Money Tips, Consumer News and Product Reviews To Improve Your Finances

Just for fun, here’s a look at some sweaters and knitwear you probably don’t want to wear. Knock yourself out with these colorful ensembles!

Bring out your favorite Christmas apparel! Do you favor the mint green top or the bright purple and yellow warm vest you got several years ago? Don’t be too embarrassed though, there are a lot of winter and holiday clothing out there that leaves much to be desired. But they’re fun, and for many of us, we got them for a song (or for free, maybe by playing White Elephant).

I see a lot of these clothes on the sales racks in my favorite bargain stores. Target, Marshall’s, Ross Dress for Less, T. J. Max still have a bunch of these out on sale periodically. If you’re lucky, you may avoid the ultra-generosity of your well-meaning loved ones who can’t resist sharing their best color schemes and taste in clothes with you! For your own sake, pray that you get the bargain gift cards, the quality cookware or even the restaurant gift certificates instead. You don’t want to expand your Christmas wardrobe this way, do you?

All these gorgeous photos are from the CNN slideshow about unfortunate sweaters. I provide my own context below.

Sweaters and Knitwear You Don’t Want To Wear

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Parts of the nation are snowed in and bitter cold, while others are just wet and cold (like here in California). Either way, if you’re indoors, why not warm up with a nice hot cup of cocoa and settle down to read a few personal finance articles from the financial web? That’s what I’m doing right now!

• Think Your Way To Wealth reminds us to review our Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) for this year and the next. Don’t forget to use your money or you’ll lose it!
• Rich Credit Debt Loan tells us how we can avoid financial disasters through good money management and budgeting. Hmmm… I don’t actually budget much, I just try not to buy stuff .
• No Debt Plan arrives at an interesting statement. He believes that a 30 year mortgage usually trumps a 15 year mortgage. Really? How is that? Won’t the bank get more of your money via interest payments for a longer term mortgage? Not if you can help it! Find out how he comes up with this conclusion, which I really quite liked! For the record, we have a 15 year mortgage and because of this recession, we’re regretting the relatively steep payments a little bit!
• StumbleForward is a new blog I’ve come across and I found the coverage on the option arm mortgage and other financial money traps very interesting.
• Pecuniarities has many cool DIY suggestions for the holidays. I love the creative ideas in this blog, including this one on an eggshell gift wrap!
• Christian PF has an awesome post about a group of Secret Santas whose members anonymously pass out $100 bills to random folks. Their Christmas spirit is very inspiring; it’s a wonderful legacy left by its founder.

Recent Carnivals

• Carnival of Personal Finance
• Festival of Frugality
• Carnival of Money Stories
• Bankruptcy and Debt Carnival
• Yule Best of Me Symphony
• Carnival of Family Life

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Are you one of the seniors or those over 55 who’s retirement investments have been hit during this economic crisis?

If your investments have taken a severe beating lately and you are over 55 years of age, you may be considering the possibility of selling all your stocks, including your 401K funds to cut your losses. This would be a terrible mistake, unless it’s a dire emergency, in which case you would do it anyway, crisis or no crisis.

Was your retirement just around the corner and were you already savoring the dolce far niente, which in plain Italian-English means the pleasure of doing nothing? Suddenly, with this recession, the dark clouds on the horizon have become a full-fledged hurricane, wiping out your precious possessions. What should a quasi senior citizen do in such circumstances?

Image by MSNBC.

Retirement Investments Hit? Financial Options For Seniors

1. Weigh the possibility of a reverse mortgage.

Check out this comment made on Yahoo Shine:
“The older a borrower, the larger the percentage of the home’s value that can be borrowed. Homeowners can receive payments in a lump sum, on a monthly basis (for a fixed term or for as long as they live in the home), or on an occasional basis as a line of credit. Homeowners whose circumstances change can restructure their payment options.”

In other words, people 55 and over may have the option to select a reverse mortgage, which in effect is like selling your home while you keep living in it. There are of course several conditions that must be met, which you can read about here. Just remember to study this option very carefully before signing on the dotted line.

2. Reduce your expenses immediately.

You may have already read about the many ways a family or a couple can lower utility bills and payments by as much as 20%. Ditto for fuel (it’s going up again, you can be sure of that), groceries (buy generic brands), car payments (pick a car you can afford and sell the extra one), insurance coverage payments (play the companies against each other and choose the cheapest one). Find ways to reduce your expenditures — take a look at your existing debt and see if you can work to minimize it. Perhaps you can call your credit card companies and tell them you have an offer to transfer your debt at a much lower rate. The key is to review your family budget and see where you can comfortably make cuts. Then do another pass and see what you can do without, for the meantime.

3. Keep your investments. Adjust your asset allocation with care.

If you’ve invested in solid companies, such as blue chips, then stay with them. They should be worth much more down the road. Once you are satisfied that their values have somewhat recovered, consider changing the percentage you dedicate to stocks and the percentage you allocate to more secure investments, such that your asset allocation is optimized for your age, risk profile and financial goals. At your age, consider reversing the typical 70%/30% allocation formula; that is, go with something more like 70% safe (cash and bonds) and 30% risky (stocks, real estate). If you already maintain a decent allocation, then rebalance your positions accordingly.

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With the continuous rise in college costs, paying for college may seem like a growing challenge, if not an impossibility. Here are our suggestions on how to pay for school on your own.

The University of Oklahoma is a lot like other universities out there. It is famous for its football program, but if I were a student there, I’d be worried about the rising cost of tuition. This year, a student from this state can expect to pay almost $190 per credit hour, while the fees go up for non-residents.

If you’re one of many folks wondering how you’re paying for college without the benefit of a college savings account, then please read on about some options that may help you out. Using certain strategies and the assistance of an online financial coaching staff, we can make it to the graduation endzone without getting tackled by thousands in student loans.

Awesome image from Invisibleman.

6 Ways To Pay for School On Your Own

1. Look into paying for college with work income.

Back when I attended college, I didn’t have options like a 529 account or other savings rewards programs that can support a 529 college savings plan, so I funded part of my tuition through various jobs as a student worker, then at a nearby mall. A neighbor recently told me that her granddaughter pays for college and her other expenses by working Fridays to Mondays; the freshman goes to classes on the other days. I’ve also met people who saved quite a bit of income from their summer jobs.

Then there are those who opt to work for a few years or even decades before completing their degrees. Some of my relatives found success as older students. Also, it’s easier to skip the loans and pay cash for tuition after saving up the money during several years in the workforce.

Another idea is to find employment at a university. For example, the University of Texas at El Paso allows full-time employees the chance to register for a course; in addition, the employees can seek fee waivers.

2. Seek tuition assistance from employers and programs.

There are still employers and programs out there willing to help pay for college costs. Some possibilities:

• The Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) is a good option if you’re interested in a military career and can commit to several years of service.
• Teach for America offers benefits such as loan forbearance and tuition assistance.
• AmeriCorps can offer you some additional benefits as well.

Or you can seek out an internship with a company that can give you on the job skills as well as college credit. BusinessWeek compiled a list of the best internships of 2008 for undergraduates.

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How is the holiday season treating you so far? Here’s how the last day of school before the holidays turned out for us today.

When you describe your day as exhausting, you may not have envisioned a day of non-stop partying with preschoolers and Kindergartners, which was exactly what I found myself subjected to as I celebrated the last day of school before the Christmas break.

So here I am finishing up the rounds of the financial carnivals a little dazed after the sugar high from frosted home-made vanilla gingerbread men, stars, snowmen and Christmas tree cookies, and the whirlwind of crafts and clean up at the schools (nope, I’m not a teacher, just a regular parent of a couple of school-aged kids).

Top the last few days off with watching a couple of school Christmas programs and pageants, and dealing with hyped up kids stoked on more sugar and I guess I’ve earned myself a well-deserved break.

And this is probably just “part one” as we gear ourselves for the main family event next week!

So have fun at my virtual carnivals, and ‘xcuse me, while I wind down somewhere quiet.

Recent Carnivals

• Carnival of Personal Finance
• Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog Carnival
• Bankruptcy & Debt Carnival
• Working At Home Blog Carnival
• Kids and Money
• B-Day Carnival of The Vanities
• Carnival of The Road To Financial Independence #2
• Carnival of Debt Reduction
• Sleety Carnival of The Vanities

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How can we avoid scams? One way is to steer clear from false advertising.

“If it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true”, a phrase everybody knows by heart once they’ve been taken in by a scam artist. Now remember that the Web is a prime ground for scam artists. There is this site that everybody should look at before doing anything (like sending money or giving a stranger your credit card number over the phone).

Photo from Patrick McManamon’s Blog

Beware the False Advertising! Learn To Avoid These Scams

Scam #1: Buy Cheap, Sell High?

This site mentions among others, the famous John Beck TV ad that promises (it’s so easy) that anybody can buy a house for $125 (or some low figure) and resell it immediately for $40,000 (or some high figure). I am sure you have seen it, as it airs constantly. If it’s so easy, why tell everybody and his grandmother? Keep it to yourself and you’ll become a billionaire in a short time, right? Next, take a look at this article called “I’m an Idiot, I Think I Just Got Screwed”. The title is sufficiently clear to satisfy even an Inquisitor of the Middle Ages.

Scam #2: Work From Home and Become Rich

One time, I got curious about an ad on the web that promised to reveal a home business that would allow you to make $9,000 a month without investing a cent and without training of any kind (see 66noboss.com for the grim details). I then read the small print, which almost nobody bothers to do, and I discovered that “the incomes depicted are not typical and represent a small percentage of actual participants.”

They even admit that 14,000,000 Americans were participating in direct/home marketing schemes, according to the latest statistics. Do you have any idea what a small percentage means? Well, I don’t either, as they don’t bother to tell us. But what if they are talking about 5 individuals who got lucky by earning the advertised average income amount last year? That’s a small percentage, right?

They also announce on the front of their ad in big letters that 20,000 satisfied customers grossed over 1 million dollars (in how long, they don’t say). Well, we could interpret this in the following manner: maybe their entire group of 20,000 customers brought in the total of $1 million. If this interpretation is the one that’s true, then if you divide that million by 20,000, the result is a measly $50 per customer. Boy, what a business! It’s probably true, but how many people actually read the ad this way? If the ad had said “each”, then I’d be the first one to sign up. The whole set up reads like, well, a set up.

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