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Newsletter to Your Friends (Use this link only if you receive this newsletter by email) Week of November 9, 2009This is an OPT-IN list ONLY! If you feel that you have received this message in error, please follow the directions at the bottom of this email to unsubscribe. Thank you.Click Here to view this newsletter online. Navigate This ColumnGrandpa Terry's Update Welcome to The Budget Stretcher! MyShoppingGenie is an innovative online shopping tool that instantly finds the best deals and lowest prices on millions of products. It's fast, it's easy, and best of all, it's free! This could really save you some money. Click Here to download My Shopping Genie. I have something else that may be fun to list in the newsletter. Every state and many citys have laws that are just crazy. I'm going to list one of those law each week. Let me know what you think!! Nevada In Eureka men who wear mustaches are forbidden from kissing women. Compliments of Loony Laws.com Our "Secret Offer" may be a free download or a program that I recommend for you that costs a little bit of money. This is not a gimmick or a trick and you make the final decision whether you want the offer or not. "Free Candy Christmas Wreath e-Book" A marketplace for handyman services. Find a handyman, a computer wizzard, a gardener, a cleaning lady, a baysit, an administrator, or any other service in your own neigborhood. Zoom in on the map below and the ads will be filtered for the new location. To offer your services or find a Handyman in your area Click Here This week the topic is: Money Saving Meals Submit your tips for this or other topics by using the form on your Your Subscriber Benefits Page to get your free gift if it is used. That's all for now. Remember, I really enjoy hearing from you folks. If you have any comments, complaints, suggestions or just want to say Hi, please send me an email to tre2000@midwest.net If you know someone that may be interested in subscribing to our newsletter just copy and paste the below link into an email to them and have them subscribe: http://www.homemoneyhelp.com/confirmsubs.html Have a great week, Grandpa Terry Sponsor AdvertisementDo you ever get stuck in a rut, preparing the same meals for your family week after week? I do! What's for dinner tonight?? The Creative Homemaking What's for Dinner? cookbook contains more than 250 quick, easy, family-tested dinner ideas plus a lot more. Click Here to find out how you can get yours. Grandpa Terry's Tip of the WeekWhen you spend more money than you make each month you are bound to have money problems very quickly. The bad part is that most of us never realize we are spending that much until it's too late. How many times have you used the credit cards to buy a TV, school clothes and supplies, fixed the car, or any number of things and not realized that you just exceeded your monthly income. You may have even realized it but thought there is always next month. Credit cards are the biggest culprit but they aren't the only way to spend more than you make. Things like payday loans or car title loans also come to mind. Paying $15 to use $100 for a week doesn't seem too bad. However, when you consider that you are paying almost 400% in interest over a years time these loans make interest on credit cards look like a great deal. Normally, installment loans have a lower interest than either credit cards or payday loans but they can still cause problems if you aren't positive that you can make the payments each month. I consider a house payment and the purchase of a car the only real legitimate reasons for paying interest. Very few people have the means to make these purchases with cash. If you aren't careful you can still get yourself into trouble by buying or renting more house that you can afford or having car payments that don't fit your budget. I just recently received an email from a lady stating that her and her husband wanted to buy a new car but really didn't know if they could afford it. This family probably saved themselves a lot of headaches just by asking that question. I wrote back showing her how they could determine if they could afford the car or not. My answer to her question was to have her develop a budget, listing all of the other bills and expenses they have, and then see what's left over. I also reminded her that she should consider the extra costs like insurance, maintenance, etc. Over the years I have seen people with as little as $500 a month income manage their finances very well while someone else with $5000 income can't make it last the entire month. It all boils down to planning. If you plan your bills and purchases each month with the goal of not exceeding your income, you can make it on almost any income. Sponsor AdvertisementGrandpa Terry's EmailCan You Help Responses?YES, YES, YES! It is definitely worth switching to Windows 7. Basically, Win 7 is Vista without all the junk. Firefox runs better in Win 7 also (I just upgraded to Win 7 and had noticed the drag that Firefox was experiencing - it runs better in Win 7). Win 7 boots up much, much faster than Vista does (it boots up in less than 2 minutes). Everyone I've talked to that are using Win 7 love it. There have been no complaints so far that I've heard. Some things to keep in mind: You will have to upgrade your anti-virus as well and you will need to go online to upgrade your drivers for printers and other peripherals before you can use them. That is a simple enough process though. Also, if you are a student, you can go to www.741.com and buy an upgrade version of Windows 7 for $29.99 (this is a microsoft website for students). If you are not a student, maybe you're lucky enough to know one who will let you use their school email address and buy it through them (each student that has a .edu email address is eligible for 1 upgrade at this price). Even if your not a student, it is still worth the $109 to upgrade to Win 7 home premium (you are able to upgrade as long as your current operating system is not older than Windows XP and you are running a legitimate copy). Anyway - in my humble opinion...definitely worth the upgrade, Win 7 is MUCH better than Vista any day! ~Christine Hi.. I'm a very reluctant conversion to Windows 7 Ultimate. My son got me a copy and he did it to me. I started on my first (owned by me) computer with Windows 95, then 98, then ME (boy was that a mess), then XPpro. I love XPpro and was somewhat interested when they came out with Windows Vista. But, at the insistance of my son who is a registered beta tester (one of many across the US) I allowed him to use me as a test crash dummy. Oh my god, what a mess. Vista was a nightmare. I used it for 10 days and every time I had an issue or problem, well, I couldn't find an easy way to solve what was going on. [And about 50% of the time neither could my son.] 75% of my programs did not convert easily if at all and some of them where document editing software that was necessary for me. Some of my hardware issues where not cheap to solve. I did some hardware changes but what a downside. 5 days into Vista I decided to dump it. It took 5 tries before I was able to get it to allow me to reformat so I could go back to XPpro. I watched and read as many of the "news" and "tech reports" on Windows 7 I could find. To be honest I was extremely sceptical because after Windows ME and Windows Vista I felt I had good reason. But my son the tester convinced me that Windows 7 was a better version and that it was Vista cleaned up with a lot of important security issues solved. He said he'd been using it for 6 weeks and was impressed. Well, the final reason that decided me to allow him to put the copy he got for me on my system was......I still have my XPpro install disk. :) My son had me "burn off" all my installed stuff .exe files on things that where special programs that I could not get off the internet for free. He said that everything had to be a clean install. I also burned my documents file to a CD. He told me to make sure that only documents, general stuff, and pix where burned, to ignore a lot of the other stuff that XP had put there as it would conflict with 7's way of doing things. Luckily all but one of my programs installed correctly (and it had minor issues that the manufacturer gave me an update for) or I would have dumped 7 immediately. I'm 10 days into using my Windows 7 and it really has been a learning curve. There are things that 7 does that is totally different then Vista. Every night my son calls me and says: "Ok, what was your conflicts and issues today." I really really prefer the XP quick launch task bar and the way that was set up. We found a way around that. I was having issues moving files and documents to where I need them without leaving a copy behind (the drag and drop nonsense). He showed me 7 way to do it by going into Edit and going to "Move to folder". I wish I could drop the 7 control panel format and go back to the XP format, it is easier to understand and use, not so "techy anal". Figuring out which item of it does what is extremely hard, it makes no sense that they go so "picky" on the way they set things up and split stuff that was set to one area in XP to 3+ areas in 7. The way they renamed things was very anal also. I wanted to uninstall that program that wasn't working correctly. It took me 4 minutes to figure out which Icon was the uninstall program and then about 4 minutes to figure out how to use it. I have a Desktop Theme I have used through every one of my windows versions and I prefer it (it plays certain religious music and has certain religious screen savers I appreciate) 7 will not install it. That's intensely annoying. I have not hated 7 as much as I did Vista. Maybe I will keep it. Maybe. Thanks for turning me on to this Grampa Terry! Clip Coupons and Put Money in Your Wallet - Debt Diva - MyCareOne This IS the best CareOne, so much to gleen from this site before even commiting to their program! Read the fine print....I got nailed with SO much junkmail from some of these coupon distributors. Hi Grandpa Terry, GREAT idea to offer ideas for the tips for the week. I think people can better come up with something if they have a general topic. I think sometimes we think our idea isn't a very good one for suggestion but will willingly offer something if we're asked a question. You're the best! Mary C Featured ArticleDear Grandpa Terry, This isn't in response specifically to any of the latest newsletter articles, but it is about reviewing one's expenses in relation to income (per your budgeting advice). I just resigned from my part-time "paid job". I had been there 19 years, if you total the years of volunteer work there with the paid position. When I started as a paid employee, I figured it would be a good way to build the "hours" needed for Social Security benefits. Then, a careful review of SS rules/benefits showed I would receive about twice as much if I claim the spousal benefits based on my husbands SSI contributions, even if I doubled my hours and worked to age 66. About that same time, the organization expanded their "401K" program to any paid employee. I opted to put 50% of pay in (after SSI/Medicare taken out) to build a retirement account using "pre-tax" dollars, and the balance (after about half of that going to additional taxes) could pay for gas, etc., and be "extras" money-- for the little "extras" that aren't needed, but are nice treats occasionally. Well, to make a long story short, working conditions became increasingly "toxic" and my "budget review" clearly showed that it was costing me more than I was taking home, after the costs of the job, and acupuncture and physical therapy appointments, which more and more were treating only work-related problems. And... what with the bank/investment firm/etc fiascoes, my 401K contributions were worth about what they would have been if I had paid the taxes on them and stuck the "after tax" portion in a savings account. Yes, if I wasn't putting half my post SSI deduction pay into the 401 K, I would have had money "left over" after expenses. However, so many others continue to work at jobs that are costing them more than they realize-- and they wonder why they never seem to get ahead when they work so hard, and such long hours. Childcare, transportation and parking, work-related clothing... maybe even paid help to do the household tasks you don't have the time or energy to do... to say nothing of the time and energy it costs you-- is what's left over "worth it"? I realize that not everybody has the luxury of choosing to quit a job, but I have no personal debts, and I do have other income-- my husband pays the mortgage and most of the bills, and his job provides health care coverage. My grown sons (students, but working, living at home) contribute to the utility bills. I'm getting some money from the rent of property inherited from my father, and from sales of my crafts. Loss of the job income mainly means that certain purchases will be delayed (like a new stove-- but we CAN cook on just the two working burners a bit longer), but not that we will starve or become homeless. Without needing to go to work-- my expenses will be lower. I estimate I can cut at least half of what I've been paying for gas. Physical therapy appointments can probably be stopped, because I won't be doing the things that were causing the injuries (just need to get a few things "fixed" one more time...). The acupuncturist can go back to working on the chronic medical problems I have, rather than acute injuries-- and less frequent visits will be needed. I'll have the time to work on my crafts business-- haven't had the "energy" to do much for a couple of years, and hopefully that will pick up once I have the time to do the regular write-ups and photography needed for on-line marketing and website, as well as for "making stuff' and attending shows. So, in short, my advice to anybody struggling to make their income meet their budgeting needs-- do a "costs/benefits study", and figure out how much you are REALLY making by going to work. If taxes, childcare and job-related expenses leave you only "pocket change", or less, it's time to find out what options you have to change that situation-- and even if you can't change anything, at least you'll have the "relief" that comes from finding out why you aren't "catching up". Kaytee www.simplexities.net www.simplexities.etsy.com |
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