Personal Finance Blog, Your Guide to Financial Fitness
| Get the FREE Money Crashers email newsletter and a chance to win an Apple iPad. |
  
|
Erik Folgate
Erik Folgate
We are gearing up for our blowout contest we’ll be having in January. Prizes includes stuff such as $250 cash, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, personal finance books, and a consultation with a Certified Financial Planner. Some of the ways you will be able to enter our contest will be becoming a fan of our new Facebook page and Twitter profile!
Why Join Our Social Networking Profiles?
Money Crashers
What Is The Plutus Awards?
A few personal finance bloggers have created the Plutus Awards which will celebrate the best in personal finance for 2009. There will be two different types of awards. The first set is the Plutus Awards, and you will nominate your top three personal finance products and services. The next set of nominations is the Plutus Awards 2.0 which you can nominate your favorite personal finance blogs for various different categories.
How Do I Nominate?
Click on this link and follow the instructions: The Plutus Award Nominations
Who Should I Nominate?
Erik Folgate
Almost 4 and a half years ago, we rescued that cute dog on the left from getting euthanized. Her mom had 8 puppies, and the Gainesville Pet Rescue adopted all of the puppies and the mother. We paid a total of $75 for the adoption fee, and she had already been fixed and had up-to-date shots. Since my wife and I didn’t have kids immediately after getting married, we were glad to get a dog with a ton of energy and a lot of love. I am not some kind of crazy PETA member, but it bugs the hell out of me when I hear that people pay thousands of dollars on pure breed dogs and cats, when there are SO many great dogs and cats in animal shelters waiting to be adopted. Here are a few reasons why you should adopt a pet instead of going to a breeder or pet mill.
Money Crashers
One of the hottest tech gifts this holiday season are the eBook readers. Have you been looking for one? If so, then you should check out this giveaway by Free Snatcher. Free Snatcher is giving away a Cybook Opus Reader and a $100 gift card to BooksOnBoard.com. Free Snatcher is terrific for finding great deals, free stuff, and sweet coupons, which are all things Money Crashers loves!
Here’s how to enter the giveaway: (one entry for each of the following)
1. Sign up to receive free samples, coupons and other great deals straight to your email. You must confirm your email in the confirmation email or you will not be entered.
Erik Folgate
There’s only 7 days left for Christmas shopping, and if you’re like me, you haven’t finished your shopping yet. Who has the time to shop? The one thing that I don’t like about online retailers is that you never know if you’ll get the item before Christmas, so shopping online for Christmas has to be done in November or it’s a waste of time. Fortunately, Money Crashers is here to bail you out. There are some great gifts that you can pull together at the last minute that don’t suck. I hate giving bad gifts. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves. I’d rather not give at all, rather than give something that someone won’t want or need. So, here are my top 5 choices if time is not on your side.
Erik Folgate
Tonight, I participated in a personal finance chat on Twitter with the hashtag #bp, which stands for Budget Pulse, which is the company that hosts the chat at 7pm on Wednesday nights. This was only its second week, and there were dozens of participants, so you should definitely join next week!
To follow the conversation, follow the hashtag #bp on a website such as Twitter Search, Tweet Chat, or Twubs.
Money Crashers
Still need some extra cash for holiday gifts? Are you running out of cash and thinking of turning to credit cards? Well, CreditCardChaser.com wants to give you $500 in the form of an American Express gift card. The contest is easy. Tell them what you LOVE about a particular credit card and tell them what you HATE about a particular credit card. But you don’t have much time, the contest ends at 12pm tomorrow! So, get your creative juices flowing and submit your answers!
Here are the rules:
Erik Folgate
The end of the year is here, and if you can find time in between last-minute shopping and spiked eggnog, then take an hour or so to reflect back on how you spent your money this past year. Creating yearly financial goals is a great habit to form when building a healthy financial future. Even if you don’t reach all of your goals, if you set them too high, or set them too low, they serve as a motivational tool throughout the year to strive toward something. If you don’t know where to start when it comes to making financial goals, start with what you spend and how much you spend on it.
Erik Folgate
Today I was in a conference for green lodging and hospitality, and it was hosted at the Rosen Centre Hotel, a prestigious and luxurious hotel and convention center in Orlando, Florida. Harris Rosen, the founder and owner of the Rosen hotel chain, gave an introduction to the conference and instead of boasting about how green his hotels are or spitting out numbers about his hotel, he told his story about how and why he became an entrepreneur. He is the type of older man that speaks softly but captures you the moment he starts speaking. You just know that everything that comes out of his mouth is words of wisdom. Here are a few things he said that really stuck out to me.
Erik Folgate
Millions of people are dreading the time it takes to decorate their houses for the holidays. But if you don’t do it now, you’ll never do it, and you know how much the kids love it. You know the feeling of when you take a step back like Clark Griswald and look at your decorating masterpiece. So that’s why we do it. We decorate our houses for a lot of reasons, and we spend a lot of money to do it. As a Money Crasher, you shouldn’t be taking our a second mortgage to fund your Christmas decoration addiction, so we will share with you the best ways to save money on Christmas decorations.
Erik Folgate
Personal finance applications and budgeting tools have become extremely popular over the past two years, with Mint.com being one of the largest players out of the group, but there are other alternative applications out there that offer a variety of different features that you may be interested. BudgetPulse.com is one of those budgeting applications that separates itself from its competition by offering features such as very high security for your personal information and a way to organize accounts for accepting donations. As many of you know, I have dedicated a few posts to Mint.com, and it’s the budgeting application that I currently use, but I have been tinkering with Budget Pulse lately, and it may cause me to switch allegiances.
Erik Folgate
I know what you’re all thinking, “It’s the holidays, we’re going to spend a lot of money and there’s nothing we can do about it”. It’s simply not true. You don’t need to break the bank to have a fun Thanksgiving. I love holidays, but they are so over-commercialized. We are programmed to think that we must spend a ton of money on the holidays, because the retail industry has brainwashed us into it. I’m not a bah, hum-bug, I promise. I just like to be practical, and I know man you do, too. Here’s my list of ways to save some cash for Christmas this Thanksgiving holiday.
Erik Folgate
Black Friday is just a week away, and Cyber Monday is 10 days away. I am a big fan of these iconic shopping days, not because people get whipped up in a frenzy and not because I love waiting in ridiculous long lines, but I truly believe that you can get some great deals if you are smart about it.
Have an iPhone? Here are some applications to help you get great deals!
Deal News App: This app is an iPhone friendly way to search the popular deal aggregator, DealNews.com, which is great at updating you on Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.
Erik Folgate
Help a reader with this question:
I currently have a 403b with about $20k in it. I am planning on leaving my job late April and was previously planning on moving the money somewhere else. However, I owe a family member $15k for a car they bought me almost 5 years ago. I did not pay them back yet because we have been working on paying off all of our other debts (which we have paid them all off!), and the family member was not charging me interest or asking for the money back. So this $15k (and our mortgage) is the only thing holding us back from being debt free. Would it be wise to consider pulling the money out of the 403b when I leave my job, paying the taxes, and then giving my family member the money to pay off the debt? Then I was thinking about opening a Roth IRA with any remaining money since I think we can get down to owing the family member $10k by the time I leave my job.
Erik Folgate
Black Friday isn’t for everyone, but for some of us, it’s the first fun event of the Christmas season. If you treat it like a family event or something fun to do with friends, you’ll have a much better time than treating it like a chore. The one thing I can’t stand about Black Friday is when I hear stories about people getting hurt trying to reach for the Nintendo Wii or whatever. This is absurd, people! It’s just stuff! Have some fun shopping, and if you score a great deal or a door buster, be happy, but don’t turn into a pack of wolves trying to get a door buster.
