Pages

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Smart Money: Have the Talk

This is a guest post by Erin Byrnes of iVillage.com

41% of U.S. moms said they wish they were more informed about managing money/being financially responsible, so they can pass that knowledge on to their kids.

iVillage and American Express have teamed up and created a new program that will make that talk a lot easier on moms. The Talk is an online community hosted on iVillage that is designed to facilitate the financial conversation between moms and their teens. It provides moms with the necessary tools to assist their children down a safer path of financial responsibility and independence.

As your child is growing up, you want them to understand the importance of being financially responsible, which is what iVillage and American Express hope to achieve with their educational program, The Talk. Some highlights of The Talk program include:

· Parents can visit Facebook.com/iVillage for more information on The Talk and can exchange tips and advice with other parents and financial experts. Parents who have had ‘the talk’ with their teen can download The Talk badge to their personal Facebook page. iVillage will make a donation to Junior Achievement after a key number of badges have been shared.

· Beginning later this month, parents will have access to The Talk via the webpage for the popular NBC series Parenthood on NBC.com. Parents who are fans of the series can experience unique content around money management and parenting, including an interactive game tied to the protagonist Braverman siblings.

· The Talk will feature video vignettes, as well as a series created by parenting and financial experts, to encourage parents to have the talk with their teens.

· At The Talk homepage, moms can access The Talk Tips, parent testimonials and The Talk message board moderated by financial and parenting experts. The page will also link to an array of articles, features and content throughout iVillage designed to help moms teach their kids about financial responsibility.

The Talk can provide you with everything you need for a successful, effortless financial conversation with your child. If you seek additional information about The Talk please visit www.ivillage.com/thetalk. 

Stop by every Thursday for a fresh dose of Smart Money.  If you'd like to see past posts on the subject, just click on the Smart Money tag at the bottom of this post.  



By TwitterButtons.com
Delicious Bookmark this on Delicious

Monday, September 27, 2010

Clutterbugs: Magazine Declutter Ideas

One of the big clutter problems in our homes is clutter from magazines and newspapers. For some reason, clutterbug-types tend to be unusually attracted to print media. We are always on the lookout for great ideas, recipes, and articles, so we tend to keep a large quantity of magazines and newspapers with the intention of going through them *someday*.

Well, here's a newsflash for you - if *someday* hasn't happened yet, it isn't going to. I'll say it again. If you were ever going to go through all that stuff, you would have done it by now. I'm not trying to be mean or to keep you from having stuff that you really want, but you've got to be honest with yourself. If you don't have enough time to go through all this on a regular basis, make another choice.

OK, given that I am different from most of the rest of the world, here is what I do. I subscribe to one, count 'em ONE magazine, and I talked my husband into only getting the Sunday paper. That's it! I used to have a daily newspaper and at least four magazines, so it's a big reduction.  

Sidebar: I'm kind of on a news diet. The news is always so depressing, negative, and unproductive, I've pretty much banned it from my life.  I've not watched a regular news show, read a full paper, or listened to a regular radio show ever since 9/11 and the interesting thing is that I've not missed a single important thing.  I get all the news I need from the Internet or word of mouth without wasting a lot of time filtering through a bunch of stuff I don't care about.  My father-in-law used to spent about 5 hrs a day watching/reading the news, over his 80 year lifetime, that's probably about 10 years of his life.  That's not how I want to spend my life. 

Anyway, strategy #1 is to be selective about what you bring into the house.  Look at each publication you are getting and see if you are getting what you want out of it?  Does it carry it's own weight?  If not, then either stop it and get a refund, or change the address to a doctor's office, or nursing home.  They'll be happy to get it.  

Strategy #2 - if you decide to keep a publication, make sure you get your goal out of it.  If it's recipes you want, tear the good ones out and keep them in a file, so you will be sure and use them.  Same thing for craft magazines.  Make time for a quick scan through, tear out the good ideas and keep them in a folder in your car.  Then when you are waiting for the kids, or at a Dr's appt or something, go through them, and see what is useful to you.  You paid for the magazine, don't feel like you shouldn't tear out the pages if you want to.  If you're really compulsive, use a ruler and a craft knife to get a nice straight cut.  

Strategy #3 - organize your magazines.  This one is my favorite.  The one magazine I hold onto is People magazine, which I love.  But it is a weekly mag, so it's a lot of material to go through and they all look somewhat similar.  So a lot of the time, I would find myself re-reading an issue I had already read.  So I came up with a brilliant idea.  When I finish a People, I fold down the whole back cover diagonally.  Then I can tell at a glance which ones I have read.  Then I take them to work and share them with co-workers.  I must say, I think it is so wasteful for only one person to read a magazine, so I always make sure that I pass mine onto someone! 

Strategy #4 - set a limit.  If you are overrun with paper, set a limit on how many issues you are willing to keep.  I suggest 3.  That means only 3 days worth of newspapers in the house.  Any older and out they go.  3 issues of each magazine.  If you haven't read it in 3 months or even 3 weeks, you aren't likely to get to it soon and it has become clutter.  Release it and let it go.  

Strategy #5 - find a clutter-free way to get the information you want.  If it's recipes, you can get just about any recipe in the world just by going to Google and putting in the main ingredients, and then when you find one you like, either bookmark it, or cut and paste it into a Word doc you keep on your computer.  Many magazines like People and Oprah are on-line, so you can go there to read your articles and not have the clutter in your home.  

Which of these tips do you think will be the most helpful to you in dealing with your magazine clutter?

If you'd like to see previous Clutterbugs posts, just click on the Clutterbugs tag at the bottom of this post. 



by TwitterButton.com

Friday, September 24, 2010

To Perm or Not To Perm?

OK, I am sick, sick, sick of my hair. I've had it completely stick straight for the last few years and I think I'm ready for a change, but I'm still waffling back and forth.  Here is what I look like with straight hair and my famous double cowlicks - hey, that's OK, they match my double chin!




And here is a pic of me from 2005 with a perm.  Obviously, the color won't be the same because I don't think I can ever go back to coloring my hair again, but that's about the best picture I've found of me with a perm.  Which way do you think looks better?


Did I mention that I am a total dweeb when it comes to doing hair? I can pretty much manage a blow dryer, but anything more complicated and I usually come out looking like Billy Ray Cyrus or someone else ridiculously odd looking. So, I need simple wash 'n wear hair that doesn't require a lot of messing around to look nice.




by TwitterButton.com

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Smart Money: Turn Your Teenager into a Smart Shopper

I ran across an article from the dark ages.  This was a post I wrote on the iVillage.com site probably before I even knew what a blog was, but I think it is a great idea for my Smart Money series, so I thought I would tidy it up a bit to share with you. 

Part of being a good parent is teaching your child how to use money wisely. Obviously, this is a great benefit to your children, but it is also a huge benefit to you because you won't have a kid wanting to borrow money from you all the time when they make those money mistakes that are an inevitable part of growing up.  

Most financial experts agree that the best way to teach kids to manage money is to actually give them some and let them learn from their own successes & failures.  Since one of your biggest recurring expenses is your grocery budget, this is a great place to start.  If you consider that your child is going to be doing their own shopping for their own family in just a few years, now is an ideal time to start teaching them.  And if you think about it, if you help them build some really great shopping skills, you could be saving them literally thousands of dollars in their lifetimes.  I so wish my own Mom had passed this knowledge onto me, but being a smart shopper was never a skill she possessed, so I had to teach myself through trial and error.

Sidebar: I wrote a post a while back called the Fast Food Challenge where I shared that young adults from 18 to 25 spent about 49% more on fast food than other age groups.  Yikes!  These kids are literally eating their disposable income instead of using it for important things like paying bills, saving for a house, or building their retirement savings.  

Now this might sound a little scary, but I am suggesting that you throw your teen in the deep end a little bit.  You turn them lose in the store with a list, some money (cash is best), and a calculator.  This may test your shopping skills a bit because you have to estimate the costs pretty tight to your list.  Keep in mind that you are figuring the costs for a "regular" person who isn't doing any coupons, price matching, or cost cutting, not what it would cost for an experienced shopper like you to buy these things.

The incentive for your kid is that if they do get smart about their shopping and work hard at saving some money, they get to use that money for things they want.  You can decide if you want to let them use it for all the junk foods near & dear to a teenager's heart, or use it as part of their allowance for clothes, CD's, or extra lunch money.  You can choose to let them keep all of it, or maybe just split it with them. 
The beauty of this program is that it gives them the opportunity to make a few harmless mistakes and learn some lessons they couldn't learn any other way.  They will learn that meat marked "reduced for quick sale" doesn't always work out well, they'll learn that generic canned vegetables and cereal don't taste the same but are tolerable, and they will understand why you get so mad when they burn through a $4.00 box of cereal in two days.  

Because they have such a good incentive, they will have more of an interest in learning how to use coupons, compare prices, and choosing the best stores to shop. They will learn how to make good decisions about food and gain an appreciation of how much work their mother has gone through for all these years to keep food on the table for them. Like the commercial says - some things really are priceless.

Obviously, a program like this is fairly simple to set up, but here are a few pointers that might help you avoid some problems. I suggest you do this for at least a 2-3 month period.  It takes a while to learn these lessons and both you and your kids need to make a commitment to it.  Also you really need to hit the prices as close as you can.  You may want to only do 15-20 items at first, rather than a whole list.   If you aim too high, they will think it is a piece of cake and you will be out some serious dough for incentive items. Too low and they get discouraged at not having a very big incentive, though it might be a great learning experience to have the embarrassment of putting things back if they go over budget.  Such are the realities of shopping with cash.

I suggest that you go with your kid(s) on the first trip to give them a few pointers, such as how to select fruits and vegetables, safe handling of meat products, etc., but please refrain from giving any pointers on prices. That is part of the learning process. 

Be prepared to show a little flexibility. They most likely will have a completely different style of shopping than you do, or may want to use different stores than you do. You may end up eating some mushy vegetables or bruised apples, and you might hear a complaint or two from your husband if they switch the family to generic TP. Tell him to just grin and bear it, and be sure to compliment your kids on the good choices they do make. 

Hearing your appreciation and positive comments are an important part of the program and will make them feel like they are making a valuable contribution to the family. They are, and isn't it nice to sit in the car and read a magazine while the shopping gets done? Hey, Moms need all the breaks they can get!

If you'd like to see some of the past posts, just click on the tag at the bottom of this post. 



by TwitterButton.com

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

September Stamp Club Projects

Thought you might want a peek at my September stamp club projects.

Isn't this cute?  I've been letting some of my customers design a project every now and then, just to give them a little variety.  Sissy came up with these darling little purses using the Big Shot.  This isn't Stampin' Up! designer paper or flowers, but it's pretty cute.  This blue one is her sample and the next one is the one I made. 


The next projects actually go together.  I used my new lattice die on this one and then used the frame from it on the next card.  I love things that serve more than one purpose.  You can't see it very well, but I used PearlEx on the leaves on this card.  You can get a great Fall color with gold, copper, and Interference Red.  It's retired now, but my customers love it and I've got whole bunch of it hanging around.


I'm trying to get artsy-fartsy with my pictures by dressing them up with some accessories.  Do you like them better than the plain pictures?  I think you get a little more detail with the plain ones, but whatever works for you. 

Speaking of stuff hanging around my stamp room, I hadn't used my crimper in ages, so I decided to drag it out and get jiggy with it.  I worked up the sample in retired colors because I was just playing around, but then I re-did it in Marina Mist & Daffodil Delight, but I didn't make a new sample.


This was a card I worked up for our church Card Ministry and I liked it so much, I decided to include in my class. This is called a "buckle card" because the extra little yellow strip actually inserts in the tab to hold the card closed.


And last, but not least is my cute little sour cream container out of our pretty designer paper. These were so easy and fun, I'm shocked that I hadn't done them for my students before. These are great for party favors or other little gifts with candy inside. 





by TwitterButton.com

Monday, September 20, 2010

Clutterbugs: Delayed Decisions

Part of a clutter problem is the problem of delayed decisions.  You don't have time to sort the mail (and probably throw half of it away!) so you dump it into a pile on the counter.  You don't have time to sort through the movies, the books, or the clothes and possibly eliminate a good portion of them, so you jam them onto an overfilled shelf or pile them up into stacks all over the place.  

You suspect that you don't really want or need all this stuff, but you don't have the time or the focus to go through and weed out the clutter, so it just builds up and up until it takes over your space.  The saddest of all is when people put the decisions off for so many years that they end up moving the clutter from one house to another one, just because they "might" need it someday.  

Two things to keep in mind - first of all, it won't take you nearly as long to dig through it as you think it will.  Second of all, the feeling of freedom you will feel when you finally dig your way out of the clutter is so worth the effort.  If you could devote just 20 or 30 minutes a day to decluttering your stuff, within a couple of weeks, you wouldn't even recognize your home. 

The point is that keeping your home decluttered is going to take a certain amount of time - you can choose to spend that time a few minutes a day or large chunks of time over the course of a year.  The difference is that one is going to give you a calm and uncluttered home, and the other isn't.  

If you'd like to see past posts, just click the Clutterbugs tag at the bottom of this page for a complete list. 




by TwitterButton.com

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Back2Blogging Event: My Purse Matches my Blog, Does Yours?

There is an event this week over at my favorite blog - The SITS Girls. They are doing Back 2 Blogging and even though they are already on day 3 and I'm just getting started, today's topic was just too tempting. Today, the topic was to re-post a title that you were particularly proud of. I had just re-done my blog design and I chanced to find this purse that matched it perfectly, so that's where this fun title came from.



OK, this is just WILD. Look what I found at Roberts (craft store) today! How crazy is that? A purse by All My Memories that exactly matches my new blog design. Naturally, I had to get it - besides it was 40% off and it was the only one left. It's not quite big enough for a purse, but I'll find something to do with it. It's even cute inside. Look at the light blue with the pretty swirlies on it in the lining - fabulous! I love it when the shopping Gods smile on me.




by TwitterButton.com

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Clutterbugs: The Importance of Appreciation

One very important way to get cooperation from your family members is simply by showing your appreciation for their help. A simple thank you or complimenting them on a job well done can go a long way toward building cooperation from them. One of my managers had a great plaque displayed in his office that stated this principle very clearly:

Actions that are recognized and rewarded will be repeated

I love this saying because it's very all-purpose. Notice that it doesn't just say anything about it being positive actions that are recognized.... It means ANY type of action, positive or negative. If you reward your child for whining by giving him what he wants, that negative action will be repeated. If you reward your teenage daughter by ignoring her breaking of a rule, that action will be repeated also. Similarly, if you allow a child (or a husband!) to slide by on an assigned chore without consequences, that action will be repeated as well.

But if you come home and thank your husband for unloading the dishwasher, compliment him on how nice the front lawn looks, and tell your son how proud you are that he has kept his room clean for the last few days, how likely is it that these actions will be repeated?

You might even take it a step further. I've been known to reward chores done well with surprise rewards of candy bars, liters of their favorite sodas, or other unexpected treat. I had a chore that I've been trying to get my husband to do for months and I was totally frustrated with him. His father passed away in February and he needed to sort out all the old photographs from their house and send them out to his various relatives. It was an emotional chore and I could see why he didn't want to do it, but I was tired of having the half-done task laying around in the family room. So I got a $20 gift card to a restaurant he liked. I tacked it up on the bulletin board and told him he could have it as soon as the job was done. It still took a bit more prodding, but he finally finished it this week and we used the gift card for lunch today. He even thanked me for giving him that little extra push to get the job completed.

Like Mama always said - you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar!

If you'd like to see previous contributions, you can click on the Clutterbugs link at the bottom of this post. 



by TwitterButton.com

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Wordful Wednesday: Queen of Peaches

Let's face it, I am firmly in that category that can be defined as "domestically challenged".  Pretty much every female in my family was a super-busy working woman, so my education in the domestic arts was sadly lacking.  I had no one to teach me how to cook, or laundry or cleaning tips, etc.  Even so, I have managed to teach myself a few things over the years.

This weekend, I got inspired by all the ripe peaches on the trees in our backyard.  We have the most lovely peach trees and they give us delicious, juicy softball-sized peaches.  Can't let all the yumminess go to waste, so I decided to get busy and make some freezer jam (a first for me!), and a couple of cobblers.


Here's the starting point.  This is one of my Pampered Chef collapsible bowls.  This bowl folds completely flat with a lid for easier storage.


One thing I hadn't thought about was how to peel all those darn peaches.  Fortunately, the Internet came to my rescue.  Ehow taught me how to easily peel them.  You just cut an "X" on their little butts and then put them in a bowl of boiling water for a minute.  Then you pop them into a bowl of ice water and then the skins peel right off.


Here's all my lovely naked peaches in my fabulous PC stainless steel bowl.  This is my favorite mixing bowl because it has a rubber base that keeps it steady, plus it has this handy padded thumb hold so you can hold it with one hand while you scoop out the peaches.


Here's my jam, all looking jammy & stuff.  Between all the corn syrup & sugar you put in it, it's surprisingly sweet.  Probably shouldn't let your kids eat this stuff, it could put you into a sugar coma!


Here's the finished product - I got NINE of these little jars just out of one batch of jam.  Now I need to go back & get some more jars for the next batch.  I just love these cute little jars though.  Just the perfect size to give to a neighbor or friend.


Now it's on to the cobbler track.  I had enough peaches for two different types of cobbler.  First I made a version that the Scouts make in their dutch ovens on their campouts.  It's super easy, just a layer of peaches plus a white or yellow cake mix mixed up with a can of Sprite.  Easy peesy and very delicious.  The other one was a more traditional crisp cobbler with a lot of butter and a crispy top crust. 

Well, that took care of about 20 peaches.  Now I've only got about 500 more peaches to use up!



 



by TwitterButton.com

Friday, September 3, 2010

Mother or Smother?

This is going to be one of those soul-searching posts, so better skip on if you don’t like that kind of thing. Something someone said got me thinking today. We are scrambling to get some last minute stuff finished up in time for Blake’s Scout advancement ceremony next week, and one of Blake’s Scout leaders pointed out (rightly so) that I was doing things that Blake should be doing for himself.

I guess the question I’m thinking is where is that fine line between being a supportive parent and being the equivalent of a pushy stage mother? With ADHD kids like mine who struggle with some things that come easier to other kids, it’s hard to know when you should butt the heck out and when you should place your foot firmly in his butt!

The interesting part about our situation is that I’ve had an advance preview with his brother. Matt has ADHD too and he was a Scout too at about this age, but his experience was totally different. He was in a troop that wasn’t nearly as good as this one and none of us (leaders, kids, or parents) took it particularly seriously. It was just a fun activity for him to do for a couple of years. We didn’t push him and he certainly wasn’t interested in doing any of the work for rank or merit badges, so he never rose above his original rank of Tenderfoot. And after a while, he got bored with it and quit. So basically, he never put anything into it and correspondingly, he never got anything out of it.

If we left Blake to his own devices, I’m quite certain that’s exactly what he would do also. He would show up for all the fun stuff like summer camp and campouts and never bother with any of the badges or any of the learning that goes along with Scouting. He might feel a little twinge at awards time when he saw all his buddies getting all their badges and advancement, but it wouldn’t bother him enough to actually get organized enough to go through all the multiple steps required to earn some of those badges. 

Some of them are pretty intense – for instance last month, he had to plan a whole weekend’s worth of meals for his patrol of 9 boys, buy all the food (obviously we had to drive him to the store and pay for it), price it out for reimbursement, pack it up, and then cook three of the meals for his whole group! That’s a lot of responsibility for a 12 year old boy, but he pulled it off pretty nicely.

I agree that you shouldn’t DO the stuff for the kid. I despise parents who send their kid to school with a Science Fair project that couldn’t have been completed by anyone with less than a Masters Degree, or send them with a Pinewood Derby car that was obviously completed entirely by the dad. That isn’t teaching them a thing, except how to cheat.

But I do think that it’s OK to set a timeframe for them and require them to meet certain milestones. Typically our policy is that he has to complete one Scout requirement per week as the price of his transportation to the meeting. It hasn’t come to the point where we have had to keep him home from a meeting, but we usually have to remind him a day or so before. But he is the one who has to figure out what he needs to do it, and get the work done. That seems pretty non-smothering to me.

I also think the proof is in the pudding. I look at Matt now at age 21. He has a really good job that he just loves, a nice car (that I helped him pick out – and negotiated $3,000 off the price!), a solid savings account, and is talking about getting his own apartment. If I hadn’t pushed him, and pushed him pretty hard, I don’t think he would have any of those things.

Honestly, I don’t think he would have graduated High School without my help. He was struggling pretty hard and at one time was missing more than 20 assignments in just one class. With struggles like that, College wasn’t even an option, at least not in my opinion, so I talked him into trade school instead. Even there, he was starting to flounder and was about to drop out when I stepped in and set up some weekly deadlines for him. I did have to push him a bit to get busy on the job hunting business, but he did find a fabulous job, and past that, he was on his own. He had to ace the interview, get the job, and then show up every morning at a gawd-awful 7:00 AM, and work hard every day to keep his boss happy.

Yikes, when I look at that, I guess I do see the pushy stage mom there, but what would I have done differently? Let him drop out of High School or get a GED? That wouldn’t have ended well for him. Paid a fortune for college or trade school and just hope for the best after all his struggles in High School?  Doesn’t sound like a winning strategy to me. I could have let him skip college altogether, but then he’d likely be working at Hot Topic or some guitar store making minimum wage and on the road to nowhere instead of starting out in a promising career with some marketable job skills (he’s a medical assistant and has several certifications).

I guess the bright spot is that now that he has “made it” at least as much as a 21 year old kid can be expected to, he gets it. He has a lot of pride in his job and earning enough money to afford a nice car and a decent apartment. He realizes that the direction he was headed in wasn’t a good one, and that he wasn’t going to end up with the kind of life he wanted. So when he started his new job, he took his Dad and me out to for a nice dinner as a “Thank you” because he realized all our meddling and pushing had landed him exactly where he wanted to be.

Moral of the story – I haven’t a clue, but I’m a Mom who loves her boys, but is willing to step back from the line and let them stretch their wings a little bit, even if it takes an occasional kick in the butt from me to do it.

PS:  Blake did put on that final push and earned his 1st Class Scout rank and he also was voted Assistant Patrol Leader by his patrol members.  I'm so proud of him!  Also, Matt had his 1st review at work and was ranked Exceeds Expectations in every category.  It might have taken a little pushing to get him there, but he's definitely flying solo now and doing a great job of it.  



by TwitterButton.com

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Smart Money: The PDQ (Pay Debts Quick) Plan

This was originally posted as one of my Clutterbugs posts, but I think it fits better under my Women and Finance series, so I've changed it up a bit for my Smart Money series.  

Because money is a very important topic for me, I have several different financial coaches that I follow. Suze Orman seems to be the guru of choice these days, but she's not my favorite. I prefer Mary Hunt of EverydayCheapskate.com, Dave Ramsay and Chellie Campbell of Chellie.com. They all have similar programs with minor variations and the good news is that any one of them will work. They all have free newsletters, so why not check them out and see which one you like the best?

I think that men tend to spend more on the big ticket items like cars, boats, etc. But I think as far as the overspenders who rack up the big on-going debts, it seems to be mostly women. Because I run a stamping business, I see a lot of this first-hand. I have seen women drop hundreds of dollars on merchandise that they are going to hide from their husbands in a closet somewhere and probably never even use.

That boggles my mind. I don't see how someone justifies spending what is basically imaginary money, especially on things they don't really need and only think they will actually use.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I have a bit of a weakness for impulse spending, but I never hide it from my husband and I do use everything I buy.  It always baffles me when people spend good money for something and then never get around to using it.  I've got customers who bought stamps from me literally years ago and they tell me they still haven't taken them out of the package.  Weird! 

Plus I'm allergic to debt and even though I do have some debt, I try to avoid it as much as possible and I work really hard to pay it down as fast as I can.  I've been in serious debt before and it's NOT a fun place to be and I don't want to go back there ever again.

Anyway, back to the PDQ Plan. It's pretty simple. You take a spreadsheet or a piece of paper and you list all your debts - large or small. I keep mine on post-in notes on my bathroom mirror so we can both see how we are doing every day.

Some people like to line them up based on the interest rate, but I prefer to line them up small to large. It gives you more of a psychological boost to see them being paid off bit by bit.

It's a little daunting to see all your debts in one place, but it's time to face facts. The amount of money isn't going to be any less if you close your eyes to it. It is what it is and you have to come up with a plan for dealing with it.

Here's how the PDQ plan works. Let's say the smallest bill is a $300 debt that you pay $25 a month on it. The next largest bill is a $500 debt that is $50 a month.

First of all, you cut back on a few things and save money like crazy so you have $100 a month to spend on that little bill. Three months and poof, that little bill is history.

Now you take the $100 a month and apply it to what you are already paying on the $500 debt. At $150 a month, that bill is also gone in just under three months. So in six month's time or less you have eliminated two bills and freed up $150 a month of your income. That kind of money really gives you some leverage when paying your bills. I can't remember the last time I actually just paid a minimum amount due on a bill - it's just a waste of your time.

Then you just go through the rest of your bills in the same manner. It is hard work, but you'll get excited as you see your debt reducing as if by magic. The average time for a PDQ Plan like this to work is 18 months to two years.

That sounds like a long time, but when you look at how long this debt has been following you around, it really isn't too bad. And by the end of the process, you'll have several hundred dollars in extra money every month - some to save for a rainy day and some to spend on all those fun things you would have put on a credit card in the past.  It's not that you can't have some of the things you want, you just need to be smart about it and only spend money you actually have and not just money you wish you had.

If you'd like to see my previous offerings on Women and Finance, just click on the Smart Money tag at the bottom of this post for a complete list.




by TwitterButton.com

Related Posts with Thumbnails
 
Blog Design by Eight Days Designs