A Penny Saved

Happy Valentines day everybody.  Nothing warms the heart better than a commercially fit holiday.  By commercially fit holiday I mean a holiday where the sole purpose of it’s continued existence is for the sale of commercially available goods.

You can stop looking at me like that.  I’m not a bah-humbug sort of fellow most of the time.  I know that like Christmas there is a bit of a deeper meaning to Valentines day that most people seem to miss.  It’s a good case of missing the forest for the trees.  Or not.  What it really boils down to is that some salesperson (most likely a salesman) in the early years of commercials decided that Valentines day would be a great day to meet his quota for sales of chocolate or roses or whatever V-day fodder he happened to be selling.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, both the men and the women get in a little hot water with their significant other if they don’t get them something.  Luckily, my wife is not very demanding and a dinner out and a movie usually is enough, but there are some who won’t settle for anything less than roses, dinner, and diamonds.

How much do you spend on V-Day?  Or how much is spent on you?  Does it make you any more loved?  Or special?  Perhaps there would be an easier way for your significant other to express how loved and special you are to them besides spending $50 on flowers.

Technorati Tags: valentines day, valentine, flowers, roses, diamonds

Honestly.  What blind person designed the new Presidential $1 coins?  And furthermore, who approved the design.  Have you seen them?

George Washington looks like he’s ready to kill someone.  John Adams looks like he could star in the next production of CATS.  Thomas Jefferson has a major unibrow thing going on and his cheek looks like it’s had a bad botox treatment.  And James Madison?  What the heck happened to the left side of his face?

Honestly, I like the idea of a dollar coin.  I think that the $1 bill is past it’s time and is more of a burden than a boon.  They have a really small lifespan when compared to even the next highest bill and besides strippers(sorry.  exotic dancers) most places could easily make the switch to the dollar coin.  Whats more is that most people empty their change into a coin jar or some such at the end of the day.  Imagine how quickly that will build up in value!  All those dollar coins in there!  The truth is that while I do like the idea, I just don’t think it will get picked up.  They’ll do it until they run out of presidents and then they’ll have a different design, but it’ll be mostly for collectors and not for commerce.

Technorati Tags: presidential, presidential coin, presidential dollar coin, dollar coin

Many of us spend 10 or 11 months of the year being as frugal as possible and saving our money as best as possible.  On those 1 or 2 months of the year, however, we sometimes lose all control and ruin all the hard work we’ve put in the rest of the year.

It seems the Holiday season brings out the habitual spender in us all.  In a mad dash to give the best possible gifts for each and every person that we know, we spend and spend until we can’t spend anymore.  And even then we apologize for not spending enough.

While there are many different theories on how to save yourself money during the holiday season, the best way to do so is to not fall victim to the constant comparing and pressure to spend.

The saying “It’s the thought that counts” is merely a nice way of acknowledging a poorly received gift. So what is a gift giver to do?

How do you handle the gift giving season?  Do you set a limit for each person? Do you exchange names?  Some combination of both? Or do you have your own unique way to handle it?

Let us know!  Leave your hints,tips, and secrets in the comments here.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, gift giving, gifts, spending, holiday season

I’ve recently held a bit of discussion with some people over the fact that I did a paid post here earlier this week. I don’t think that it’s as big of a deal as everyone makes it out to be, while others are taking a stance of non-participation by censoring people like myself that do make money with paid posts.

As stated in the post in question, all paid posts on this or any other blog that I run will be clearly marked as a paid post. The content of the post will not be regulated by the entity paying for the post and will be my honest opinion of the product or website. In fact, to take it further, I see no difference between my doing a paid post every once in a while and having affiliate links in a unpaid-for post. In many cases, affiliate links are not marked in any way. Further, I see little difference between a paid post and regular advertisements like adsense, Text-Link-Ads, and others. I’m still being paid to put up content in both cases. And in both cases the advertisement is clearly marked.
What are your opinions of this? Do you use services like PayPerPost or ReviewME? Have you found that people censor your blogs because of it? Or that people are more negative towards you and your blog because of it? Let me know. I’d like to hear what the consensus is among the personal finance realm.

Technorati Tags: payperpost, reviewme, paid posts, personal finance, advertisement

It’s become clearer to me in the last few days that there can be some confusion with the name of this blog and the purpose of this blog from the comments on my post “Where are the wealthy bloggers?”

Perhaps it would have been better to select a different name other than A Penny Saved.  I understand the arguement that A Penny Saved… brings about images of scrooges miserly collecting every penny.  I also understand how one could take it to mean that the content here is merely about saving.

It’s not.  It’s about making yourself better financially.  Saving is one of the elements of that.  There are many other elements to that as well.  A close look at the history of articles on this site would show that while I do cover saving, I also cover most every other element of financial soundness.

Perhaps one day I will change the name to better depict that, but until then, please don’t judge a blog by it’s cover.  A Penny Saved can very easily be invested and made into great wealth.  If you only go about it the right way.

Technorati Tags: clarification, naming, blogs, finance

If you’re reading this, you most likely are aware of the growing community of Personal Finance bloggers.  Most of us are struggling to make ends meet and that is part of our theme.  We blog about the struggles in hopes of learning something new and helping others in the same situation.

But the question I would ask is, Where are the wealthy bloggers?  Where are the self-made millionaires that are blogging about personal finance and how they did it?

My guess is that there are none as yet.  A majority of the wealthy that are out there now, at least self made wealthy that didn’t get lucky, are quite a bit older than the median age of blogger(mid twenties if your interested) and really just don’t get the whole blogging thing.

So, if you’re reading this and you’re a self-made wealthy person.  I’d like to offer you the chance to guest post here at A Penny Saved…  It doesn’t have to be any more than one article if you don’t want it to.  There won’t be any pay involved.  If you do it and like it, we can discuss getting you set up with your own blog and you can write until you’re blue in the face if you like.  It can be completely anonymous if you like as well.

Any takers?

Click on Contact to drop me a line.

Technorati Tags: wealthy, wealthy blogger, wealthy bloggers, wealth, guest post

JLP’s Question of the day brings up a bit of a hot topic.  Should the value of your home be included in your net worth calculations?

I say yes.  Just so long as you count the debt on the house as well.  Mortgage, Home Equity Line of Credit, etc… should all be included and most people are very adamant about including all debt.  If the debt is included, then so should the value of the house.

One thing to remember when calculating your net worth is that it is meant to be a snapshot of your net value at that particular time and place.  Many would argue that the current bubble-like real estate market is reason enough to not trust your home value enough to include it in the net worth.  But let’s be real.  That value, even inflated as it may be, is a snapshot of the value of your home at that time and place.

Inlcude it.  The difference in value from time to time may make it look like your net worth fluctuates a lot more than it really does, but the snapshot will be that more accurate for it’s inclusion.

Technorati Tags: net worth, home value, mortgage, house value

Not even a little excited.  The problem is that last year the company that I work for implemented some nifty, handy-dandy, employee evaluation software.  Great for the company.  Bad for the employees.

Not one employee that I’ve talked to received a raise that exceeded 2.5%.  That’s not so great.  Let me tell you why.

Inflation hovers somewhere around 3-4%.  Inflation is the measure of growth in costs of items.  So, if the costs of items grew by 3-4% last year, and I received a raise of 2.5%, I’m actually losing  0.5-1.5% over last year.

Obviously, some companies cannot afford to give all employees raises that are astronomical.  Some employees are at the near the top of their salary range and as such are unable to get a higher raise.  However, a raise that at least matches the inflation rate would certainly be nice.  I dare say it should almost be required.

Again, this year, they are using the same software to “assess” our work and determine salary ranges and raises.  Again, I think there will be some unhappy employees who will be losing money year to year because of a sub-inflation pay raise.

And that is why I’m not excited about my next raise.  How’s your raise looking this year?

Technorati Tags: pay raise, pay scale, salary range, raise, inflation, inflation rate

Throughout the world, people desire to be wealthy.  People want to be at the top of the wealth game.  But what defines wealth?  Is it movie stars, sports stars, *ahem* bloggers?

Many people look to the rich and famous to define wealth and riches.  A bigger mistake couldn’t be made.  While it is true that some of the rich and famous are indeed wealthy, many of them will end their careers in worse financial positions than you or I.

What should define wealth?  What qualifiers do you use for wealth?  Many use net worth.  To some, a net worth of more than a certain number qualifies as wealthy.  But what number?  Many use the $1,000,000 mark.  A lofty goal for many.

I define wealth differently.  Wealth to me does include my net worth, but it’s a fluid mark.  For me to consider myself wealthy, I merely wish to live comfortably now and into retirement.  I am still quite a way off from that mark and still have to work diligently on my finances to make strides in that direction.  Currently, if my wife and I were to make somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 combined gross per year, we could live quite comfortably.  So for now, that’s the mark.

The beauty of it being fluid is that as our debts and bills decrease so does the mark.  Say all my debts were to go away tomorrow.  The mark would decrease significantly.  Perhaps down to the level of income that we make now.

These numbers do include some planning for future, but that is what it would take to live comfortably for now.  And it would leave some for retirement investing.  Enough to keep that level of funds for many years into our retirement.

How do you define wealth?  Do you have a set goal for your net worth that would indicate to you that you are wealthy?

Technorati Tags: wealth, wealthy, net worth, retirement, salary, worth, rich

Every body remembers the Bankruptcy reform act of 2005.  It was supposed to severly cut back on the amount of bankruptcies and make it harder to file for one.  But did it work?

Credit Slips has a powerful article on that very subject.  As we can see from their inset table and the text, bankruptcy filings surged to over 630,000 filings in October.  The deadline to file before the reform act was October 17, 2005.  We can assume then that the majority of those filings were before the deadline.

What is more interesting is that the following month the number of filings returned to what approximates as normal and has gone on an uptrend ever since.  So, one of two things has happened.  Either the reform act wasn’t as effective as everyone would like to believe, or there are just more people who are truly going bankrupt.

Personally, I don’t think the reform act did much of anything.  Except get nearly 1 million people to file because they were afraid that they would get “stuck” with their debt if they waited.  It’s a disturbing trend that we as American’s go through in our consumerist society.  Unfortunately, I am just as guilty as some others are.  But we’re on the right track here.  Are you?

[tags]bankruptcy, bankruptcy reform act of 2005[tags]