging rights.
Smith told me that, at first, she was torn on how to invest her money. Eventually though, she set out to prove that a side hustle could out-earn any stock that was out there.
So, while some in the challenge invested in individual stocks or peer-to-peer lending, Smith split her $1,000 initial investment into three buckets – $250 into Lending Club (a peer-to-peer lending firm), $250 into a “green” stock, and $500 into a side hustle that was, at that point, to be determined.
After mulling over her options, Smith chose to invest her $500 into a soon-to-exist Amazon drop-ship business where she would design and sell fancy cellphone covers.
By the end of the year, Smith was absolutely right. While her $250 Lending Club investment netted her a 10.37% return and her “green” stock went in the red to the tune of a nearly $100 loss, the profits on her new business soared to $5,119.78 for that year. That’s money Smith made after investing the initial $500 into inventory and setting up her business, then reinvesting her profits to buy more inventory over and over.
That’s also a return of more than 1,000%.
Ever since then, Smith says she’s basically been hooked on making money with Amazon. While she sells all sorts of merchandise on Amazon, she is well known for designing T-shirts and coffee mugs that sell like hotcakes. She even designed the famous “Nasty Woman” mug that was used in an SNL skit during the tumultuous 2016 Presidential elections.
Smith also offers a few different courses and the occasional free webinar to teach others the intricacies of making money using various Amazon strategies. She just had her first child and, thanks to her hard work, she can enjoy some time at home with a new “job” she can do from anywhere.
Other Ways to Make Money with Amazon and eBay
Obviously, Smith isn’t the only person out there earning cash on the side using popular websites most of use to spend money. Over the years, we’ve profiled people who buy used items and resell them on Craigslist or other sites – or people who focus on procuring specific antiques or electronics to buy low and sell to the highest bidder.
But, new online hustles are sprouting up all the time. Jason Butler, the blogger behind The Butler Journal, is another good example of someone who uses a popular website to earn some money on the side. But Butler’s website of choice isn’t Amazon — instead, he’s built an empire selling items on eBay.
While his strategy is more nuanced than we could probably cover in a single article, the gist of it is this: Butler purchases items from thrift stores and yard sales, and resells them on eBay.
But, he doesn’t just buy and sell anything. “Since I’ve been doing it for a while, I know what items will sell,” he says. “My biggest sellers are jerseys, tennis shoes, dress shoes, and bobble heads.”
Once he stumbles upon an item he thinks will sell, Butler says he checks the eBay app to see if a similar item has sold recently – and if so, how much someone paid. At that point, he decides if the potential profit margin for the item is worth it.
“If I can make a 2-3 times profit on what I spent on the item at the thrift store, I usually get it and list it on eBay,” he says.
Butler says the process isn’t overly complex; you just have to make the right decisions – and sales – over and over and over again. Right now, he’s spending around three hours per week searching for hot items, listing them on eBay, and shipping them at the post office. During the 12 hours per month he spends, he says he averages a profit of around $250 after expenses.
Like Smith, Butler also offers a course on how to start an eBay side hustle. I guess if you have the entrepreneurial spirit, it can be applied to any idea – whether that’s selling jerseys and bobbleheads or selling your knowledge to others.
Tyler Philbrook is another blogger we spoke to who sells stuff online, but he uses a program called Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) to make his side hustle dreams come true.
“What it means is, you send your products directly into Amazon and they store it in their warehouse,” says Philbrook. “When a customer orders from you, Amazon sends the item to them [with free two-day shipping for Prime members], and will deal with any customer service issues if they arise.”
Philbrook says his basic strategy is going to clearance racks inside of Target, Walmart, Walgreens, and other stores that provide tons of inventory he can buy cheap and sell for double the price or more. He looks for interesting items that are clearly marked down but also valuable and frequently sold online. And sometimes, the weirdest things bring in the biggest profit.
“My biggest strategy is to check everything even if you don’t know what an item is or does,” says Philbrook. “I just picked up some audio something for $240 and will sell it for $499. I have no idea what it does, but it’s still going to make a nice amount of profit.”
Philbrook says that, at the time being, he’s pulling in around $1,000 per month in profit for 12 to 14 hours per week. If he spends more time in the future, he believes he can earn a greater return.
Is an Amazon or eBay Side Hustle for You?
If you’re thinking of running out to a garage sale to rummage around for items you can sell for cash, you might want to read up on a few strategies before taking the plunge. Philbrook and Butler both agree turning a profit online isn’t as easy as it looks.
According to Philbrook, one of the biggest problems with either an eBay or Amazon hustle is the fact you have to spend money to make money. And if you buy the wrong items, you could be left holding the bag – or unwanted collectible, as it were.
“I sometimes spend $500 or more at one time, and that money won’t be coming back to me for at least a month,” he says. “If you don’t have enough capital to pay your bills, don’t spend it on inventory.”
Then there are the scams to worry about, specifically with eBay. Over the years, there have been complaints about scams and buyers trying to finagle free stuff out of sellers. Usually, a buyer threatens to leave negative feedback on a seller’s page but promises not to do so if they get a full refund.
Butler says these things absolutely happen, but you can minimize bad experiences if you know what’s going on. The website also has safety measures to prevent fraud, he notes. “For example, they want transactions to only happen on eBay. If someone messages you asking can they just PayPal you the money for an item, don’t do it.”
If you do, notes Butler, they can send you the money, receive the item, and then do a chargeback via PayPal. “You’re protected from things happening like that on eBay,” he says.
A final pitfall to be aware of is the fact that many people assume these hustles are easy and don’t do the leg work first.
“People think you can just find something, post it, and it will sell,” says Butler. But, there’s more to it than that. You have to find the right items to sell, take great pictures, come up with good titles, and write accurate product descriptions, he says.
Researching your items is also very important because, like it or not, even some great products just don’t have a market on eBay.
The Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a way to make money that doesn’t involve a traditional part-time job, it helps to know people are out there coming up with new and interesting ways to earn cash on the side. Some would even say that a resale side hustle is the perfect side job. After all, you can work any hours you want, you don’t have to sit in an office, and all the profit is yours.
Before you dive in, however, you should read more about eBay and Amazon side hustles to figure out what you’re getting into. Also, don’t start buying or selling anything until you have a plan.
If you jump in too early and start buying inventory to sell, you could wind up with boxes of “stuff,” hundreds or even thousands of dollars of losses, and not much else to show for it.
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.
Back in April, I decided to do something brave:I stopped using disposable sanitary pads.No, I didn’t replace them with tampons. In fact, I replaced them with something your grandmother probably used: reusable cloth pads.
Why, you ask? Well, disposable pads are bad for you, the environment and your wallet. Did you knowthe average womanwill use up to 16,800 disposable tamponsduring her lifetime?
That’s a lot of pads — and a lot of waste. And not just trash, I’m also talking wasted money. Here’s something to think about: Let’s assume a woman menstruates for 40 years and buys a $8 pack of disposable pads every month.That adds up to $3,840 over a lifetime.
All that money could have gone to personal savings, college loans or a nice vacation! That’s why I decided it was time to look into cloth pads, and I’m so glad I did. Not only am I saving some cash, but I’m also doing my body — and the environment — a favor.
Since I know the mere idea of switching to reusable pads can be intimidating, I’m going to break it down for you. I’ll show you how much money reusable pads saved me, why they’re better for your health and environment and explain my own personal experience with cloth pads.
Reusable Cloth Pads Save Money
Switching to reusable pads is also great for your wallet. I should know: Using them has already saved me over $40 worth of pads in the five months I have been using them. The disposable pads I usually buy cost around $8, excluding tax.
That amount certainly adds up: At the end of the year,I was dishing out at least $96 on disposable pads.
I bought a full cloth pad set for $80 from The Little Flower, complete with three light day pads, six regular day pads and two overnight pads. This pad set will last me anywhere from two to five years, depending on how well I take care of it.
If I only keep them for two years, I saveapproximately $192 on disposables. If I keep them for five years, I save a whopping $480. Sweet, right?
Reusable Cloth Pads are Better for Your Health
Did you know that disposable pads are made out of plastics, cotton, wood pulp and synthetic fibers?
And if you’re thinking “Oh, but cotton is a safe material to use,” know this: Conventionally grown cotton is one of the most toxic crops around. According to theRodale Institute, cotton growers use 16 percent of the world’s pesticides. To make matters worse,the materials in padsare bleached with chlorine dioxide, which creates polluting and harmful bio-accumulative by products, like dioxin. These chemicals enter the environment and body and remain there for decades.
I certainly don’t. All those chemicals can cause a number of health problems, like allergic reactions, hormone disruption and reproductive issues. Count me out.
Reusable Cloth Pads Help the Environment
Disposable pads are ridiculously wasteful. Since every woman is different, the amount of pads you save from heading to a landfill each month will vary.
Before switching to cloth pads, I would typically go through one-and-a-half packs of pads in a month. Each pack had about 24 pads in them.
So, in other words,I was sending about 36 pads to the landfill in just one period cycle(that’s in addition to the non-recyclable, plastic packaging). Worse yet, it takes hundreds of years for the plastic in disposable pads to decompose. Not too disposable if you ask me.
Sadly, just by being a woman with a period, I was pretty much contributing 432 pads per year to the landfill. Since I was 11 years old when I first got my period and I’m now 22 years old, I guess you could sayI’ve contributed 4,752 pads to a landfill, give or take. That’s a harsh reality to live with.
By switching to cloth pads in the last five months, I’ve saved 180 pads from heading to the landfill. It’s something to be proud of: Any step towards reducing your waste is a good step, considering the average Americanproduces 4.4 pounds of garbage a day.
My Experience with Reusable Cloth Pads
You’re probably wondering by now how you’d even go about using cloth pads, right? It’s not as much of a mystery as it sounds:They operate exactly like disposable pads, only you need to wash them and dry them. It takes a lot of work, and it’s certainly not for everybody, but it’s well worth it.
First, I’d recommend buying a pad set from a seller you trust. Some sellers, like mine, let you choose the fabric and patterns of your pads. I got a mix of different fabrics (cotton, minky, windpro fleece and pul) and chose to mainly go with floral designs.
The pads also came with KAM snaps, which made the pads super easy to secure in place. Unlike disposable pads,I didn’t have to stick them onto my underwear or rip them off when I was done. Just snap and unsnap.
They’re both machine and hand washable, but since I don’t have a washing machine in my apartment, I just used the sink. After I prewashed them, I let them dry before using them.
I don’t have access to a dryer either, so I made an impromptu clothes line by using a clothes hanger and safety pins.
I change my cloth pad every 2 to 3 hours. While wearing disposables, I would change my pad every two hours, or even in one hour if my flow was heavy. It’s safe to say the cloth pads are way more absorbent!
My cloth pad set came with a wetbag and a pad wrapper. A wetbag is a safe place to store dirty pads in, and a pad wrapper (made out of pul) protects my cloth pads when not in use (like how disposable pads have a plastic wrapper to keep them sanitary in your purse).
The only time I need to use the wetbag is when I’m out and not able to wash my pads right away. I would stash both my wetbag and my pad wrapper in a big purse while out and made sure to take it with me whenever I went to the bathroom. I know it sounds gross, butthe inside of a wetbag is lined with waterproof material, so it won’t leak.
At home, I rinse the used pad under cold water in the sink until the water runs clear (this helps to prevent stains). Then I prepare it for washing by placing it in a bin filled with cold water. At night, I wash the pads in the sink using an all-natural detergent and let them hang to dry.
I repeat this process over the course of my period without issue. Sure, the cloth pads took a little getting used to, but since I had a great pad set, I really had no complaints —they were super comfortable to wear.
It was also a huge stress buster to be able to get these delivered straight to my house. I’m sure most women can relate when I say buying pads at the store is not fun. I’ve been given dirty looks and even been snickered at simply for purchasing conventional pads. It felt like there was a huge sign over me that read“Period, she has her period!”
But now with these reusable pads.My period remained just that: mine. No one else’s, and that’s empowering.
By using reusable pads, you’ll be saving a buck, and doing your body and the environment a favor. Sure, it takes a little extra elbow grease, but it’s all doable and worth it.
Because the truth is, nobody should have to pay extra in their lifetime just because they have a period.
Ariana Palmieri is a green beauty and green living blogger whose work has appeared on MindBodyGreen, Motivation Grid, Jeannine Morris, Basmati, and National Viral. She mostly blogs about zero waste living, which is all about finding creative ways to reuse and upcycle materials to help the environment.
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.
Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life.
1. John Green on loving people and things
“People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos, is because things are being loved and people are being used.” – John Green
A friend of mine shared this quote with me recently, along with the comment that we’re utterly wasting the current technological revolution because we’re just chasing more and newer stuff without solving basic problems of human suffering.
I think this is the struggle of the twenty first century. We either have or will shortly have the technology needed to handle almost every kind of manual labor and low skill job in existence. What happens then? What happens when the vast majority of the world doesn’t have a skillset that’s worth employing? We’re walking straight toward that point, and we’re not even seriously talking about it.
What value do those lives have? Do we continue to buy into the idea that the only real value of human life is what that person can produce? That’s the idea we’ve operated under for the last few hundred years at least, but in that situation, we consign the majority of the human race to worthlessness.
Perhaps we need to start asking ourselves if people beyond our immediate circle have worth beyond what they can produce, because when things can exceed the production capacity of most people, when automated fleets of machines do all of the farming and all of the manufacturing and all of the transportation and all of the warehouse work and all of the unloading and loading and all of the package and mail delivery… what’s left?
It is easy to say, “Well, sure, all humans have worth,” but what does that mean in a world when the majority of people are essentially idle because all of their work is being done by machine? What is their purpose, if not to produce? How do we begin to transition to a world that shows them love beyond what they produce? Or do we? It’s a question I’m really struggling with right now, and it’s inspiring me to read a lot of challenging material.
For our latest episode of Endurance Test, LA-based director Ivan Olita explores the spiritual practice of Kaihōgyō, performed by the monks of Mount Hiei, Japan. The 1000-Day pilgrimage has been completed by less than 50 monks in over a century, and traditionally, any monk who cannot complete it must take their own life.
From the related article:
What these monks do is an example of the ultimate distillation of life. They go to the essential core, getting rid of literally anything that is unnecessary both physically and spiritually. The doiri, a nine-day retreat without food, water, or sleep, which takes place around the fifth year of the pilgrimage, is the most extreme example of this.
They lose themselves in the trees, rivers, purity.
The fact that they make this journey on foot does not mean the movement is the goal—it is just a means to reach enlightenment. They lose themselves in the trees, rivers, purity—entranced by the rhythm of the mountain, awakening their spirits with the pace of nature from night to sunrise, day after day.
Whenever I feel that I can’t achieve a goal, I think back to this video. These monks take on 1,000 marathons over the course of seven years, of which 100 are essentially marathon-and-a-half in length and 100 more are double length marathons. They do this for spiritual enlightenment. Along the way, they take on additional challenges, like the mentioned doiri.
I could fill myself with questions of why they are doing is, but the why isn’t really so important in the end – suffice it to say that they are seeking enlightenment. What’s meaningful is the focus on the goal and the willingness to give up so much to attain that goal. Spiritual enlightenment is central to their life and they take on a truly incredible goal to attain it.
What am I willing to take on to achieve my own goals? What can I do to achieve enlightenment, or any other thing I want from life? What am I willing to give up?
3. Mitch Albom on moving on
“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.” – Mitch Albom
The biggest mistakes that I make in life are ones that are driven by regret.
My past is filled with a ton of what-ifs. What if I had just stayed at my old job and kept The Simple Dollar as a side gig? What if I hadn’t said yes to Sarah and given up on another relationship that was dying on the vine? What if I hadn’t decided to sell The Simple Dollar in 2011 and remain just as a writer?
Sometimes I look down those other paths and I feel a bit of regret. I see what my life might have been like. I see relationships with people that I now miss quite a bit. I see business opportunities and intellectual challenges that seem wonderful.
It’s easy to get lost in those regrets. However, when I step back to right now and I look at those moments seriously, I realize I chose the right path. All of my feelings are on the side of the path chosen. Those other paths withered away for a reason – and often for many reasons.
Regret takes me away from the life I have now, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Our culture is obsessed with happiness, but what if there’s a more fulfilling path? Happiness comes and goes, says writer Emily Esfahani Smith, but having meaning in life — serving something beyond yourself and developing the best within you — gives you something to hold onto. Learn more about the difference between being happy and having meaning as Smith offers four pillars of a meaningful life.
Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about the concept of contentment, which I view as a state in life where happiness occurs naturally from your day-to-day life. Hand in hand with that idea is that contentment comes hand in hand with finding some sort of meaning in life.
In this video, Smith touches on four pillars of finding meaning: belonging, purpose, transcendence, and storytelling. On the surface, those seem almost “buzzword-y,” like they come out of a pop psychology book, but as I thought about them, I realized that a person who has those things really has a content life.
A person with belonging is someone with a healthy social circle around them, one that they’ve worked to build over time. It isn’t given to you.
A person with purpose is someone that just has a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Maybe it’s just being a parent, or a good spouse. Or maybe you have a job that you derive meaning from.
A person with transcendence is someone who can find wonder in everyday life and can achieve a state of flow where they’re wrapped in the task they’re doing and lose track of time.
A person with storytelling is someone who can simply work through the events in their life and set them in terms of redemption, growth, and love. What stories do you tell about yourself? Do you grow? Do you redeem yourself? Do you share stories with those elements? Do you think about situations in that way?
Those four things really are at the foundation of a content life, at least as I see it. This is a beautiful talk, well worth listening to.
5. Rumi on changing the world
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi
The only thing you can really change is yourself. You can try and try, but you can’t really fundamentally change anyone else unless they choose to open themselves up to you.
The only change that matters comes from a person who is in control of themselves and exhibits great virtues in the world, and that’s a person who has invested the time to change and improve themselves.
That person, by their normal actions, makes the immediate world around them better. This improves the lives of those nearby, and that ripples outward. Perhaps that person can inspire or mentor others to make similar changes, but, again, those changes come from within. The changes ripple outward.
In the end, though, it comes back to changing you. It comes back to making yourself better.
As many of you know, I started on a path recently to become a black belt in taekwondo. I chose taekwondo because I’ve long been interested in a martial art, there are inexpensive lessons near my home, and it has a self-defense and personal improvement focus that really appeals to me. It focuses greatly on self-defense, focus, and elements of personal growth. The vast majority of classes is spent on individual technique and then “sparring” with a partner which is mostly about developing defensive technique.
Part of learning taekwondo at my school is learning a pretty sizable number of move sequences intended to simulate certain fighting situations where you may have to respond defensively or certain sequences of moves that synchronize well together. The list of these that you need to know to achieve black belt status is impressive.
As a result, I’ve been seeking out a “flash card” tool I can use on my phone to review the moves and other pieces of information that I need to remember and master. Tinycards is hands down the best tool I’ve found for this.
What I’ve done is created a big set of “cards” that depict the name of the move on one side and a description of the moves on the other side. During belt progression tests, the instructor simply calls out the name of the move and the students are expected to be able to pull off the move immediately, so it requires knowledge of the moves expected in response to just the name of that moveset.
If you’re struggling to remember a large set of individual facts, I highly recommend Tinycards. It’s brilliant for this.
Can you still be friends with someone who doesn’t vote the same way as you? For Caitlin Quattromani and Lauran Arledge, two best friends who think very differently about politics, the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election could have resulted in hostility and disrespect. Hear about how they chose to engage in dialogue instead — and learn some simple tactics they’re using to maintain their bipartisan friendship.
For the last several months, I’ve been deeply inspired by a private group I’ve been a part of with several of my oldest friends and a few of their closest friends – people who I know socially but perhaps aren’t incredibly close to. The purpose of this private group was to have discussions on issues entirely without negative tone or personal attacks – they were entirely banned. If you wanted to criticize something, you had to come with a question, not a criticism. If you attacked someone, your message was deleted; if it happened too often, you’d be tossed out of the group. If you quoted a statistic, you had to provide a source for it.
The thing is, once we adopted those strict rules of being pleasant to each other and discussing issues in a positive fashion, we came to realize that we all had a lot in common with each other, far more than we would have initially thought on November 9, 2016. Most of us want many of the same things – security and freedom for ourselves and our family, opportunity and respect for the people of the world. The difference is in our route to those goals, but when we sit down and actually discuss those routes in a positive way, we can begin to see that other routes have positive elements and our own ideas perhaps aren’t as perfect as we once thought, either. In fact, there may just be some room for compromise and borrowing ideas from each other.
Strangely enough, having political discussions with friends with very different views in 2017 has actually brought some of us closer together.
Unfortunately, this is a private group of friends, so it’s also filled with in-jokes and coarse language and references to personal matters and so on – not something to be shared publicly.
Instead, I’m sharing this video, which really hits on the same points. Be positive. Focus on the common things that we share. Don’t waste your time with people or media that tries to paint whole groups of people as bad or immoral, because they’re really not. Talk, listen, and ask questions, and recognize that other people are generally good people who may just see a different path than you do.
8. Theodore Roosevelt on mind and morals
“To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society.” – Theodore Roosevelt
I’m very happy with the education that my children receive at school. They are adept readers. They’re strong at arithmetic. They’re able to reason through difficult problems. I really couldn’t ask for more.
However, public schools are pretty weak in one area. They don’t really do much to teach character or morals. The rules structure there is mostly meant to keep children in their seats and focused on learning the material as presented, which is fine for what it is, but it doesn’t really teach much about having an internal sense of right and wrong.
I can also understand why schools shy away from such education. No one really wants their children to be taught morals and values that they themselves don’t 100% agree with.
Thus, such lessons fall back on the parents, which I consider to be a good thing provided that the children have involved parents.
I feel like my children have strong basic values and morals, but they’re growing older, and many of the moral and ethical questions that they’re starting to face are very challenging ones.
It’s up to me as a parent to guide them through this, to begin some of their final preparations for flying on their own through life. I want to send out good citizens, people who will make the world a better place than they found it. I relish the challenge.
(In case you’re wondering, one big step I’m taking is having dinner table conversations about this stuff, working through the right and wrong of complex issues and getting them to think about it while their focus is engaged with the rest of the family. The conversations we have and the resultant subtle behavior changes tell me that this is a good path to keep following.)
It’s hard to think of an artist who’s brought more joy to more people, across more generations — and in more ways — than Steve Martin. In the 1970s, he won the hearts of young children for his playful appearances with The Muppets while simultaneously charming legions of older fans with his subversive standup routines. Later, as an actor, he wrote and starred in some of the most memorable comedies (and a few dramas) of all time, while writing books, plays and even a Broadway musical.
Throughout his 50-year career, one constant in Steve Martin’s life has been the banjo. It was a staple of his early standup shows and even fans who only wanted to laugh couldn’t help but marvel at his playing. Over the years, he’s continued to perform and record with country and bluegrass luminaries like Earl Scruggs, Dolly Parton, Vince Gill and others.
These days Martin is working on music full-time. He’s just released a stellar bluegrass album he recorded with The Steep Canyon Rangers called (perfectly) The Long-Awaited Album, a record filled with often hilarious story songs and world-class performances.
Martin’s set with The Steep Canyon Rangers at the Tiny Desk was at times thrilling, particularly his opening solo for the song “So Familiar.” But it was also playful, comical and a joy to witness. At the end of the typical three-song performance, the group graciously decided to do one more called “Caroline,” a hilarious, first-person account of how not to handle a breakup.
Not too long ago, I had a conversation with an older relative who was just baffled that Steve Martin would walk away from a stellar comedy career to play bluegrass music. Why on earth would he give up making so many people laugh to play bluegrass music at small venues and sell recordings that not many people listen to in the big scheme of things?
Well, for me, I find it hugely inspirational. Martin may have been really successful in the comedy world, but when he found that his passion was heading elsewhere, he didn’t just keep churning out comedies and making money with them when his heart wasn’t in it. He walked away. He had always loved bluegrass, but he now wanted to devote himself even more fully to it.
And so he did.
It’s difficult to walk away from something successful, even when your heart is calling you elsewhere. It’s courageous to do it, and inspirational to others when you do.
Keep playing that banjo. I’ll listen. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I happen to like bluegrass anyway and Steve Martin is a really good banjo player.)
10. Jack Dixon on change and results
“If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.” – Jack Dixon
It’s easy to set giant goals for yourself. I’m going to lose 100 pounds this year. I’m going to pay off all of my debts. I’m going to do this big thing or that big thing.
The problem is that those goals don’t have anything to do with how you actually live your day-to-day life. They don’t encourage you or motivate you to really change for the long term. You climb that mountain, and then what? You’re the same person with the same habits as before and you’ll eventually go right back to where you started.
The path to a better life is in changing that day to day routine. It’s in giving up the routines that caused you to get into debt or to get heavy in the first place and find better routines, and then mindfully practicing those routines until they become the new normal in your life.
Then, you’re a changed person. Your life path has changed. You’re headed to a new destination.
Whereas the 2006 Internet was used to find specific information, the 2017 Internet is more used to see what’s out there to entertain you. You don’t go to Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, or Instagram because you’re looking for something, rather, you want to see what it has found for you.
On the Internet in 2006, you were focused on pulling out what you wanted. Unless you were reading the news, whatever you read was something you had sought out. But now, most of your information is pushed onto you. You no longer enter the Internet the way you would a public library, where you browse and pick out what you want to read in peace, it’s more like the Las Vegas strip, where you’re bombarded with demands for your attention and need not exert any effort to be entertained.
It’s a subtle change, and most of us haven’t noticed it happening, but it’s been damaging to our minds in a few ways. Ways that don’t feel evident in our day to day, but when we step back and look at them, are glaringly obvious.
The clearest problem is what it’s done to our attention spans. How easily can you sit down with a book for an hour without checking your social media or email? Can you read through this whole article without switching to another tab or window at least once? What about at work, do you get a few hours of deep work without checking the news, email, or social media? Or do you jump around multiple times a minute?
I notice the same thing. If I have an internet device near me, I find myself jumping around constantly, looking at all kinds of information sources that are foisting information on me. Inherently, I have some level of trust in those sources of information, and they shape what I think, but the problem is that when I’m doing this, I am never thinking deeply.
The only solution I’ve found is to regularly disconnect. I turn off my phone and put it away completely. I turn off my computer. I then just go do things that don’t involve electronic devices. I go on a walk in the woods. I read a book and take notes on it sometimes. I make a complex meal. I play a game with friends or with family. I help my children practice at soccer. That time is incredibly inspirational for me. It fills me with energy, with thoughts, and with peace. I highly recommend it.
12. Cus D’Amato on a beaten man
“To see a man beaten not by a better opponent, but by himself, is a tragedy.” – Cus D’Amato
It’s one thing to be beaten by something outside of our control. A great opponent. A disaster or an illness that we couldn’t prevent.
It’s another thing entirely to be beaten by ourselves. To give up. To throw in the towel. To not try with our whole heart.
The thing is, it’s rarely the outside world that beats you. Almost always, people beat themselves. That’s the greatest tragedy of all.
I have been a bridesmaid not one, not two, butseventimes.
Words can’t describe how incredible it felt to stand next to my best friends on their wedding days. The only thing that kept me fromcompletelyenjoying each experience was the cost.
Being a bridesmaid is expensive:the bachelorette party, bridal showers, lingerie shower, transportation to and from each event. And, oh yes, the bridesmaid dress.
Most of the dresses I bought for these occasions set me back at least $100.As a woman in my early 20s, still in college on a couple of occasions, those dresses hurt my bank account big time.
Thankfully, dresses are one aspect of being a bridesmaid where it’s possible to earn some of our money back! It didn’t occur to me until recently that I could have lessened the pain of those purchases if only I had planned ahead of timeto sell my dresses.
It’s never too late. After doing a little research, I’ve narrowed down my selling options to five websites.
My favorite part is theWedding Dress Value Calculator.This tool helps you determine how much your dress is worth, which may be helpful if you bought the dress a while back or if the dress has some wear and tear.
For each bridesmaid dress you post for sale, you pay a $5 listing fee. While this is lower than the commission fee of other sites, you do have to pay it whether your dress sells or not.
2.Bridesmaid Trade
Bridesmaid Tradehas very comprehensible user guidelines,so this website is arguably the easiest to use.(All of them are pretty user-friendly, but that’s just the opinion of this technologically un-savvy gal.)
There is no listing fee, but if your dress does sell, Bridesmaid Trade charges a $15 fee. So, for example, if you want to pocket $75 for your dress, list it at $90.
As of September 2017, Etsy boasted 30.6 million active shoppers, so there may be a better chance your dress will be seen.I’ve had several friends shop for wedding and bridesmaid dresses on Etsy. They fell in love with their purchases and sing Etsy’s praises.
Etsy charges 20 cents per item that you list, a 3.5% transaction fee, and a 3% + 25-cent fee for processing the payment. Broken down, that means that if you listed a dress for $100, you would end up paying Etsy $6.95.
That equation seems unnecessarily complicated, but it still works out to be quite affordable. So it’s okay, Etsy, we still love you!
4.Forever the Bridesmaid
Forever the Bridesmaidis for bridesmaid dresses only.My favorite part is itsTips for Sellers section.This page gives advice regarding dress upkeep, photos, descriptions and pricing to increase the likelihood of selling your dress.
Rather than charging a specific dollar amount, Forever the Bridesmaid takes a 15% commission fee for each dress you sell.
5.Tradesy
Although Tradesyhas a lot of high-quality bridesmaid dresses listed, the website sells much more than just wedding-related items. The potential downside of this feature is that people wanting to buy bridesmaid dresses might not think of searching Tradesy first.
However, I must say that Tradesy seems mighty convenient. The site has representatives available 24/7 to answer your questions.Their team also sends you, the seller, a free shipping kit and even handles returns if your buyer changes her mind!
If your dress sells for under $50, Tradesy takes $7.50. If your dress sells for more than $50, Tradesy switches from dollars to percentages, taking 14.9%.
Hopefully you feel a little less anxious about being a bridesmaid now that you have options for selling your dress. Just focus on being there for the bride and thinking of the perfect wedding hashtag.
Laura Grace Tarpley is a nomad and freelance writer who runs the blog Let’s Go Tarpley!, where she shares tips about budget travel and moving abroad. Follow her on Twitter @lgtarpley.
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.
Columbus Day is Monday, Oct. 9. So what does that mean?
If, like us, you need a refresher, Google tells us the holiday celebrates Christopher Columbus hitting the New World. Remember?In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It happened October 12.
The day is honored as a federal holiday, which means federal workers get the day off.
In retail, it means there’ll be sales all weekend.
Shop Through Ebates for Columbus Day Deals
In addition to cashing out on in-store sales, you can also earn money back on your purchases when you shop throughEbates, a cash-back website.
And guess what? The online platform is offeringdouble cash backon Columbus Day. For example, you can get cash-back deals at the following retailers:
8% at Toms
Up to 6% at Hotels.com
6% at Kohl’s
6% at Macy’s
6% at PetSmart
4% at Overstock
4% at Loft
4% at the Disney Store.
These are only a few retailers. To check out the full list, head on over tothe Ebates portal.
Once you’re on the site, create an account, which you can do so easily when you sign up with Facebook.You’ll also need to select if you want the $10 Walmart gift card as a welcome bonus or the $10 Ebates cash bonus. (!!!)
Once you’re in, find the store you want to shop and the corresponding deal, then click “Shop Now.”
Ebates will redirect you to the retailer’s site. Go on your merry way, and add what you need to your cart. When you check out, Ebates will register the purchase and boom — cash back.
Once you earn at least $5 back, Ebates automatically sends you a “big fat check” or a PayPal payment each quarter.
Happy Columbus Day, y’all!
Carson Kohler (@CarsonKohler) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s feeling way too tempted to buy some Toms shoes right now…
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.
We’ve catapulted out of the Great Recession, and the unemployment rate just hit itslowest pointin more than a decade. But we feel it’s our personal duty as savings experts at The Penny Hoarder to talk about your spending.
Average personal consumption expenditures, a measure of personal spending, jumped 4% across the U.S. last year, according tothe latest state-level datafrom the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
That’s just a little too much for our nerves.
Sure, there are some thrifty states, like Mississippi, where residents kept their average spending to $30,200 last year — about $83 a day. But then you’ve got (surprise, surprise) Washington, D.C., where residents spent an average of $56,843 a year, or nearly $156 a day.
Let’s follow the money.
Personal Spending Was Highest in These 10 States in 2016
In terms of the U.S. as a whole, the average resident spent $39,664, with housing and health care making up the biggest purchases at roughly $7,200 and $6,700 respectively.
But, you ask, how much did your state spend?
Here’s a list of the states where money is burning the biggest holes in the pockets of residents.
Washington, D.C. — $56,843
Massachusetts — $51,981
Alaska — $49,547
New Jersey — $48,972
New Hampshire — $48,810
Connecticut — $48,497
North Dakota — $48,225
Vermont — $47,648
New York — $46,906
Hawaii — $45,123
Personal Spending Falls Within Penny Hoarder Range in These 10 States
So how do these big-spending states compare with the thriftier ones?
Here are the 10 states with the lowest personal consumption expenditures in 2016.
Mississippi — $30,200
Arkansas — $31,117
Alabama — $31,336
Oklahoma — $32,978
South Carolina — $33,266
Kentucky — $33,288
Idaho — $33,653
North Carolina — $33,779
Louisiana — $34,181
Tennessee — $34,418
Live in One of Those Big-Spending States? Here Are Some Ways to Curb Your Spending Habits
Sure, buying stuff feels good, but here at The Penny Hoarder we know thatsaving money feels way better. So if you want to help your state break from the list of big spenders next year, we have plenty of suggestions.
So, for you D.C denizens out there, you’ve still got a few months to go in 2017 to cut back. We’ve got your back.
Alex Mahadevan is a data journalist 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.
Financially savvy travelers know they can save by signing up for hotel loyalty programs. But which programs provide the most bang for your buck?
CarTrawler, a travel technology platform, recently released the results of its third annualHotel Reward Payback Survey. Consulting firm IdeaWorks gathered data for the survey using six hotel loyalty programs: Best Western Rewards, Hilton Honors, IHG Rewards Club, Marriott Rewards, Starwood SPG and Wyndham Rewards.
Rewards members with Wyndham get the most benefit, while members of Starwood’s loyalty program benefit the least of the six, the survey found.
For every $100 spent, here’s the average value of the rewards each loyalty program pays back:
Wyndham Rewards: $16.70
Marriott Rewards: $8.80
Hilton Honors: $7.50
Best Western Rewards: $7.40
IHG Rewards Club: $6.70
Starwood SPG: $5.40
Rewards Program Points Are Weakening
The Wall Street Journalcompared this year’s hotel rewards study with IdeaWorks’ data from two years ago and found rewards program points aren’t worth as much as they used to be.
It now takes more points to get a complimentary room at Starwood and IHG hotels even though the price of rooms has gone down, according to The Wall Street Journal. Travelers staying at Hilton and Marriott hotels need fewer points to score comp rooms that now cost less, but the rewards points still aren’t as strong as before, the article said.
An analysis of Wyndham’s and Best Western’s programs wasn’t provided.
Still, The Wall Street Journal article pointed out that although points are weakening in value for free rooms, rewards programs aren’t necessarily offering less. Some loyalty programs are expanding to include other perks like room upgrades and free breakfast.
Save More with Hotel Brands’ Credit Cards
Racking uprewardswith hotel-brand credit cards is another way to add to your travel savings. The survey also looked into which brands’ credit cards offer the best reward value for everyday purchases.
The survey found the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express provided users the greatest rewards, while the IHG Rewards Club Select Credit Card provided the least rewards.
Here are the reward rates for every dollar spent on everyday purchases using hotel credit cards:
Starwood Preferred Guest American Express: 2.7%
Wyndham Rewards Visa: 2.5%
Best Western Rewards MasterCard: 1.5%
Hilton Honors American Express: 1.5%
Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card: 0.9%
IHG Rewards Club Select Credit Card: 0.7%
According to the survey, credit card rewards may be greater when you charge purchases like hotel stays or airline tickets instead of everyday purchases.
Just remember, whether you’re swiping your card for travel or everyday purchases, paying off the balance in full every month will help you avoid accumulating interest fees. That way, you can travel stress-free knowing you aren’tadding debtto your life.
Nicole Dow is a staff 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.
September was themost active month for hurricanesand tropical storms in the Atlantic in more than 30 years in terms of storm strength and duration.
While the month brought waves of destruction, it also brought an end to the seven-year streak of job gains for the economy.For the first timesince September 2010, the U.S. shed jobs — roughly 33,000 — according to theSeptember jobs reportfrom the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“It is likely that the payroll employment estimates for September were lower due to the effects of Hurricanes Irma and Harvey,” said the bureau’s acting commissioner, William Wiatrowski,in a statement.
The leisure and hospitality sector and, more specifically, the restaurant and bar industry took the biggest hit, with aloss of 104,700 jobsbetween August and September.
On top of the jobs lost, 1.5 million peoplemissed workdue to the hurricanes for the entire week the statistics bureau was collecting its data, a 20-year record. That obviously doesn’t include thosewho hustled on the sideto scrounge up cash during the emergency.
September Jobs Report Isn’t All Bad News
OK, now I’ll drop the economist Debbie Downer tone.
Despite the storm clouds over the latest jobs report, the unemployment rateticked down to 4.2%, the lowest it has been in more than a decade.
Andaverage wages increased2.5% to $22.23 an hour in September, up from $21.68 in September 2016.
So chin up, America!And if you do happen to be one of the workers who lost their jobs because of the hurricanes, keep an eye onThe Penny Hoarder Jobs pageon Facebook for tons of new opportunities.
Alex Mahadevan is a data journalist 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.
After more than 143 million identities were compromised in adata breach at Equifax, the credit reporting agency and White House officials are questioning the safety of using Social Security numbers for identification.
The risk of fraud already inspired the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services toremove Social Security numbersfrom ID cards starting in 2018.
The Trump administration also plans to ask other government agencies to find new identification systems that don’t rely on Social Security numbers.
Slate reports that Rob Joyce, special assistant to the president and White House cybersecurity coordinator,discussed the safety issueat a cyber conference in Washington, D.C., this week.
“I feel very strongly that the Social Security number has outlived its usefulness,” Joyce said “Every time we use the Social Security number, you put it at risk.”
The same day, former Equifax CEO Richard Smith echoed the belief that the wide use of Social Security numbers as a form of identification is a liability.
“We should consider the creation of a public-private partnership to begin a dialogue on replacing the Social Security Number as the touchstone for identity verification in this country,” he said inwritten remarkspresented to Congress. “It is time to have identity verification procedures that match the technological age in which we live.”
Smithresignedafter 12 years as CEO of Equifax following the breach that impacted about 44% of the American population.
Social Security Numbers Weren’t Supposed to Be ID Numbers
When Social Security numbers were created in 1936, they weren’t meant to be used as widely as they are today. In fact, their only purpose was “tracking the earnings histories of U.S. workers, for use in determining Social Security benefit entitlement and computing benefit levels,”according to the Social Security Administration.
Although there is consensus now that it is necessary to replace Social Security numbers as our primary means of identification, there is no concrete plan yet for what a new system would look like.
At the cyber security conference, Joyce touched on the idea of a “modern cryptographic identifier.”
Bloomberg explainedthat this system would require you to have a physical device that would hold a secret code that serves as an identification method. To access the code and confirm your identity, you would have to enter a unique PIN.
SImply put, it could work like a credit card chip and PIN.
This is only one idea, and it would also come with a unique set of challenges, including how to create and distribute the identifiers. According to Bloomberg, it would likely take an act of Congress and a series of new laws to make a change like this.
Hopefully, the renewed focus on safety measures will make it more difficult for scammers and hackers to access personal information, while making us less susceptible to identity theft.
Desiree Stennett is a staff 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.
It’s structured similarly to Google Alerts, which I’m sure you’re familiar with.
The only difference is the primary focus of this service is backlinks.
Here’s an example of what your reports will look like:
If you discover your competition has a home run strategy for building backlinks, follow their lead.
What websites are featuring your competition?
Reach out to them directly and ask if you can write a guest post.
Maybe send them a link to one of the infographics you created, and offer it as a source of information.
Monitoring the habits of your competitors is a great way to stay ahead of the curve.
4. Reach out to bloggers and journalists
Earlier, I talked about contacting webmasters to get backlinks through broken links on their websites.
You can apply this same concept to websites run by journalists and bloggers.
Even if they don’t have broken links, reach out to them. It can’t hurt.
If you don’t know how to reach the right person, here are some options.
First, try the “Contact Us” option directly on their website.
If that doesn’t work or an email address isn’t listed anywhere, try to search for the person by name on other platforms. Do they have a Linkedin account? Connect with the blogger there.
You can also send them a message on Facebook or another social media platform.
Introduce yourself. Tell the person why your pages would be a credible source to mention on their blog.
5. Actively promote your content
You won’t be able to generate any backlinks if people can’t find your information.
How are you promoting your content?
Content promotion needs to be at the top of your list of things to do every day.
Having a website isn’t enough.
You need different avenues to distribute your content across multiple channels.
They found a study and built a visual representation of the data.
What’s someone else more likely to use for a blog post?
Numbers? Or the infographic?
The infographic wins.
It’s easier for readers to find and interpret infographics, especially if they’re reading a long blog post.
Make infographics.
People will use them on their websites and backlink to your page as the data source.
It’s super effective.
If you’re a faithful reader of mine, you know I love to include infographics in my blog posts.
I always give credit to the source with a backlink.
Here are some tips to follow when building an infographic:
Stay relevant. Use information related to your industry or areas of expertise.
Use legible images. Nobody will use your graphic if it’s too hard to read or understand.
Use accurate numbers. Make sure your data is coming from reliable and high quality sources. You don’t want to get a reputation for spreading inaccurate statistics.
Use recent information. Data changes over time. Make sure you update your infographics. Instead of coming up with completely new graphics every year, update your old ones.
One of the most important factors to consider when thinking about retirement is your withdrawal rate. It comes up time and time again in articles and books on retirement, but is rarely fully explained and often becomes a topic that people gloss over.
Let’s change that.
Withdrawal rate simply refers to the amount of money you’re taking out of your savings each year (unless otherwise specified). So, if you’re taking $500 a year out of your savings account, that’s your withdrawal rate.
Most of the time, withdrawal rate is expressed as a percentage. So, let’s say you have $100 in your savings account and you withdraw $1 per year, your withdrawal rate would be 1%. Makes sense, right?
Here’s where things get tricky. With almost all investments, that investment continues to earn money during the years when you’re withdrawing money. So, with that savings account example above, it might be earning 1% interest during that year, so although you might withdraw $1 per year, it’s also earning $1 per year. So, at the end of the year, you will have taken out $1 but the account will still have a balance of $100 – the $1 in interest plus the $99 that you left in the account.
That’s why withdrawal rate is usually based on the amount in the account when you started making regular withdrawals.
Let’s clear this up with another savings account example. You have $1,000 in there, and you’re committing to withdrawing $10 each year. Your withdrawal rate is 1%. However, that account earns 1.25% interest. So, each year, you’re withdrawing $10, but during the first year, the account actually earns $12.50 in interest, leaving it with a balance of $1,002.50 at the end of the year. The next year, your withdrawal rate is still 1% and you’re still withdrawing $10 (because that’s all based on the starting balance of $1,000), but it’s earning 1.25% on the current balance, which means that it earns $12.53 in interest that year and ends up with a balance of $1,005.03 at the end of the year.
The key thing to notice here is that the withdrawal rate and the annual withdrawn amount stay the same, but the account balance can actually change over time. The withdrawal rate is based on the initial account balance and thus doesn’t change.
So, what does this all have to do with retirement?
Retirement calculations follow this same exact principle. When you retire, your goal should be for your retirement savings to last the rest of your life, right? You don’t want your money to run out when you’ve still got years of life left in you.
So, what people typically do in retirement is that they figure out a withdrawal rate and then withdraw that amount each year from their account. Let’s say, for example, that they have $1,000,000 in retirement savings at the start of retirement and decide on a 4% withdrawal rate. That means that, each year, they’re going to take 4% of $1,000,000 – or $40,000 – out of their account.
In other words, you might retire at 65, you hope to last until you’re in your 90s, and so you want to be able to withdraw 4% – $40,000 a year – for 30 years.
If you do the simple math – $40,000 times 30 – you’ll see that over those thirty years, you’re pulling $1.2 million out of the account, but it only has a balance of $1 million at the start. That means that the money that stays in the account had better be invested well, in order to earn that extra $200,000 in investment income.
Let’s play around with this a bit. Let’s say you choose a withdrawal rate of 5%. That would mean you’d take out $50,000 a year over 30 years, or $1.5 million. Your investments would have to come up with another $500,000 along the way as you’re drawing it down. That’s a pretty tall order!
On the other hand, you might choose a withdrawal rate of 3%. That would mean you’re taking out $30,000 a year for 30 years, or $900,000. In that case, you can actually afford to lose $100,000 in investments along the way and still be okay!
What you can see here is that the higher your withdrawal rate, the less safe everything is. The more money you take out each year, the less likely it becomes that your investment is going to last from the start of retirement to your passing.
(Yes, that’s an obvious point, but it’s an important one.)
Of course, you have another factor pushing the other way. If you go for a safer withdrawal rate, that means less money each year for you to live on. The person that takes $30,000 out of their investments each year might be safer than the person who takes out $50,000, but they have far less to live on.
The trick, of course, is to find a balance, and that balance is called the safe withdrawal rate. It’s the percentage of the initial balance you can take out each year and expect, with a high likelihood, that your investments will last until you pass away.
Obviously, a safe withdrawal rate comes with some assumptions. It assumes that you have a certain number of years to live between retirement and death – usually, thirty years is used. Also, it depends a great deal on how your money is invested and what the economy is like when you’re in retirement. Typically, a safe withdrawal rate is calculated with the idea that you’re invested fairly aggressively and that the market does pretty poorly by historical measures over that timeframe.
So, what exactly is a safe withdrawal rate, then? Most experts tend to agree that a safe withdrawal rate for retirees with a heavily diversified 401(k) is somewhere between 3% and 4%, with a few suggesting a bit lower, as low as 2.5%.
In other words, if you set your withdrawal rate at 3% when you retire and stick to that amount and your retirement investments are diversified but have a healthy amount in stocks, most experts agree that your retirement savings will last you for 30 years (at least).
Of course, you can set a different withdrawal rate if you choose. A higher one means that there’s a lower likelihood of your money lasting for 30 years; a lower rate means that it’s extremely likely to last for 30 years with money left over at that point. The choice is up to you.
How is this useful in retirement planning? You can use that “safe withdrawal rate” to see how much you’ll have to live on when you retire.
For example, let’s say you think you’ll have $600,000 saved up when you retire. If you multiply that by the safe withdrawal rate of 3%, you get $18,000 per year. Is that enough, along with Social Security and any other benefits you might have? What about inflation – remember, prices will go up, too. You might want to consider accelerating your savings.
A safe withdrawal rate simply helps you get a realistic picture of what your finances will look like after you retire. It suggests how much you can safely withdraw each year, and you can use that along with your Social Security estimates to figure out if that’s enough or if you need to start bumping up your retirement savings.
