With all the medical bills (dentist, eye doctor, braces) and the price of food soaring, my wife and I have been talking about whether she should get a part-time job. At first we thought maybe something seasonal so that in the summer she could be home with the girls. But it looks like my wife is going to go back to substitute teaching! She goes in once a week now to volunteer at the girls elementary school. When she was in the other week, she mentioned to one of the teachers about looking for a job, and they encouraged her to become a substitute teacher. The person mentioned that substitute teachers in our area make $100 a day, which is not bad considering there is no prep and the hours are great with us having girls in school.

It’s funny because she has done that before (she has her teacher certification) and we hadn’t really thought about it (don’t ask me why). So she is in the process of filling out all the paper work, getting her criminal background checks done, getting fingerprinted, resume updated, and references sent in (yeah, it’s a lot to do). Hopefully by the beginning of the year she can be ready to start. We’re hoping she can get about one day a week. That would be enough to take the pressure off and let us do a few thinks we can’t afford to do right now.

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The second time my wife was hospitalized last year (summer of 2011), the doctor ordered a test that ultimately diagnosed what was wrong. However our insurance company decided that they would not cover the test – and our bill was several thousand dollars for the test. We wrote to the Insurance Company and challenged their denial. They denied us again. We challenged again. They denied us again.

We went to the doctor (actually office billing staff) who performed the test – they said the insurance company was crazy – the insurance company was stating that the test performed was not recognized for diagnosing the type of condition my wife had (stomach issues). But that is what the test is used for!

So the doctor’s office went to bat for us, and told us not to worry about the bill. So we haven’t. It has now been almost a year since the billing and we still have not paid the bill, and we have not heard anything about it for over six months.

Now I am not saying that we are completely out of the woods yet – we have never received anything from the insurance company saying they would pay, and we have not received anything from the doctor’s office in writing saying forget about it. But I would say that we are getting close to seeing the edge of the woods. No news is definitely good news in this case!

If nothing else, we have delayed payment at least to the point where we have the resources to pay it if we have to. It’s another reminder to me that it pays to challenge insurance companies and medical offices, and to not give up with their first or even their second answer.

 

Hi there - could you help spread the word about A Penny Saved? We rely on word of mouth to get new readers. If you would send someone a link, email, or even mention it to your friends, I would truly appreciate it. Health Insurance Fight Update is a post from: A Penny Saved, the best darn personal finance blog around.

Our church is going through the process of looking for a new senior pastor. Part of my responsibility as a staff member in this search process is to do the first review of resumes that come in. Although I will not make the final decision, what I note on these resumes for others to look at goes a long way in determining how that resume fares through the process.

Being on this side of the resume process, I thought I would share a few tips to those of you sending resumes out.

1. Don’t just tell me you were a manager, or an employee at some firm that I may or may not ever have heard of. Tell me something you did there that will get me to notice your abilities. Also, if the company is obscure, tell me a little bit about what that company does, especially how your experience there relates to my company.
2. Do some research about my company, and at least know what to send me to be considered for the position. I am going through this stack of resumes, and we asked for certain information to be provided to us if you were applying. Not giving me the information I asked for is a dead-end for you.
3. If there are gaps in your work experience, tell me why. If you don’t, I will assume the worst. Even if it was the worst, it’s better if you fill it in and share it as positive as possible. One resume had a gap of several years, but he took the time to explain on a cover letter about taking care of a child’s special needs. Okay, good. We can accept that, even appreciate that. He goes to the next phase of the search because he took the time to explain things.
4. Give dates. One resume I read through gave no information about the places they worked and gave no dates. My opinion-they were hiding something. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. But I am not going to take the time to find out. So show me up front.
5. Make your resume clear and the information easy to find. One resume that came in the guy was trying to be different. Did it stand out? Yes, we noticed it. The bad news is it didn’t help because although it was creative, it was too hard to find the information we were looking for. I am busy, don’t waste my time. I moved on to another resume.

There are other tips for good resume writing (like spelling), but these five came jumping out at me as I read through a stack of resumes this week. So don’t give the resume reviewer an easy no. Review your resume and see if you have any of these problems listed above and get them corrected.

 

 

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With my work (pastor) it’s hard to earn extra income. I need to be available seven days a week. I have evening meetings that change nights and times, and my work schedule changes frequently. So I cannot look for regular avenues of income. I need work that I can pick up and put down whenever I have to, and do whenever I can. So mostly I blog and do paid surveys. Sometimes I will get extra money for doing weddings or funerals, but that is pretty limited (those activities have to be approved by the church).

My wife does bring in a little income from doing home school evaluations. InPennsylvania, if you home school, you need a licensed teacher to evaluate your child’s work for the year. Since she is accredited in PA, she can do evaluations even though she isn’t currently teaching.

So far YTD, we have made $1,970. We were pretty excited. I thought maybe if we were lucky we would make two thousand for the whole year! We don’t budget the extra money (sorry Dave Ramsey), but use it to do things like go out to eat or purchase things that are just not in our budget. It’s basically fun money, although sometimes it does go to extra expenses like car repairs or some emergency like that.

It has been really helpful this year to have that extra money. I hope the 2^nd half of this year we can make another thousand! How are you doing making extra income this year?

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Thanks to Dave Ramsey, or should I say unthanks to him, my wife and I decided to have a yard sale. Although yard sales are a good way to save some money, they are no fun in my book to do. The return on investment of time and energy just seems to not be worth it. But in spite of this feeling, we decided to join with a friend and try one again.

 Unfortunately for us, after months of pulling things together (and even have some things donated), the big day arrived last Friday – and it rained! We live out in the country where there is not much traffic, so the yard sale was being held at a friend’s house where there is a lot of traffic. But with all our stuff there was no good place to keep it sheltered from the rain (and it did rain all day) so we cancelled Friday.

 Saturday we tried again. My wife and our friend held the sale from 7:00 am until 3:00 p.m. After some small expenses, we netted a whole $53! If it was just for the money, it definitely would not be worth it. But we did get some areas of our house cleaned up, and the stuff that did not sell we were able to donate to a homeless shelter, so that made it more worthwhile.

It will be a long time until we do another one!

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If you are looking for a way to make a few bucks and you would like to help the environment at the same time, think about recycling your inkjet cartridges and/or toner cartridges.

I just started to look into it (after I bought some more ink for my inkjet printer and it set me back some serious cash!).  If you Google “inkjet cartridge” you will see a bunch of companies that offer to pay you cash or give you store credit for your cartridges, some even pay the shipping.

Unfortunately for me, Epson is not one of the brands that you can send in, at least from looking at a couple of sites. It seems that they have some special type of head that makes it difficult to recycle. Figures!

However, Staples advertises that you can bring in any type of inkjet cartridge and they will give you store credit, I think $2. That is less than the online companies, but more than $0 for Epson! And I don’t have to worry about shipping because I can just drop it off. So I will give it a try soon and see. I think you can take up to 10 cartridges a month, so I can go just whenever I get a few.

Seems like this could be a good deal for me and for the environment!

Hi there - could you help spread the word about A Penny Saved? We rely on word of mouth to get new readers. If you would send someone a link, email, or even mention it to your friends, I would truly appreciate it. Recycling Ink Cartridges is a post from: A Penny Saved, the best darn personal finance blog around.

I was printing out some Quicken reports – some to get ready to do my taxes, some just for fun and curiosity. The one report I did was on income earned last year through various sources. Between my wife and I, we were able to earn $2300 in extra income last year! That really helped us as we had so many medical and house expenses last year.

The income came from a variety of sources:

• Doing Online Surveys
• Performing Funerals / Guest Preaching
• Blogging
• Selling an Old Car (to junk yard) & selling Jewelry
• Home School Evaluations (my wife is a former teacher)

Obviously not everyone can do some of these. But usually most anyone can do something to make some extra cash. I have friends who use their hobbies (like gardening or photography) to make money. Who use their skills to earn some extra cash (small house projects for others).

What are some ways you could make some extra cash this year to pay down bills or build up an emergency fund? Get creative and get started!

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My wife and I made a tough decision the other night. We are going to sell our Pop-Up Camper. This sale is going to be sad for us, and really sad for the girls. We love camping, but because of schedule conflicts we did not go once last year, and because of health issues this year we did not go at all either. As we talked about next year, my wife and I came to the conclusion that we probably weren’t going to make it camping next year either.

So instead of letting it sit and just depreciate and deteriorate, we are going to sell it. We are hoping to get at least $5000 for it – I went online to the NADA appraisal guide and their estimated value for our make and model is between $5800 and $7000. Ours has a few dings so we are expecting a little less, and I know my wife and if someone we know wants to buy it, she always wants to give them a deal!

Once we sell it we will use most of the money to restock our emergency fund. We will take a little bit of it to finish our bathroom that needs flooring. Right now we are using word of mouth and so far we have  two individuals that might be interested. If they don’t come through and buy it then we will probably use Craig’s List to see if we can sell it. Going to a RV dealer will be our last option – you never get much as much when selling to directly to them as you can by selling it yourself. But if our Pop-Up doesn’t sell after awhile (we haven’t set a time frame yet), we may just get what we can from a dealer and move on. We don’t want it sitting in our yard for to long.

Hopefully, once we get our emergency fund back to health (and this sale will help!) we can think about camping again. We love camping so this will be hard, but right now we are in a season of life where we just won’t be able to go for awhile. Maybe in the future camping will be something our family can enjoy once again!

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Last Friday I had the opportunity to do what I call a triple play – make a purchase and utilize three different savings/earnings opportunities.

First I lookecd on the web for internet savings codes for the gardening company I wanted to make a purchase from. I knew about how much I was going to spend, and I found several codes – the best one was for free shipping which saved me almost $15!

Secondly, I did a search through the mypoints toolbar (even though I knew the website, etc.). It listed the gardening company and if I clicked to the site through mypoints I could earn 3 points per dollar spent (which can be used for gift cards – I usually choose restaurants). I don’t do a lot through mypoints, but it is an easy way to get some gift cards with little effort.

Third, I paid for the purchase using my Wells Fargo Visa credit card which gives me one percent back to be used toward paying off my mortgage.

So for one purchase, I was able to save ($15) and get rewarded (points toward gift card and points toward mortgage). Not bad for something I was going to buy anyway!

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My family and I were in Target buying a birthday gift when all of a sudden there were like a dozen employees standing around with a trainer explaining to them how to “help” customers. Being naturally curious I listened in for awhile. What these new employees were really being trained to do was not help customers but to sell them more products.

If you ask a Target employee for help about diapers, they are supposed to also mention or ask if you need wipes.  If you need help in electronics about a DVD player, the employee will ask you if you have cables. It was one big sales training event.

It was a reminder to me that salespeople are really there to help the company, not necessarily there to help you – unless, like I said, it helps the company. So the next time you are shopping at Target, or anywhere for that matter, remember that a sales person’s “help” comes at a price. Don’t let them sell you what you don’t need. Know what you want / what you need and stick to it.

Hi there - could you help spread the word about A Penny Saved? We rely on word of mouth to get new readers. If you would send someone a link, email, or even mention it to your friends, I would truly appreciate it. Target Sales Training is a post from: A Penny Saved, the best darn personal finance blog around.