Planning a Cheap Night Out
Mar 11th
Apparently, I don’t get out much. This weekend, Hubby and I decided to go out with another couple for dinner and a movie. 4 hours and $70 later I was in the car on the way home with a stunned expression on my face trying to figure out where it all went wrong.
You know, I love a night out just as much as the next girl but to spend the equivalent of a week’s worth of groceries on just one night is, well, not very fiscally responsible. Of course, there are things that I could have done to make the night cheaper if I hadn’t been so short-sighted and, frankly, lazy.
Want to know what I will do differently next time I’m asked to enter the world of social beings? Here are a few ideas:
Make Dinner Cheaper
1. Eat before you leave home. If Hubby and I had eaten before meeting the other couple for dinner then we would not have needed to order so much food at the restaurant. This would have saved us money in both food costs and tip.
2. Don’t drink expensive drinks or alcohol at the restaurant. I gave in and ordered some kind of specialty tea with dinner. It was bottled, did not have refills and retailed somewhere around $3. This is excessive and unnecessary. Water with lemon would have been both satisfying and free.
3. Go out for lunch instead of dinner. Since we had plans to go out on Saturday there is no reason why we could not have met for lunch instead of dinner. Lunch options are often much cheaper at restaurants and afternoon matinees are also less expensive.
Cheap Entertainment
1. Go to a cheaper theater. Believe it or not, there are still dollar movie theaters in operation. We opted for the opening weekend of ‘Alice’ in 3-D, which was over $8 per person. If we had watched something else and gone to the dollar theater, we would have saved a worthwhile amount of money.
2. Rent a movie. There is no reason we could not have just gone back to one of our homes and watched a rented movie or a streaming movie from Netflix. Doing so wouldn’t have just saved us money on the movie tickets but also on the popcorn, soda and Raisinets.
3. Take a walk instead of a movie. ‘Alice’ in 3-D was impressive, but you know what else is impressive and available in 3 dimensions? The entire world. We could have skipped the expensive movie, burned some dinner calories and avoided movie theater popcorn if we had just taken a walk after dinner instead of going to the movie.
4. Don’t eat at the movies. Okay, I don’t even know why I’m putting this on the list because I think skipping movie theater popcorn is tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment; the smell of that salty, buttery popcorn wafting through the theater—and you, sitting on your hands to avoid stealing your neighbor’s. Unfortunately, we would have saved about $15 if we had skipped the popcorn, soda and candy which comes pretty close to being worth suffering through a movie without snacks.
Photo credit: Dustin Diaz
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
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2009 deductibility of Chile donations
Mar 11th
Have you filed your 2009 taxes yet? If you haven't and you contributed to relief efforts in the wake of the massive Chilean earthquake last month, you might want to hold off a bit longer.
The House yesterday approved a bill that would allow donations to groups providing aid to those affected by the Feb. 27 earthquake centered outside Concepción, Chile, to be counted as 2009 tax deductions as long as they are made by April 15.
News Update: Two strong aftershocks, measured at 7.2 and 6.9 magnitudes, stuck Chile this morning as the country's new president was being sworn into office. They were the strongest aftershocks to date.
The Chile donation bill, H.R. 4783, is similar to the emergency charitable contributions law enacted after the earthquake in Haiti.
In fact, this latest charitable deductions measure would extend the tax deduction time frame for deductible charitable gifts made in connection with the Haiti disaster. Donations to Haiti relief also could count as 2009 write-offs as long as they also are made by April 15. Under the earlier law change, that donation deadline was Feb. 28.
Hmmm. Sounds very familiar to my proposal in Chile & charitable tax deduction fairness for permanent
changes to charitable donations. I don't know if I should be pleased or
troubled that a majority of House members and I are thinking along the
same legislative lines.
Bipartisan support: H.R. 4783 was introduced by acting House Ways and Means Committee Chair Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) and W&M ranking minority member Dave Camp (R-Mich.).
The bill, which passed with no opposition and by voice vote, was designated as an emergency measure. That means it doesn't have to
meet the House's "pay as you go" restrictions demanding that any lost
revenue be offset by funds from elsewhere.
H.R. 4783 is now in the Senate's hands.
Whether such extended donation deduction options really prompt additional aid is debatable. But the bill apparently has wide bipartisan support, so I expect the Senate to soon act on it favorably.
Related
posts:
- Chile & charitable tax deduction fairness
- Haiti donation deadline Feb. 28
- Congress OKs accelerated tax deductions for donations
to Haiti - Red Cross receipts for text donations
- Alabama tax tidbit (Haiti donations state deduction)
- Year-end Money Moves 2009: Giving
- The 12 Tax Tips of Christmas: #4 Be Charitable
- Keep the giving going
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Five Reasons To Not Bet The Farm On Gold
Mar 11th
The lure of gold is everywhere these days. With the price of gold hovering around $1,300 per ounce, everyone and their brother is rethinking whether or not they should be investing in gold. Is it too late? How much gold should be in your portfolio? We are being bombarded by late night infomercials, celebrity endorsements, television pundits, scrap gold buyers, and a host of other pressure to jump on the bandwagon.
Most readers of the blog should know where I stand on buying gold. I actually wrote a long guest post on The Dough Roller blog about the dangers of buying gold especially on late night TV. I am not a gold fan, and I am not a fan of commodities or precious metals, including gold, comprising of too much of your investment portfolio. All precious metals should make up no more than 5% to 10% of your total portfolios. Gold may look like it is just continuing to go up and up, but it is a horrible long term investing.
Five Reasons Not to Own Too Much Gold…
- The price of gold declined in 14 out of 20 years between 1981 and 2000. Those are some of the prime investment years to be losing so much money.
- Gold’s price has already been over $1,000 per ounce three times in the last 30 years.
- In 1974, the U.S. government changed the law and allowed private citizens to invest in gold on the open market. In 1974, the price of an ounce was about $100. Based on today’s price of approximately $1,100, gold has lagged the overall market and returned only 6.8% per year. The historical stock market return has been approximately 8% per year even throughout the decades you could not legally own a bar of gold.
- Stocks beat inflation better than gold. Stocks have returned an average of 11.5% between December 1974 and December 1999. Inflation has averaged 4.2% during that time.
- People argue that gold is a safer investment because it is a real asset. That is a flawed assumption that real assets are safe. Real estate is a real asset as well and look where that asset value went over the past few years. Real assets are no safer than paper assets like stocks in today’s market.
Investing in gold just because it is popular right now is not the right thing to do for your financial wellbeing. Investors often lose sight of gold’s poor long term historical results or lack thereof. Short time horizons with extreme volatility and market uncertainty do not help the long term investor. Gold and precious metals should only comprise a small portion of your overall retirement and investment portfolio. Making it a main component will set your financial future up for disappointment.
© Own The Dollar – This posting originally appeared on the blog, Own The Dollar. Visit the website for more great content.
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Paying Debt Collection
Mar 11th
The FTC had over seventy thousand complaints in 2007 leveled against debt collectors, third party agencies that collect debts for various businesses and banks. It can go without saying that not all debt collectors follow the rules. Here is some info that can help you to deal with (or not deal with) those collections agencies.
Are you aware of what debt collectors are?
When a financial institution has a problem collecting repayment of a debt from a debtor, they “hire” debt collectors (i.e. Sell the debt to the collection agency and then write the unpaid debt off for taxes) to handle the unpaid debt. Debt collectors have to work within the limits set in the FDCPA or Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in order to seek repayment of a debt. Any unpaid debt collections will likely show up on your credit report, will negatively affect your credit, and over time will keep you from being approved for credit cards, loans, apartments, and in some cases, even jobs.
When are debt collectors allowed to call?
The FTC, last year alone, received more than 100,000 complaints about collectors that were calling beyond the allowed periods of time. There may have even been more instances, but with consumers that did not complain about them to the FTC. Debt collectors are only legally allowed to call you during specific times of the day and night. If the collector is calling you outside of those periods of time, then they are violating the law and you should lodge a complaint about them in order to rectify the situation.
Is this your debt?
Do not simply take it for granted that that debt is actually yours. Debt collectors are not really known for their honesty, after all. You do reserve the right to have that debt collector validate the truth about whether or not the debt is yours, as well as whether or not they actually have the right to attempt collecting it from you. What this means is that they are going to have to provide some form of documentation paperwork from the initial creditor. If the debt collector is incapable of providing this proof to you, then they cannot legally collect the debt from you. You generally only have a short period of time in which to exercise this particular right, so make sure that you ask for a validation request immediately as soon as you are contacted for the first time by a debt collector.
Should you pay off the debt?
If the debt is really old, then you may just forget about it because after seven years, the statute of limitations for the debt is going to expire anyway. Still, you should understand the moral obligations because paying back the debt that you owe is definitely the right thing for you to do regardless of how old it is.
Photo Credits: eric731
Originally posted 2009-10-20 03:42:55. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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I Might Need $3,000,000 To Retire: What’s Your Number?
Mar 11th
ING Direct’s recent survey results about retirement are scary. I don’t know what the world is going to be like in thirty years, the time I’ll be approaching “retirement age.” I do know that if my pattern of increasing expenses doesn’t change until then, and if I’m still earning primary income by trading my time and effort, a comfortable retirement is going to require a lot of saved and invested money.
If you believe the 4% safe withdrawal estimate, in order to live off the equivalent of today’s $50,000 a year, I’m going to need the equivalent of today’s $1,250,000 invested. Assume a modest 3% rate of inflation and I’ll need more than $3,000,000 in 2040 dollars. Unless I make major reductive changes to my lifestyle or move somewhere in the world where the cost of living is low, I’d prefer to live on more than today’s $50,000 a year. I’m going to need a bigger nest egg.
Although it sounds sophisticated, this is speculation based on assumptions that could be very wrong. I’m doing exactly what 53% of working Americans are doing according to the ING Direct survey: guessing the amount of money I’ll need to save for retirement. Even if I were to use an online retirement calculator sponsored or designed by banks, investment companies, or bloggers, my results would still be guesses, though most likely slightly more accurate.
ING Direct is offering a planning tool that takes into account the lifestyle you’d like in retirement, your investment style, and your assets and planned contributions, and presents a savings plan. According to my results, I am surprisingly on target for over $3,000,000 in 2040. This includes a number of significant assumptions about my future income and rate of return on stocks.
According to the ING Direct survey, one third of Americans age 55 and over think their number is $250,000 or less. There is a subtle implication that this won’t be enough for many retirees.
In reality, I don’t know what my retirement will look like in 30 years. I may never be able to stop working in order to afford expenses for my future family. The best we can do is set a target that makes sense for what we know and understand of the world today, and make choices based on the assumption that the nature of money and finance won’t change too much between now and then.
What is your retirement number?
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I Might Need $3,000,000 To Retire: What’s Your Number?
When Stock Prices Crash, Where Does the Money Go?
Mar 11th
This is a guest post by Rob Bennett
It’s a question you always hear after a stock crash. It’s usually asked in apologetic tones, as if it were a dumb question. It’s not. It’s a question that most of the big-name experts don’t fully grasp the answer to. Understand this one and you go to the head of class in Investing School.
When stock prices crash, where does the money go? It goes “Poof!”
That’s the truth. People think of stock investing as a serious business played by serious people. So they assume that there must be a complicated answer to this question. There must be some mysterious process by which the trillions of dollars of wealth that are lost in a stock crash disappear.
Nope. We can bid stock prices up to any level we want. We can all vote ourselves raises if we like. The only penalty is that, when we bid them up too high, they must crash back down in the following years. What is made from nothing must eventually return to nothing. It always happens that way. It always will happen that way. Now you know.
The strategy takeaway? Don’t invest too heavily in stocks when prices are high. Someone has to pay the bill for those times when we bid prices up too high. It doesn’t have to be you.
——————–
Rob Bennett is author of the A Rich Life blog and recently wrote a Google Knol entitled “Why Buy-and-Hold Investing Can Never Work.” (J: I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with “buy and hold,” (although I usually hold way more than sell) but I do find this topic interesting.)
Frugal Gluten-Free Living: Flour Tortillas that Taste Great!
Mar 11th
This recipe is a fantastic substitute for regular flour tortillas. If you’re sick of using the rough texture, (and small size) of corn tortillas, try this out. The texture of these are bendable, foldable, and so delicious, they’ll be gone before you know it. Make an extra batch if you have guests, and get ready to enjoy burritos again, the gluten-free way.
Gluten-Free Flour Tortillas
(3 parts corn starch, 3 parts white rice flour, 2 parts soy flour, 1 part masa flour)
- 1 ½ teaspoon xanthan gum
- 2 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup warm water
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
Mix all of your ingredients together. I like to mix the dry ones together first to make sure they’re all blended. Use your hands to get everything good and ready. It’s a fun texture to play with. Then take your blob and divide it into 8 parts. Place them in a large bowl and cover with saran wrap until you’re ready to roll them out. Roll out a ball at a time on a floured butcher block. Use a spatula to scrape off the dough if it sticks and add a little more flour to the rolling pin, if necessary. Gluten-free flour can be a sticky beast, so be patient, and just keep working with it until you’re comfortable.
When the tortillas are rolled out, place them on a heated griddle (I use my big pancake one so I can cook 3 at a time). I keep the temperature at around 325 degrees and keep them on there until bubbles form. Then flip and wait for the tortilla to be ready.
I feed these to my husband and kids all the time. It makes burritos a gourmet feast that everyone loves. There is nothing so delicious as freshly made tortillas. Serve them with melted butter and salt. Use them for sandwich wraps. Have fun and enjoy. I promise this one is easy and will be a hit.
Thanks again to gluten-free cooking school, where I adapted this recipe from.
Permalink | 3 comments | Sonja Stewart's blog | Channel: Food and Drink, Health and Beauty
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This article is from Wise Bread.
