Pennysaverblog – Page 181 – Smart Finance and Money Saving Tips

Gifts

An Easy Way To Christmas Shop For Less

I had a great time Christmas shopping this year. I don’t really enjoy shopping in crowded malls, so this year I avoided the mall scene altogether. I shopped on amazon.ca and found everything I was looking for, and at reasonable prices, too.

Here are some ways to make amazon.ca work for you:

Take advantage of free shipping. When I first started shopping, I found a few items I really liked but didn’t pay attention to the shipping fees. When I proceeded to the checkout I realized that the items I chose did not qualify for free shipping. Go figure! I hadn’t noticed that the items I selected were not Amazon products, but instead, were sold by a private seller using the Amazon website. Those products do not qualify for free shipping. So, after learning this the hard way, I decided to make a point of only looking at the products that are eligible for free shipping. Amazon provides free shipping when you buy a minimum of $25 worth of products. That’s a great deal!

November 13, 2013

Family

What You Should Tell Your Kids About Family Finances

Everyone has their opinion on what you should and shouldn’t share with your children about your family’s financial situation. Some say you should be really honest and if your family is struggling financially, then the kids should be made aware of it. Others say that you shouldn’t tell your kids anything at all as it’s not their problem.

I would venture to say that neither approach is healthy. If a child is in a family that is currently experiencing financial difficulties, it’s a good idea for them to be kept in the loop to a certain degree, but certainly not to the extent that they feel burdened and pressured to find a job to help support the family.

I can say this from experience. When I was growing up, my mother was a single parent for most of my formative years. We lived on an extremely tight budget, and while I was aware that things were tight, I was never led to believe that we were going to go hungry or become homeless. My mother never told me that we were in trouble, even if we might have been.

November 10, 2013

General

How To Determine The Right List Price For Your Home

Although the real estate market is certainly more stable than it’s been over the past several years, it’s still pretty tough. So if you happen to be someone who is thinking about putting your house on the market, it’s going to require some savvy and know-how in order to get your house to move fast and for you to make a good profit. In the efforts to help you do both, one thing that you have to do is determine the right list price for your home.

If you’re not quite sure about what all of that entails, this is a great article for you to read because we actually have five things that we feel will assist you in coming to the right asking price for your home below:

Get your home appraised. You might think that your house is the best thing ever but when prospective buyers are walking through the rooms of your house, they are going to want to get more than your opinion. This is why it’s important to hire someone to come over and appraise your home. It will give you a factual estimate of what your house is actually worth.

Look at it from a “local” perspective. Even if you and someone you know have extremely similar houses, including the floor plans, if you both happen to live in different states you can’t really compare the value of the houses. That’s because each market varies from state to state. So as you’re looking to get a general idea of how the real estate market is doing in order to figure out what to charge for your own house, narrow it down to the areas where you live; that will offer you a more accurate assessment.

November 7, 2013

Investing

What Do You Use Your TFSA For?

The Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) has been around for a few years now. A TFSA can be used for virtually any type of savings goal. So, what are you saving for in your TFSA?

When TFSAs were first introduced in 2009, my husband and I each opened one up immediately. We had very little knowledge of how we could use them, but we were attracted by the feature of not having to pay income tax on any interest we earned on the accounts.

Consider investing – As time progressed and we learned more about the TFSA, we bought some investments within our TFSAs, as we realized that we could save for longer term goals within these accounts, too, not just short term ones.

Open more than one – We also discovered that we could open up more than one – by doing so we could save for different savings goals in different TFSAs, eliminating confusion.

November 6, 2013

Banking

How To Benefit From Having Multiple Savings Accounts

Do you know anyone who has two savings accounts? Do you know why they have two savings accounts? Did you know that many financially savvy people do this in order to stash their money away in places where they don’t have quick access to it?

So, why is having more than one savings account beneficial? The reason this is beneficial to you is because you can save money in different places in order to meet different goals. For example, if you want to save for a vacation sometime in the future, then you can use one of these accounts as your vacation savings account. Let’s say you want to save for college as well, this is where the other account will come in handy. What you need to understand is that by putting money into a separate account for a certain purpose is a really great way to save, and in fact, it makes saving easier as you will be able to see your progress more easily.

November 3, 2013

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