Photo: Photos8
Showing posts with label Financial Tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Financial Tips. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Credit Score
Photo: Photos8
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Spring Cleaning: Your Finances!
What did you think of the ideas to Spring Clean your house the non-toxic way? Well, now you can think about Spring Cleaning your finances. Now is a wonderful time to check through your files, get rid of no longer needed paper and see how you're doing on your budget since the beginning of the year. Dave Ramsey gives some great advice on Spring Cleaning your finances.
How's your "Spring Cleaning" going? Or have you not started yet, like me? :)
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Frugal Tip: Word of Mouth
Quite honestly, one of the best frugal practices I've ever come across is the ancient and extremely simple "Word of Mouth." You can seriously apply this to anything.
It's by word of mouth that I read about new printable coupons I wouldn't have found by myself. It's by word of mouth that I find out when there's special store deals going on. It's by word of mouth I find out about clearances. It's by word of mouth I hear about great non-food deals like appliances. How often have you bought or even received something for free because your friend's aunt's brother-in-law need to get rid of it fast?
Knowing this principle, anytime my husband and I need something, I often pass the word out to my family and friends. Whether it's a car, furniture, apartment or job possibilities, we usually find what we're looking for by word of mouth. Actually, we've had to turn many things away because we were receiving too much stuff!
Example: We were recently looking for an apartment and I mentioned it to my mom. I was getting a little overwhelmed at the task of sorting through all the possibilities in the area and I wasn't having much luck.
The day after I told my mom we were looking, she sent me a listing for the apartment we're now moving into on Saturday. It's a wonderful deal for the area and is just a few minutes from my husband's job. It was a blessing to our family to get this apartment and I doubt I would have found that listing if my mom hadn't sent it to me. It was from a site I didn't know much about.
So I am extremely thankful to have such wonderful friends and family that look out for our best interests and are willing to help us. I'm also thankful for the great online blogging community (word of mouth!) I found a few years ago that I'm positive has taught me frugal living ideas and deals that have saved my family thousands! Never under estimate the finer thing of word of mouth!!
Friday, June 12, 2009
My Junk Mail Lesson
Ok. So I normally toss all junk mail without really looking at it too hard. Never again! I was sorting the mail today and came across this Pizzahut coupon flier. Rarely are their coupons good enough to entice me, but check out the bottom left one...
I thought there would be a catch, but after reading it, it really is a free medium pizza, no strings attached. We just have to pick it up and luckily it's right down the road. Sweet! I'm thinking we're having pizza tonight. With all the cooking and baking I've been doing for the freezer, I'm usually not in the mood to make dinner (more about this soon!). :) Sounds counterproductive, huh? Anyway, free, easy dinner works for me! So from now on, I'll be taking a closer look at all my "junk" mail.
I thought there would be a catch, but after reading it, it really is a free medium pizza, no strings attached. We just have to pick it up and luckily it's right down the road. Sweet! I'm thinking we're having pizza tonight. With all the cooking and baking I've been doing for the freezer, I'm usually not in the mood to make dinner (more about this soon!). :) Sounds counterproductive, huh? Anyway, free, easy dinner works for me! So from now on, I'll be taking a closer look at all my "junk" mail.Tuesday, February 3, 2009
2008 Taxes
Tax season can be very stressful for some people, especially if you don't have a lot of money to shell out for help. Luckily, last year, I found out that if you made below a certain level of money, you can fill out, file and receive a direct deposit using a name brand tax filing service for free!
Last year, as well as this year, I used Turbo Tax's Freedom program to file our Federal tax returns for free and because Ohio wasn't a participator, I paid $10 for Turbo Tax to do my State forms too. Some states do participate and you can fill out your forms for free. To qualify for this free service you must: have a Gross Income of $30,000 or less, be an active military member that Grossed $56,00 or less, or be able to apply for the Earned Income credit this year. Our family did qualify and I was able to use a top of the line service for free!
There are other free tax services you can find through the IRS website for lower income families, however, I felt that I wanted to go with a big name I knew I could trust. Last year, my husband was both a contractor and an employee, so our taxes were very complicated with write offs and milage and such. I highly recommend Turbo Tax (no, I'm not getting anything to say any of this) because they ask simple questions, you answer them, they tell you your refund amount and then automatically check for any errors. I think it took me about an hour to complete both our Federal and State forms this year.
Information it will help you to round up and have in front of you:
Last year, as well as this year, I used Turbo Tax's Freedom program to file our Federal tax returns for free and because Ohio wasn't a participator, I paid $10 for Turbo Tax to do my State forms too. Some states do participate and you can fill out your forms for free. To qualify for this free service you must: have a Gross Income of $30,000 or less, be an active military member that Grossed $56,00 or less, or be able to apply for the Earned Income credit this year. Our family did qualify and I was able to use a top of the line service for free!
There are other free tax services you can find through the IRS website for lower income families, however, I felt that I wanted to go with a big name I knew I could trust. Last year, my husband was both a contractor and an employee, so our taxes were very complicated with write offs and milage and such. I highly recommend Turbo Tax (no, I'm not getting anything to say any of this) because they ask simple questions, you answer them, they tell you your refund amount and then automatically check for any errors. I think it took me about an hour to complete both our Federal and State forms this year.
Information it will help you to round up and have in front of you:
- Personal information for you and your spouse
- Social Security numbers for anyone being listed, including dependents
- w-2, 1099, Interest statements issued by your bank and any other forms you have regarding your income for the year
- Last year's tax forms for both Federal and State
- This year, you need to list the amount of stimulous money you received in May. It's not taxable and didn't seem to change anything, but you need to list it none the less
That's about it! I hope your taxes go as smoothly and beneficially as ours did this year!
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Refund Cents Website
Today and tomorrow, refundcents.com is hosts a guest preview day. You can go to the site and look around at everything they have to offer for free.
I am a member of the refundcents.com website. Now, normally I don't like paying for a money saving service-seems self defeating to me. However, I did a 3 month membership just to try it out and figured I'd cancel if it wasn't worth it (like I did with the grovery game which I DID cancel). But I really like this one.
Not only is the website so full of information I haven't even gone through it all in my first two months of membership, but you also receive a magazine once a month full of all the rebates you can get, real people with all the deals they've pulled off-proving it's possible, and ads which I found helpful as well.
Online, everyday, Michele lists updates on good deals around the web and in stores. Somehow, she gets drugstore ads and coupon previews weeks in advance and posts them so you can be ready. Every week, the website lists all the possible good deals with coupon matchups for Rite-Aid, CVS, and Walgreens. There are also message boards for local grocery stores, centsible chat which is where everyone talks about deals they've found and shares them, and tons of info on just about anything you can think of. Like I said, I haven't even gotten a chance to read it all yet. There's Dinner Tricks, tips and tricks for all the drugstores and more.
Should you choose to sign up for a membership, and are a new member, just be sure to use the links above and if it asks you who refered you type in: sccrkid85. That way I receieve credit. Thanks!
Each month of magazine membership you will receive:
50-70 page issueInformation about 100-300 new refund offers
5 page Ad section
Good Deal Alerts
10 pages of “Tips & Talk” featuring reader letters and pictures (Sample: “Reader Pics & Stories”)
Many, many features and helps too numerous to mention
Access to all Password Portions of this site with hottest daily deals
$30.00 - 14 month print subscription (12 issues) + online access
$25.00 - 1 year print subscription (10 issues) + online access
$14.00 - 6 month print subscription (5 issues) + online access
$8.00 - 3 month print subscription (3 issues) + online access
You can also choose to recieve only online access:
$30.00 - 2 1/2 year online access only
$12.00 - 1 year online access only
$7.00 - 6 month online access only
$4.00 - 3 month online access only
I know, advertisements are annoying, but I really do like this website, so I thought I'd share it with you! :)
I am a member of the refundcents.com website. Now, normally I don't like paying for a money saving service-seems self defeating to me. However, I did a 3 month membership just to try it out and figured I'd cancel if it wasn't worth it (like I did with the grovery game which I DID cancel). But I really like this one.
Not only is the website so full of information I haven't even gone through it all in my first two months of membership, but you also receive a magazine once a month full of all the rebates you can get, real people with all the deals they've pulled off-proving it's possible, and ads which I found helpful as well.
Online, everyday, Michele lists updates on good deals around the web and in stores. Somehow, she gets drugstore ads and coupon previews weeks in advance and posts them so you can be ready. Every week, the website lists all the possible good deals with coupon matchups for Rite-Aid, CVS, and Walgreens. There are also message boards for local grocery stores, centsible chat which is where everyone talks about deals they've found and shares them, and tons of info on just about anything you can think of. Like I said, I haven't even gotten a chance to read it all yet. There's Dinner Tricks, tips and tricks for all the drugstores and more.
Should you choose to sign up for a membership, and are a new member, just be sure to use the links above and if it asks you who refered you type in: sccrkid85. That way I receieve credit. Thanks!
Each month of magazine membership you will receive:
50-70 page issueInformation about 100-300 new refund offers
5 page Ad section
Good Deal Alerts
10 pages of “Tips & Talk” featuring reader letters and pictures (Sample: “Reader Pics & Stories”)
Many, many features and helps too numerous to mention
Access to all Password Portions of this site with hottest daily deals
$30.00 - 14 month print subscription (12 issues) + online access
$25.00 - 1 year print subscription (10 issues) + online access
$14.00 - 6 month print subscription (5 issues) + online access
$8.00 - 3 month print subscription (3 issues) + online access
You can also choose to recieve only online access:
$30.00 - 2 1/2 year online access only
$12.00 - 1 year online access only
$7.00 - 6 month online access only
$4.00 - 3 month online access only
I know, advertisements are annoying, but I really do like this website, so I thought I'd share it with you! :)
Friday, October 3, 2008
Frugal Friday: Bill Problems
I recently had a problem with our internet bill (Road Runner). I'm still not sure what exactly happened, but I pay my bill online each month (to save on stamps and such) and apparently our payment hasn't gone through two months in a row. I'm not sure if the problem was an input problem (my fault) or a system problem (their fault).
I found the problem by mistake. I was checking our checkbook against the online bank statement and noticed two payment weren't taken out. I got on my internet account and checked and my bill was $117 (normally 27)!! I quickly called Time Warner Cable. They tried to tell me the electronic check bounced twice. I had no notice of it, no online notice, nothing showed up on the online account. Something was fishy. I called the bank... no such payments had ever been submitted! Back to TWC. After being transferred twice I finally got a lady who ALSO couldn't tell me what happened. At this point I think I'd been trying to solve this problem for an hour and I was done. She offered to drop one of the late fees and because I had never received or kept the online confirmation email/number I couldn't prove anything so I took her offer.
As of today, my bill was still high, I didn't see where she removed a fee, but I'm going to check my next paper bill and if they don't fix it, you can be sure I'll be calling again and I probably won't be so nice about it this time. I normally love our internet connection. We have Road Runner Lite ($27/mo) and I usually don't notice too much of a difference from regular Road Runner. Normally I would recommend it to you, but after this ordeal, I'm not so sure about Time Warner. If they don't resolve this problem, I may switch.
My advice is two-fold. Always call and talk to people, whether you actually owe them money you can't yet pay or there is a problem. I've always been told that speaking with someone (especially when you can't pay a bill) will always get you futher than you think. Credit card company in particular are quick to dismiss fees and work with you if you just CALL and talk to them. Explain your situation, etc. My second peice of advice is to keep ALL of those annoying little messages and emails they send about payment confirmations. I just created a folder in my email account for "Financial" emails. You never know when you'll need them and it helps to be organized!
I found the problem by mistake. I was checking our checkbook against the online bank statement and noticed two payment weren't taken out. I got on my internet account and checked and my bill was $117 (normally 27)!! I quickly called Time Warner Cable. They tried to tell me the electronic check bounced twice. I had no notice of it, no online notice, nothing showed up on the online account. Something was fishy. I called the bank... no such payments had ever been submitted! Back to TWC. After being transferred twice I finally got a lady who ALSO couldn't tell me what happened. At this point I think I'd been trying to solve this problem for an hour and I was done. She offered to drop one of the late fees and because I had never received or kept the online confirmation email/number I couldn't prove anything so I took her offer.
As of today, my bill was still high, I didn't see where she removed a fee, but I'm going to check my next paper bill and if they don't fix it, you can be sure I'll be calling again and I probably won't be so nice about it this time. I normally love our internet connection. We have Road Runner Lite ($27/mo) and I usually don't notice too much of a difference from regular Road Runner. Normally I would recommend it to you, but after this ordeal, I'm not so sure about Time Warner. If they don't resolve this problem, I may switch.
My advice is two-fold. Always call and talk to people, whether you actually owe them money you can't yet pay or there is a problem. I've always been told that speaking with someone (especially when you can't pay a bill) will always get you futher than you think. Credit card company in particular are quick to dismiss fees and work with you if you just CALL and talk to them. Explain your situation, etc. My second peice of advice is to keep ALL of those annoying little messages and emails they send about payment confirmations. I just created a folder in my email account for "Financial" emails. You never know when you'll need them and it helps to be organized!
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