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I know I really should be practicing what I preach, but right now is the time to start saving for your retirement! No matter how old you are (18 or 62) it’s very important to start saving now! In case you think that you are young enough or that is what social security is meant for, you couldn’t be more wrong! If you don’t believe me, then you should start looking at how much social security benefits has changed. Now people have to work until they are a lot older before they can receive their full benefits.
I just find it sad that someone pays from the time they start working (usually 16-18) until they can retire (with full benefits is 70) and how much of that money do they actually get back? It makes you wonder, where did all that money go? That’s where I would rather be in charge of my own retirement… hence the reason why we need to start putting money away now for later.
I feel so fortunate that my husband has a decent paying job with good benefits right now. It seems like once again more and more people are hoping to find a job in our area, but unfortunately jobs still aren’t the easiest to come by here. Thankfully my sister in law was quite lucky to of found a job in a weeks time. The bad thing about it, is it’s a temp job, but I guess if they like her there is a possibility she might eventually get hired permanently. I really hope that will be the case for her. Even if it’s not, at least her name is out there even more and hopefully she will get picked up by another doctors office or hospital.
Now that President Obama passed the health care bill I can’t stop to wonder what this will be doing to our economy. Paul stopped over to a friends house yesterday and their son had just got a new job and was suppose to go in yesterday to fill out the paperwork and when he walked in they informed him that due to this new bill, they will now have to charge him $100 a week for his health insurance. So he ended up walking away from the job as that was going to be a $2.50 pay cut from his previous job and thought it would be best to go crawling back to that job in hopes that they would take them back.
After hearing that I can’t help but wonder what these businesses will do to their employees. I can see them making the employee pay for part of their health insurance (so they will be making less money than what they currently make) or maybe they will have to take away vacation/sick days to make up part of the health insurance they now have to pay or for all the new taxes they will be hit with. Or even worse, they will end up having to let a few employees go, so they can pay for the health care for the rest of the employees.
No matter how you look at it, I have a feeling people will be feeling more pain financially than they currently are since prices of most things like prescription drugs and premiumswill increase. I think you will start seeing more and more things on craigslist and on the side of the road for sale and more people saying “I need to sell my timeshare” as I can’t afford it anymore.
Just amazing how one piece of paper can change the lives of everyone in the United States for the rest of their lives.
It seems like more and more of our friends are having to live paycheck to paycheck now and while they do that they look at us and wonder how in the world we are not only able to survive on only one income, but to be able to go on big vacations every year too without going in debt. So I thought I would share some of the things we do.
First and foremost, we don’t buy anything unless we know without a doubt we can pay either cash for it, or we will be able to pay it off when the credit card statement comes. Our only exception has been when we bought our house. I wish we would of been able to pay cash for it (like our neighbors just did) but unfortunately that wasn’t possible. So if you don’t have to cash to pay for it.. don’t buy it! (If you are currently in debt… put the credit cards up and away and pay cash otherwise you will spend more if you use the credit card)
The next thing you can do to free up some money would be to call around and get home owners and auto insurance quotes. Now, don’t just switch to any company because their prices are lower. You have to make sure you are comparing apples to apples. If you really don’t feel like switching, what you always could do too is increase your deductible. I believe we have a $1000 deductible on our house and honestly I’m glad we do as it makes us only use it if we have a big claim. (Like when our refrigerator sprung a leak and did a TON of damage as it had gone on for months and we never knew it because it never showed on top of the floor.. it seepedunder the floor and finally our kitchen floor started to buckle and our ceiling in the basement started dripping) Did you know that every time you make a claim your insurance will increase. (Hence the reason why you want a high deductible to stop you from making those little claims)
Another thing you can do to free up some cash is get rid of all those cable stations and either go to basic (that’s what we have) or if you can, just do the tv antenna thing and have FREE tv! Just think about how much money a YEAR you are paying just to watch TV. Like I had mentioned before we have basic tv and are paying $23.34 a month for that, but when you multiply it by 12 that means we spend $280 and change just to be able to watch TV! Now you of those who are spending say $50 a month for cable (or satellite) just think.. you are spending $600 a year to watch tv! That’s $320 more than us… which bill could you put that $320 towards to get it paid off that much sooner so you could get debt free that much faster.
Finally, this one I know a lot of you will say there is no way you could do this, but do you seriously need to have that $100+ a month cell phone? As you can see I said NEED, not WANT. There is a difference. We keep a land line at home which costs us $28 (plus change) a month to have, then we each have a prepaid cell phone so if we are out and about and someone needs to get a hold of us (not for every day chit chat, but for more an emergency) they can or if we need to get a hold of someone we can. What do we pay a month for that?!? Less than $10 a month!! For Paul’s Tracfone we always buy the 1 year prepaid card around Christmas time when we can use the Santa Bucks at Meijers to buy it and save $20! So for $80 a year Paul can have 1 years service with 800 minutes (the first year we bought the double the minutes for lifetime.. otherwise he would have 400 minutes for the year). I bet a lot of you are thinking how in the world can you have a phone for a year with only 800 minutes. Once again it’s because it’s more for emergencies or short conversations. If we want to talk to someone for a long time, that’s why we have our land line phone!
I know it would be hard for a lot of you to not have those unlimited minute phone with unlimited texting, or all 100+ tv stations, but it’s not as if you wouldn’t have to do this for the rest of your life. Just do it long enough to get your bills paid off and can get debt free! Trust me, you will feel so much better when you are.
I really hope that my kids take after me when it comes to clothes. When I was in high school, some of my friends had to have the name brand jeans like Guess?. (Do they even make those anymore?) For me, I didn’t care what brand clothes I wore, as long as they fit and were clean.
As I walk through the mall I can’t help but look at all these high school age kids with their iphones, brand name sunglasses and hip clothes and wonder how much money their parents spend on clothing these kids.
I’m so glad my kids don’t care, granted they are only 4 & 6. I just went garage saling with my parents (yes.. garage saling in Feb, but that’s because we are in Orange Beach, AL) and I bought $4 worth of clothes for my daughter that would cloth her for the year! When I showed her what I bought she loved them all! To think I was able to get enough clothes for the year for a lot less than what some people pay for 1 shirt!
Of course things might change when she gets in high school, but I really hope she looks at the sale prom dresses instead of looking at Vera Wang dresses. Sometimes those off brand name clothes are just as good as the name brand ones.
Yesterday I ended up going to one of the local libraries so I could get some movies for Paul and I to watch since he had the night off last night and there really wasn’t anything on tv. While I was there I noticed the sign they had up, which bummed me out. The sign read…
Due to state budget cuts, beginning March 15, we will no longer be able to transport books belonging to other libraries through our delivery service. PLEASE return any books you pick up at another library to that library.
I can honestly say that was one thing I LOVED about the library. (Besides being able to check out books & DVD’s for free) I would say 95% of the time I would return the books/movies from the library I had checked them out from, but there were some days I wasn’t going to be going in the direction of the library I rented them from, but was going to be going past another library so I would just drop them off there. Plus it was nice to be able to put a hold on a book (which I have done plenty of times) and have them deliver it to the library I like and go to the most. Now it sounds like that won’t be happening anymore either. So if I want a book and the only library that has it is 45 minutes away.. it looks as if I will have to drive that far now to get it and will also have to return it there. I’m not sure now if I would do that or not as it might be cheaper to look for the book online, but it and have it shipped directly to my house.
Part’s of me would love to ask the library to see how much it costs to run that program as I wonder how many other library users wouldn’t mind chipping in to keep that program. Somehow though I have a feeling I would be shocked to find out the cost.
When it comes to finding the best deal possible, I’m all about that. The catcher is, not all the time is buying the cheapest thing always the best. A majority of the time you will catch me buying the store brand name product, but there are sometimes when there is a product I like (for example the Clorox Green Works dish soap) that’s what I’ll be sticking with even though I know there are other products much cheaper.
It’s one thing when products are cheap enough and you can compare and find out which item is best before long, but what about products like insurance? How do you honestly know which insurance would be the best for your dollar? Sometimes it’s really hard to compare apples to apples so how do you know which is best? Do you just go with the cheap insurance and hope for the best? I know we (ok I) was nervous having our insurance company as we didn’t know anyone else who did and Paul likes to shop on price alone. I ended up being so thankful that when we did have to make a claim they ended up being just as good as the more expensive companies! So we ended up lucking out, but who knows the next time he decides to change companies.
Paul and I are seeing the light and every day it’s just getting brighter and brighter and we are LOVING it! What light are we seeing? The light is us having our house paid off!! I once again crunched numbers and we just might be able to pay off the house during the middle of the month next month, if not it will be by the end of the month!
Thankfully when we got married, both of us were debt free, but a week before we got married we ended up finding our house and a few weeks after our wedding we were $130k in debt. We always hoped to pay our house off early, but we honestly never had dreamed of paying it off this early! All I know is Paul and I are already feeling better as we can now breathe a little easier knowing we won’t be having to pay $1000+ to the mortgage company anymore, instead we can start investing it for our retirement so in 25 years hopefully we will be able to retire comfortably
Not only will we be saving the money of not having to pay 22 more years of interest, but now we can change our term life insurance as we won’t need enough to cover the mortgage life insurance. I just don’t know what would be the wise amount of life insurance to carry on ourselves since we will be debt free. I still would like to have enough on us so in case something happened to Paul, I wouldn’t have to go out and get a job right away. Or if something happened to me I would hope he could take some time off, plus to pay for the daycare that he would then have to pay. (Plus some for their college would be nice too) So as you can see I still have lots to think about.
A couple weeks ago I started posting things on Craigslist once again and I was shocked that just about everything I posted ended up selling! My Dad teases me because I’m suppose to have a garage sale this week and here I’m selling a lot of my big stuff before the garage sale!
My recommendation.. if you look through your house and find that you have some extra things laying around your house that you no longer use (anything baby wise, Dressers, tv stands, desks) then you should try posting them on Craigslist! I know I got better prices there than I ever would of at my garage sale! In just 2 weeks time I ended up making over $200!
I got this email and wanted to share with all of you! Paul and I are looking forward to attending and I hope you will too!
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Mark your calendar for April 23 at 8:00 p.m. EDT! We are holding an exciting one-time national event called Town Hall for Hope, and you’re invited!
We all know that the economy is causing a lot of fear among Americans. It’s time for our nation to come together to find hope for the future—and that’s exactly what Town Hall for Hope is all about.
At this free, 90-minute event, Dave will address the nation live with straight talk about what’s really going on with the economy. He will discuss the history of the economy, real stats, and steps to take toward hope! Plus, he will answer questions from all around the country.
You do not want to miss this historic event! It’s shaping up to be one of the most-viewed webcasts in history. Over 6,000 host locations across the U.S. will be broadcasting the live feed on Thursday, April 23, at 8:00 p.m. EDT (West Coast delay—7:00 p.m. PT). The event is completely free for anyone to attend. Search for a host location nearest you on our site using the zip code tool.
Get involved now and start spreading the word at townhallforhope.com. We’ll see you there!
—The Dave Ramsey Team
