Archive results for “July 2007f 2007”

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States Offering Sales Tax Free Shopping Days for School Supplies

For those with school age children, you may be interested in knowing that some states are offering sales tax free shopping days for school supplies. Each state has their own definition of “school supplies,” so you will have to pay attention to the particulars.

Here are the states that offer sales tax holiday saving. It does change year to year, so don’t assume that each state will always or never have a sales tax holiday for school supplies.

Up until now, I completely forgot about school shopping. Summer is going by way too fast!

Posted by Tricia on July 31, 2007 at 8:58 AM in Saving Money | 3 Comments »
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What Do I Feel Constitutes a “Super Saver”

Yesterday, I posted a brief recap of an article in the New York Times about people saving up money for down payments on homes. On that post, I received a comment from someone wondering why I called them “Super Savers” and I thought I would devote a post to it, because it brings up good points about how I now look at things.

I’ll single out the first couple, Janey Lee and Pablo AgÃ¼ero. They were saving $18,000/year with their $100,000 income. That comes out to 18% of their income being saved. Does 18% seem that impressive right off hand? It might not to some. But do I think it is? YES!

Here’s the big reason why:

I have no idea of all of the particulars of their life. The story in the New York Times only gave a glimpse into their financial lives and aside from sitting down with them and hearing their life story, there’s no way I can judge their spending against mine. Sure, there are the things like eating out and entertainment that can (for the most part) be reduced and/or eliminated for most of us. And from the article, it appears that they were targeting those areas. But I don’t know if perhaps one of them is paying child support, or helping to pay for an elderly relative’s nursing home, or if they give a percentage of their income to worthy causes…the list goes on and on. Until I know all of those details, I cannot say whether the percentage of income they were able to save was enough or not enough.

Now, since I don’t know about the particulars of their life, I look at their goal and what they accomplished. Janey and Pablo set a goal of saving a down payment for a home and they made changes in their lifestyle to make it happen. It took them 5 years to save that money, but they kept with it and made their dream happen. I have nothing but a great deal of respect for that. My guess is that they’ve learned a lot in the process and I hope they will have a brighter financial future because of it.

With my finances detailed on here for all of the world to see, probably the most difficult part is having people tell me that I am not doing enough. Sometimes they are spot on (like with our grocery spending), sometimes it’s a matter of them not knowing the whole story. There’s no way I can give everyone all of the details of how we live. Unless you can live in someone else’s shoes…you can’t know everything.

The same can apply to stories about debt reduction that you read. I’ve read a few debt reduction stories where people paid off over $30,000 of their debt (or some high number like that) in a year and they make $150,000/year. Before starting my debt reduction journey, the first thing out of my mouth was, “Of course they could do it, look at how much they make!” I don’t say that anymore, because I am missing the point. The point is that they had to change the lifestyle they were used to and stick to their goal. Again, nothing but respect for those who have done it. I understand now that I cannot compare my life to others.

To sum it all up, to compare lifestyle to lifestyle and merely looking at the numbers is dangerous and can have negative results on your morale. However, looking at what others have accomplished can provide a great source of inspiration.

That’s why I called those people “Super Savers.”

Posted by Tricia on July 30, 2007 at 9:26 AM in General Debt | 12 Comments »
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I Only Need Two Credit Cards…We’re Gonna Give You 2,000 More

Frank Van Buren has a credit card through ExxonMobil. His card was due to expire soon, so he contacted them to get two copies of his card. I guess they decided that two wouldn’t do it for Van Buren so in addition to the two he ordered, they sent him two boxes of 1,000 cards each!

Yahoo Story

All I can say after reading this story is how did this happen? Thank goodness both boxes made it to the correct destination. ExxonMobil is looking into they mix-up, and hopefully their response makes the news because it will be interesting to read.

Posted by Tricia on July 30, 2007 at 2:44 AM in Credit Cards | 6 Comments »
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Finally…Here’s June’s Spending Report

I’ve had the report ready for some time now. I just never got around to writing a post and really looking at the numbers and discussing them. Prepare yourself, there was some major spending in June. But we still spent less than we earned.

Ok, here’s the report. My comments are below.

Automobile – We had a one, two punch with car troubles in June. First was the oil filter being clogged. The second was a flat tire, so we bought two new tires. The tires needed to be replaced anyways.

Entertainment and Recreation – Both of these categories were zero. We knew it would be a pretty expensive month so we decided to cut everything out here.

Finance Charges – These are starting to creep up since my balance transfer offers expired. Now that all of our credit card debt is at 9.9%, this will really be going up.

Dining – Very high in June due to my in-laws visiting. We treated them to two meals total. It was the least we could do for them bringing doors to us and helping us to put them in. They saved us so much money over having to hire someone.

Groceries – There was some money that was spent to purchase more groceries for when my in-laws were here. We ate sandwiches quite a few times. But it still doesn’t make up for the rest of the spending…it’s still too high. I know exactly what is killing us with grocery costs…we are not planning before we go to the store. My excuse is that I lack the time. But, I’m working on changing that as you will see shortly. I am going to become one lean, mean, productive working machine.

Household – I saw that number and my mouth dropped. Then I remembered that it was $500 alone for our new doors. Quite a bit of the rest was for some new trim and some supplies related to the repairs.

Pets – The spending here is still higher than normal due to the increased members of the family (the pregnant stray that had four kittens). So far, we have found a home for one kitten and the momma. So there are three kittens left.

Utilities – These were super low in June compared to May. I enjoy the lower overall utilitiy costs in the summer!

Final Thoughts – Not too bad. We ended up having a surplus of over $700 and I am pleased. I love seeing that. It is helping a lot that my husband has work for his temp jobs. One of them is now over, but the other one looks like he will have work for a while.

Like I mentioned briefly above, I’ve found myself saying way too often, “If I only had time.” I know the time is there…I’m just not very effective at using my time. I had some credit at Amazon.com from an gift certificates I won with Blingo and one that I won through a contest. What I ended up doing was purchasing three personal productivity books to learn some better skills. Of course, I’ll review them as I go through them and pass on some interesting tidbits to you.

Posted by Tricia on July 29, 2007 at 9:57 PM in Monthly Spending | 13 Comments »
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Lessons to Learn From A Few Super Savers in New York

The New York Times had a very interesting article about some people that cut costs and saved as much money as they could to afford a downpayment to own their own home in the area. Their goal of saving isn’t that much different than debt reduction. You still have to spend less than you earn to make it happen.

First up are Janey Lee and Pablo AgÃ¼ero. This family of three had their sights on a $445,000 two-bedroom condo in Upper Manhattan. With their income of over $100,000 (they are freelance web designers), they could afford the mortgage. However, they needed a down payment.

They kicked it into gear and started cutting expenses. Pablo cut the daily dose of chicken, soda pop and cigarettes. They both quit socializing with friends as much and didn’t buy new clothes, etc.

By figuring out where they were spending money, but didn’t have to, they were able to save up $90,000 in 5 years (comes out to $18,000/year). They will be moving into their new condo shortly.

Next up is Amy Wegenaar. As a single woman making around $85,000/year, Amy would find herself crying because she thought a single person could never make home ownership happen. With her rent currently at $1,550 she was losing some breathing room in her finances.

What she did was start saving $400/month. Anything extra such as raises and bonuses also went directly into the savings. Then she started cutting costs like crazy, and even started buying fabric and sewing her own dresses.

In October of 2006, she found a $220,000 one-bedroom co-op that only required a 10% deposit. She had $17,000 saved which was $6,500 shy. Not wanting to lose out, she pulled out a credit card check and paid the rest with that. (I can understand why she did that, but I hope she turned around and paid off that credit card as aggressively as she was saving money!)

Those are only two recaps. There are two more to be found in the New York Times article about Obi Onyejekwe and Carina Katigbak & Michael Lenton.

Even though these individuals were saving money instead of using their money for debt reduction, they all have one thing in common with the rest of us:

They set a goal and worked very hard to achieve it!

Hat tip to Chris and May for sending me this story!

Posted by Tricia on July 29, 2007 at 9:10 AM in Saving Money | 2 Comments »
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Operation Garage Sale: Successfully Selling Clothes

Whenever I go to garage sales, I rarely look at clothes. To me, the time it takes to sort through folded clothes on a table is enough to make me pass on by. I also am not someone who likes to fold clothes. Now, for those garage sale hosts that hang their clothes on hangers, I usually glance at something, look at the size and if it’s not in my range I keep on going to the nick-nacks. But I do look at them if they are hung up.

Taking from my own garage sale habits, I hope to have the best garage sale ever in terms of selling most of our clothes. Here’s my gameplan:

1.) I am going to hang as much as I can. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough hangers to hang everything so some of them will have to be on a table. As items are sold, I’ll use those hangers to turn around and hang some of the clothes on tables.

2.) I am going to organize the clothes by size. I haven’t figured out the logistics yet, but I’ll probably use a piece of paper to sort of mark where size changes occur. That way, people can see right away what sizes things are.

3.) I am going to mark the size with the price. I’m using masking tape for pricing items since I’ve had horrible experiences trying to get off those pre-made stickers from items. Masking tape always seems to come off with no problems. It takes a bit longer to put the size on there, but thinking as a shopper it would save me time and also make me think, “This person took a lot of care with setting up this sale…they probably also take great care of the stuff they own.” Or, they’ll think I’m crazy. But as long as they buy more clothes…it’s all good!

4.) The clothes will be situated where people have to walk by them for the flow of the sale. If your garage sale set-up is a “U” shape (which mine will likely be at this point), I’m having the clothes at the bottom of the “U” so they have to walk right by them to get to the other side of the “U”.

5.) Related to #4, I am going to place a few stellar articles of clothing on display so you can see the front of the item. Probably bright articles of clothing to catch their eye or something that is so cute that you walk by it and go “awe…” Anything to grab attention to hopefully draw people into looking through all of the clothes.

6.) About an hour or so before I close shop, I am going to offer a paper bag sale on the remaining clothes. I haven’t figured out a price yet (any suggestions?) but it seems like a good way to reduce the remaining items.

7.) I’m going to post a sign saying the children’s hangers are available for purchase after the sale. I have no idea why I purchased so many hangers for my son’s clothes. Since he’s older now, his clothes can be hung fine with adult hangers. When setting up for the sale I’ll get a count and then come up with a price.

8.) All remaining clothes will be donated to St. Vincent de Paul. I do want to make as much money as I can with this garage sale, but I also want to rid our lifes of all of the unnecessary stuff. St. Vinny’s helped us with having their clothing at such a low price (25 cents/each) so it is only fitting to donate the leftover clothes. That way they can help the store and help someone in need of children’s clothing.

Of course, a lot must be said for getting people to visit the sale. I can’t sell anything if I don’t get people to stop by. I still am working on the gameplan for that.

Posted by Tricia on July 29, 2007 at 12:27 AM in Making Money | 15 Comments »
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Making Toy Boomerangs Out of Credit Cards, Six Figure Wage Earner in Debt and $200 Every 6 Weeks for a Hair Budget

Yay for Friday. Another work week is almost over. This weekend, I am going to be a very, very busy gal pricing things for our garage sale. It is going to be one VERY big sale…more on that later.

Now for some posts I enjoyed this week.

Don’t feel like merely cutting up your credit cards? Make toy boomerangs out of them. I’m tempted to give it a whirl. My luck, though…it would come back and hit my right knee (inside joke for those following Blogging Away Fat).

Mighty Bargain Hunter points to a thread where a man who makes over $100,000/year is in debt over his head. It goes to show that debt troubles are not just for low wage earners.

Lazy Man’s new wife spends $200 for a cut and color every 6 weeks. So he asking women: what is your hair budget? I looked back in my Quicken history and my hair spending worked out to $3.00/year (that doesn’t include shampoo or conditioner). Yikes!

What’s coming up? This weekend I will be posting my long overdue income and expense report for June. Next week I will be posting a book review and will have a special giveaway. Stay tuned!

Posted by Tricia on July 27, 2007 at 10:26 AM in Blogging Buddies | 6 Comments »
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