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Posted
Jun 25 2008, 04:28 PM
by
Karen Datko
Talk about secondary sources of income, a contest co-hosted by our sister MSN Money writer Liz Pulliam Weston offers the potential of lots of prize money and "not too much fame." All you've got to do is decide to save money and post a video about it at YouTube. Well, it's a little more complicated than that. Let us explain.
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Posted
Jun 25 2008, 12:35 PM
by
Karen Datko
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You're brown-bagging your lunch, driving less and clipping more coupons, but you're still not cutting expenses enough to compensate for higher gas and food prices. That's a common lament of many of our readers, who often ask, "Isn't there more I can do?" Hopefully you can find some inspiration in "101 ways I saved money this year" by "The Village Idiot" at an entertaining blog called Save, You Fool!
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Posted
Jun 16 2008, 06:10 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly. My wife has always maintained a sizable savings account, but having extra cash is new to me. Until recently, I had always lived paycheck to paycheck, often treading close to a zero dollar balance in my checkbook for months at a time. Now, though, I've not only established an emergency fund, but set up a couple of targeted accounts as well. (One is for vacations, and the other is for a new car.) My method works for me, but others have different approaches. In her book "Debt-Proof Living," author Mary Hunt suggests a sort of emergency fund plus. Often, when people struggle with money, she says, the predictable monthly bills aren't the problem. People cannot cope with the unexpected things -- not just emergencies (like a severe illness), but irregular expenses like auto maintenance, wedding and birthday gifts, or a new pair of shoes.
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Posted
May 20 2008, 06:39 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from partner blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. Plenty of articles discuss the importance of emergency funds and how to set one up, so this is not going to be one of those. I assume that you already understand all that good stuff. (If not, check out these great articles at a Money Blog Network writing project.) Here I'll discuss a strategy to maximize your emergency fund's interest earnings so you can lessen the pain of not having the funds in an investment account.
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Posted
Apr 28 2008, 04:47 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly. I wasn't raised in a culture of saving. My parents never made it a habit, and so could not pass the skill on to me or my brothers. In fact, I didn't establish my first savings account until three years ago, when I was 36 years old. (I had a passbook savings account as a young boy, but it never had more than $5 in it.)
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Posted
Mar 20 2008, 07:28 AM
by
Karen Datko
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Times are tough. The economy is "recessionesque," writes Nick at Punny Money. To save your job, you need to stay on the boss's radar. Nick says, "There's a fine line between brown-nosing and hiding in your cubicle, and you're going to want to ride it like a horse made of money when tough times are on the horizon." There's some wisdom to be found in his 11 satirical tips about what to do when your company is considering layoffs. (We also think his stick-figure cartoon is reason enough to check out his post.) Another tip: Become popular. Work and play well with others. Nick writes: "As long as he's pulling his weight on paper, nobody's going to lay off the office 'friend to all.' But you know Bertha down in Accounting who talks too loud on the phone and tries to convert everyone to her cult? Yeah, she's totally gone in the first round of layoffs."
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Posted
Mar 19 2008, 05:10 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Mrs. Micah clearly touched a nerve when she opened a discussion about how to save money to leave -- and ultimately divorce -- an abusive spouse. She and her readers -- including social workers, and former victims and their children -- provided lots of ideas to consider, as well as personal stories of successfully leaving or being found out. We'll summarize some of their suggestions here, but we recommend you read the entire series. Set up a P.O. box and get a bank account and safe deposit box using that address. Do not check your bank statements on your home computer. Readers left stories about tech-savvy abusers who installed programs to track their spouse's keystrokes. Stash a bag of clothing, cash and copies of important documents at the home of a trusted friend. Be extremely careful about sharing your plans; word can leak out. The daughter of an abused woman offered another perspective: Don't wait until you've saved money.
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Posted
Mar 13 2008, 01:05 PM
by
Karen Datko
We have a friend who is determined to buy a home, and this causes us to worry. Are prices going to drop where she lives (they haven't -- yet) after she buys? Renting is cheaper than buying in her city. Is she better off continuing to rent and investing the difference? Thus, posts on this subject intrigue us. One we recommend is Pinching Copper's "Why we rent," one of the top picks in the recent Carnival of Personal Finance. Of course, there are plenty of good arguments on both sides of the issue. Seb at Pinching Copper makes an interesting case by comparing what it costs to buy vs. rent a home with the same floor plan in each of three different major markets.
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Posted
Feb 29 2008, 08:02 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Look at these 12 little hacks and think about how simple they are. Switch your savings account from your local bank to ING Direct. That's the bank I switched to about a year and a half ago in order to get a higher interest rate (then more than 4%). They made the whole thing easy as pie -- it took about five minutes -- and I've never had anything but stellar customer service. Drink one less coffee a week. Let's say you stop at Starbucks -- or your preferred coffeehouse -- three times a week. Just trim it back to two. That's it. Call one credit card company and ask for a rate reduction. Just flip over your card and call that number on the back. Ask to speak to a supervisor if the first human you get won't reduce your rate.
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Posted
Feb 27 2008, 12:49 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Mike Richard at Master Your Card was intrigued by the LifeLock commercial in which the company CEO shares his Social Security number with the viewing public, as if to say, "LifeLock's services are so good that I dare you to try to steal my identity." So Mike decided to check out LifeLock's anti-identity-theft service -- which costs $120 -- to find out what all the fuss is about. "As it turns out," he writes, "every preventive service they offer is relatively easy, convenient and readily available for consumers to do themselves."
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