While my entire state was mourning the loss of the Super Bowl last Sunday, I put my time to better use, reading my fellow Personal Finance Bloggers to see what I could learn. The first great article I’ll share reminds me of a request I responded to a while back. Someone wrote in, saying she was in debt, and couldn’t get out of it. No advice on cutting her budget was acceptable, so my answer moved towards the income side. She was a stay at home mom, and her husband worked full time. To cut to the chase, she said that neither she, nor her husband would entertain anything to earn extra money. So, she vented, but wasn’t open to advice. On the other hand, when you look at your budget and see that after saving 10% for retirement, the ‘fun money’ may be pretty limited. Check out DoughRoller’s 75 Ways To Make Money On The Side, if you can’t find one idea here that works for you, I’d be pretty surprised. A couple nights a week, or a series of Saturday afternoons, and you’ll find some good pocket money coming in. If this list helps you, let DoughRoller know how you found it.
Ron at The Wisdom Journal shares 4 Surprising Ways To Damage Your Credit Score. Some good points, important to understand how adding, canceling, and applying for credit can impact your score. Some feel it’s a game, but if you don’t care to play, it may be at your own expense.
Free Money Finance had a guest post, Compute Your Net Worth Once a Year. This is an excellent exercise, and a good way to hold yourself accountable to your financial goals. The articles offers an age-based chart showing how much you should have saved each year as a multiple of current income. I like that approach and use it myself.
At Bargaineering, Miranda Marquit discussed Financial Options for the Unbanked, touching on the payday lender and other non traditional financial partners. She offers a kind word regarding Suze Orman’s cash card. I imagine that it might be worth considering as a very last resort, but would hope none of my readers find themselves in such dire straights.
Miranda also authored Dollar Matters: Kid Stuff, a roundup of recent articles about kids and money. Let’s hope the next generation can learn from our mistakes, and avoid the messes we seem to get into every 8-12 years.
And on a bit of a lighter note, we’ll close this week’s roundup with Financial Samurai’s Don’t Get Fired Or Quit, Get Laid Off Instead. As I commented to Sam, I was thinking of this very strategy myself. My employer has offered severance packages in the past, as many as 2 weeks pay for each year of service. This would be a year’s pay. Even after the tax hit (although I’d do my best to arrange this to fall in a January) that would be pretty cool to get that kind of lump sum to walk away. Sam suggests that getting laid off would allow for a nice period of unemployment benefits, I don’t know if one can get severance and the unemployment, I have to check that out. But it’s still a ways off for me, just planning way ahead.
That’s a wrap, drive home carefully, remember to tip your waitress!