Personal Finance Blog — Page 77 — Tips And Stories To Help You With Managing Money

Good Buys For Christmas From The Top Five Online Retailers

December 10, 2012 By Sherry Tingley

Amazon, Staples, Apple, Walmart and Dell made Internet Retailer’s list of the top five online retailers. To help you with your Christmas shopping, we will provide you information on shopping features and three good money saving buys from each company.

At Amazon.com, you will find a shopping feature called “Lightning Deals” that show you up coming deals and will tell you how many hours you have to wait for the deal to appear. You’ll get deals on cameras, navigators, clothing, watches, shoes and a large variety of items. The “Missed Deals” shows you what deals you have missed. The deal feature is viewable in each browsing category. Gift items for sale are categorized by gifts for him, her, kids and the one who has it all. Some hot suggestions are: 1.) The Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ – $249 for 16GB use Code – FireHD899 2.) Klipsch Image S4 In-Ear Enhance Bass Noise-isolating Headphones for $49.00 and 3.) Toy purchases over $75 – Get a free Gund bear (adorable plush teddy).

At Staples.com, they are offering free shipping on all orders. They will also let you order online and pick up in a nearby store. Browse their current ads for the week. Also offered are special 2 day deals as well as an exclusive offers sent to you by email. Some impressive community support includes donations of over $25 million to non-profit organizations around the world. Good buys include: 1.) Toshiba laptop with AMD E1 Dual-Core APU for $299 (available until December 15) 2.) HP Officejet Pro 8600 E-All-in-One Printer – $149.99 normally $199.00 and 3.) 7″ Digital Picture Frame, stores up to 10 photos, has multiple transitional effects – $29.99.

Legendary Apple.com is featuring five products this year. The ipad mini, the new iMac, the iPodtouch, and the iPhone 5. With tag lines like “engineered for maximum funness” and the pure power of the Thunderbolt I/O technology (handles data with speed, flexibility and simplicity), who can resist their latest upgrades and products? The ipad mini is as Apple says, “this year’s biggest gift, only smaller.” It has 10 hours of battery life, access to over 1 1/2 million books, Facetime in HD, fits in your hand, weighs .68 pounds, is thin and light and is a good buy at $329. The iMac’s have been redesigned and upgraded in several ways. The screen is even thinner that it was last year, the storage is up to 1TB and the memory is between 8GB and 16GB. Adding to the fun of buying at Apple, you can get a free engraving on your iPod or iPad.

Walmart online includes over 19,000 products. Some of the features that make shopping online easy are their ‘today only’ deals, value of the day deals and the ability to create wish lists to share with others. They display a 35 page ad showing bargains in your area. Good buys for Christmas are 1.) The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 – $249.00, regularly $299.98 2.) Apple iPod Touch for $179 and 3.) Razor AW Kick Scooter for $20.

Dell.com sells digital products like laptops, desktops, tv’s, projectors, monitors, phones, cameras, gaming, cloud computing and the ability to customize products. They have ’12 days of deals’ for shoppers. Good buys include: 1.) An Inspiron 15 Laptop and HD webcam – $389.00, regularly $568.99 2.) Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 – $109.99 to members and 3.) Quicken Home & Business Software for 2013 – $72.99.

Shopping for good buys from these top five online retailers is sure to save you some money in 2012! Let us know where you get good buys for Christmas.

Planning Key To Painless Yule Shopping

November 29, 2012 By Twila Van Leer

If you’re ho-ho-hoping to make it to 2013 with your finances intact, plan to plan. Impulse buying and overuse of credit are the twin bugaboos for some shoppers every Christmas, but there are ways to avoid these gifting traps.

Americans are likely to spend more this Christmas, because with the economic downturn abating, most Americans have more to spend. Matthew Shay, CEO of the Retail Federation estimates that holiday spending will increase by 4.1 percent or more. So if you spent $600 last year and are the average Joe or Jill, it is likely you’ll spend another $25 this year.

The statistics are bearing out Shay’s optimism. Over the past 25 months, there has been a consistent increase in retail sales each month. And some 60 to 65 percent of the American shopping population say they will rely on cash or debit cards this year, a good sign that the temptation to pile on holiday debt is going the way of the Ghost of Christmases Past.

Shay credits a good helping of better financial management to the recovering economy to explain the improvement. “We are using sound money management fundamentals,” he says.

Steve Krenzer, CEO of Pricegrabber.com, agrees that a bit of wisdom in the holiday shopping frenzy can salvage budgets that might otherwise be scuttled. His company compares prices on more than 80 million products and works with 40,000 merchants.

Krenzer says there are indications that shoppers are not always intent on getting the “bottom prices.” They factor in other details such as shipping costs, return policies and guarantees that may counterbalance the price. Shoppers engaging in “couch commerce” look at all of these angles before pressing the final button. More than 90 percent of today’s shoppers research their options before making purchases, he says.

This Christmas, it is apparent at the outset for Pricegrabber, that electronics are taking second place to soft goods — including clothing and other personal items — on many shopping lists.

Mondays and Tuesdays are the most active days for online shipping, Krenzer said, and women, as the “chief household officers” are more likely to be the family shoppers than men. The average age for shoppers is mid-40s.

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos works hard at keeping a finger on the retail pulse. That is how the noted e-tailer, which employs more than 80,000 people, keeps at the top of the frugality game. Amazon’s market value has reached $114 billion dollars. He is constantly on the lookout for new products, many of them devised to address consumer complaints.

This year’s Kindle Paperwhite, an e-ink device that includes illumination for the first time, is one of those products. The product, moderately priced at just $119, is nerdily wonderful, allowing the avid reader to peruse his books in bed without disturbing a partner. That’s the kind of consumer consideration that makes Bezos the undisputed heir to the late Apple’s Steve Jobs as the poster boy for entrepreneurship in today’s market.

One of his strategies is to invent new products to push to customers. He encourages development of some of these after listening to consumer complaints. He released this product for sale this year: the Kindle Fire HD 7, selling for $199 plays streaming video and DVDs in true HD, is the most gifted item on Amazon.

Prominent e-tailers such as these are doing their bit to make the holiday shopping more stress-free. Wise consumers will piggy-back on their advice by researching before buying, looking at all the factors before making final decisions, avoiding “panic” buying and becoming aware of what’s really out there. As Santa himself would say, this way, “it’s in the bag.”

WordPress Plugin For Personal Finance Bloggers

November 1, 2012 By Sherry Tingley

Coolchecks.net has created a WordPress Plugin that bloggers can use on their financial WordPress websites. The plugin displays a list of financial tips taken from a variety of financial experts. Each tip was chosen to help readers learn about important financial concepts and goals. There are three areas the tips appear in: the sidebar, the admin panel and there is a short code you can use to add to your posts.

The user can choose how frequently the tips should be rotated, either daily, weekly or monthly. Users can also create their own tips customized to fit their audience. This customization helps to give a unique branded message that is constantly changing and keeps readers wanting to come back to read updated content.

Our focus for this plugin is to educate and inform others about good, sound financial principles that will help them with their personal financial goals. If you have a personal finance site that needs new content, then be sure to try this new widget. It is free to use and hopefully will interest your audience.

Download Financial Tips Plugin here. Then unzip the file and upload the folder to your wordpress plugin directory. Activate the plugin.

screen-shot-plugin — Financial Tips Plugin

The screen shot above shows the management page of the plugin. This is where can edit any existing tips or add your own tips.

The text widget can rotate your tips on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can also select how many tips to show and choose you the category you want. You can use more than one widget.

Please let us know if you have any trouble with getting the plugin to work for you or if you have any suggestions to make it better! To a bright outlook on your wealth building future!

30 Personal Finance Tips To Use Now

October 29, 2012 By Sherry Tingley

Personal finance tips can come in handy when you are trying to improve your financial situation. Economic struggles in the past several years have really turned some people’s lives upside down.

In September, 2012, there were 12.1 million unemployed people. That’s a lot of people struggling to make ends meet any way they can.

To help you through this tough economic time, make sure that you help yourself by doing some of these practical things.

Protect yourself

1. Get a credit report every year so that you can make sure your credit is in good standing.
2. Scan everything in your wallet. In case of theft, you’ll have all your account numbers and contact information available.
3. Stop overdraft fees by going online and hooking up your checking account with a savings account.
4. Sign up for an alert that warns you when your account reaches whatever amount you choose.
5. Keep well organized financial documents for tax purposes
6. Diversify your sources of income.

Setting Goals

7. Decide what you want to do with your money.
8. Cover the necessities first
9. Use free websites for tracking goal setting
10. Choose some new starting points to hope for the best but plan for the worst.

Savings Strategies

11. Start saving at an early age.
12. Save money on a weekly basis and leave it alone for a while.
13. Order free information for your vacation planning.
14. For older folks, estimate your retirement benefits online at www.ssa.gov where you can put in your social security number and estimate your retirement benefits.

Debt Management

15. Use your tax refund to pay off high interest credit card debt.
16. Go to the websites where you have credit card accounts and sign up for an alert to remind you 10 days prior to the due date.
17. Request a reduction in your credit card interest rates.
18. Be grateful that your debt is not as big as the country’s debt.

Daily Living

19. Take an oath of financial honesty, with yourself and with others.
20. Use your local library instead of purchasing books.
21. Eat at home. Avoid restaurants to limit calories and cash expenses.
22. Reassess your possessions and see what you can live without.
23. Tell a friend what you are saving for and ask for emotional support.
24. Practice self-monitoring. Track spending using software like quicken or see if your online banking has a budgeting feature and track it for free.
25. Beware of advertising campaigns to entice you to spend more on house-hold goods. Proctor & Gamble, will increase advertising expenses by 20% in 2010.
26. Shop at cheaper stores. You can get Egyptian cotton sheets at discount stores.
27. Recognize buying mistakes and vow not to make them again.
28. Give away things you don’t need to make room for your new life.
29. If you are suffering from depression about your finances, discuss it with your doctor.
30. Learn to live with less – do you really need everything you have stashed away?

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

10 Quick Tips For Job Hunting After Being Laid Off!

October 29, 2012 By Sherry Tingley

When people lose their jobs, it’s a devastating experience no matter how tactfully they were told they were no longer needed. The life they once knew as financially and emotional secure has been ripped away. According to many sources this loss is similar in intensity to a divorce or death.

Here are 10 quick tips for surviving a job loss. (Click on the dog to buy the cute doggie tee.)

1. Be grateful for at least one thing in your life on a daily basis. It’s so easy to get angry about situations beyond your control. Gratitude helps immensely.

Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. – Charles Swindoll, Minister/Author

2. Get dressed for the day as if you were going to an interview. You will feel more competent and better prepared for anything that may come up during the day. Get out of those pajamas (unless you are looking for a job as a pajama model) and act as if you were going to be working soon!

3. Focus on getting face-to-face interviews. The chances of getting a job are increased with every face-to-face interview with a person who has the power to hire. It seems too obvious to point out, but the end goal of obtaining a job cannot be reached without face-to-face interviews.

4. Talk to everyone you know and let them know you are looking for work. If there was ever a time in your life that you felt more like crawling in a hole and covering yourself up with sand, this is it. Let go of this feeling as quickly as possible. The more people that are aware you are job hunting, the higher your chances of getting interviews that lead to employment.

5. Become a sales person about the most important thing you will ever sell anybody – YOU! It is extremely difficult for some people to think of themselves as a product, but in a way that is what we are. If you could describe yourself as a product a buyer needs what would you say?

6. Control the job hunting process. Being laid off is a situation that is out of your control. In fact the only thing you have control of is the actual job hunting process. Plan out daily time periods where you will be on the phone inquiring about job openings and actually talking to possible employers. Avoid doing anything else during this time.

7. Don’t overrate the value of a resume. What is going to get you hired with a new company is your interaction with the interviewer. Write a good resume, but don’t get stuck on spending hours doing it. Many employers are extremely busy and just want the answers to where your worked, how long you were working and what you did.

8. Avoid writing an objective on your resume. Employers care about what they want, not what you want. They want to know if you will fit the position they have in mind for you. As Tony Beshara states in his book, “The Job Search Solution,”

The clear message of an effective resume needs to be “You need to interview ME because this is what I have done in the past FOR OTHERS and therefore THIS IS WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU!

9. Jobs are given to the people who sell themselves best. Don’t be afraid that the qualifications you have aren’t the absolute perfect fit for the jobs you apply for. Maybe someone else looks better than you on paper, but people get hired who are best at selling themselves.

10. Research, research, and more research. Find out about the company you are asking to work for. Find out everything you can about them. Ask yourself if you would be happy working for that company. Talk to people who are already working there.

Loosing a job is difficult. Hang in there and keep your spirits up. Often, when one door closes, another door is opened.