#my grocery bill of JUST the essentials (4-7 items) is like $50

[theiceandbones]

“Why are Canadians not having children anymore??” Too expensive to live here, next question

[lexa-lives-in-us]

Saving Tips for Hard Times

I found this old document where I collected a series of tips to save money. This is all part of my experience of when I was near homeless, and some work depending on where you live, some don’t. Here we go.

BILLS:

1. The optimum temperature for refrigerator operation is 5°C, and -18°C for freezer operation. As a rule of thumb, for each additional degree of refrigeration output about six percent more electricity is used.

2. Unplug your appliances. Lamps, microwave, tv, computers etc. They don't need to be plugged until you use them, and it saves energy to keep them unplugged. Therefore, money.

3. Do homework for phone companies and internet plans. Call them! Often they are toll free and if you mentioned that you were already with them or thinking of going with them and then found out another company had a better deal, they could offer you deals for lower prices. I had to do it all the time for my phone, until they couldn't really offer anything better.

4. BIKE. Invest in a used bike if you can, especially for the warmer months. It offsets the transit costs and better your health.

5. WALK. That's the same as the bike, honestly.

6. Pay your bills on time, you will avoid late fees which can up to HUNDREDS of dollars wasted over the course of a year. If you can, set up automatic payments so you don’t forget.

FRIDGE:

1. Every time the refrigerator door is opened, cold air escapes and warm ambient air enters. To compensate for the temperature increase in its interior, the refrigerator must then use energy to bring the temperature back down. Always avoid opening the door unnecessarily and for too long.

2. When defrosting frozen food place it in the refrigerator. Not only does this ensure that the food is carefully defrosted, its presence cools down the refrigerator interior, reducing the amount of work that the compressor has to do, and therefore lowering energy consumption.

3. Never put warm food in the refrigerator as this will heat up the interior, as well as other stored foods. Hot food should always be allowed to cool to room temperature before placing it in the refrigerator

MONEY:

1. Keep all the containers like glass bottles, juice bottles, jars, cans etc. Look for your Return-It depot and have trips to return them. They give back coins for laundry, small expenses etc

2. Use that junk mail. Go through it, find coupons for food, for essentials like toilet paper or shampoo.

3. CHECK. THAT. DOLLARSTORE. They often have things like pasta, ketchup, toilet paper, batteries etc for literally 1 dollar.  Pasta is pasta, toilet paper is toilet paper. Seriously. Don't need to spend 5$ on a shampoo bottle when you can have it for 1/5 of the price.

4. Do homework and check with different banks for which one offers a better plan. Some of them are willing to help out. Sit down with their advisors, find the best solution!

5. Use the envelope system! For example, one envelope with a label “food” the other with “entertainment” the other with “bills”. Then set the right amount of cash for each. That’s what you’re allowed to spend each month. If you realize you need more for food, grab it from the entertainment envelope. Adapt and arrange as needed.

6. If you can, set up an automatic saving (example 50$ every paycheck) for both regular saving AND an emergency fund.

7. Use the 24-Hour Rule. Avoid purchasing expensive or unnecessary items on impulse with a self-imposed 24-hour rule. For any non-essential item, wait 24 hours before purchasing. It’s perfect for online shopping where your items can simply be added to your cart to purchase later.

8. Make a grocery list BEFORE going to the grocery store and STICK to it. You’re going to avoid buying things you don’t really need.

9. DO. NOT. SHOP. WHILE. YOU. ARE. HUNGRY. Or you’ll end up buying food that you actually don’t need just because you feel snacky!

10. Only use ATMs from your bank, or you get charged small fees.

11. Set a “No Spend Day” per week, where you consciously DO NOT spend any money for that day.

12. Ditch the paper: Cutting out paper towels and using cloths and napkins that you can simply wash and reuse is a simple way to save.

13. After you wear clothes, hang them outside your wardrobe, on a door or something. You can air them out a bit, then stick them in the closet without washing. You can basically reuse the same clothes two or three times without having to wash them, sometimes they just need a bit of air and they won’t smell AT ALL.

14. If you don’t own or want to spend money on an iron, hang whatever blouse you need to iron in the bathroom while you shower. The steam will humidify the fabric and straighten it up.

15. Hang stuff to dry. Really don’t need to spend money on the dryer.

16. Sign up to the library. They have so many books and DVDs nowadays. You can also just go, sit at the library and stay warm for a while, so that you don’t have to sit at home and either suffer the cold or use money on your own heat.

17. Budget, budget, budget. Get a lil notebook, write down the monthly expenses, cut what you don’t need. It gets easier with time.

 FOOD:

1.       Make a meal plan. Write 10-14 days worth of dishes that you can do (lunch, dinner, everything you need). You can then toss them around as you go on with your week, but that way you have a pretty clear idea of what you use and the food you go through for how long. It also reduces the risks of getting take out since you already have plans for what to eat.

2.       Cook double! Seriously. Make that dinner and double it up. Leftovers can be frozen or put in the fridge for the day after.

3.       Meal prep. Once a week, prep a bunch of different recipes. Let them cool down, stick them in the freezer. At that point you’ll already have all these meals at the ready to just thaw/microwave or oven up.

4.       You don’t need pop. You don’t need alcohol. You most likely don’t need milk, but go for it if you wanna. Just remember dairy products go bad WAY more quickly than non dairies, so consider getting food and drinks with no dairy in them. Mainly, though. Water. Just drink water. Lots of it too! Sometimes our brain can’t tell the difference between hunger and thirst. You think you’re snacky? Drink some water instead! It’ll quell your hunger.

5.       Freeze fruit! If you think you’re not gonna be able to eat fruit in time, put it in a Tupperware or a ziplock and slap it in the freezer. You’ll be able to then use it for smoothies.

6.       Use the Italian saying “Colazione da re, pranzo da nobili, cena da poveri.” Which quite literally means “Breakfast as a king, lunch as a noble, dinner as a poor.” Breakfast should be very filling, carbs, protein, vitamins. It carries you for the whole day. Lunch should be quite filling too! But supper doesn’t really need a lot of it, and if you REALLY have to skip a meal, skip supper. Your body doesn’t need that much sustenance while sleeping.

7.       This is for the desperate times but I’ve done it, and I would do it again if I ever had to. Go to markets that have like… Fruits and veggies. Talk to them. Ask them “HEY, can I have the fruit/veggie that you have to throw away?” Ask them if you can have the ugly produce, the one that doesn’t look pretty enough to be put out. Or ask them to have whatever extra they have to dump because is past the expiry date. EXPIRY DATE IS USUALLY MUCH LONGER THAN WHAT THE LABEL SAYS. I wouldn’t risk it with dairy stuff or with things that are VERY expired, but one or two days? Totally fine, I promise. And if you have to? Dumpster Dive. Especially at markets with fruit and veggies that have to be sold on the same day (because it’s not considered “fresh” past that day.) Or behind pizza places like Dominos or Panago or whatever chain. They get pizza orders wrong all the time. Just give a peak behind these buildings and look inside their boxes. You have no idea how many times I found perfectly fine pizzas. For free! IF YOU DUMPSTER DIVE, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GLOVES, A MASK AND PLASTIC BAGS TO PUT YOUR STUFF IN. ONCE AT HOME, DISCARD GLOVES AND WASH PRODUCE THROUGHLY. Also check tumblr for your divers community, they usually know the best spots.

 CLOTHES:

1.       Thrift shop! So many GOOD used clothes are out there! Honestly! My whole wardrobe is thrifted and everything looks brand new. It takes a bit of research and maybe that shirt you liked is not in your size, but you can find EVERYTHING, from socks to bras, at a thrift store. Don’t thrift underwear though. You want to go new with those.

2.       Invest in some needle and thread, then open youtube. There are SO MANY tutorials that teach you how to mend holes in socks and underwear. And really, no one will really notice if a mend is perfectly done or not. After a week, you’ll forget it too! But that prevents you from throwing away clothes that could just be mended a little.

3.       Something doesn’t fit you? Too small, too big? YouTube, homie. They have tutorials on how to fix these kinda things! All you need, again, is needle and thread.

4.       Organize clothes swaps with friends and/or neighbors. Everyone brings clothes they don’t need, put them in a pile. Go through the pile and grab whatever there is. There’s no money exchange, one could go home with 1 item and one could go home with 50 items. Who cares? The extra stuff… DONATE IT TO A SHELTER.

Feel free to add more, and stay safe!

[wineanddinosaur]

How Trader Joe’s Turned the Wine Aisle on Its Head and Helped Create the Modern Grocery Store

Shopping for supermarket wine is an American pastime. And while some of us have always loved the act of buying groceries, pandemic restrictions on “nonessential” activities have made our weekly outings to the market all the more exciting.

Benjamin Lorr, author of “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket,” says that for many adults, grocery stores are like amusement parks. And while there are lots of reasons the supermarket became what it is today, one thing was fundamental to its success: alcohol. Booze, and specifically wine, played an especially important role in the rise of one of America’s favorite grocery stores: Trader Joe’s.

According to Lorr, Trader Joe’s changed the game for supermarket wine, making it the sessionable vino we know and love today. VinePair talked with Lorr about the role of wine in the modern American grocery store, and how Trader Joe’s played a key part in increasing Americans’ access to quality, affordable wine.

1. What inspired you to write “The Secret Life of Groceries”?

There were two paths to this book. One was that I’ve just loved grocery stores my whole life. They are this almost hallucinogenic place that I go to on a daily or weekly basis, with saturated colors on the shelves, as well as a large volume of different objects all screaming from the shelves. They’re simultaneously comforting and menacing. There’s something very powerful about them, and I wanted to scratch the surface behind that.

I don’t want to get too grandiose here, but the grocery store, to me, is this small stand-in for the civil project writ large. This is what we’ve created to meet our needs. It is pretty absurdly impressive when you look back on the human project — the amount of choice, abundance, low price, and high quality is so routine, we take those things completely for granted.

The short story was that I was working on my last book, which was about Bikram yoga and understanding why people were attracted to that as an obsessive pursuit. And in the middle of writing that book, I was trying to get close to this guru and spend time with him, so I went to one of his teacher trainings, where people are locked in a hotel complex for nine weeks doing gobs of yoga, and they would let them out to go to the grocery store. I watched these yogis, grown adults, descend on a Trader Joe’s, and I had never seen happiness like that in adults. There was just this maniacal glee, like adults going to an amusement park, and I think something just clicked.

2. What was Trader Joe’s initial strategy when it came to wine?

Joe [Coulombe] founded Trader Joe’s in 1958, and he realized pretty quickly that he couldn’t compete against big firms that had the power. So he chose to reinvent along several interesting angles, one of which was that he realized that, as the GI Bill promised college education to people who weren’t previously allowed to get one, that more consumers were going to [go to college] — and that was going to change their tastes and what they wanted to buy. Similarly, he saw that travel was increasing. He thought cheap international airfare was going to create customers who wanted items on the shelf that reflected their travel and their education.

Likewise, he thought that network TV offered only one, homogenous advertising experience, and then people would all look at the same TV shows and they would all buy the same giant brands. He just thought that this new consumer wouldn’t want that. So he started to build Trader Joe’s for consumers that are educated, exposed to travel, and who want options that aren’t in that mainstream.

That sounds easy, but he really didn’t have a clue how to do that. The place that he got probably the biggest indication — he calls it the most important decision he made as a marketer — all came from studying wine.

Wine represented a place where the typical rules that govern grocery stores didn’t apply. Shoppers understood that wine changes by vintage, not by brand. Each year, it changes, and it’s in limited supply. It’s scarce, and it’s risky when you’re a buyer, because you have to rely on taste, rather than preconceived notions. Whereas if you’re buying Bounty paper towels or Coca-Cola, it doesn’t matter, because these are bombed out in such consistency.

The wine industry really opened his eyes to the possibility of marketing all foods like wine. When you’re a consumer, you find a good wine shop, and then you start to trust the owner of that [store]. You don’t necessarily try to master everything as a consumer. Using that as a frame for a grocery store was very novel at the time. The idea that you would find trust in a grocery store, and then they would bring you options, was a shift that he was really interested in getting people to do.

3. What role did Trader Joe’s play in bringing affordable and quality wine to American consumers via the grocery store?

California is governed by a series of laws called Fair Trade, which essentially is out to defend small chains and prevent volume buying, where you could sell products at a loss and then outsell your competitor. Fair Trade said that you have to sell foreign wine at the price that the importer imports it. Essentially what that means is that all grocery stores sold wine at the same exact price. There was no way to compete on price, which is why Joe originally opened up with 17 varieties, which at the time represented this enormous bounty of California wines.

But as Joe started to study the regulatory apparatus, he realized there was this loophole: If he could find an importer to bring in wine and ask that importer to post a price of his or her choosing, the importer could post one that was less than the dominant market. Joe found that if he got an importer to post a price, he could actually sell the wine at that price. So Joe found a friendly importer who posted wine prices way lower than anyone else in the state of California. This shattered the price of wine, and Trader Joe’s went on to sell the cheapest bottles of [international] wine in the state.

Because of that, Trader Joe’s became the leading retailer of imported wine in all of California in just a few years. He was selling Latour for $5.99, or Pichon-Longueville Lalande for $3.50. These were crazy prices for these bottles of wine because he could get his importer to post them for whatever he wanted. And he took a loss on those bottles.

4. Talk to me about Two Buck Chuck.

Joe really put an emphasis on getting his buyers to master wine from a taste perspective. There were times when they were pulling about 60 corks a week. At the Trader Joe’s central office, they had a courtyard, and he built a small tasting table in the backyard, and put up a spittoon. It just encouraged people to drink as much wine as possible, so they could learn about all different types.

The reason that matters is that I don’t think that their good luck with Two Buck Chuck can be called “luck.” It was really based on this wealth of experience in the wine industry. Two Buck Chuck was this deal that they struck, very much structured around how they could sell a very cheap bottle of wine. But it wasn’t something that a competitor could necessarily imitate, because they had a wealth of knowledge about what a good wine tasted like, and what consumers were looking for from a good wine.

So they were trying to sell an extremely drinkable, very friendly, frictionless wine that’s not exactly bad, but it’s not exactly good, either. And that’s a selling point. They knew how to find that wine, and they knew how to develop it, whereas if Target or Whole Foods or Safeway had tried to develop a wine like that, they would have whiffed, because they would have had to rely on people who weren’t as qualified.

5. What did Trader Joe’s do differently in terms of its wine selection and food selection?

Trader Joe’s has a much smaller product selection than a traditional grocery store. By shrinking the number of offerings, you can then give your buyers a chance to spend time learning about those items and putting tastes forward. Trader Joe’s is famous for private labeling things, which gives them a chance to create slightly individualized offerings around these products.

Wine is no different. Of course, it can be private labeled, and can be mixed to taste. So that same process of honing in on items and then getting expertise plays for wine as well.

6. What did Trader Joe’s do differently in terms of its management and treatment of employees and suppliers?

[Before he founded Trader Joe’s], when Joe Coulombe was running a convenience store, he decided really early on, ”Life’s too short, I want to work with better, more interesting people.” And so he pays his employees more money. He has the highest-paid employees, and that started because he decided to pay his workers average California family income levels.

This was the late ’50s, early ’60s. At that time, an individual employee tended to be a man and the sole breadwinner of the family. So individual employee income was family income. There weren’t a lot of women in the workplace. Then in the ’60s and ’70s, that shifted. Women entered the workplace, and family income went way up because there were a lot of two-breadwinner houses.

But Joe was kind of stubborn, and he just had this idea that he was going to stick with paying his individual employees average California family income levels. All of a sudden, he’s paying these people much higher than market rate in an industry that used to be paying people less, so he has access to a much better quality of employee.

7. Who is “Trader Joe” and what was it like interviewing him for this book?

Oh, it was such a pleasure. Sadly, he is no longer with us. He died in February of this year. But he was a really brilliant guy.

He could see around corners. He could make connections between different things. I started off the Trader Joe’s section of this book pretty cynical. I thought with Trader Joe’s — because it seems like it offered healthy food at cheap prices and all the employees were happy — that something’s too good to be true here.

And the book itself gets pretty dark in places, but it was really a pleasure to meet Joe and realize that a big reason that Trader Joe’s is so successful was because he was just brilliant, and he saw the world differently, and he valued things like paying people a decent wage, creativity, and creating options that were individualized and would meet his consumers’ desires.

I think a lot of that did come from his experience, with his ability to see things and invest in learning about them. Wine is the best example of that. He did not grow up a wine drinker. When he founded Trader Joe’s, he would drink cooking sherry to relax. He was not a gourmand, but he realized wine was going to be big, and he decided he was going to learn about it. He poured himself into wine — pulling 60 corks a day sometimes — and just learning as much as he could. That gives you a sense of the type of guy he was.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article How Trader Joe’s Turned the Wine Aisle on Its Head and Helped Create the Modern Grocery Store appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/benjamin-lorr-trader-joes-supermarket-wine/

[johnboothus]

How Trader Joes Turned the Wine Aisle on Its Head and Helped Create the Modern Grocery Store

Shopping for supermarket wine is an American pastime. And while some of us have always loved the act of buying groceries, pandemic restrictions on “nonessential” activities have made our weekly outings to the market all the more exciting.

Benjamin Lorr, author of “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket,” says that for many adults, grocery stores are like amusement parks. And while there are lots of reasons the supermarket became what it is today, one thing was fundamental to its success: alcohol. Booze, and specifically wine, played an especially important role in the rise of one of America’s favorite grocery stores: Trader Joe’s.

According to Lorr, Trader Joe’s changed the game for supermarket wine, making it the sessionable vino we know and love today. VinePair talked with Lorr about the role of wine in the modern American grocery store, and how Trader Joe’s played a key part in increasing Americans’ access to quality, affordable wine.

1. What inspired you to write “The Secret Life of Groceries”?

There were two paths to this book. One was that I’ve just loved grocery stores my whole life. They are this almost hallucinogenic place that I go to on a daily or weekly basis, with saturated colors on the shelves, as well as a large volume of different objects all screaming from the shelves. They’re simultaneously comforting and menacing. There’s something very powerful about them, and I wanted to scratch the surface behind that.

I don’t want to get too grandiose here, but the grocery store, to me, is this small stand-in for the civil project writ large. This is what we’ve created to meet our needs. It is pretty absurdly impressive when you look back on the human project — the amount of choice, abundance, low price, and high quality is so routine, we take those things completely for granted.

The short story was that I was working on my last book, which was about Bikram yoga and understanding why people were attracted to that as an obsessive pursuit. And in the middle of writing that book, I was trying to get close to this guru and spend time with him, so I went to one of his teacher trainings, where people are locked in a hotel complex for nine weeks doing gobs of yoga, and they would let them out to go to the grocery store. I watched these yogis, grown adults, descend on a Trader Joe’s, and I had never seen happiness like that in adults. There was just this maniacal glee, like adults going to an amusement park, and I think something just clicked.

2. What was Trader Joe’s initial strategy when it came to wine?

Joe [Coulombe] founded Trader Joe’s in 1958, and he realized pretty quickly that he couldn’t compete against big firms that had the power. So he chose to reinvent along several interesting angles, one of which was that he realized that, as the GI Bill promised college education to people who weren’t previously allowed to get one, that more consumers were going to [go to college] — and that was going to change their tastes and what they wanted to buy. Similarly, he saw that travel was increasing. He thought cheap international airfare was going to create customers who wanted items on the shelf that reflected their travel and their education.

Likewise, he thought that network TV offered only one, homogenous advertising experience, and then people would all look at the same TV shows and they would all buy the same giant brands. He just thought that this new consumer wouldn’t want that. So he started to build Trader Joe’s for consumers that are educated, exposed to travel, and who want options that aren’t in that mainstream.

That sounds easy, but he really didn’t have a clue how to do that. The place that he got probably the biggest indication — he calls it the most important decision he made as a marketer — all came from studying wine.

Wine represented a place where the typical rules that govern grocery stores didn’t apply. Shoppers understood that wine changes by vintage, not by brand. Each year, it changes, and it’s in limited supply. It’s scarce, and it’s risky when you’re a buyer, because you have to rely on taste, rather than preconceived notions. Whereas if you’re buying Bounty paper towels or Coca-Cola, it doesn’t matter, because these are bombed out in such consistency.

The wine industry really opened his eyes to the possibility of marketing all foods like wine. When you’re a consumer, you find a good wine shop, and then you start to trust the owner of that [store]. You don’t necessarily try to master everything as a consumer. Using that as a frame for a grocery store was very novel at the time. The idea that you would find trust in a grocery store, and then they would bring you options, was a shift that he was really interested in getting people to do.

3. What role did Trader Joe’s play in bringing affordable and quality wine to American consumers via the grocery store?

California is governed by a series of laws called Fair Trade, which essentially is out to defend small chains and prevent volume buying, where you could sell products at a loss and then outsell your competitor. Fair Trade said that you have to sell foreign wine at the price that the importer imports it. Essentially what that means is that all grocery stores sold wine at the same exact price. There was no way to compete on price, which is why Joe originally opened up with 17 varieties, which at the time represented this enormous bounty of California wines.

But as Joe started to study the regulatory apparatus, he realized there was this loophole: If he could find an importer to bring in wine and ask that importer to post a price of his or her choosing, the importer could post one that was less than the dominant market. Joe found that if he got an importer to post a price, he could actually sell the wine at that price. So Joe found a friendly importer who posted wine prices way lower than anyone else in the state of California. This shattered the price of wine, and Trader Joe’s went on to sell the cheapest bottles of [international] wine in the state.

Because of that, Trader Joe’s became the leading retailer of imported wine in all of California in just a few years. He was selling Latour for $5.99, or Pichon-Longueville Lalande for $3.50. These were crazy prices for these bottles of wine because he could get his importer to post them for whatever he wanted. And he took a loss on those bottles.

4. Talk to me about Two Buck Chuck.

Joe really put an emphasis on getting his buyers to master wine from a taste perspective. There were times when they were pulling about 60 corks a week. At the Trader Joe’s central office, they had a courtyard, and he built a small tasting table in the backyard, and put up a spittoon. It just encouraged people to drink as much wine as possible, so they could learn about all different types.

The reason that matters is that I don’t think that their good luck with Two Buck Chuck can be called “luck.” It was really based on this wealth of experience in the wine industry. Two Buck Chuck was this deal that they struck, very much structured around how they could sell a very cheap bottle of wine. But it wasn’t something that a competitor could necessarily imitate, because they had a wealth of knowledge about what a good wine tasted like, and what consumers were looking for from a good wine.

So they were trying to sell an extremely drinkable, very friendly, frictionless wine that’s not exactly bad, but it’s not exactly good, either. And that’s a selling point. They knew how to find that wine, and they knew how to develop it, whereas if Target or Whole Foods or Safeway had tried to develop a wine like that, they would have whiffed, because they would have had to rely on people who weren’t as qualified.

5. What did Trader Joe’s do differently in terms of its wine selection and food selection?

Trader Joe’s has a much smaller product selection than a traditional grocery store. By shrinking the number of offerings, you can then give your buyers a chance to spend time learning about those items and putting tastes forward. Trader Joe’s is famous for private labeling things, which gives them a chance to create slightly individualized offerings around these products.

Wine is no different. Of course, it can be private labeled, and can be mixed to taste. So that same process of honing in on items and then getting expertise plays for wine as well.

6. What did Trader Joe’s do differently in terms of its management and treatment of employees and suppliers?

[Before he founded Trader Joe’s], when Joe Coulombe was running a convenience store, he decided really early on, ”Life’s too short, I want to work with better, more interesting people.” And so he pays his employees more money. He has the highest-paid employees, and that started because he decided to pay his workers average California family income levels.

This was the late ’50s, early ’60s. At that time, an individual employee tended to be a man and the sole breadwinner of the family. So individual employee income was family income. There weren’t a lot of women in the workplace. Then in the ’60s and ’70s, that shifted. Women entered the workplace, and family income went way up because there were a lot of two-breadwinner houses.

But Joe was kind of stubborn, and he just had this idea that he was going to stick with paying his individual employees average California family income levels. All of a sudden, he’s paying these people much higher than market rate in an industry that used to be paying people less, so he has access to a much better quality of employee.

7. Who is “Trader Joe” and what was it like interviewing him for this book?

Oh, it was such a pleasure. Sadly, he is no longer with us. He died in February of this year. But he was a really brilliant guy.

He could see around corners. He could make connections between different things. I started off the Trader Joe’s section of this book pretty cynical. I thought with Trader Joe’s — because it seems like it offered healthy food at cheap prices and all the employees were happy — that something’s too good to be true here.

And the book itself gets pretty dark in places, but it was really a pleasure to meet Joe and realize that a big reason that Trader Joe’s is so successful was because he was just brilliant, and he saw the world differently, and he valued things like paying people a decent wage, creativity, and creating options that were individualized and would meet his consumers’ desires.

I think a lot of that did come from his experience, with his ability to see things and invest in learning about them. Wine is the best example of that. He did not grow up a wine drinker. When he founded Trader Joe’s, he would drink cooking sherry to relax. He was not a gourmand, but he realized wine was going to be big, and he decided he was going to learn about it. He poured himself into wine — pulling 60 corks a day sometimes — and just learning as much as he could. That gives you a sense of the type of guy he was.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article How Trader Joe’s Turned the Wine Aisle on Its Head and Helped Create the Modern Grocery Store appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/benjamin-lorr-trader-joes-supermarket-wine/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/how-trader-joes-turned-the-wine-aisle-on-its-head-and-helped-create-the-modern-grocery-store

[onlinemarketinghelp]

15 Ways To Save An Extra $500 Per Month https://ift.tt/2MpXW3z

Saving money is important - we all know that. But sometimes everyone needs some help in coming up with ways to save money. I'm going to break down the exact strategies that I use to save more money each month. If you know me, you know I'm pretty lazy when it comes to this stuff. But these tricks and hacks are simple, and they save a lot of money.

Going back to my frugality equation, all time spent on these saving tricks earns me tons of savings.

We all know the basics - spend less than you earn. But how do you really spend less? You first have to have the right mindset to save, and then you have to take advantage of every trick possible to boost that savings. This already assumes you're tracking your money each month. If you're not, take a look at Personal Capital and get started for free.

After that, it's mindset. And your mindset need to be this: Each month start with a spending budget at $0. It's easier to just buy nothing than to buy something, and stop budgeting. Every purchase needs to be thought of very intensely. Only spend when you have to.

Finally, it's about leveraging tricks to help you. Here are our top 15 tricks to save money. This list will save you over $590 each month if you follow it diligently and use all of these strategies. That means you could save over $7,000 per year! 

Quick Navigation

1. Use A Cash Back Reward Credit Card For All Spending

2. Use Spending Tricks To Boost Savings

3. Use Online Saving Tricks For Stuff You Already Do

4. Get Rebates For All Online Shopping

5. Drop The Gym Membership

6. Get Organized

7. Buy Used And Sell Used

8. Compare Prices On Everything

9. Get Price Adjustments On Old Purchases

10. Cut Your Cable

11. Save On Utilities Each Month

12. Boost Your 401k Contribution

13. Lower Your Insurance Bill

14. Cut Your Investment Expenses

15. Eliminate Bank Fees

1. Use A Cash Back Reward Credit Card For All Spending

The first trick, and one of the most important ones, is to use a cash back rewards credit card for all spending that you do. I'm talking everything.

The best rewards credit cards pay 2% cash back as a baseline. Some cards offer up to 5% on special categories of spending as well. You can find the best top cash back rewards cards here.

By putting everything on a rewards credit card, you're saving at least 2% on everything you spend each month. If your average spending is $1,000 per month, this tactic can save you $20 per month.

The problem is, people don't spend everything on the same card. Even I mess up sometimes. For example, I recently discovered that my car insurance could have been paid for on a credit card. I've been having it directly debited from my checking and earning no rewards. Considering the my bill is about $100 per month, I could have been saving $2 per month for literally doing nothing. I switched it over, and now I'm saving money!

To prove you can get great savings with this trick, here is my savings so far for 6 months of the year:

As you can see, for 6 months, this strategy has saved me $424.81. That breaks down to $70.80 per month in savings.

Total Monthly Savings: $70.80

2. Use Spending Tricks To Boost Savings

There are spending tricks that you can use to boost your savings when making a purchase. I'm not an expert in this area, but there are a lot of blogs that are. The problem with many of these tricks is that it can take a lot of time and effort to find the best ways to take advantage of credit card deals. And like I said earlier, I hate spending time and effort if I can't get the reward easily.

However, there are simple tricks that you can do right now to boost your savings. The easiest way to do this is to simply take advantage of credit cards that pay more for certain categories of spending.

For example, American Express is offering a Blue CashBack Everyday Credit Card, which pays 3% cash back at supermarkets.

The great thing about grocery stores is that most of them sell gift cards to other retailers and shops. Another reward perk that I take advantage of is on groceries and gas.

I normally spend about $500 per month on groceries, so getting 3% cash back equates to $15 per month. Now, I also spend about $400 per month in gas. If I buy a gas gift card at my grocery store, I'm actually spending another $400 at the grocery story - getting that same 3% cash back. That's another savings of $12 per month.

Total Monthly Savings: $27

3. Use Online Saving Tricks For Stuff You Already Do

Do you search the Internet for stuff? I'm talking random searches, like "What Time Does The Stock Market Open"? If you do, you could be earning extra money just for your normal online habits.

For example, Melanie highlights how she made $5 in two weeks using Swagbucks for her normal searches. I signed up for both Swagbucks and InboxDollars and earned $5 instantly just for signing up.

Both Swagbucks and InboxDollars are still offering their $5 sign up promotion. You can sign up here:

Swagbucks $5 Signup Promotion

InboxDollars $5 Signup Promotion

If you signup for each, you'd get $10 the first month. Ongoing, this is a way to save $10 per month by just doing your normal activity.

Total Monthly Savings: $10

4. Get Rebates For All Online Shopping

My next secret to saving money is to use Rakuten or TopCashBack for all your online shopping. The great thing is that you can combo this with credit card cash back rewards and hacking to save even more money.

Rakuten is a rebates site where you get a rebate just for shopping through their website. They offer different percentages for different stores that you can shop at. Here's some of their current cash back deals:

As you can see, you can earn money just for your normal back to school shopping. Here's a snapshot of my normal shopping online, and how it earned me $46.39 for 3 months of online shopping:

As you can see, I spent a total of $1,260.55 online over the first three months of the year. That earned me a check of $46.39 - the $41.39 you see in the screenshot, plus a $5 bonus for spending at a certain store that month.

That equates to a 3.7% rebate on all online shopping I did for the quarter. Remember, when it came time to pay, I also used a rewards credit card that earned me 2% cash back - effectively saving me 5.7% on all my online shopping.

The best trick for using Rakuten and TopCashBack is to wait for a sale on the site - sometimes they offer 10% or more cash back for your regular shopping. This is when it can be very worthwhile to use their service.

Total Monthly Savings: $13.80

5. Drop The Gym Membership

The average gym membership costs around $50 per month. Even if you go with a "cheap" gym, you're still looking at paying around $20 per month. Plus, many gyms have activation fees or signup fees that can boost the annual cost big time.

Here's the worst part - according to Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, the authors of Freakonomics, the average person overestimates how much they'll use the gym by upwards of 70%. Essentially they are only getting 30% of their money's worth.

So what's a person to do? Look for ways to work out without having to go to the gym. MoneyCrashers has a great list of 13 Ways To Exercise Without Going to The Gym, including running, biking, playing an outdoor sport, and more.

Total Monthly Savings: $20

6. Get Organized

Many people, including myself, forget about the value of organization and how it can really translate into monthly money savings. I've written before about the power of getting organized, but it never ceases to amaze me how much I could potentially spend when I'm disorganized.

To get organized, take a few tips from our family. First, we keep all of our toiletries in one spot in the hall closet so that we know if we're out of something. Second, we keep the pantry organized by type of food as well, so that we don't skip over something. Finally, we keep a list of everything we need to get at the store each week.

This may seem simple, but it prevents doubling up on buying things that we don't need. For example, the other day I thought we were out of soap - I'll admit I was lazy and didn't look in the closet. I added it to the shopping list, but my wife quickly discovered that it was in the hall closet. Given that soap costs about $5, that's a savings right there.

Now, it's not a lot, but it can add up if you're not organized.

Total Monthly Savings: $10

7. Buy Used And Sell Used

The next strategy I use a lot is to buy used, and also sell used. What do I mean by this?

Whenever I'm looking at purchasing something - like a household good, electronics, or even a car - I look a buying it used or refurbished. There's a ton of savings to be had if you buy things refurbished.

For example, when I was recently looking to upgrade my laptop, I went to the refurbished store in the Apple Shop:

Inside the Apple Refurbished and Clearance store, you can find savings of 15% or more on almost every product that Apple carries. Plus, all of these items have the same warranty as any other new product purchased from Apple.

Part 2 of the equation is to sell used.

Whenever we upgrade to something new, we don't just let the old stuff sit around - we sell it. For example, I was replacing an old iMac. It wasn't worth much, but I was able to sell my old iMac for $450. Apple has a great program where you can sell your item back to them for an Apple Gift card, which you can use for anything from Apple. You can learn more at the Apple Recycling Program.

However, if I didn't have an Apple product, I would look on selling my item on Amazon.com or eBay.

So, not only am I getting a savings on the new computer, but I'm selling the old computer to offset the price. There's big savings to be had here. In my example, I saved $240 on my new MacBook, and sold my old iMac for $450 - a total savings of $690.

While that's not something that happens monthly, I would say that I get this type of savings yearly. So, we can divide this savings out per month.

Total Monthly Savings: $57.50

8. Compare Prices On Everything

Even if you don't want to buy things used, you should still check and compare prices. I do this all the time - especially when just buying the regular stuff I need to purchase each month.

If I'm in a store, I always pull out my smartphone and use my Amazon app to compare prices on everything. I don't necessarily buy it on Amazon, but it gives me a good sense of the best price.

If I do end up buying the item online versus in-store, I always take advantage of Ebates to combo the savings. So, not only am I getting the best price, I'm getting rebates and credit card rewards.

For example, it's been hot and I've been looking at buying a fan. I was walking by a Best Buy, and decided to go in and look. I found a fan I liked and was getting ready to buy it:

However, before pulling the trigger at Best Buy, I pulled out my phone and Google'd the Model Number:

As you can see, Walmart had a much cheaper price on the fan. And yes, Best Buy does have a price match guarantee policy, but even their price match guarantee doesn't include Rakuten. As you can see, Rakuten offers an additional 1% cash back for shopping at Walmart:

I do this on almost every purchase now and find savings almost every time. For just comparing prices, we can see the savings of $21.11.

Total Monthly Savings: $21.11

9. Get Price Adjustments On Old Purchases

When you purchase something, you need to hold on to all of your receipts. I suggest having a file where you store all of your receipts for at least a year - longer for big purchases like appliances.

You would be surprised by the savings you can find each month by getting adjustments on your past purchases. Almost every retail store has a price adjustment policy, but I would venture that 98% of consumers never take advantage of them.

For example:

Macy's: Offers a price adjustment within 14 days of purchase.

Walmart: Offers a price adjustment within 7 days of purchase

Gap: Offers a price adjustment within 14 days of purchase

However, some companies will do adjustments as long as they carry the item at full price. I purchased a pair of shoes at Nordstrom earlier in the year, and it recently went on sale during their Anniversary Sale.

Even though it has been about 6 months since I purchased the shoes, Nordstrom honored the price adjustment. And as you can see, it was a hefty amount - $83.05. If you can get that savings twice a year, it's worthwhile.

Total Monthly Savings: $13.84

10. Cut Your Cable

The next big cost cutting expense is to simple cut your cable. With all of the shows you can watch for free online, there is no reason to pay for cable anymore.

According to the latest full year report compiled by BI Intelligence, cable companies reported the lowest amount of cable subscribers in years, but growing broadband internet subscribers.

Cable TV is expensive, and while Internet is still pricy each month, the savings by not having cable is huge.

We recently cut our cable, and it has saved us $100 per month. Even on the lowest cable plan offered by our cable company, it would have been an extra $100 per month to have basic cable channels and the box to get it.

Instead of cable, we opted to buy Apple TV along with Netflix. The Apple TV costs nothing each month, and Netflix runs us an additional $7.99. We also purchased a digital antenna to get the local channels, which actually works surprisingly well and we can watch the news and several sports programs.

We're torn between looking at HBO NOW or not, but it's always an option. If we ever want to rent a new release or buy a show, we can do that through the Apple TV.

It's funny because prior to cutting cable, we could have never fathomed not having it. Now, without it, life is just simpler and cheaper.

Total Monthly Savings: $92.01

11. Save On Utilities Each Month

One of the biggest expenses that most families have each month are utilities. These are the essentials - power and water - that everyone typically pays for. These "mandatory" expenses can add up if you're not careful.

But there are several ways that you can save on utilities each month. First, for power, switch every lightbulb in your house to LED Lightbulbs. This can provide substantial savings in your house - they use 90%+ less energy than standard lightbulbs.

We recently switch all of our lightbulbs in our house to LEDs, and saw our power bill reduced over 50% - nothing else changed. Here's a screenshot of our energy usage showing the drop in power usage since switching bulbs in the beginning of June:

For comparison, in July 2014 we used 676 kW of power, and in July 2015 we used 288 kW. That translated into a $100 per month savings!

However, LED lightbulbs are expensive. They cost about $7 or more per bulb, if you find them on sale. However, most of the power companies across the United States are currently offering rebates on bulbs. You can go to the Energy Star Rebate Finder and select "Light Bulbs" and see if you can get a rebate on your bulbs. Many companies are offering rebates of around $4 per bulb. That lowers the price substantially and makes it even more worthwhile.

Another way to save on power is to use a free tool like OhmConnect that allows you to get rebates for cutting back your power during certain times. It's not a ton of money, but it gives you a little extra in your pocket each month.

Next up is water. Water is a tough one, because it's hard to find ways to save. In California, though, it's even more important to save water because of the drought - and water companies are raising rates and adding penalties as a result.

However, just like power companies are offering rebates to conserve, water utilities are also offering rebates to conserve. In California, the water companies are offering rebates on buying high efficiency clothes washers, high efficiency toilets, weather-based sprinkler controllers, high efficiency sprinklers, and more. I recently was able to purchase a new sprinkler controller and all new sprinklers for FREE after the rebate, and it decreased our water usage by about 10% - or a $20 savings.

Total Monthly Savings: $120

12. Boost Your 401k Contribution

Automating your savings is one of the best ways to boost your overall savings. If you work and are offered a 401k or 402b, one of the best ways to save more money each month is to simply boost your 401k contribution.

These contributions are pre-tax, so if you boost it by just 1%, you'll barely even notice a change in your take-home pay. It's as close to a painless way to save as possible.

Take the example of making $35,000 per year. If you boost your 401k contribution by just 1%, it will contribute an extra $29.17 per paycheck (if you're paid bi-weekly). That increases your annual savings by $758.42, which is huge!

Want to do more than just 1%. Check out this great calculator and see all types of different scenarios.

Total Monthly Savings: $58.34

13. Lower Your Insurance Bill

Insurance is one of those areas that's typically set and forget for most families. You sign up for insurance when you have to (when you buy a car, or when you move), but otherwise you likely never look at it.

Instead, you should be checking your insurance policies at least annually. You'd be surprised how much you can save by checking simple changes - like the mileage you drive or the value of your property.

For example, I recently checked the mileage that was on my car insurance policy. When I signed up, I selected 15,000 miles annually on average. However, based on my last year of service records, I'd only driven 10,000 miles. By going online to USAA and changing this one fact, it lowered my bill by $5 per month.

Check out my tool for finding the best car insurance rates.

Total Monthly Savings: $5

14. Cut Your Investment Expenses

This one is a tough one because investment expenses are typically "ghosts" - meaning you don't really know they are there, but they're taking money away from you each month. Investment expenses are commissions and annual fees that you pay to invest.

Remember this chart from our article about Paying More To Invest In The Same Company:

Investing in the same exact stocks can cost you $14,341 over 30 years. That breaks down into a monthly expense of $39.84. Why are you giving up $39.84 to invest in an more expensive ETF that invests in the same 500 stocks?

The trouble is that these fees are hidden. You don't know they're there. While the government has tried to make fees more transparent, they are still lost on most individual investors.

Luckily, there are two tools that can help. The first is Personal Capital. I recommend Personal Capital as a free tool to simply organize your financial accounts (which you should be doing already). What you probably didn't know is that they also have a Retirement Fee Analyzer that will tell you how much you're spending in fees annually.

Here's a sneak peak at my portfolio and it found two funds that have significantly higher fees than they should:

By finding these two funds, and switching them out for lower cost funds, I was able to save roughly $800 per year - or $66.67 per month.

The other tool that does a similar function is FeeX. It's a free tool that allows you to connect your accounts and it scans them for fees. Once it's complete it provides you with a report that highlights alternatives and what you could save. It actually found the same issues as Personal Capital. Here's an example:

You can see, it estimates that I'll save approximately $400 per month as well, and even highlights a potential ETF that I could buy that matches my investment objectives.

Both tools offer great interfaces. Personal Capital is a great long term solution because it helps you manage all of your accounts. But if you're worried specifically about investment fees, check out FeeX.

Total Monthly Savings: $66.67

15. Eliminate Bank Fees

Finally, do you have truly free checking? I'm talking $0 fees.

According to the 2014 Bankrate Checking Account Fee Survey:

Only 38% of checking accounts are truly free

97% of checking accounts can be free if customers meet certain requirements

The average out-of-network ATM transaction costs $4.35

Even "good" banks and credit unions, like Navy Federal Savings Bank, have started charging customers random fees - like account minimum fees and inactivity fees. If you don't maintain enough in your accounts, you can quickly see your balance eroded by fees.

That recently happened to me - I maintained a small account at Navy Federal and suddenly saw a $3 fee for inactivity. Sorry, but I don't use my savings account - that's why it's a savings account. Either way, I moved away from there and setup at USAA.

USAA offers truly free checking, with no minimums or fees, and even ATM reimbursement - so you don't have to pay that nasty $4.35 per transaction.

If you're not enjoying truly free checking, you're not saving enough when it comes to banking.

Check out our list of the Best Credit Unions or Best Free Checking Accounts. 

Total Monthly Savings: $5

Adding Up The Time And Savings

It's always important to remember the time it takes to save money - that's a big part of the frugality equation. You don't want to save $1 if it takes you 5 hours of work. That just doesn't make sense.

If you add up all of the savings from these tasks, you'll save $591.07 per month. That adds up to over $7,000 in savings per year.

But let's talk time. Here's my estimated breakdown of how much time each task takes on a monthly basis. Yes, some tasks may have an startup time-cost, but this is the ongoing time cost:

Credit Card Rewards: 0 extra time (you would be shopping anyway)

Credit Card Hacking: 10 minutes per month (time to find top deals)

Online Savings: 0 extra time (you would be searching online anyway)

Online Rebates: 30 minutes per month (time to find the top deals)

Drop The Gym: 0 extra time (you would work out anyway)

Organization: 1 hour per month (time to organize)

Buy Used/Sell Used: 0 extra time to buy, 30 minutes extra to sell (you would be buying anyway, but selling is a new task)

Compare Prices: 30 minutes per month (to spend time comparing different websites)

Price Adjustments: 10 minutes per month (to check old receipts and get adjustments)

Cut Your Cable: 0 extra time (once you've got your system setup, there is no ongoing time commitment)

Save On Utilities: 0 extra time (once you've changed your equipment, there is no ongoing time commitment)

Boost Your 401k: 0 extra time (once you change your withholding, there is no ongoing time commitment)

Lower Your Insurance: 0 extra time (once you've made the change, nothing is ongoing)

Lower Your Investment Expenses: 0 extra time (once you've made the change, nothing is ongoing)

Eliminate Bank Fees: 0 extra time (once you've made the change, nothing is ongoing)

So, as you can see, this entire list of extras maybe adds up to an extra 2 hours and 20 minutes over the course of an entire month. To save $590, that works out to roughly $246 per hour of work in savings!

Remember, saving money is only half the equation. You should also focus on earning more money as well! That's the real secret to building wealth. Check out our resources on 50+ ways to earn extra money in college, and ways to setup a passive income stream.

The post 15 Ways To Save An Extra $500 Per Month appeared first on The College Investor.

from The College Investor

Saving money is important - we all know that. But sometimes everyone needs some help in coming up with ways to save money. I'm going to break down the exact strategies that I use to save more money each month. If you know me, you know I'm pretty lazy when it comes to this stuff. But these tricks and hacks are simple, and they save a lot of money.

Going back to my frugality equation, all time spent on these saving tricks earns me tons of savings.

We all know the basics - spend less than you earn. But how do you really spend less? You first have to have the right mindset to save, and then you have to take advantage of every trick possible to boost that savings. This already assumes you're tracking your money each month. If you're not, take a look at Personal Capital and get started for free.

After that, it's mindset. And your mindset need to be this: Each month start with a spending budget at $0. It's easier to just buy nothing than to buy something, and stop budgeting. Every purchase needs to be thought of very intensely. Only spend when you have to.

Finally, it's about leveraging tricks to help you. Here are our top 15 tricks to save money. This list will save you over $590 each month if you follow it diligently and use all of these strategies. That means you could save over $7,000 per year! 

Quick Navigation

1. Use A Cash Back Reward Credit Card For All Spending

2. Use Spending Tricks To Boost Savings

3. Use Online Saving Tricks For Stuff You Already Do

4. Get Rebates For All Online Shopping

5. Drop The Gym Membership

6. Get Organized

7. Buy Used And Sell Used

8. Compare Prices On Everything

9. Get Price Adjustments On Old Purchases

10. Cut Your Cable

11. Save On Utilities Each Month

12. Boost Your 401k Contribution

13. Lower Your Insurance Bill

14. Cut Your Investment Expenses

15. Eliminate Bank Fees

1. Use A Cash Back Reward Credit Card For All Spending

The first trick, and one of the most important ones, is to use a cash back rewards credit card for all spending that you do. I'm talking everything.

The best rewards credit cards pay 2% cash back as a baseline. Some cards offer up to 5% on special categories of spending as well. You can find the best top cash back rewards cards here.

By putting everything on a rewards credit card, you're saving at least 2% on everything you spend each month. If your average spending is $1,000 per month, this tactic can save you $20 per month.

The problem is, people don't spend everything on the same card. Even I mess up sometimes. For example, I recently discovered that my car insurance could have been paid for on a credit card. I've been having it directly debited from my checking and earning no rewards. Considering the my bill is about $100 per month, I could have been saving $2 per month for literally doing nothing. I switched it over, and now I'm saving money!

To prove you can get great savings with this trick, here is my savings so far for 6 months of the year:

As you can see, for 6 months, this strategy has saved me $424.81. That breaks down to $70.80 per month in savings.

Total Monthly Savings: $70.80

2. Use Spending Tricks To Boost Savings

There are spending tricks that you can use to boost your savings when making a purchase. I'm not an expert in this area, but there are a lot of blogs that are. The problem with many of these tricks is that it can take a lot of time and effort to find the best ways to take advantage of credit card deals. And like I said earlier, I hate spending time and effort if I can't get the reward easily.

However, there are simple tricks that you can do right now to boost your savings. The easiest way to do this is to simply take advantage of credit cards that pay more for certain categories of spending.

For example, American Express is offering a Blue CashBack Everyday Credit Card, which pays 3% cash back at supermarkets.

The great thing about grocery stores is that most of them sell gift cards to other retailers and shops. Another reward perk that I take advantage of is on groceries and gas.

I normally spend about $500 per month on groceries, so getting 3% cash back equates to $15 per month. Now, I also spend about $400 per month in gas. If I buy a gas gift card at my grocery store, I'm actually spending another $400 at the grocery story - getting that same 3% cash back. That's another savings of $12 per month.

Total Monthly Savings: $27

3. Use Online Saving Tricks For Stuff You Already Do

Do you search the Internet for stuff? I'm talking random searches, like "What Time Does The Stock Market Open"? If you do, you could be earning extra money just for your normal online habits.

For example, Melanie highlights how she made $5 in two weeks using Swagbucks for her normal searches. I signed up for both Swagbucks and InboxDollars and earned $5 instantly just for signing up.

Both Swagbucks and InboxDollars are still offering their $5 sign up promotion. You can sign up here:

Swagbucks $5 Signup Promotion

InboxDollars $5 Signup Promotion

If you signup for each, you'd get $10 the first month. Ongoing, this is a way to save $10 per month by just doing your normal activity.

Total Monthly Savings: $10

4. Get Rebates For All Online Shopping

My next secret to saving money is to use Rakuten or TopCashBack for all your online shopping. The great thing is that you can combo this with credit card cash back rewards and hacking to save even more money.

Rakuten is a rebates site where you get a rebate just for shopping through their website. They offer different percentages for different stores that you can shop at. Here's some of their current cash back deals:

As you can see, you can earn money just for your normal back to school shopping. Here's a snapshot of my normal shopping online, and how it earned me $46.39 for 3 months of online shopping:

As you can see, I spent a total of $1,260.55 online over the first three months of the year. That earned me a check of $46.39 - the $41.39 you see in the screenshot, plus a $5 bonus for spending at a certain store that month.

That equates to a 3.7% rebate on all online shopping I did for the quarter. Remember, when it came time to pay, I also used a rewards credit card that earned me 2% cash back - effectively saving me 5.7% on all my online shopping.

The best trick for using Rakuten and TopCashBack is to wait for a sale on the site - sometimes they offer 10% or more cash back for your regular shopping. This is when it can be very worthwhile to use their service.

Total Monthly Savings: $13.80

5. Drop The Gym Membership

The average gym membership costs around $50 per month. Even if you go with a "cheap" gym, you're still looking at paying around $20 per month. Plus, many gyms have activation fees or signup fees that can boost the annual cost big time.

Here's the worst part - according to Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, the authors of Freakonomics, the average person overestimates how much they'll use the gym by upwards of 70%. Essentially they are only getting 30% of their money's worth.

So what's a person to do? Look for ways to work out without having to go to the gym. MoneyCrashers has a great list of 13 Ways To Exercise Without Going to The Gym, including running, biking, playing an outdoor sport, and more.

Total Monthly Savings: $20

6. Get Organized

Many people, including myself, forget about the value of organization and how it can really translate into monthly money savings. I've written before about the power of getting organized, but it never ceases to amaze me how much I could potentially spend when I'm disorganized.

To get organized, take a few tips from our family. First, we keep all of our toiletries in one spot in the hall closet so that we know if we're out of something. Second, we keep the pantry organized by type of food as well, so that we don't skip over something. Finally, we keep a list of everything we need to get at the store each week.

This may seem simple, but it prevents doubling up on buying things that we don't need. For example, the other day I thought we were out of soap - I'll admit I was lazy and didn't look in the closet. I added it to the shopping list, but my wife quickly discovered that it was in the hall closet. Given that soap costs about $5, that's a savings right there.

Now, it's not a lot, but it can add up if you're not organized.

Total Monthly Savings: $10

7. Buy Used And Sell Used

The next strategy I use a lot is to buy used, and also sell used. What do I mean by this?

Whenever I'm looking at purchasing something - like a household good, electronics, or even a car - I look a buying it used or refurbished. There's a ton of savings to be had if you buy things refurbished.

For example, when I was recently looking to upgrade my laptop, I went to the refurbished store in the Apple Shop:

Inside the Apple Refurbished and Clearance store, you can find savings of 15% or more on almost every product that Apple carries. Plus, all of these items have the same warranty as any other new product purchased from Apple.

Part 2 of the equation is to sell used.

Whenever we upgrade to something new, we don't just let the old stuff sit around - we sell it. For example, I was replacing an old iMac. It wasn't worth much, but I was able to sell my old iMac for $450. Apple has a great program where you can sell your item back to them for an Apple Gift card, which you can use for anything from Apple. You can learn more at the Apple Recycling Program.

However, if I didn't have an Apple product, I would look on selling my item on Amazon.com or eBay.

So, not only am I getting a savings on the new computer, but I'm selling the old computer to offset the price. There's big savings to be had here. In my example, I saved $240 on my new MacBook, and sold my old iMac for $450 - a total savings of $690.

While that's not something that happens monthly, I would say that I get this type of savings yearly. So, we can divide this savings out per month.

Total Monthly Savings: $57.50

8. Compare Prices On Everything

Even if you don't want to buy things used, you should still check and compare prices. I do this all the time - especially when just buying the regular stuff I need to purchase each month.

If I'm in a store, I always pull out my smartphone and use my Amazon app to compare prices on everything. I don't necessarily buy it on Amazon, but it gives me a good sense of the best price.

If I do end up buying the item online versus in-store, I always take advantage of Ebates to combo the savings. So, not only am I getting the best price, I'm getting rebates and credit card rewards.

For example, it's been hot and I've been looking at buying a fan. I was walking by a Best Buy, and decided to go in and look. I found a fan I liked and was getting ready to buy it:

However, before pulling the trigger at Best Buy, I pulled out my phone and Google'd the Model Number:

As you can see, Walmart had a much cheaper price on the fan. And yes, Best Buy does have a price match guarantee policy, but even their price match guarantee doesn't include Rakuten. As you can see, Rakuten offers an additional 1% cash back for shopping at Walmart:

I do this on almost every purchase now and find savings almost every time. For just comparing prices, we can see the savings of $21.11.

Total Monthly Savings: $21.11

9. Get Price Adjustments On Old Purchases

When you purchase something, you need to hold on to all of your receipts. I suggest having a file where you store all of your receipts for at least a year - longer for big purchases like appliances.

You would be surprised by the savings you can find each month by getting adjustments on your past purchases. Almost every retail store has a price adjustment policy, but I would venture that 98% of consumers never take advantage of them.

For example:

Macy's: Offers a price adjustment within 14 days of purchase.

Walmart: Offers a price adjustment within 7 days of purchase

Gap: Offers a price adjustment within 14 days of purchase

However, some companies will do adjustments as long as they carry the item at full price. I purchased a pair of shoes at Nordstrom earlier in the year, and it recently went on sale during their Anniversary Sale.

Even though it has been about 6 months since I purchased the shoes, Nordstrom honored the price adjustment. And as you can see, it was a hefty amount - $83.05. If you can get that savings twice a year, it's worthwhile.

Total Monthly Savings: $13.84

10. Cut Your Cable

The next big cost cutting expense is to simple cut your cable. With all of the shows you can watch for free online, there is no reason to pay for cable anymore.

According to the latest full year report compiled by BI Intelligence, cable companies reported the lowest amount of cable subscribers in years, but growing broadband internet subscribers.

Cable TV is expensive, and while Internet is still pricy each month, the savings by not having cable is huge.

We recently cut our cable, and it has saved us $100 per month. Even on the lowest cable plan offered by our cable company, it would have been an extra $100 per month to have basic cable channels and the box to get it.

Instead of cable, we opted to buy Apple TV along with Netflix. The Apple TV costs nothing each month, and Netflix runs us an additional $7.99. We also purchased a digital antenna to get the local channels, which actually works surprisingly well and we can watch the news and several sports programs.

We're torn between looking at HBO NOW or not, but it's always an option. If we ever want to rent a new release or buy a show, we can do that through the Apple TV.

It's funny because prior to cutting cable, we could have never fathomed not having it. Now, without it, life is just simpler and cheaper.

Total Monthly Savings: $92.01

11. Save On Utilities Each Month

One of the biggest expenses that most families have each month are utilities. These are the essentials - power and water - that everyone typically pays for. These "mandatory" expenses can add up if you're not careful.

But there are several ways that you can save on utilities each month. First, for power, switch every lightbulb in your house to LED Lightbulbs. This can provide substantial savings in your house - they use 90%+ less energy than standard lightbulbs.

We recently switch all of our lightbulbs in our house to LEDs, and saw our power bill reduced over 50% - nothing else changed. Here's a screenshot of our energy usage showing the drop in power usage since switching bulbs in the beginning of June:

For comparison, in July 2014 we used 676 kW of power, and in July 2015 we used 288 kW. That translated into a $100 per month savings!

However, LED lightbulbs are expensive. They cost about $7 or more per bulb, if you find them on sale. However, most of the power companies across the United States are currently offering rebates on bulbs. You can go to the Energy Star Rebate Finder and select "Light Bulbs" and see if you can get a rebate on your bulbs. Many companies are offering rebates of around $4 per bulb. That lowers the price substantially and makes it even more worthwhile.

Another way to save on power is to use a free tool like OhmConnect that allows you to get rebates for cutting back your power during certain times. It's not a ton of money, but it gives you a little extra in your pocket each month.

Next up is water. Water is a tough one, because it's hard to find ways to save. In California, though, it's even more important to save water because of the drought - and water companies are raising rates and adding penalties as a result.

However, just like power companies are offering rebates to conserve, water utilities are also offering rebates to conserve. In California, the water companies are offering rebates on buying high efficiency clothes washers, high efficiency toilets, weather-based sprinkler controllers, high efficiency sprinklers, and more. I recently was able to purchase a new sprinkler controller and all new sprinklers for FREE after the rebate, and it decreased our water usage by about 10% - or a $20 savings.

Total Monthly Savings: $120

12. Boost Your 401k Contribution

Automating your savings is one of the best ways to boost your overall savings. If you work and are offered a 401k or 402b, one of the best ways to save more money each month is to simply boost your 401k contribution.

These contributions are pre-tax, so if you boost it by just 1%, you'll barely even notice a change in your take-home pay. It's as close to a painless way to save as possible.

Take the example of making $35,000 per year. If you boost your 401k contribution by just 1%, it will contribute an extra $29.17 per paycheck (if you're paid bi-weekly). That increases your annual savings by $758.42, which is huge!

Want to do more than just 1%. Check out this great calculator and see all types of different scenarios.

Total Monthly Savings: $58.34

13. Lower Your Insurance Bill

Insurance is one of those areas that's typically set and forget for most families. You sign up for insurance when you have to (when you buy a car, or when you move), but otherwise you likely never look at it.

Instead, you should be checking your insurance policies at least annually. You'd be surprised how much you can save by checking simple changes - like the mileage you drive or the value of your property.

For example, I recently checked the mileage that was on my car insurance policy. When I signed up, I selected 15,000 miles annually on average. However, based on my last year of service records, I'd only driven 10,000 miles. By going online to USAA and changing this one fact, it lowered my bill by $5 per month.

Check out my tool for finding the best car insurance rates.

Total Monthly Savings: $5

14. Cut Your Investment Expenses

This one is a tough one because investment expenses are typically "ghosts" - meaning you don't really know they are there, but they're taking money away from you each month. Investment expenses are commissions and annual fees that you pay to invest.

Remember this chart from our article about Paying More To Invest In The Same Company:

Investing in the same exact stocks can cost you $14,341 over 30 years. That breaks down into a monthly expense of $39.84. Why are you giving up $39.84 to invest in an more expensive ETF that invests in the same 500 stocks?

The trouble is that these fees are hidden. You don't know they're there. While the government has tried to make fees more transparent, they are still lost on most individual investors.

Luckily, there are two tools that can help. The first is Personal Capital. I recommend Personal Capital as a free tool to simply organize your financial accounts (which you should be doing already). What you probably didn't know is that they also have a Retirement Fee Analyzer that will tell you how much you're spending in fees annually.

Here's a sneak peak at my portfolio and it found two funds that have significantly higher fees than they should:

By finding these two funds, and switching them out for lower cost funds, I was able to save roughly $800 per year - or $66.67 per month.

The other tool that does a similar function is FeeX. It's a free tool that allows you to connect your accounts and it scans them for fees. Once it's complete it provides you with a report that highlights alternatives and what you could save. It actually found the same issues as Personal Capital. Here's an example:

You can see, it estimates that I'll save approximately $400 per month as well, and even highlights a potential ETF that I could buy that matches my investment objectives.

Both tools offer great interfaces. Personal Capital is a great long term solution because it helps you manage all of your accounts. But if you're worried specifically about investment fees, check out FeeX.

Total Monthly Savings: $66.67

15. Eliminate Bank Fees

Finally, do you have truly free checking? I'm talking $0 fees.

According to the 2014 Bankrate Checking Account Fee Survey:

Only 38% of checking accounts are truly free

97% of checking accounts can be free if customers meet certain requirements

The average out-of-network ATM transaction costs $4.35

Even "good" banks and credit unions, like Navy Federal Savings Bank, have started charging customers random fees - like account minimum fees and inactivity fees. If you don't maintain enough in your accounts, you can quickly see your balance eroded by fees.

That recently happened to me - I maintained a small account at Navy Federal and suddenly saw a $3 fee for inactivity. Sorry, but I don't use my savings account - that's why it's a savings account. Either way, I moved away from there and setup at USAA.

USAA offers truly free checking, with no minimums or fees, and even ATM reimbursement - so you don't have to pay that nasty $4.35 per transaction.

If you're not enjoying truly free checking, you're not saving enough when it comes to banking.

Check out our list of the Best Credit Unions or Best Free Checking Accounts. 

Total Monthly Savings: $5

Adding Up The Time And Savings

It's always important to remember the time it takes to save money - that's a big part of the frugality equation. You don't want to save $1 if it takes you 5 hours of work. That just doesn't make sense.

If you add up all of the savings from these tasks, you'll save $591.07 per month. That adds up to over $7,000 in savings per year.

But let's talk time. Here's my estimated breakdown of how much time each task takes on a monthly basis. Yes, some tasks may have an startup time-cost, but this is the ongoing time cost:

Credit Card Rewards: 0 extra time (you would be shopping anyway)

Credit Card Hacking: 10 minutes per month (time to find top deals)

Online Savings: 0 extra time (you would be searching online anyway)

Online Rebates: 30 minutes per month (time to find the top deals)

Drop The Gym: 0 extra time (you would work out anyway)

Organization: 1 hour per month (time to organize)

Buy Used/Sell Used: 0 extra time to buy, 30 minutes extra to sell (you would be buying anyway, but selling is a new task)

Compare Prices: 30 minutes per month (to spend time comparing different websites)

Price Adjustments: 10 minutes per month (to check old receipts and get adjustments)

Cut Your Cable: 0 extra time (once you've got your system setup, there is no ongoing time commitment)

Save On Utilities: 0 extra time (once you've changed your equipment, there is no ongoing time commitment)

Boost Your 401k: 0 extra time (once you change your withholding, there is no ongoing time commitment)

Lower Your Insurance: 0 extra time (once you've made the change, nothing is ongoing)

Lower Your Investment Expenses: 0 extra time (once you've made the change, nothing is ongoing)

Eliminate Bank Fees: 0 extra time (once you've made the change, nothing is ongoing)

So, as you can see, this entire list of extras maybe adds up to an extra 2 hours and 20 minutes over the course of an entire month. To save $590, that works out to roughly $246 per hour of work in savings!

Remember, saving money is only half the equation. You should also focus on earning more money as well! That's the real secret to building wealth. Check out our resources on 50+ ways to earn extra money in college, and ways to setup a passive income stream.

The post 15 Ways To Save An Extra $500 Per Month appeared first on The College Investor.

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The most effective German Coupon sites 2019

Now we will not be in a position to provide our SUV or property in the next month or two, but there are many different ideas to aid cushion the financial blow towards your wallet.

one - Purchase generic compared to brand names. Branded items, like Cheerios, Charmin, Christian Dior, are so ingrained within our aware as excellent that we fail to remember that other objects exist. Sad to say, we also forget the effect on our wallets. By starting to purchase generic merchandise we could begin to see discounts of $twenty five or more on a shop

2 - Rethink amusement. Rather than shopping for $10 a bit Motion picture tickets or investing $five at the online video retail store, think about joining Netflix, in which you can obtain absolutely free flicks to the Laptop or get a number of motion pictures shipped to your door for the expense of less than two motion pictures tickets, or take into consideration other types of low cost entertainment. $forty per month

three - Downsize the meal possibilities. It feels Pretty much deluxe to go out for meal, recognizing Other people have prepared a delicious food so you don't need to. And it may well appear to be one meal won't get rid of you but conserving $ten by consuming at home or skipping the $five appetizers or saving $5 on ideas with counter service can certainly add up to $two hundred to $300 for the entire thirty day period.

4 - Dump cable TV. I've eliminated cable quite a while back, and just depend upon World-wide-web support. Not acquiring Tv set might appear tricky at the outset, but The end result has become a lifestyle changer for me. I am much more Innovative, like penning this blog site, and possess a lot more spare time to go after the things I wish to do. For $fifty of savings a month, I could make it without the boob tube.

5 - Re-examine insurance policy. Though health coverage for many is really a have to have, there are actually supplementary insurance policy you may perhaps spend that may not have a pressing need to have at this minute. Talk to your coverage Experienced to find out what expenses is usually minimized or eliminated.

six - Child's allowance. Really don't let them thrust you about. Yes, you ought to provide them with the ideal, but in an effort to truly secure a better long term for them, figure out what is essential to them now and what is significant to their potential.

7 - Electric power. During the summers and winters, this bill could get mighty big. Get in touch with your local utility organization and talk to them what ways you will take to cut your energy bill. Switching to CFC bulbs (twirly bulbs) is an effective start off, but much more of one's electric Monthly bill will come from A/C, warmth, scorching drinking water, the dryer Which new plasma Tv set you purchased.

eight - Bank cards. You can't cease producing bank card payments, but no less than you can phone them to barter much better charges. Use a lot of the bank card gives to help you negotiate a far better level. $twenty-$40 or more per month on $ten,000 balance

nine - Carpooling/Telecommuting/Bike or Stroll to work - All these selections can equate to conserving a weekly $50 tank of fuel, minimize don and tear, and reduce probable upkeep expenses.

ten - Cell versus household phone. Pick which is necessary much more and get rid of one other. If you're able to, I'd take into account removing the home cellular phone due to the fact there are cheaper selections like Skype for home phone companies. And In the event your cellular phone enterprise will never Supply you with Internet access without the need of acquiring area cellphone, give significant-velocity cable from your cable enterprise a attempt. For The sunshine computer people, trying planning to a totally free WiFi region or even the library, and have related there.

11 - Question the boss to go company relaxed or maybe casual. Carrying relaxed clothes may perhaps not only be more durable and very last for a longer time, but you can also skip the pricey dry cleaning Monthly bill

12 - Cancel Memberships. When you've got fitness center memberships you don't use or memberships to corporations you don't drop by, cancel them. Unless of course you utilize most of these memberships weekly and it helps you to aim or acts as a private getaway, acquire the opportunity to consider solutions, like jogging, biking, and so forth.

13 - Storage Facility? Do you've got a storage facility that you choose to use to your junk? Market it and then terminate the storage unit. A recent WSJ post says individuals who use a facility with limited-time period intentions turn out preserving them for 5 yrs. $one hundred month

14 - House cleaning/pool services/lawn services/pest Management. Could you do any of such expert services yourself? Borrow a lawn mower or pool brush out of your neighbor For those who have much too. $twenty five or more per month

fifteen - Market your things. Except if it may be Tremendous useful for eBay, Have got a garage sale or submit your objects on Craigslist. Certain you will not get leading dollar in this atmosphere, however, you might one thing

16 - Lease out a home. There are plenty of people who require an easy place to continue to be, and leasing out a room it's possible a fantastic small-term way to lift money. But before you decide to do, I highly endorse making ready a handful of hurdles for any future tenant like a felony Test, a credit rating Examine along with a rental background Look at, as well as looking through a handful of great books on renting out to a tenant or calling a accredited real-estate agent for aid. Without the proper planning and authorized documents, this too will become a lawful or money nightmare.

17 - Renegotiate your mortgage loan. You might or might not have any cash it is possible to refinance, but you can unquestionably talk with your financial institution or simply a home finance loan broker about decreasing your charge. Although you might incur extra prices, a lessen fee may well offset them if you may get an important drop Bummelwelt within your charge.

eighteen - Personal compared to Public University. In case you are spending month-to-month for personal college, you are able to possibly place your child in public college or renegotiate a reduced tuition depending on your switching money condition

19 - Beer/Colas/Coffees. These beverage items are the real Expense killer whenever you include it up. Your $4 lattes, $4 beer or twice each day $2 soda or $2 bottled waters include nearly $a hundred and twenty per month by yourself. Faucet water is free of charge and much healthier to suit your needs.

twenty - Use Discount coupons. As goofy and "grandma" as it sounds, clipping Coupon codes still operates. Sunday newspapers or well-liked coupon web pages remain fantastic resources for Discount coupons.

21 - Modify you supermarket. As recent Wall Avenue Journal post in contrast many perfectly-recognized supermarkets chains to a Wal-Mart Supercenter on the exact same foodstuff goods, and located Wal-Mart to get appreciably more cost-effective. Cost savings: $fifteen or maybe more on total grocery shop.

22 - Haircuts. Even though Supercuts and Hair Cuttery are an excellent start for reasonable haircuts, I can commonly obtain a local barber charging even fewer. Considering the fact that they need not spend royalty costs or franchise costs, they could demand a couple of bucks less. If you're brave ample to get it done yourself, Select it.

23 - Pet foods. It could be tempting to go to the less expensive brand, but transforming a Pet dog's diet plan isn't healthier for them. As a substitute, purchase the "Costco" dimension and store inside of a cool, dry and bug no cost place.

24 - Pet Medicines. I exploit heartworm and flea medication every month for my Canine, Rudy. I order from an Australian business, Petshed.com. They are less costly to the flea medication and Additionally they present you with a generic medication for heartworm avoidance. Here i will discuss also other stuff you can do for Fido.

25 - Skip Lotto. In rough periods, more people play the lotto decreasing your odds of winning, which happens to be pretty minimal to start with. If it's essential to, at the time is ample.

26 - Dental Treatment. Teeth cleanings are essential, particularly if I've to take a look at you. But having correctly taking care of your enamel can help to keep foreseeable future expenses and suggested visits down. Remember; most instances cleansing are carried out with the hygienist, not the dentist, so your prices shouldn't be greater than $fifty. I am able to generally find some specials in the neighborhood paper.

27 - Reward cards or money, instead of items. Give a present card as opposed to a gift, or much better but, give dollars and stay away from the transaction fee. You might continue to keep your self from expending greater than you'll want to. If you need to do opt to invest in a gift card, ensure that the present playing cards are not store unique both. Whilst Uncle Fred enjoys Household Depot, he might require to pay some charges or get food stuff rather.

28 - Canceling specified newspapers. Contemplate canceling the day by day paper, and just have the Sunday paper delivered. The Sunday newspaper could be a goldmine for Coupon codes, and use the online Variation For the remainder of the week.

29 - Downsize the Division store. Target, Wal-Mart and other retailers can present sizeable financial savings to those people who are in need to have of clothes. You should be surprised what excellent things they have, but pay attention to People return guidelines. Goodwill or other consignment retailers also can offer some precious treasures. But, acquire only what you'll need. Affordable doesn't suggest cost-free for all.

thirty - Invest time with the kids. If you do not expend time with the children, they're going to want to invest time with their friends on the mall expending your money.

31 - Washer/Dryer. Use cold only for washing outfits, and dangle dry Anything you can. The new drinking water plus the dryer can get fairly pricey to run.

32 - Electronics. Shut down your Pc and unplug electronics when they are not in use. Remarkably, electronics nevertheless drain electrical power even when they're off. This involves cell phone chargers, as well.

33 - Automobile Repairs. Needing to restore your vehicle while you are by now limited on revenue is no pleasurable. Here are a few items I have done to convey down the cost: (1) most mechanics will give you a totally free diagnostic, (2) connect with no less than 3 other mechanics Along with the details of the situation and request a estimate around the labor (you would be amazed the primary difference in selling price), (three) talk to about applying following sector pieces or provide your very own sections and (four) Never be forced into doing a little something you don't need.

34 - Concentrate on ATM charges. A current journey to an ATM machine costs $3, in addition what my financial institution expenses me. The good thing is, I use a discount broker that addresses this Charge on the two ends. If You aren't so Fortunate, discover convenient banking companies to in which you Typically get cash or perhaps draw out a bit more than regular and hold most concealed in the home. Replenish as desired.

35 - Pricing out gasoline. Be cognizant of the differences in gasoline costs. Although a penny might not produce a big difference, twenty cents for your twenty gallon tank will save $four when. Use Costco, Wal-Mart, and web pages like Gasoline Value Look at to help you place the bottom Expense stations.

36 - Have to carry out some touring? Use selling price aggregators internet sites like Kayak or Trax.com (my favorite) to search out decreased fares for flights, motels and auto rentals.

37 - Negotiate. When was the last time you experimented with to barter on selling price? Get started with scaled-down objects, and graduate to hotel rooms and various expert services or solutions you buy. If you speak with the appropriate human being, you'll be able to negotiate Virtually something.

38 - View the "stupid" service fees. These can come from returning video clips late to overdrawing your harmony to overdue textbooks. Have a minute to determine what you Generally do Mistaken to bring about service fees and setup an easy method like making use of "Publish Its" to proper your practices.

39 - End the Catalogs. Unsolicited mail, like catalogs, can entice even the at any time meager into a full-blown impulse buy; eliminate the temptations.

40 - Quite Smoking. What an incredible explanation to kick the routine! It expenditures excessive, plus your insurance plan rates go up because of it.

41 - Re-look at previous calendar year's taxes. When you have the time and gumption, there could happen to be a few deductions you may have skipped. If they are large ample, The federal government could owe you cash.

42 - Stroll-In Clinic. For considerably less critical emergencies or injuries, a Stroll-In Clinic may possibly give a similar service as being a hospital with fewer Charge. But very first, see exactly what the nearby clinic has the capacity to do and never do. Then, take detect in their hours of Procedure so when an emergency comes up, you can make the correct choice. Some pharmacy chains like CVS now have nurse practitioners who will diagnose and prescribe, at lessen rates.

43 - Challenge your house assessment. Because the values of properties have long gone down in the previous few yrs, you may be able to challenge town or county in your property taxes. Do some analysis to determine if This can be plausible, after which you can Get in touch with your municipality. Weigh your options.

44 - Relocating can be quite a headache, however it does not have for being expensive. You may want to think about solutions like U-Haul, Penske or Price range Truck. Call all three and negotiate concerning them. After a quote is secured, contact a local staff support that focuses on guide labor to assist with the transfer.

45 - Re-shop for car insurance and homeowner's insurance policies. Consider switching carriers. I switched to Geico and did not have to alter my deductible in the least. I saved $forty a month. Also, check with your agent about alternatives in your current homeowner's coverage.

46 - More substantial grocery retailers. Visiting the supermarket once or twice a month will pressure you to purchase only what you'll need and decrease your urge for impulse buys (beyond dairy, needless to say). Normally make an inventory before you go.

47 - Make use of the library. According to your locale, This may be an excellent place for guides, DVDs and CDs. Some smaller sized libraries can broaden their access and thus your selection with other regional libraries. Continue to keep that in your mind to seek out far more of what your want.

48 - Go with a diet program. I am not referring to joining a pricey diet regime plan, but Test a couple of books out of your library and teach yourself. Weight loss plans commonly necessarily mean fewer high priced food stuff, or often just significantly less meals consumption on the whole, which interprets to significantly less out of your respective pocket.

49 - If you have to get a thing, use a site that compares prices, like Pricegrabber, Pricescan, Bizrate, Nextag, Purchasing.com, eBay and Froogle. Just one neat web-site I like is Priceprotectr.com. This website will help you be sure you created a fantastic offer by informing you When your item drops in selling price as many as 30 days after order. Price changes are fantastic not merely for on-line products, but brick and motor vendors frequently supply adjustments for many objects they offer like outfits or instruments for any confined time frame.

fifty - Try to fix it you initially. I never begun out getting good a some thing, like fixing the pc, shifting the spark plugs, or a variety of other issues I picked up together how. But I shock myself Once i initially learn how to perform these things from a "How To" guide or YouTube video clip. Definitely, you want to get started modest and easy that will help Make your expertise and assurance. Every time an opportunity offers by itself, often have a minute to contemplate the possibility.

Can you believe you of everything (outside of offering the house or car or truck) that can save you revenue immediately? Please let me know so I am able to expand the record. And For those who have saved some cash from some issues on this checklist, allow me to know likewise.

Potentially you have an interest in Mastering a fresh language, and you have heard of the impressive Rosetta Stone language software package. You may additionally be questioning if you can down load Rosetta Stone language cost-free. Perfectly, there are lots of difficulties and limits that will arise if you try and acquire it free of charge And that i am heading to stipulate just some.

Rosetta Stone is One of the more extensively accessed language Understanding systems globally. Fortune five hundred providers are utilizing this computer software For several years, and also the U.S. Army. So Exactly what does this tell you? It lets you know that this language Discovering method can be a very powerful Resource for Mastering a completely new language.

If you need to try and obtain it totally free, you may be little question limited. You'll be able to accessibility a few of the language modules free of charge or on the trial foundation. The difficulty is that you will be pretty minimal on Anything you can master from your free of charge obtain. You are considerably far better off to really paying for the lessons while in the language you need to understand, as an alternative to accessing the no cost software.

You'll find, needless to say, several possibilities, including torrent web-sites where you can down load Rosetta Stone language totally free, but these is often problematic. First of all, employing a torrent download web-site just isn't authorized. Next, these torrent web-sites can load up your Laptop or computer with Trojans, spy ware and adware. These kinds of "downloads" can infect your Laptop, and result in it to run slowly but surely or not run at all. Aside from slowing your Laptop down, your registry keys will be afflicted, and it may well probably result in concerns with initiate and with other plans you Typically run with your Laptop.

Fundamentally, you receive Anything you purchase, and For anyone who is going without spending a dime, then you won't get Significantly, in all honesty. Until you concentrate on the head ache and the time linked to endeavoring to resolve the entire new "concerns" you'll have along with your Pc, then don't trouble attempting to down load Rosetta Stone totally free. If you're unsure about the benefits of buying this system, consider the trial Variation from the actual Web site, but steer clear of free of charge downloads from websites that can not be trusted.

The advantages that you'll get from this program far outweigh the costs. It can be relatively high priced to enroll in a Actual physical class in a college or evening school, and you'll have to adhere for their training schedule so that you can discover. With Rosetta Stone, you are completely free of charge to learn at your individual tempo. I might also generally advocate

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7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

Already feeling like you need more organization in your life? Here are some simple things you can do to help get ahead.

The past few weeks have been a welcome break.

Later bedtimes, later wake times, and less deadlines.

But now it's the new year and now it's time to get going. Everywhere I turn people are posting about their goals, resolutions, and specific dreams for this year. While I love seeing others' enthusiasm… it's also made me stressed.

It's made me feel anxious I'm already behind on this year and it's barely begun. 

So in an effort to feel like this upcoming year is under my control, I made a list of simple things to do and have been knocking them off one-by-one.

And you know what?

It feels amazing.

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

If you want to feel more settled, ordered, and organized for the new year then take a few hours over the next week or two and knock these out one by one.

You'll already feel less anxious and stressed about what the year holds.

Get A Planner & Add Important Dates

I love getting my new planner organized for the New Year.

If you've recently purchased a planner then now's the time to add in all the dates you can. Just having a paper planner is a lifesaver. If you are a digital planner than get out your calendar online and fill in those important dates as well.

When I add in an important date, I may also go back a few weeks and put a reminder to buy a present or book a reservation, etc.

I buy my planner from the Brilliant Life Shop, but there are some Amazon ones listed below as well.

Dates to Add In:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays you celebrate

When you need to begin preparing for something (i.e. 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving, etc.)

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Make Yearly Appointments For All Family Members

It's much easier to remember to go to an appointment than it is to make it. Choose a month of the year to do certain appointments (i.e. dentist appointments every January and June) and book those out in advance.

You can add them into the planner you purchased above or into your digital calendar and set reminders. I'm not great at remembering to make appointments off the cuff, but doing it in advance ensures it gets done.

Appointments To Make

Check-ups

Dental cleanings (at least once, preferably twice a year)

Female check-ups for mom

Appointments with specialists (allergies, etc.)

Follow-ups for all previous diagnoses, procedures, etc.

Add School Calendar And Standing Events In Planner

If your children at in school, you can easily access the school's yearly calendar by going to the county website. They'll have a PDF version available for you with most events for the remainder of the year.

Add in things to your planner so you'll be prepared. Again, you can put in reminders a week or two in advance if you need to do anything beforehand.

Events to Add

School starting and closing dates

School holidays

Spring Break and Winter Break

Tryouts and sport season information

Standardized testing dates

Get Thank You Notes & Stamp Them

One of the best things I've done recently is to pre-stamp my thank you card envelopes. (Note: I used pre-stamped thank you notes all last year and loved it!)

I've just purchased some regular cards and will pre-stamp those as well. This means when it crosses your mind to write a note, jot down a thanks, or say a simple “I'm thinking of you” then you can do it in a few minutes and get it done.

Busy moms have the best of intentions, but a shortcut like this will mean you get the thoughts out of your head and into the mailbox without the mental barriers.

Reference Info For Notes And Stamps

You can buy stamps online

I buy our thank you cards and personalized cards from Vistaprint (half the price of Shutterfly or Minted)

Shutterfly

Minted (high quality)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Thank You Cards"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "dc5e1d19f8702b7c50056a3155a6d844"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B010MXDYFW,B01M0TTHCH,B0085ECSNK,B01MSQK8Y8";

Add Vacations In Calendar And Book What You Can

Two years ago, I booked the entire year's worth of vacations in one sitting.

It was exhilarating to know it was all done and as each trip came nearer, all we had to do was pay the balance minus deposits and make some to do lists.

If you know you want to go somewhere for spring break, Memorial Day weekend, or Thanksgiving, look ahead and if you're able, go ahead and book.

The vacation rental by owner sites usually require 50% at the time of booking, but hotels will often reserve your spot with a credit card but no money down.

Vacation Sites

AirBnB

VRBO

Travelocity

National Parks

Trivago (get the cheapest rate at your desired hotel)

CheapAir

Update (Or Create) Your Household Binder

If you like the idea of a central command zone where most of the pertinent household information is located, get a homemaking binder. You can  get a 3 ring binder from your local store and then fill it with the essentials.

Photocopies of driver's licenses, passport information. Copies of bills so each adult in the house can locate the necessary phone and account numbers if they need to take care of business.

From budgeting info to favorite recipes, a household binder will help you feel immediately more organized and in control of the household administrative duties.

Grab It: Print Your Household Binder Here (currently at 30% off)

Revisit Budget & Tweak What Didn't Work

Look at your budget again. If you are like me then the monthly budget is much the same from month to month. Before you roll it all over without another thought, check it out again.

Look at your line items.

Are there any things you can take off you don't use anymore? Any you'd like to add so the budget is slightly more conservative, ensuring you don't go over?

Check Out These Line Items

Subscriptions (Netflix, Sirius, cable, etc.)

Groceries

Gas

Spending $

Retirement

Fun $

Want Some Accountability To Get Your Year Started Right?

The week of January 4th we're going to do a New Year Fresh Start Bootcamp. Together we'll spend 4 days getting ourselves ready for the New Year and offer you practical strategies, accountability, and more!

Stay tuned!

::

The post 7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year appeared first on A Mother Far from Home.

[zulmaabroxton1988-blog]

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

Already feeling like you need more organization in your life? Here are some simple things you can do to help get ahead.

The past few weeks have been a welcome break.

Later bedtimes, later wake times, and less deadlines.

But now it's the new year and now it's time to get going. Everywhere I turn people are posting about their goals, resolutions, and specific dreams for this year. While I love seeing others' enthusiasm… it's also made me stressed.

It's made me feel anxious I'm already behind on this year and it's barely begun. 

So in an effort to feel like this upcoming year is under my control, I made a list of simple things to do and have been knocking them off one-by-one.

And you know what?

It feels amazing.

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

If you want to feel more settled, ordered, and organized for the new year then take a few hours over the next week or two and knock these out one by one.

You'll already feel less anxious and stressed about what the year holds.

Get A Planner & Add Important Dates

I love getting my new planner organized for the New Year.

If you've recently purchased a planner then now's the time to add in all the dates you can. Just having a paper planner is a lifesaver. If you are a digital planner than get out your calendar online and fill in those important dates as well.

When I add in an important date, I may also go back a few weeks and put a reminder to buy a present or book a reservation, etc.

I buy my planner from the Brilliant Life Shop, but there are some Amazon ones listed below as well.

Dates to Add In:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays you celebrate

When you need to begin preparing for something (i.e. 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving, etc.)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Planners"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "0dd5c214c6b8e425a3ee389044bb41b6"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B013Z5Y70K,B01KEU5GOA,B071QXXM31,1631363239";

Make Yearly Appointments For All Family Members

It's much easier to remember to go to an appointment than it is to make it. Choose a month of the year to do certain appointments (i.e. dentist appointments every January and June) and book those out in advance.

You can add them into the planner you purchased above or into your digital calendar and set reminders. I'm not great at remembering to make appointments off the cuff, but doing it in advance ensures it gets done.

Appointments To Make

Check-ups

Dental cleanings (at least once, preferably twice a year)

Female check-ups for mom

Appointments with specialists (allergies, etc.)

Follow-ups for all previous diagnoses, procedures, etc.

Add School Calendar And Standing Events In Planner

If your children at in school, you can easily access the school's yearly calendar by going to the county website. They'll have a PDF version available for you with most events for the remainder of the year.

Add in things to your planner so you'll be prepared. Again, you can put in reminders a week or two in advance if you need to do anything beforehand.

Events to Add

School starting and closing dates

School holidays

Spring Break and Winter Break

Tryouts and sport season information

Standardized testing dates

Get Thank You Notes & Stamp Them

One of the best things I've done recently is to pre-stamp my thank you card envelopes. (Note: I used pre-stamped thank you notes all last year and loved it!)

I've just purchased some regular cards and will pre-stamp those as well. This means when it crosses your mind to write a note, jot down a thanks, or say a simple “I'm thinking of you” then you can do it in a few minutes and get it done.

Busy moms have the best of intentions, but a shortcut like this will mean you get the thoughts out of your head and into the mailbox without the mental barriers.

Reference Info For Notes And Stamps

You can buy stamps online

I buy our thank you cards and personalized cards from Vistaprint (half the price of Shutterfly or Minted)

Shutterfly

Minted (high quality)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Thank You Cards"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "dc5e1d19f8702b7c50056a3155a6d844"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B010MXDYFW,B01M0TTHCH,B0085ECSNK,B01MSQK8Y8";

Add Vacations In Calendar And Book What You Can

Two years ago, I booked the entire year's worth of vacations in one sitting.

It was exhilarating to know it was all done and as each trip came nearer, all we had to do was pay the balance minus deposits and make some to do lists.

If you know you want to go somewhere for spring break, Memorial Day weekend, or Thanksgiving, look ahead and if you're able, go ahead and book.

The vacation rental by owner sites usually require 50% at the time of booking, but hotels will often reserve your spot with a credit card but no money down.

Vacation Sites

AirBnB

VRBO

Travelocity

National Parks

Trivago (get the cheapest rate at your desired hotel)

CheapAir

Update (Or Create) Your Household Binder

If you like the idea of a central command zone where most of the pertinent household information is located, get a homemaking binder. You can  get a 3 ring binder from your local store and then fill it with the essentials.

Photocopies of driver's licenses, passport information. Copies of bills so each adult in the house can locate the necessary phone and account numbers if they need to take care of business.

From budgeting info to favorite recipes, a household binder will help you feel immediately more organized and in control of the household administrative duties.

Grab It: Print Your Household Binder Here (currently at 30% off)

Revisit Budget & Tweak What Didn't Work

Look at your budget again. If you are like me then the monthly budget is much the same from month to month. Before you roll it all over without another thought, check it out again.

Look at your line items.

Are there any things you can take off you don't use anymore? Any you'd like to add so the budget is slightly more conservative, ensuring you don't go over?

Check Out These Line Items

Subscriptions (Netflix, Sirius, cable, etc.)

Groceries

Gas

Spending $

Retirement

Fun $

Want Some Accountability To Get Your Year Started Right?

The week of January 4th we're going to do a New Year Fresh Start Bootcamp. Together we'll spend 4 days getting ourselves ready for the New Year and offer you practical strategies, accountability, and more!

Stay tuned!

::

The post 7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year appeared first on A Mother Far from Home.

[josephinemkepley21-blog]

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

Already feeling like you need more organization in your life? Here are some simple things you can do to help get ahead.

The past few weeks have been a welcome break.

Later bedtimes, later wake times, and less deadlines.

But now it's the new year and now it's time to get going. Everywhere I turn people are posting about their goals, resolutions, and specific dreams for this year. While I love seeing others' enthusiasm… it's also made me stressed.

It's made me feel anxious I'm already behind on this year and it's barely begun. 

So in an effort to feel like this upcoming year is under my control, I made a list of simple things to do and have been knocking them off one-by-one.

And you know what?

It feels amazing.

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

If you want to feel more settled, ordered, and organized for the new year then take a few hours over the next week or two and knock these out one by one.

You'll already feel less anxious and stressed about what the year holds.

Get A Planner & Add Important Dates

I love getting my new planner organized for the New Year.

If you've recently purchased a planner then now's the time to add in all the dates you can. Just having a paper planner is a lifesaver. If you are a digital planner than get out your calendar online and fill in those important dates as well.

When I add in an important date, I may also go back a few weeks and put a reminder to buy a present or book a reservation, etc.

I buy my planner from the Brilliant Life Shop, but there are some Amazon ones listed below as well.

Dates to Add In:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays you celebrate

When you need to begin preparing for something (i.e. 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving, etc.)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Planners"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "0dd5c214c6b8e425a3ee389044bb41b6"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B013Z5Y70K,B01KEU5GOA,B071QXXM31,1631363239";

Make Yearly Appointments For All Family Members

It's much easier to remember to go to an appointment than it is to make it. Choose a month of the year to do certain appointments (i.e. dentist appointments every January and June) and book those out in advance.

You can add them into the planner you purchased above or into your digital calendar and set reminders. I'm not great at remembering to make appointments off the cuff, but doing it in advance ensures it gets done.

Appointments To Make

Check-ups

Dental cleanings (at least once, preferably twice a year)

Female check-ups for mom

Appointments with specialists (allergies, etc.)

Follow-ups for all previous diagnoses, procedures, etc.

Add School Calendar And Standing Events In Planner

If your children at in school, you can easily access the school's yearly calendar by going to the county website. They'll have a PDF version available for you with most events for the remainder of the year.

Add in things to your planner so you'll be prepared. Again, you can put in reminders a week or two in advance if you need to do anything beforehand.

Events to Add

School starting and closing dates

School holidays

Spring Break and Winter Break

Tryouts and sport season information

Standardized testing dates

Get Thank You Notes & Stamp Them

One of the best things I've done recently is to pre-stamp my thank you card envelopes. (Note: I used pre-stamped thank you notes all last year and loved it!)

I've just purchased some regular cards and will pre-stamp those as well. This means when it crosses your mind to write a note, jot down a thanks, or say a simple “I'm thinking of you” then you can do it in a few minutes and get it done.

Busy moms have the best of intentions, but a shortcut like this will mean you get the thoughts out of your head and into the mailbox without the mental barriers.

Reference Info For Notes And Stamps

You can buy stamps online

I buy our thank you cards and personalized cards from Vistaprint (half the price of Shutterfly or Minted)

Shutterfly

Minted (high quality)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Thank You Cards"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "dc5e1d19f8702b7c50056a3155a6d844"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B010MXDYFW,B01M0TTHCH,B0085ECSNK,B01MSQK8Y8";

Add Vacations In Calendar And Book What You Can

Two years ago, I booked the entire year's worth of vacations in one sitting.

It was exhilarating to know it was all done and as each trip came nearer, all we had to do was pay the balance minus deposits and make some to do lists.

If you know you want to go somewhere for spring break, Memorial Day weekend, or Thanksgiving, look ahead and if you're able, go ahead and book.

The vacation rental by owner sites usually require 50% at the time of booking, but hotels will often reserve your spot with a credit card but no money down.

Vacation Sites

AirBnB

VRBO

Travelocity

National Parks

Trivago (get the cheapest rate at your desired hotel)

CheapAir

Update (Or Create) Your Household Binder

If you like the idea of a central command zone where most of the pertinent household information is located, get a homemaking binder. You can  get a 3 ring binder from your local store and then fill it with the essentials.

Photocopies of driver's licenses, passport information. Copies of bills so each adult in the house can locate the necessary phone and account numbers if they need to take care of business.

From budgeting info to favorite recipes, a household binder will help you feel immediately more organized and in control of the household administrative duties.

Grab It: Print Your Household Binder Here (currently at 30% off)

Revisit Budget & Tweak What Didn't Work

Look at your budget again. If you are like me then the monthly budget is much the same from month to month. Before you roll it all over without another thought, check it out again.

Look at your line items.

Are there any things you can take off you don't use anymore? Any you'd like to add so the budget is slightly more conservative, ensuring you don't go over?

Check Out These Line Items

Subscriptions (Netflix, Sirius, cable, etc.)

Groceries

Gas

Spending $

Retirement

Fun $

Want Some Accountability To Get Your Year Started Right?

The week of January 4th we're going to do a New Year Fresh Start Bootcamp. Together we'll spend 4 days getting ourselves ready for the New Year and offer you practical strategies, accountability, and more!

Stay tuned!

::

The post 7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year appeared first on A Mother Far from Home.

[kevinjhora-blog]

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

Already feeling like you need more organization in your life? Here are some simple things you can do to help get ahead.

The past few weeks have been a welcome break.

Later bedtimes, later wake times, and less deadlines.

But now it's the new year and now it's time to get going. Everywhere I turn people are posting about their goals, resolutions, and specific dreams for this year. While I love seeing others' enthusiasm… it's also made me stressed.

It's made me feel anxious I'm already behind on this year and it's barely begun. 

So in an effort to feel like this upcoming year is under my control, I made a list of simple things to do and have been knocking them off one-by-one.

And you know what?

It feels amazing.

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

If you want to feel more settled, ordered, and organized for the new year then take a few hours over the next week or two and knock these out one by one.

You'll already feel less anxious and stressed about what the year holds.

Get A Planner & Add Important Dates

I love getting my new planner organized for the New Year.

If you've recently purchased a planner then now's the time to add in all the dates you can. Just having a paper planner is a lifesaver. If you are a digital planner than get out your calendar online and fill in those important dates as well.

When I add in an important date, I may also go back a few weeks and put a reminder to buy a present or book a reservation, etc.

I buy my planner from the Brilliant Life Shop, but there are some Amazon ones listed below as well.

Dates to Add In:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays you celebrate

When you need to begin preparing for something (i.e. 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving, etc.)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Planners"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "0dd5c214c6b8e425a3ee389044bb41b6"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B013Z5Y70K,B01KEU5GOA,B071QXXM31,1631363239";

Make Yearly Appointments For All Family Members

It's much easier to remember to go to an appointment than it is to make it. Choose a month of the year to do certain appointments (i.e. dentist appointments every January and June) and book those out in advance.

You can add them into the planner you purchased above or into your digital calendar and set reminders. I'm not great at remembering to make appointments off the cuff, but doing it in advance ensures it gets done.

Appointments To Make

Check-ups

Dental cleanings (at least once, preferably twice a year)

Female check-ups for mom

Appointments with specialists (allergies, etc.)

Follow-ups for all previous diagnoses, procedures, etc.

Add School Calendar And Standing Events In Planner

If your children at in school, you can easily access the school's yearly calendar by going to the county website. They'll have a PDF version available for you with most events for the remainder of the year.

Add in things to your planner so you'll be prepared. Again, you can put in reminders a week or two in advance if you need to do anything beforehand.

Events to Add

School starting and closing dates

School holidays

Spring Break and Winter Break

Tryouts and sport season information

Standardized testing dates

Get Thank You Notes & Stamp Them

One of the best things I've done recently is to pre-stamp my thank you card envelopes. (Note: I used pre-stamped thank you notes all last year and loved it!)

I've just purchased some regular cards and will pre-stamp those as well. This means when it crosses your mind to write a note, jot down a thanks, or say a simple “I'm thinking of you” then you can do it in a few minutes and get it done.

Busy moms have the best of intentions, but a shortcut like this will mean you get the thoughts out of your head and into the mailbox without the mental barriers.

Reference Info For Notes And Stamps

You can buy stamps online

I buy our thank you cards and personalized cards from Vistaprint (half the price of Shutterfly or Minted)

Shutterfly

Minted (high quality)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Thank You Cards"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "dc5e1d19f8702b7c50056a3155a6d844"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B010MXDYFW,B01M0TTHCH,B0085ECSNK,B01MSQK8Y8";

Add Vacations In Calendar And Book What You Can

Two years ago, I booked the entire year's worth of vacations in one sitting.

It was exhilarating to know it was all done and as each trip came nearer, all we had to do was pay the balance minus deposits and make some to do lists.

If you know you want to go somewhere for spring break, Memorial Day weekend, or Thanksgiving, look ahead and if you're able, go ahead and book.

The vacation rental by owner sites usually require 50% at the time of booking, but hotels will often reserve your spot with a credit card but no money down.

Vacation Sites

AirBnB

VRBO

Travelocity

National Parks

Trivago (get the cheapest rate at your desired hotel)

CheapAir

Update (Or Create) Your Household Binder

If you like the idea of a central command zone where most of the pertinent household information is located, get a homemaking binder. You can  get a 3 ring binder from your local store and then fill it with the essentials.

Photocopies of driver's licenses, passport information. Copies of bills so each adult in the house can locate the necessary phone and account numbers if they need to take care of business.

From budgeting info to favorite recipes, a household binder will help you feel immediately more organized and in control of the household administrative duties.

Grab It: Print Your Household Binder Here (currently at 30% off)

Revisit Budget & Tweak What Didn't Work

Look at your budget again. If you are like me then the monthly budget is much the same from month to month. Before you roll it all over without another thought, check it out again.

Look at your line items.

Are there any things you can take off you don't use anymore? Any you'd like to add so the budget is slightly more conservative, ensuring you don't go over?

Check Out These Line Items

Subscriptions (Netflix, Sirius, cable, etc.)

Groceries

Gas

Spending $

Retirement

Fun $

Want Some Accountability To Get Your Year Started Right?

The week of January 4th we're going to do a New Year Fresh Start Bootcamp. Together we'll spend 4 days getting ourselves ready for the New Year and offer you practical strategies, accountability, and more!

Stay tuned!

::

The post 7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year appeared first on A Mother Far from Home.

[tylersharrison32-blog]

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

Already feeling like you need more organization in your life? Here are some simple things you can do to help get ahead.

The past few weeks have been a welcome break.

Later bedtimes, later wake times, and less deadlines.

But now it's the new year and now it's time to get going. Everywhere I turn people are posting about their goals, resolutions, and specific dreams for this year. While I love seeing others' enthusiasm… it's also made me stressed.

It's made me feel anxious I'm already behind on this year and it's barely begun. 

So in an effort to feel like this upcoming year is under my control, I made a list of simple things to do and have been knocking them off one-by-one.

And you know what?

It feels amazing.

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

If you want to feel more settled, ordered, and organized for the new year then take a few hours over the next week or two and knock these out one by one.

You'll already feel less anxious and stressed about what the year holds.

Get A Planner & Add Important Dates

I love getting my new planner organized for the New Year.

If you've recently purchased a planner then now's the time to add in all the dates you can. Just having a paper planner is a lifesaver. If you are a digital planner than get out your calendar online and fill in those important dates as well.

When I add in an important date, I may also go back a few weeks and put a reminder to buy a present or book a reservation, etc.

I buy my planner from the Brilliant Life Shop, but there are some Amazon ones listed below as well.

Dates to Add In:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays you celebrate

When you need to begin preparing for something (i.e. 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving, etc.)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Planners"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "0dd5c214c6b8e425a3ee389044bb41b6"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B013Z5Y70K,B01KEU5GOA,B071QXXM31,1631363239";

Make Yearly Appointments For All Family Members

It's much easier to remember to go to an appointment than it is to make it. Choose a month of the year to do certain appointments (i.e. dentist appointments every January and June) and book those out in advance.

You can add them into the planner you purchased above or into your digital calendar and set reminders. I'm not great at remembering to make appointments off the cuff, but doing it in advance ensures it gets done.

Appointments To Make

Check-ups

Dental cleanings (at least once, preferably twice a year)

Female check-ups for mom

Appointments with specialists (allergies, etc.)

Follow-ups for all previous diagnoses, procedures, etc.

Add School Calendar And Standing Events In Planner

If your children at in school, you can easily access the school's yearly calendar by going to the county website. They'll have a PDF version available for you with most events for the remainder of the year.

Add in things to your planner so you'll be prepared. Again, you can put in reminders a week or two in advance if you need to do anything beforehand.

Events to Add

School starting and closing dates

School holidays

Spring Break and Winter Break

Tryouts and sport season information

Standardized testing dates

Get Thank You Notes & Stamp Them

One of the best things I've done recently is to pre-stamp my thank you card envelopes. (Note: I used pre-stamped thank you notes all last year and loved it!)

I've just purchased some regular cards and will pre-stamp those as well. This means when it crosses your mind to write a note, jot down a thanks, or say a simple “I'm thinking of you” then you can do it in a few minutes and get it done.

Busy moms have the best of intentions, but a shortcut like this will mean you get the thoughts out of your head and into the mailbox without the mental barriers.

Reference Info For Notes And Stamps

You can buy stamps online

I buy our thank you cards and personalized cards from Vistaprint (half the price of Shutterfly or Minted)

Shutterfly

Minted (high quality)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Thank You Cards"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "dc5e1d19f8702b7c50056a3155a6d844"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B010MXDYFW,B01M0TTHCH,B0085ECSNK,B01MSQK8Y8";

Add Vacations In Calendar And Book What You Can

Two years ago, I booked the entire year's worth of vacations in one sitting.

It was exhilarating to know it was all done and as each trip came nearer, all we had to do was pay the balance minus deposits and make some to do lists.

If you know you want to go somewhere for spring break, Memorial Day weekend, or Thanksgiving, look ahead and if you're able, go ahead and book.

The vacation rental by owner sites usually require 50% at the time of booking, but hotels will often reserve your spot with a credit card but no money down.

Vacation Sites

AirBnB

VRBO

Travelocity

National Parks

Trivago (get the cheapest rate at your desired hotel)

CheapAir

Update (Or Create) Your Household Binder

If you like the idea of a central command zone where most of the pertinent household information is located, get a homemaking binder. You can  get a 3 ring binder from your local store and then fill it with the essentials.

Photocopies of driver's licenses, passport information. Copies of bills so each adult in the house can locate the necessary phone and account numbers if they need to take care of business.

From budgeting info to favorite recipes, a household binder will help you feel immediately more organized and in control of the household administrative duties.

Grab It: Print Your Household Binder Here (currently at 30% off)

Revisit Budget & Tweak What Didn't Work

Look at your budget again. If you are like me then the monthly budget is much the same from month to month. Before you roll it all over without another thought, check it out again.

Look at your line items.

Are there any things you can take off you don't use anymore? Any you'd like to add so the budget is slightly more conservative, ensuring you don't go over?

Check Out These Line Items

Subscriptions (Netflix, Sirius, cable, etc.)

Groceries

Gas

Spending $

Retirement

Fun $

Want Some Accountability To Get Your Year Started Right?

The week of January 4th we're going to do a New Year Fresh Start Bootcamp. Together we'll spend 4 days getting ourselves ready for the New Year and offer you practical strategies, accountability, and more!

Stay tuned!

::

The post 7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year appeared first on A Mother Far from Home.

[eugenemjacobs-blog]

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

Already feeling like you need more organization in your life? Here are some simple things you can do to help get ahead.

The past few weeks have been a welcome break.

Later bedtimes, later wake times, and less deadlines.

But now it's the new year and now it's time to get going. Everywhere I turn people are posting about their goals, resolutions, and specific dreams for this year. While I love seeing others' enthusiasm… it's also made me stressed.

It's made me feel anxious I'm already behind on this year and it's barely begun. 

So in an effort to feel like this upcoming year is under my control, I made a list of simple things to do and have been knocking them off one-by-one.

And you know what?

It feels amazing.

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

If you want to feel more settled, ordered, and organized for the new year then take a few hours over the next week or two and knock these out one by one.

You'll already feel less anxious and stressed about what the year holds.

Get A Planner & Add Important Dates

I love getting my new planner organized for the New Year.

If you've recently purchased a planner then now's the time to add in all the dates you can. Just having a paper planner is a lifesaver. If you are a digital planner than get out your calendar online and fill in those important dates as well.

When I add in an important date, I may also go back a few weeks and put a reminder to buy a present or book a reservation, etc.

I buy my planner from the Brilliant Life Shop, but there are some Amazon ones listed below as well.

Dates to Add In:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays you celebrate

When you need to begin preparing for something (i.e. 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving, etc.)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Planners"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "0dd5c214c6b8e425a3ee389044bb41b6"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B013Z5Y70K,B01KEU5GOA,B071QXXM31,1631363239";

Make Yearly Appointments For All Family Members

It's much easier to remember to go to an appointment than it is to make it. Choose a month of the year to do certain appointments (i.e. dentist appointments every January and June) and book those out in advance.

You can add them into the planner you purchased above or into your digital calendar and set reminders. I'm not great at remembering to make appointments off the cuff, but doing it in advance ensures it gets done.

Appointments To Make

Check-ups

Dental cleanings (at least once, preferably twice a year)

Female check-ups for mom

Appointments with specialists (allergies, etc.)

Follow-ups for all previous diagnoses, procedures, etc.

Add School Calendar And Standing Events In Planner

If your children at in school, you can easily access the school's yearly calendar by going to the county website. They'll have a PDF version available for you with most events for the remainder of the year.

Add in things to your planner so you'll be prepared. Again, you can put in reminders a week or two in advance if you need to do anything beforehand.

Events to Add

School starting and closing dates

School holidays

Spring Break and Winter Break

Tryouts and sport season information

Standardized testing dates

Get Thank You Notes & Stamp Them

One of the best things I've done recently is to pre-stamp my thank you card envelopes. (Note: I used pre-stamped thank you notes all last year and loved it!)

I've just purchased some regular cards and will pre-stamp those as well. This means when it crosses your mind to write a note, jot down a thanks, or say a simple “I'm thinking of you” then you can do it in a few minutes and get it done.

Busy moms have the best of intentions, but a shortcut like this will mean you get the thoughts out of your head and into the mailbox without the mental barriers.

Reference Info For Notes And Stamps

You can buy stamps online

I buy our thank you cards and personalized cards from Vistaprint (half the price of Shutterfly or Minted)

Shutterfly

Minted (high quality)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Thank You Cards"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "dc5e1d19f8702b7c50056a3155a6d844"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B010MXDYFW,B01M0TTHCH,B0085ECSNK,B01MSQK8Y8";

Add Vacations In Calendar And Book What You Can

Two years ago, I booked the entire year's worth of vacations in one sitting.

It was exhilarating to know it was all done and as each trip came nearer, all we had to do was pay the balance minus deposits and make some to do lists.

If you know you want to go somewhere for spring break, Memorial Day weekend, or Thanksgiving, look ahead and if you're able, go ahead and book.

The vacation rental by owner sites usually require 50% at the time of booking, but hotels will often reserve your spot with a credit card but no money down.

Vacation Sites

AirBnB

VRBO

Travelocity

National Parks

Trivago (get the cheapest rate at your desired hotel)

CheapAir

Update (Or Create) Your Household Binder

If you like the idea of a central command zone where most of the pertinent household information is located, get a homemaking binder. You can  get a 3 ring binder from your local store and then fill it with the essentials.

Photocopies of driver's licenses, passport information. Copies of bills so each adult in the house can locate the necessary phone and account numbers if they need to take care of business.

From budgeting info to favorite recipes, a household binder will help you feel immediately more organized and in control of the household administrative duties.

Grab It: Print Your Household Binder Here (currently at 30% off)

Revisit Budget & Tweak What Didn't Work

Look at your budget again. If you are like me then the monthly budget is much the same from month to month. Before you roll it all over without another thought, check it out again.

Look at your line items.

Are there any things you can take off you don't use anymore? Any you'd like to add so the budget is slightly more conservative, ensuring you don't go over?

Check Out These Line Items

Subscriptions (Netflix, Sirius, cable, etc.)

Groceries

Gas

Spending $

Retirement

Fun $

Want Some Accountability To Get Your Year Started Right?

The week of January 4th we're going to do a New Year Fresh Start Bootcamp. Together we'll spend 4 days getting ourselves ready for the New Year and offer you practical strategies, accountability, and more!

Stay tuned!

::

The post 7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year appeared first on A Mother Far from Home.

[robertomessi311-blog]

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

Already feeling like you need more organization in your life? Here are some simple things you can do to help get ahead.

The past few weeks have been a welcome break.

Later bedtimes, later wake times, and less deadlines.

But now it's the new year and now it's time to get going. Everywhere I turn people are posting about their goals, resolutions, and specific dreams for this year. While I love seeing others' enthusiasm… it's also made me stressed.

It's made me feel anxious I'm already behind on this year and it's barely begun. 

So in an effort to feel like this upcoming year is under my control, I made a list of simple things to do and have been knocking them off one-by-one.

And you know what?

It feels amazing.

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

If you want to feel more settled, ordered, and organized for the new year then take a few hours over the next week or two and knock these out one by one.

You'll already feel less anxious and stressed about what the year holds.

Get A Planner & Add Important Dates

I love getting my new planner organized for the New Year.

If you've recently purchased a planner then now's the time to add in all the dates you can. Just having a paper planner is a lifesaver. If you are a digital planner than get out your calendar online and fill in those important dates as well.

When I add in an important date, I may also go back a few weeks and put a reminder to buy a present or book a reservation, etc.

I buy my planner from the Brilliant Life Shop, but there are some Amazon ones listed below as well.

Dates to Add In:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays you celebrate

When you need to begin preparing for something (i.e. 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving, etc.)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Planners"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "0dd5c214c6b8e425a3ee389044bb41b6"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B013Z5Y70K,B01KEU5GOA,B071QXXM31,1631363239";

Make Yearly Appointments For All Family Members

It's much easier to remember to go to an appointment than it is to make it. Choose a month of the year to do certain appointments (i.e. dentist appointments every January and June) and book those out in advance.

You can add them into the planner you purchased above or into your digital calendar and set reminders. I'm not great at remembering to make appointments off the cuff, but doing it in advance ensures it gets done.

Appointments To Make

Check-ups

Dental cleanings (at least once, preferably twice a year)

Female check-ups for mom

Appointments with specialists (allergies, etc.)

Follow-ups for all previous diagnoses, procedures, etc.

Add School Calendar And Standing Events In Planner

If your children at in school, you can easily access the school's yearly calendar by going to the county website. They'll have a PDF version available for you with most events for the remainder of the year.

Add in things to your planner so you'll be prepared. Again, you can put in reminders a week or two in advance if you need to do anything beforehand.

Events to Add

School starting and closing dates

School holidays

Spring Break and Winter Break

Tryouts and sport season information

Standardized testing dates

Get Thank You Notes & Stamp Them

One of the best things I've done recently is to pre-stamp my thank you card envelopes. (Note: I used pre-stamped thank you notes all last year and loved it!)

I've just purchased some regular cards and will pre-stamp those as well. This means when it crosses your mind to write a note, jot down a thanks, or say a simple “I'm thinking of you” then you can do it in a few minutes and get it done.

Busy moms have the best of intentions, but a shortcut like this will mean you get the thoughts out of your head and into the mailbox without the mental barriers.

Reference Info For Notes And Stamps

You can buy stamps online

I buy our thank you cards and personalized cards from Vistaprint (half the price of Shutterfly or Minted)

Shutterfly

Minted (high quality)

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "amofafrho-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Thank You Cards"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "dc5e1d19f8702b7c50056a3155a6d844"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B010MXDYFW,B01M0TTHCH,B0085ECSNK,B01MSQK8Y8";

Add Vacations In Calendar And Book What You Can

Two years ago, I booked the entire year's worth of vacations in one sitting.

It was exhilarating to know it was all done and as each trip came nearer, all we had to do was pay the balance minus deposits and make some to do lists.

If you know you want to go somewhere for spring break, Memorial Day weekend, or Thanksgiving, look ahead and if you're able, go ahead and book.

The vacation rental by owner sites usually require 50% at the time of booking, but hotels will often reserve your spot with a credit card but no money down.

Vacation Sites

AirBnB

VRBO

Travelocity

National Parks

Trivago (get the cheapest rate at your desired hotel)

CheapAir

Update (Or Create) Your Household Binder

If you like the idea of a central command zone where most of the pertinent household information is located, get a homemaking binder. You can  get a 3 ring binder from your local store and then fill it with the essentials.

Photocopies of driver's licenses, passport information. Copies of bills so each adult in the house can locate the necessary phone and account numbers if they need to take care of business.

From budgeting info to favorite recipes, a household binder will help you feel immediately more organized and in control of the household administrative duties.

Grab It: Print Your Household Binder Here (currently at 30% off)

Revisit Budget & Tweak What Didn't Work

Look at your budget again. If you are like me then the monthly budget is much the same from month to month. Before you roll it all over without another thought, check it out again.

Look at your line items.

Are there any things you can take off you don't use anymore? Any you'd like to add so the budget is slightly more conservative, ensuring you don't go over?

Check Out These Line Items

Subscriptions (Netflix, Sirius, cable, etc.)

Groceries

Gas

Spending $

Retirement

Fun $

Want Some Accountability To Get Your Year Started Right?

The week of January 4th we're going to do a New Year Fresh Start Bootcamp. Together we'll spend 4 days getting ourselves ready for the New Year and offer you practical strategies, accountability, and more!

Stay tuned!

::

The post 7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year appeared first on A Mother Far from Home.

[kennethherrerablog]

Here Are the 13 Best Second Jobs — Plus What You Need to Land One

Are you thinking about taking on a second job?

Sometimes called “side hustles” or “side gigs,” they can be a great way to supplement your income to pay off bills, grow savings and have some extra cash in your wallet. Also, these gigs might lead to opportunities to develop new skills or explore your passions.

But before you sign up for part-time work or dive head first into an independent-contractor gig, you have to think about which side jobs are best for you. With that in mind, here are some tips on how to find the right second job — plus 13 gigs to consider.

How to Find the Right Second Job

Here are some specific questions to ask yourself about a gig and your situation when hunting for a second job.

Will This Gig Interfere With My Day Job?

When searching for the best second job for yourself, make sure it will not cause conflicts with your regular job. The last thing you want to do is get fired from your day job in pursuit of a second job.

Every company is different, and some may have strict guidelines on what you can and can’t do regarding side hustles. Take some time to look through your company’s employee handbook or schedule a meeting with your human resources manager to find out for sure. Once you figure out that you can do a second job, look for ones that can be done during your off hours.

How Flexible Is Your Schedule?

Although you may be able to find a second job that has some schedule flexibility, you also need to be willing to make changes to your personal schedule. This means being willing to do your side gig before or after work or eliminating nonessential activities.

McKinzie Bean, who runs the website Moms Make Cents, recommends recording your schedule for one week to find which events, like bingeing on Netflix on a Tuesday night, you can cut.

“Just see which pieces you’re willing to give up because it is going to take some sacrifice to get to that point where your business is growing,” she says.

Will You Need Additional Training?

When narrowing down your list of potential second jobs, keep in mind that not all gigs will be available right away. Some jobs may require a specific skill certification. Some industries have official certifying bodies that conduct competency tests that allow people to work within a field for a period of time.

If you don’t have a certification needed in your field, factor in some extra schooling or studying before opening up shop.

“They’re looking for reasons to hire candidates,” says Tim Gates, senior regional vice president at Adecco Staffing. “So if they see anything that’s relevant to their industry, to their company, to the specific position, it’s definitely going to help to make that candidate more attractive.”

One way to learn additional skills is by signing up for massive open online courses. These 100% online courses can be completed at your own pace, offering online certifications in personal branding and social media literacy.

Having these certifications shows employers that you have ambition, says Robin Colner, director of Fordham University’s certificate program in digital and social media.

“It shows a desire and an understanding of the marketplace, which every employer wants,” she says.

Where Do You Want to Work?

So, where do you want to conduct your second job? Are you interested in being an assistant in an office, a sales associate in a store, a server in a restaurant or a ride-share driver in your car?

If going to another business after work to do your second job doesn’t sound appealing, then consider looking for a work-from-home job. Check out The Penny Hoarder’s Work-From-Home Jobs Portal for jobs such as customer service associates, part-time English tutors, transcriptionists and much more.

What Are You Looking for in This Job?  

Ask yourself what you’re trying to get out of your side gig. Are you trying to find a second job that pays a lot of money, expands your skills or explores a passion? What if you don’t know what job is best for you?

If you don’t know where to begin, write down your strengths on a piece of paper and what you’re looking for in a second job. This piece of paper can be a reference point to help with in your search to find your marketable skill.

In addition, consult your friends and coworkers to find out what skills they think you excel at. Their observations may help you figure out which job is best for you.

“Until someone else sees that [skill] in you, you don’t realize it’s a unique skill or a skill [other] people are having trouble with,” says Sol Rosenbaum, who runs The Engineering Mentor, a website that helps engineers develop interpersonal skills such as communicating and collaborating.

The Best Second Jobs

If you don’t already have a specific side gig in mind, here are some second-job ideas to consider. These jobs are broken down into categories, including service industry, smartphone apps and work-from-home.

App-Based Gig Jobs

Thanks to smartphones, app-based gig jobs have risen in popularity in recent years. Companies such as Uber and Lyft, Rover and GrubHub make it easier for people to accept jobs on the fly and work a flexible schedule. Here is a breakdown of some of the more popular gig jobs involving smartphone apps.

1. Ride-share Driver

Turn your car into a taxi on your terms. Try driving with Lyft!

Demand for ride-sharing has been growing like crazy, and it shows no signs of slowing down. To be eligible, you’ll need to be at least 21 years old with a year of driving experience, pass a background check and own a car made in 2007 or later.

We talked to Paul Pruce, who had been driving full-time with Lyft for over a year and earning $750 a week as a driver.

Best of all, he could do it on his own time. You can work days, nights or weekends — it’s up to you!

Because it’s easy to switch between apps, Lyft drivers often also sign up to drive with Uber.

2. Grocery Shopper

Not comfortable with driving strangers around? How about picking up groceries instead? Shipt and Instacart are two services that deliver supermarket essentials to a customer’s door. Drivers for the services receive an order, go to the store, pick out the items and drop them off.

Destiny Frith of Nashville, Tennessee, told The Penny Hoarder she earns about $600 in a 35-hour workweek as a Shipt shopper.

3. Meal Delivery

Luckily, there are other food-delivery options for people who don’t want to wait in the deli line for someone else’s cold cuts. With meal-delivery services like Uber Eats, Grubhub and DoorDash, drivers will pick up customers’ take-out orders from restaurants and deliver the items to them.

According to Uber Eats, the amount of money drivers earn depends on several factors, such as when they work, demand for deliveries and tips. Drivers earn pickup, drop-off and trip mileage fees. Uber takes a cut of the overall payout, but drivers keep 100% of their tips.

Like traditional Uber, surge pricing can boost your pay during popular times, and Uber’s Instant Pay feature lets you access your pay from trips immediately after they conclude — for a 50 cent fee each time — up to five times per day.

4. Dog Walking  

If you’re looking for a flexible, independent way to earn money — and you love hanging out with dogs — Rover might be your perfect gig.

The online network connects dog walkers and sitters to local dog owners through its 4.9-star-rated app, so you don’t have to staple flyers on every utility pole across town.

Rover says sitters can earn as much as $1,000 a month.

Rover dog-sitter requirements vary by location. In general, you must:

Be 18 years or older.

Pass a background check.

Have access to the Rover app (iOS or Android).

Here’s how it works: You’ll create an online sitter profile where you’ll answer questions about your experience with puppers and your schedule availability.

You can choose to offer a variety of services, including dog walking, overnight boarding at your home or theirs, and daycare. Boarding is the app’s most popular service, so offering it can get you more gigs. You set your own rates. (Rover keeps a small percentage as a service fee.)

Dog owners will reach out to you. Accept which gigs you want, then start snugglin’ pups. As soon as you complete a service, you’ll be paid within two days.

5. Odd Jobs

For those who are a little more handy around the house and don’t want to be stuck in a car all day, think about putting your odd-job skills to good use.

TaskRabbit, a service that connects workers with people who need help at home, lists a variety of tasks that people can accept, including assembling furniture, mounting TVs, cleaning and more.

According to Brittany Benson, a TaskRabbit spokeswoman, “Taskers” in the United States earn an average of $35 per hour. Check out our overview of how to make money on TaskRabbit.

Service Industry

The service industry depends on people looking for extra work as servers and bartenders. The hours and pay can vary depending on the type of establishment, so make sure these shifts will not interfere with your day job.

6. Restaurant Server

Since most servers rely on tips, do your best to find busy restaurants that have expensive food and drink. That way, you have a better chance to get a more lucrative tip at the bottom of the receipt. Restaurant servers earn $8.33 per hour, including tips, according to a The Penny Hoarder analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.  

7. Bartender

You may need some previous experience behind a bar before getting a gig serving cocktails. Bartenders earn $11.54 per hour, including tips, according to a The Penny Hoarder analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. If you have the necessary know-how to become a bartender, try out these 16 tricks to maximize your tip income.

8. Fast-Food Worker

Working in a fast-food restaurant is a common first job for high schoolers, but now may be the time to give it another shot.

Some of the biggest fast-food chains have added more benefits for their employees. McDonald’s announced in early 2018 that it was planning to expand its college tuition assistance program. A few months later, KFC started offering employees access to personal finance education and budgeting software. Fast-food workers earn $6.41 per hour, according to a The Penny Hoarder analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Work From Home

Work-from-home jobs are a great option if leaving your day job and going straight to another gig doesn’t sound appealing. These jobs offer the flexibility to do your duties from the comfort of your home office.

9. Customer Service Associate

These gigs come in many forms, requiring reps to resolve issues for customers on the phone and by chat and email. Fields include technology, health care and finance. Customer service jobs require patience, a desire to help people and a proper computer setup. Check out the customer service jobs available on The Penny Hoarder Work-From-Home Jobs Portal for more information.

10. Freelance and Creative Writing

So you have a way with words. Why not get paid to use them? You can find opportunities to get paid to write copy and original creative writing pieces. One of the ways to make your writing more in-demand is to focus on a specific niche or topic, such as finance or technology.

Also, stay away from writing for sites and services that pay little per article. Those articles usually need to be written in a hurry and are not worthy to be clips in your professional portfolio.

If you’re interested in getting paid for your original creative writing pieces, then sign up for a submission-management website, such as Submittable or Duotrope, says Jerrod Schwarz, a creative writing professor at the University of Tampa and a managing editor of Driftwood Press Literary Magazine.

Here’s a breakdown on how to make more money as a freelance writer and a list of magazines that pay for creative writing submissions.

11. Teaching English as a Second Language

If you’re a former teacher looking to make some money from home, you should check out VIPKid, Qkids or Italki. These companies connect U.S. instructors with students who want to learn English.

According to the Qkids website, most online teachers work 10 to 20 hours per week and earn between $16 and $20, including loyalty bonuses.

Jennifer Ross, a former schoolteacher who now works for VIPKid, told The Penny Hoarder in 2018 she makes more than $520 working 24 hours a week.

12. Online Tutoring

Another teaching opportunity available outside the classroom is online tutoring. Several companies give educators a chance to help students while working from the comfort of home.

Tutors with Chegg, for example, earn $20 or more per hour teaching grades 6-12, college and working professionals in topics such as calculus, computer science, zoology — and more.

Most companies require teachers to have a bachelor’s degree or be working toward one. But not all companies, like Tutor.com or Yup, require previous teaching experience. Here’s a roundup of work-from-home online tutoring companies.

13. E-Commerce Seller

Maybe you’re not interested in working in a service-industry gig and want to explore your crafty side. Thanks to the popularity of platforms like Etsy, eBay and Facebook Marketplace, craft merchants and small business owners have an outlet to sell their goods.

Etsy seller Lena Gosik-Wolfe encourages new sellers to do their due diligence in the beginning by obtaining the necessary tax documents, business licenses and web domain for their companies before making a first sale.

“It’s better to take it seriously and get that stuff in order from the start rather than having to go back and fix it later on,” she says. If you’re considering selling on Etsy, here are five more tips to help boost your sales.

In addition to Etsy, craft sellers can open up online stores using Amazon and Shopify. One of the benefits of selling on Amazon is the sheer number of people who use the site every day.

The downside is that there’s increased competition from people selling similar products. An upside is that sellers have access to features such as Prime and Fulfillment by Amazon.

Shopify is another option for sellers who prefer control over their online store to merely listing their goods on a large aggregate like Etsy. Shopify is user-friendly for sellers who aren’t especially tech-savvy, offering more than 100 free, customizable online store templates. Find out more about different e-commerce services here.

Matt Reinstetle is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.

Here Are the 13 Best Second Jobs — Plus What You Need to Land One published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[kansascityhappenings]

Federal government shutdown leaving many metro families hungry for help

BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. — People who work for the federal government and those who rely on its programs are now feeling the sting of the ongoing government shutdown.

The shutdown is now in its 24th day — with no end in sight.

Federal workers just missed their first paycheck since the shutdown started on Friday. That, coupled with a change in how food stamp money is given, could have many more families hungry for help.

The shelves are full at Impact Ministry Family Resource Center at Blue Springs First Baptist Church, but it won’t stay that way for long.

“It goes out as fast as it comes in,” said Kim Danley, director of the center.

The resource center currently serves 500 families a month with essential food, personal care items and clothing. That number is growing by at least 50 families every month, and it’s expected to climb even higher with thousands of local federal workers off the job.

“I get it. I get the importance of just what we call a bag of hope, our grocery bags can make, the meat can make, to help you get to the next paycheck,” Danley said.

Yet another layer hurting dinner tables during the government shutdown stalemate are food stamps. February benefits are being given now, but there’s no guarantee of any future payments as long as the shutdown continues.

“They need to think about the people and not their agenda and what they want to accomplish. They’re there for us and not themselves,” Lacie Tucker said.

Tucker suffers from a neurological condition called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Her muscles are so weak, she can barely walk or stand and falls easily, making it virtually impossible to hold a job. Disability benefits and food stamps are her sole means of survival.

“I would hate to have to ask for handouts or favors. I like to be independent and do things on my own. And being disabled it is hard, but it’s something that I am a person still, not just my disability,” Tucker said.

But Tucker said stretching the few dollars she gets in food stamps indefinitely could force her to rely on food banks. And the Impact Ministry Family Resource Center wants to do all it can to help.

“We never turn anybody away the first time for any reason. We serve you like we do everybody else,” Danley said.

The center, located at 1710 W. Main St., is open three days a week — Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Wednesday, 4–6 p.m.; and Thursday, 10 a.m.  to 1 p.m. An ID and utility bill is all you need to get started.

If you’re able, the center can also really use donations. Here are some of the items needed most:

Canned food: (e.g. ravioli; chicken noodle soup; fruit; green beans; corn; pork and beans, etc.)

Spaghetti sauce in cans or plastic jars (no glass, please)

Jars of jelly and peanut butter (plastic jars, no glass please)

Boxed helper meals (e.g. hamburger/tuna helper)

Kid-friendly cereal

Mac and cheese

Tuna

Instant potatoes

Feminine hygiene products

Personal care items (e.g. toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, etc.)

Diapers (especially sizes 4, 5, and 6)

Wipes

Children’s christian books

Bibles for all ages

Clothing of current styles (infant through 7)

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/01/14/federal-government-shutdown-leaving-many-metro-families-hungry-for-help/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/federal-government-shutdown-leaving-many-metro-families-hungry-for-help/

[kerrychelly-blog]

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

Already feeling like you need more organization in your life? Here are some simple things you can do to help get ahead.

The past few weeks have been a welcome break.

Later bedtimes, later wake times, and less deadlines.

But now it's the new year and now it's time to get going. Everywhere I turn people are posting about their goals, resolutions, and specific dreams for this year. While I love seeing others' enthusiasm… it's also made me stressed.

It's made me feel anxious I'm already behind on this year and it's barely begun. 

So in an effort to feel like this upcoming year is under my control, I made a list of simple things to do and have been knocking them off one-by-one.

And you know what?

It feels amazing.

7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year

If you want to feel more settled, ordered, and organized for the new year then take a few hours over the next week or two and knock these out one by one.

You'll already feel less anxious and stressed about what the year holds.

Get A Planner & Add Important Dates

I love getting my new planner organized for the New Year.

If you've recently purchased a planner then now's the time to add in all the dates you can. Just having a paper planner is a lifesaver. If you are a digital planner than get out your calendar online and fill in those important dates as well.

When I add in an important date, I may also go back a few weeks and put a reminder to buy a present or book a reservation, etc.

I buy my planner from the Brilliant Life Shop, but there are some Amazon ones listed below as well.

Dates to Add In:

Birthdays

Anniversaries

Holidays you celebrate

When you need to begin preparing for something (i.e. 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving, etc.)

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Make Yearly Appointments For All Family Members

It's much easier to remember to go to an appointment than it is to make it. Choose a month of the year to do certain appointments (i.e. dentist appointments every January and June) and book those out in advance.

You can add them into the planner you purchased above or into your digital calendar and set reminders. I'm not great at remembering to make appointments off the cuff, but doing it in advance ensures it gets done.

Appointments To Make

Check-ups

Dental cleanings (at least once, preferably twice a year)

Female check-ups for mom

Appointments with specialists (allergies, etc.)

Follow-ups for all previous diagnoses, procedures, etc.

Add School Calendar And Standing Events In Planner

If your children at in school, you can easily access the school's yearly calendar by going to the county website. They'll have a PDF version available for you with most events for the remainder of the year.

Add in things to your planner so you'll be prepared. Again, you can put in reminders a week or two in advance if you need to do anything beforehand.

Events to Add

School starting and closing dates

School holidays

Spring Break and Winter Break

Tryouts and sport season information

Standardized testing dates

Get Thank You Notes & Stamp Them

One of the best things I've done recently is to pre-stamp my thank you card envelopes. (Note: I used pre-stamped thank you notes all last year and loved it!)

I've just purchased some regular cards and will pre-stamp those as well. This means when it crosses your mind to write a note, jot down a thanks, or say a simple “I'm thinking of you” then you can do it in a few minutes and get it done.

Busy moms have the best of intentions, but a shortcut like this will mean you get the thoughts out of your head and into the mailbox without the mental barriers.

Reference Info For Notes And Stamps

You can buy stamps online

I buy our thank you cards and personalized cards from Vistaprint (half the price of Shutterfly or Minted)

Shutterfly

Minted (high quality)

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Add Vacations In Calendar And Book What You Can

Two years ago, I booked the entire year's worth of vacations in one sitting.

It was exhilarating to know it was all done and as each trip came nearer, all we had to do was pay the balance minus deposits and make some to do lists.

If you know you want to go somewhere for spring break, Memorial Day weekend, or Thanksgiving, look ahead and if you're able, go ahead and book.

The vacation rental by owner sites usually require 50% at the time of booking, but hotels will often reserve your spot with a credit card but no money down.

Vacation Sites

AirBnB

VRBO

Travelocity

National Parks

Trivago (get the cheapest rate at your desired hotel)

CheapAir

Update (Or Create) Your Household Binder

If you like the idea of a central command zone where most of the pertinent household information is located, get a homemaking binder. You can  get a 3 ring binder from your local store and then fill it with the essentials.

Photocopies of driver's licenses, passport information. Copies of bills so each adult in the house can locate the necessary phone and account numbers if they need to take care of business.

From budgeting info to favorite recipes, a household binder will help you feel immediately more organized and in control of the household administrative duties.

Grab It: Print Your Household Binder Here (currently at 30% off)

Revisit Budget & Tweak What Didn't Work

Look at your budget again. If you are like me then the monthly budget is much the same from month to month. Before you roll it all over without another thought, check it out again.

Look at your line items.

Are there any things you can take off you don't use anymore? Any you'd like to add so the budget is slightly more conservative, ensuring you don't go over?

Check Out These Line Items

Subscriptions (Netflix, Sirius, cable, etc.)

Groceries

Gas

Spending $

Retirement

Fun $

Want Some Accountability To Get Your Year Started Right?

The week of January 4th we're going to do a New Year Fresh Start Bootcamp. Together we'll spend 4 days getting ourselves ready for the New Year and offer you practical strategies, accountability, and more!

Stay tuned!

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The post 7 Simple Things You Can Do To Prepare Your Family For The Whole Year appeared first on A Mother Far from Home.