Yes, saving money involves being organized. One thing that husband and I agreed on - very early in our dating - was that neither of us liked being in debt. The day before we were married I paid for every one of my bills sitting waiting to be paid - including adding up the credit card slips and sending a check for same to the credit card company. I never wanted husband to be able to say that I married him in debt. (Well, technically I was in debt - my student loans were still being paid off by my parents and were not fully paid off until some time after we married - but he has been polite enough to never mention same.)
When I was a child - before age 5 - my parents started teaching me about money. I got an allowance of something like a penny (US) a week. Now, remember, both my parents were accountants. My mom set up a “bank account” for me. She drew up a little bank book (do they still exist now?). When I received my allowance I could keep it and spend it (amazingly, one could actually buy things then with a penny) or I could deposit it in my bank account and save up for something. If I “deposited” it in the “bank account” she would note in my bank book. If I decided to buy something and needed money, I could withdraw it from my bank account and she would note it in my bank book. Sounds crazy right? Well it taught me to save and what saving could do. (I don’t remember if she ever added interest to my account - I don’t think so.) If I got a gift of money from a relative I could, again, keep it and spend it or “deposit” it.
Over the decades the amount of my weekly allowance increased. By the time I was in junior high school (around age 12) I was getting $3 per week. My allowance was calculated so that I could buy lunch in school every day (50c per day), if I wanted to, from my allowance and I would still have money left over to spend. Over time I saved up money and took my parents and my younger sister (second sister was still a baby) to see a Broadway play (tickets were a lot cheaper than - under $10 even for orchestra seats and I bought for the mezzanine).
We have lived within our means since we married. We found an apartment that we could afford. At first we were spending most of our income. As we went along I came up with an idea. Husband received promotions at work - first director of his department and then director of the agency at which he worked. With the first promotion I took half of the increase in his net salary and saved it - only using half of the net salary increase for spending. Why? Well, we had been living on the amount he (and I ) received before - the raise was extra money that we would not miss if we put it in savings. I used the net amount (after taxes were deducted) as that amount was the extra money available to us. I did for some time.
Watch where you bank. Different banks, savings & loan associations or credit unions can charge hugely different amounts for the same services. A credit union functions just like a bank, only the depositors own it so fees are less. The same financial institution that works for a friend or family member - might not be best for you and what is good for you now (or last year) might not be the best for you right now or in the future. The credit unions I have been involved with locally require one to deposit $5 in a savings account and leave it there. One then gets a free checking account plus can make other deposits and withdrawals to the savings account. Generally the interest rate on credit union accounts is higher than those on accounts at banks.
We eventually bought a house. We bought one below what we could afford. We put down a good sized down payment on the house - much of it from my savings as a child. We did not like the idea of having a mortgage and wanted it paid off as quickly as we could. Instead of dividing the net salary increases in half after that, I would divide into thirds - one third to spend, one third to save and one third for extra mortgage payments. We paid the mortgage off in half the time it was for - again since the money was new money, it was not missed by us as we had not had it to spend before.
When we have bought cars - and we buy them, we do not lease them - we have mostly paid for them in full from savings. When we have had to take a loan - 3 times - for a car it was always for less than 25% of the price of the car. We drive them, with two exceptions, until it no longer makes sense to repair them. We have 23 year old van and a 10 year old car at the present time.
We did buy our little RV. It does have a loan on it. I send an extra $100 at least 4 times a year to speed up the payments on it and cut the amount of interest we will have paid on it when it is paid off.
We have paid our credit card bills in full - with one exception - since either of us had a credit card. No interest paid means money not needed for same and available to use. I recently read an article and the person who wrote it said that one should always pay in cash for everything. I wrote to them and pointed out that if items are put on credit cards one has a record of where their money went (and records for tax deductible items). If they are paid in full, it costs nothing in interest or fees. If one gets a credit card one can get one that pays a very small percentage back in cash - additional money to spend or save. In our case we use several credit cards - each for a different purpose and depending on the card and what we buy we can get up to 5% back in the purchases. Does not sound like much? We bought a fence for our house - we got 5% back on the price of the fence. We put a car down payment on a credit card - paid the credit card in full and got 5% back on the down payment towards the car. The one exception was decades ago. Husband used to get his unused sick days paid off at the end of the year, which was August, so we used the money received in September for the sick days to pay for vacation (and the balance of what was received into savings). One year there was a problem and the sick day pay was coming in October. We discussed should we take money from savings to pay the vacation bills and then deposit the sick pay to replace what we took or should we pay the half of the credit card bill we could and then pay the balance in full the following month. It was an odd time and the two interest rates were just about the same, so we went with paying half and then paying the bill in full the following month.
If one can get their bills in order, one can actually pay less and have money available for savings or needed items. I was reminded this past weekend when the movie “I Remember Mama” was on TV that I actually started my thinking of dealing with money with when I read the book (actually named “Mama’s Bank Account) as a girl. If you have never seen the movie or read the book - it is about a lower class Norwegian immigrant family in San Francisco in the early 1900s. Every week the father brings home his wages (in cash which was how people were paid back then at all but professional/executive level) and gives it to his wife. She sits there with paper and sorts the money “ for the grocer” she makes a pile and wraps it in paper, “for the landlord” ditto and so on. When there is a problem and money is needed for something special/different (such as the son going to high school - they will his potential wages and there will be costs) the mother says that they must figure out what to do so that they do not have to take money from her bank account. I have gone with this idea of “piles. I have moved money - in my computer accounts - to save for various things. By subtracting the money before we have it on our regular savings account, it is not there to spend. I had subaccounts in my Quickbooks - savings for next car, for vacation, etc. subtracted from the total amount of each paycheck and each time I did I heard in my head “for the grocer, for the landlord..”. (Spoiler alert - at the end of the book/movie the daughter/author has received her first payment for writing and tells the mother to deposit it in the bank account and the mother admits that she has never been in a bank in her life - but that “it is not a good for children to worry”.) Set aside money in advance for things that you want or need and you will not have to worry. Start next time there is a raise if you want and set aside part of the net raise in a savings account (or even a jar) and it will become a habit.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
It is back to school time again. If you need or know that you will need office supplies - now is the time to buy them. Pens disappear all the time? Buy them for around US$ for a dozen. Will you need a memo book, notebook, ruler, file folders etc. NOW is the time to buy them!
Showing posts with label back to school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label back to school. Show all posts
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Thursday, September 6, 2018
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Happy New Year!
Huh? It’s September?
I am again reminding everyone that one does not have to wait for January 1 to start a new year, turn a new page, start organizing. Every day is the start of a new year.
When I was a child my year started in September. School started then - a new school year. The new TV shows came on for the year (later this became the start of the fall season) - a new TV year. And in either September or October, being Jewish, it was the religious new year also - the anniversary of the beginning of the world we were told.. The January 1 new year always seemed lacking in reason to me - what was starting anew - just the newly printed calendars.
It is a bit arbitrary. The new year used to start on March 25 - talk about crazy, Could you imagine March 24, 2018 being followed by March 25, 2019? This change of year changed at various dates in various places based on the religion practiced in the area starting in 1582. In the British countries, including their colonies here in America, the change to January 1 as the start of the new year was made in 1750. (And this led to all sorts of problems as there was also an adjustment to the calendar of 11 days at the time to correct errors in the prior adjustments by leap year days. If you were born on April 10, 1720 O.S. (old style), you would change your birthday to April 21, 1720 for example.)
The Lunar New Year is in February. The Muslim New Year occurs at a different time each year in the common (western) calendar although it falls on the same day of the Muslim calendar. It will vary over the entire year over time. (The common calendar is a solar calendar- it is based on the travel of the earth around the sun and how long it takes. The use of the different number of days in various months and leap year day keep the common calendar set more or less fixed against the seasons of the year. While there are a number of lunar calendars ( based on the length of the months at about 29 days in the time it takes the moon to travel around the earth), some of them will insert a leap year adjustment of some sort - in the Jewish calendar it is an extra month added a number of times over a cycle of years - the Muslim calendar does not add an extra month to adjust for the solar year and so its holidays move through the year over a period of years as there is an 11 day difference in the length of the year.)
Okay, now we are getting religion classes and history lessons. Back then people had less stuff to deal with and could keep it better organized. What is going on?
What I am saying (and I have posted similar in the past) is that the day we consider to be the golden time to start organizing (or doing something else) is a fairly arbitrary day. If today is September 5 - it will be a year until the next September 5, so it is also the start of a new year.
Make sense (I hope)?
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
Since every day is the start of a new year, do not put off starting or doing something until January 1. Start NOW! Okay, maybe today is too soon, pick a day soon and start THEN! No more procrastination. No more New Year's resolutions left uncompleted. Pick one thing, just one thing and do it. Then do something else - one thing at time adds up.
Huh? It’s September?
I am again reminding everyone that one does not have to wait for January 1 to start a new year, turn a new page, start organizing. Every day is the start of a new year.
When I was a child my year started in September. School started then - a new school year. The new TV shows came on for the year (later this became the start of the fall season) - a new TV year. And in either September or October, being Jewish, it was the religious new year also - the anniversary of the beginning of the world we were told.. The January 1 new year always seemed lacking in reason to me - what was starting anew - just the newly printed calendars.
It is a bit arbitrary. The new year used to start on March 25 - talk about crazy, Could you imagine March 24, 2018 being followed by March 25, 2019? This change of year changed at various dates in various places based on the religion practiced in the area starting in 1582. In the British countries, including their colonies here in America, the change to January 1 as the start of the new year was made in 1750. (And this led to all sorts of problems as there was also an adjustment to the calendar of 11 days at the time to correct errors in the prior adjustments by leap year days. If you were born on April 10, 1720 O.S. (old style), you would change your birthday to April 21, 1720 for example.)
The Lunar New Year is in February. The Muslim New Year occurs at a different time each year in the common (western) calendar although it falls on the same day of the Muslim calendar. It will vary over the entire year over time. (The common calendar is a solar calendar- it is based on the travel of the earth around the sun and how long it takes. The use of the different number of days in various months and leap year day keep the common calendar set more or less fixed against the seasons of the year. While there are a number of lunar calendars ( based on the length of the months at about 29 days in the time it takes the moon to travel around the earth), some of them will insert a leap year adjustment of some sort - in the Jewish calendar it is an extra month added a number of times over a cycle of years - the Muslim calendar does not add an extra month to adjust for the solar year and so its holidays move through the year over a period of years as there is an 11 day difference in the length of the year.)
Okay, now we are getting religion classes and history lessons. Back then people had less stuff to deal with and could keep it better organized. What is going on?
What I am saying (and I have posted similar in the past) is that the day we consider to be the golden time to start organizing (or doing something else) is a fairly arbitrary day. If today is September 5 - it will be a year until the next September 5, so it is also the start of a new year.
Make sense (I hope)?
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
Since every day is the start of a new year, do not put off starting or doing something until January 1. Start NOW! Okay, maybe today is too soon, pick a day soon and start THEN! No more procrastination. No more New Year's resolutions left uncompleted. Pick one thing, just one thing and do it. Then do something else - one thing at time adds up.
Friday, August 3, 2018
BACK TO SCHOOL SUPPLIES - AGAIN
First, my apologies - somehow I forgot last night to write and post to you. I had finished the yearbook (next year meeting program guide) for my embroidery guild chapter and on Tuesday I had taken it to be printed - yesterday (Wednesday) we picked it up and in the evening when I normally would be writing and posting to you, I stapled, labeled, and stuck stamps on the yearbooks to be mailed out today. Somehow my mind then wandered off and I never did get back to writing and posting. So I am doing it today.
Last year I wrote about back to school supplies - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/08/this-week-back-to-bit-more-normal.html
Today is more about back to school supplies. As I wrote last year, even as a child I loved office supplies and back to school was actually fun for me - the promise of a blank notebook, not scribbled on or in was the promise to me of a year that I would stay organized and all assignments would be done ahead of when they were due. This, of course, was never true for me or I would not be writing this blog.
As I mentioned last year this is the time of year to buy supplies that might be needed as they are discounted. Do you have pens and pencils in your house that you can find? If not this is the time to get them - and a box to keep them in. The same with basics such as scissors and tape. Good time to find plastic boxes, crates, and file storage boxes.
Growing up I thought everyone went to back to school the Wednesday after Labor Day unless they lived in New York City - since NYC rarely needed a snow day (subways always ran until more recent years when even they had to close sometimes for weather) so the schools in NYC started on the Monday, a week after Labor Day as the did not need to have the 3 snow days the rest of had built into their schedule. I have in recent years learned that schools around the country start and end on all different schedules. (Around here schools close at the June.) Some school districts close for a 2 month vacation -some for a 3 month vacation. Even around here there is now a movement to start schools earlier - in some districts even before Labor Day (although many districts have union agreements against same). The local change is the result of adding holy days of additional religions as days off during the year and the need to make up those days in the calendar.
But right now is the time for school supplies. I wanted to add this second posting about school supplies as there are some that people (as least old timers such as me) do not think of as back to school items.
Electronics. Laptops, tablets, and so on. Stores are running sales now on these for back to school. I was reminded of this as my husband has for some time (years) been pushing me to replace this laptop - to say it is not new is an understatement, you know those stickers on the laptops that show what version of what is included in it - well, the newest copyright on any of them on this laptop is 2004 - that make it around 14 years old, and yes, it still runs Windows XP. It was my work laptop when it was new. I bought a newer work laptop since then and rather than toss this one, it became my kitchen computer - where I go online at night and write and post my blog. It still works - mostly. Some websites are too fast for it and therefore run very slowly on the computer. But for most things it is fine. Husband has been pushing me to get a new laptop. My desktop - main - computer is Windows 7 and not all of my software runs on it - it is even harder to get me to get new software. I tried using his laptop which is Windows 10 and I was not happy with it - and probably even more software will not run. He has been showing me back to school ads for laptops and pushing “Look what great prices they are.” I start to think what a great idea - that website that takes sooooo long to open will work quicker, but I know it is hard for me to switch and it will involve screaming and yelling - on both our sides. (Husband is a dear and puts up with my wanting everything to remain the same and be able to use my old software and goes to great lengths to “make it so” but even he cannot do magic.) So, it reminded me to mention it to all of you. Now, don’t run out and buy a new computer just because they are on sale - but if you have been thinking of getting one - it is a good time save a few bucks.
Another school supply that I don’t think of as being one is casual furniture. Back to school includes going to college and stores that carry casual furniture - small pieces for storage and the like - are having sales and also have a larger choice of them in stock. Shelving units, small file cabinets, the doored cabinets with shelves in them are readily available now.
Of course clothing including shoes for adults (remember back to college) as well as children, of course, are in stock now.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
While one should not go out buying items willy nilly and only buy what one actually needs, if one is need of office supplies, clothing, electronics, casual furniture, etc. now is the time to look for bargains.
Obviously one should not buy stuff just because it is on sale - that just adds to the clutter and having too much stuff, but if items are needed it is always best to buy them during the time they are on sale.
Last year I wrote about back to school supplies - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/08/this-week-back-to-bit-more-normal.html
Today is more about back to school supplies. As I wrote last year, even as a child I loved office supplies and back to school was actually fun for me - the promise of a blank notebook, not scribbled on or in was the promise to me of a year that I would stay organized and all assignments would be done ahead of when they were due. This, of course, was never true for me or I would not be writing this blog.
As I mentioned last year this is the time of year to buy supplies that might be needed as they are discounted. Do you have pens and pencils in your house that you can find? If not this is the time to get them - and a box to keep them in. The same with basics such as scissors and tape. Good time to find plastic boxes, crates, and file storage boxes.
Growing up I thought everyone went to back to school the Wednesday after Labor Day unless they lived in New York City - since NYC rarely needed a snow day (subways always ran until more recent years when even they had to close sometimes for weather) so the schools in NYC started on the Monday, a week after Labor Day as the did not need to have the 3 snow days the rest of had built into their schedule. I have in recent years learned that schools around the country start and end on all different schedules. (Around here schools close at the June.) Some school districts close for a 2 month vacation -some for a 3 month vacation. Even around here there is now a movement to start schools earlier - in some districts even before Labor Day (although many districts have union agreements against same). The local change is the result of adding holy days of additional religions as days off during the year and the need to make up those days in the calendar.
But right now is the time for school supplies. I wanted to add this second posting about school supplies as there are some that people (as least old timers such as me) do not think of as back to school items.
Electronics. Laptops, tablets, and so on. Stores are running sales now on these for back to school. I was reminded of this as my husband has for some time (years) been pushing me to replace this laptop - to say it is not new is an understatement, you know those stickers on the laptops that show what version of what is included in it - well, the newest copyright on any of them on this laptop is 2004 - that make it around 14 years old, and yes, it still runs Windows XP. It was my work laptop when it was new. I bought a newer work laptop since then and rather than toss this one, it became my kitchen computer - where I go online at night and write and post my blog. It still works - mostly. Some websites are too fast for it and therefore run very slowly on the computer. But for most things it is fine. Husband has been pushing me to get a new laptop. My desktop - main - computer is Windows 7 and not all of my software runs on it - it is even harder to get me to get new software. I tried using his laptop which is Windows 10 and I was not happy with it - and probably even more software will not run. He has been showing me back to school ads for laptops and pushing “Look what great prices they are.” I start to think what a great idea - that website that takes sooooo long to open will work quicker, but I know it is hard for me to switch and it will involve screaming and yelling - on both our sides. (Husband is a dear and puts up with my wanting everything to remain the same and be able to use my old software and goes to great lengths to “make it so” but even he cannot do magic.) So, it reminded me to mention it to all of you. Now, don’t run out and buy a new computer just because they are on sale - but if you have been thinking of getting one - it is a good time save a few bucks.
Another school supply that I don’t think of as being one is casual furniture. Back to school includes going to college and stores that carry casual furniture - small pieces for storage and the like - are having sales and also have a larger choice of them in stock. Shelving units, small file cabinets, the doored cabinets with shelves in them are readily available now.
Of course clothing including shoes for adults (remember back to college) as well as children, of course, are in stock now.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
While one should not go out buying items willy nilly and only buy what one actually needs, if one is need of office supplies, clothing, electronics, casual furniture, etc. now is the time to look for bargains.
Obviously one should not buy stuff just because it is on sale - that just adds to the clutter and having too much stuff, but if items are needed it is always best to buy them during the time they are on sale.
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