Money Management

Save On Entertainment

July 22, 2018 by Twila Van Leer

Americans love to be entertained and they spend a lot of money for the pleasure. Here are a half dozen ideas for spending less and enjoying it more:

Plan Ahead – Buy Tickets At The Best Discount

If you’re planning a night out for live entertainment, wait until the last minute to purchase tickets. A theater hoping to fill the house may begin selling “rush” tickets a couple of hours before the performance. Consolidated discount ticket booths are popping up all over the country. Or make a direct call to the theater and ask if they discount tickets right before show time. Of course, if you know a performance is likely to sell out, keep your plans flexible.

Use The Library

Remember the library? That’s where people used to go for books. Many of them still do and they also keep current on recorded books, shelves of CDs and other media. Today’s libraries also offer readings, book clubs, film screenings and lectures. Dust off your card and take another look at your local library.

Get Employment With A Fun Venue

Teenagers and young adults who are looking for entertainment that doesn’t break the bank can often find part-time jobs at sports venues, concert halls or theaters. That way, they can catch the action (without neglecting their responsibilities) while earning enough to pay their way into yet more events.

Check Out Discount Days For Entertaining Activities

Regular discount days are a feature of many theaters, museums, galleries, zoos and parks. Some even offer free entry on certain days of the week or during particular hours. Live performance theaters sometimes offer drastically discounted tickets for dress rehearsals.

If baby-sitting costs keep you home, arrange with another family to swap the chore on alternating Saturdays. Over a year’s time, you could save more than a thousand dollars. which you could turn back into entertainment money.

Matinee performances generally are less expensive than night-time performances, so plan to attend during the day rather than paying the higher night-time costs.

Save Money On Food

July 16, 2018 by Twila Van Leer

The typical American family of four spends $8,513 per year on groceries. And many families add to that amount by eating out regularly. If you are interested in cutting the amount you spend at the grocery store, file these tips away and follow the advice they offer:

Learn To Eat At Home

Learn to cook. Cooking you own meals can significantly cut the costs of eating. Even fast-food eating out in enormously expensive. You’ll also save if you cook from scratch and avoid the higher-priced frozen and pre-prepared meals. Not only that, it is likely that you will eat healthier. Book stores have dozens of cookbooks, many of them focused on inexpensive and easy-to-fix meals.

Plan Meals For A Week

Take fewer trips to the grocery store. Typical American food shoppers go to a store three or four times a week. This means they triple or quadruple the temptation to pick up things they don’t really need. Studies say the frequent shoppers spend up to 54 percent more than those who stock up for a month or more at a time.

Homemade Lunches

Take sack lunches to work. Compare the cost of a $2 brown bag lunch to the average $6 trip to a sandwich shop and you can see how fast you could save yourself some serious money. In this comparison, the savings are about $80 a month or $960 in a year.

Write Down What You Need

Make a list. Impulse buying is sharply curtailed when you have it written down. Sketch out a week’s meals and see that all the ingredients are on hand. Add a few goodies to the list for the occasional treat, but otherwise, stick with the list.

Use The Brands That Are Cheapest

Buy generic. No-name brands are almost invariably less expensive than those that you recognize right off the bat and the quality is likely to be comparable. The experts say you can pocket big savings on such items as canned goods, cereals, frozen vegetables and even baby products such as diapers and prepared formulas. When buying prescription drugs, compare labels so you are sure you are getting the same dose of the active ingredients.

Discount Coupons Help Save Money

Use coupons. Coupons are good money-savers only if you look for items that don’t cost more than you would find in another brand. Store brands usually cost less. Eateries also offer coupons and you’ll find them online.

Consider Buying In Bulk Quantities

Many stores offer information on their shelves or price tags that gives a unit price. Comparison shop using the unit price. Buying in quantity is a good idea for some items. For instance, a pack of 40 diapers may cost f$13. or 33 cents per diaper. A box of 144 diapers at $35 is just 24 cents per diaper. (A word of caution: Although buying in bulk is usually less expensive, it’s a waste if you cannot use the product within a reasonable time. A good deal is not a good deal if it goes to waste.)

Robust Economy? Not For Everyone

June 28, 2018 by Twila Van Leer

Unemployment is down. Spending is up. Inflation is manageable. Taxes are down. Demand for new homes is up. Household wealth is higher.

Why Are Americans Feeling Insecure About The Economy

So how come many Americans are not feeling secure, even though the last major recession is nine years in the past? Too many of them are falling into categories where high child care costs wipe out the advantages, or the expanding costs of travel wipe out any pay raises, or those pay raises have not materialized, or . . .

Some Are Using Savings To Live Month To Month

Analysts at Oxford Economics who studied American spending patterns found that those in the bottom 60 percent of earners were drawing from their savings to maintain a standard of living. Many are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Even those who have found jobs as the jobless rate dipped are not feeling financially secure.

Here’s how the current economy looks to these folks:

Even though inflation is not a current concern, the prices of some indispensible items is rising. Gasoline is up 24 percent since a year ago. That can eat away as much as a third of what people hoped to save.

Owning A Home Has Become Harder

Owning a home has become harder, not easier. Many areas of the country are seeing a dearth of listings in the affordable range. Prices are rising more than 6 percent annually overall and even higher in some areas, increases that effectually wipe out the 2.7 percent increase in most hourly wages. Thirty-year fixed-rate mortgages are growing costlier. Average interest rates have jumped too 4.62 percent, from 3.95 percent at the beginning of this year.

At the root of the problem is the decline of America’s middle class. Wealth is increasingly lop-sided, with the ultra-rich sector growing while those at the other end of the scale see little benefit from the great economy. The top 10 percent of the country controls 73 percent of the personal wealth. The gains are concentrated in the top 1 percent, which lays claim to 39 percent of the wealth.

Where the middle class once included some 40 percent of the overall population, the figure now is just 27 percent. In the lowest 40 percent, Americans have a negative net worth and few have cushions sufficient to offset an emergency. They can’t look to stocks, rental properties, capital gains or home equity to shore up the budget if needed. Hourly wages haven’t risen over the past year for most of them.

Times are particularly tough for people who lack an advanced educational degree. Those who ended their education with high school find themselves scrambling as most of the jobs go to college grads. Those minimally educated make up less then 1 percent of the job gains that have boosted the overall economy.

Student Debt Affects Home Buying

At the same time, it isn’t all rosy for those with a college degree. Ever-higher student debt has wiped out some of the advantage. Since 2004, total student debt has increased 540 percent to a startling total of $1.4 trillion. That doesn’t include graduate school debt. That debt is influencing the ability to buy homes. Realtors have reported home-buying delays of about seven years among those burdened with education debt. College graduates dealing with debt also tend to delay the start of families, another factor that impedes full economic health in the country.

Children are, in fact, very expensive. Nearly a third of families put out at least 20 percent of their income for child care. Some families go into debt to cover child care expenses. Average cost of care for one child is $10,486 a year and it can be as high as $20,209. Many women have dropped out of the job market to stay home with children rather than pay the high costs of outside care.

The percentage of American women in the workforce has dropped from 77 percent in 2000 to 74.8 percent now. A return to the higher figure would see some 1.4 million more women in the workplace.

So while the economy appears in print as encouraging, there are problems to address before the benefit can blanket all Americans.

Wise Shopping For Groceries

June 19, 2018 by Twila Van Leer

Grocery Shopping — Essential ingredients are placed at opposite ends of the store so you must pass through the inner aisles to reach the dairy products at one end and produce at the other

Grocery stores are strategically designed to tempt the shopper into spending more money. Try to avoid some of the pitfalls by following these tips:

Avoid Impulse Buying At The Grocery Store

Essential ingredients are placed at opposite ends of the store so you must pass through the inner aisles to reach the dairy products at one end and produce at the other. Try to focus on what you need and don’t spend unnecessary time in the central aisles.

Coupons Really Do Save You Money

Don’t shun coupons. You can save serious cash if you are willing to spend a little time and effort to accumulate coupons for items you routinely buy. Watch the store’s ads to magnify the benefit of coupons. Staying current with sales will save you money. Be aware, however, that coupons are most likely to give you a break on brand-name products when there may be cheaper alternatives. Don’t buy something you don’t need because there is a coupon.

Toiletries generally are cheaper at a pharmacy than in the grocery store. Stock up with an occasional trip to the pharmacy.

Brand Names Are Not Always The Best For You?

Don’t become addicted to brand names. Often, a generic or house brand is of comparable quality and costs less. Often, they are the same product under a different label. Check the ingredients to be certain you are not sacrificing anything.

Remember that the eye-level shelves are likely to contain the more expensive items. Grocery store managers know that what the shopper sees at eye-level is most likely to catch their attention. Look up or down before buying the first version you see.

If an item you have seen that is currently discounted, but you can’t find it one the shelves, don’t hesitate to ask for a rain check. Some stores offer the option of getting an extension on sold-out sale items.

Don’t go to the grocery store hungry. You’ve heard it before. After work or before dinner is the worst time to go. If it’s possible, shop on weekends.

Eat with the seasons. Not only will fresh products taste better, they’ll be mulch more reasonable priced. If you opt for fruits and veggies that are out of season, you pay for the transportation costs that get them to your store.

Mortgage Lingo Requires Study

June 11, 2018 by Twila Van Leer

Buying a home can thrust you into a realm where the language is about like being in a foreign country. The alphabet soup of acronyms and the jargon that peppers the conversation can leave you feeling a little lost.

Understanding just one factor, the LTV or loan-to-value component, can be a big help. Basically, it compares the size of the loan you are signing to the value of the home.

The LTV mathematics are relatively simple. You calculate it by dividing the amount of the mortgage by the appraised value of the property. The lender is interested in the LTV because it is an indicator of loan risk.

For instance, on a home appraised at $300,000, if you make a down payment of $40,000, the $260,000 mortgage represents an LTV of 86 percent. In other words, your mortgage is 86 percent of the value of the home. A higher LTV could represent a greater risk for the lender because it suggests the assets behind the loan are lower. Should you default or foreclose with a high LTV, it becomes more difficult for the lenders to recuperate the outstanding balance when they resell the property. Because of that risk, they may charge higher interest in the first instance.

Lowering the LTV has a number of benefits for the purchaser. It will make applying for a loan easier and could lock in a lower interest rate. You may not be required to purchase mortgage insurance, which usually becomes a factor when the LTV is 80 percent or lower. If the value of the property should drop, you could find yourself “under water,” a term applied when the balance on your mortgage is greater than the value of the home.

You can improve the LTV by increasing your down payment, building equity as you pay off the mortgage or by proving that over time, the value of your property has increased. That requires another appraisal.

As time passes, check the numbers to see if your LTV has improved. If so, you may be able to drop your mortgage insurance.