Posts Tagged ‘debt’
“Summer Brains” Out; Saving Money In
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Today I thought I would talk about some fun ways to get kids to use their heads in the summer by helping the family save money without wasting time!
Throughout my book I have “Kid-tivities” that help get kids involved and making it easy and fun at the same time.
I thought I would share a couple with you:
The “Getting Rid of Debt” Game: If you are one of the many American families with problem debt, don’t try to hide the situation from your children, because they are smart enough to realize that something is wrong. Instead, sit down with them and explain that in the past you have spent more than you made but you are trying to fix it, and if the whole family works together to make it better, everyone will be happy. Then brainstorm with your children what you can do as a family to bring in extra money and pay down that debt. Whether it is through a yard sale or two (or seven!), or having them help you sell items on eBay or whatever, include them in the process and make it a game, rather than a drag!
Playing “House Detective”: This is a game that can work on those rainy days (like the Northeast has been having for the past 2 months!) when your kids are bored and stuck in the house. If your circuit breaker box has never been labeled, you have your kids run around the house every time you shut off a breaker so you know which room(s) corresponds to what fuse. Then you can show your kids how to shut down the breaker box in the event of an emergency. You can also play house detective to find the source of leaky pipes, since kids are particularly good at crawling in places (such as under sinks) that are hard for us adults to reach!
Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.
Tags: debt, home improvement, kidtivities, saving money
Posted in Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time | No Comments »
Guilt-Free Shopping
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
Hi Everyone! Sorry for the posting delay…tax season makes it a bit crazy for me!
A special hello to all of the new visitors coming from the Blog Party at 5minutesformom!
So what is guilt-free shopping? It’s when you buy something and you know you can afford it because there is money in the bank to pay for it! In our house, we stick to a debit/cash payment style 95% of the time. The only time we use a credit card is when making an online purchase for something like airfare, where we don’t find it to be a good idea to put our debit card number out on the web, even if it does have a Visa logo on it.
But what happens when you are not in guilt-free shopping mode? What if there are credit card bills piling up? Where do you start to undo them?
The lousy part of this economy is that it brings out the vultures in our society–those who prey on people suffering. Those who say they can “fix” your credit if you just pay them $500 or $1000 and they will get everything fixed for you. Or they tell you you can “just declare bankruptcy” and that will work. And then when it doesn’t work out you feel double-ripped off and helpless.
If you or someone you know is having problems managing their debt, there is a legit non-profit out there to help. Try www.debtadvice.org. This is the website for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, a branch of Consumer Credit Counseling Services (www.cccsinc.org). With these folks, you have the opportunity to work with a trained, certified NFCC counselor. And you can achieve for free or very little cost what these debt settlement companies may charge thousands of dollars for.
I actually called these folks and interviewed one of their staff members for my book and asked every question I could think of to determine their legitimacy and understand how they work to make sure I wasn’t recommending a group that would rip off my readers. These are good folks that can get you on the right track when you are ready to take control of your debt. Then it is 100% guilt-free shopping!
Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.
Tags: credit cards, debt, free stuff, guilt-free shopping, saving money
Posted in Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time | No Comments »
