|
|
|
 |
|
Week
of April 17 |
|
Friday, April 21, 2006
Deals & Steals
What
a treasure trove the Web is!
Here’s a roundup
of cool tools and good deals I found while hunting around online
this week:
First, have you checked out
www.epicurious.com lately? It’s the site that pools the recipe
and knowledge base of Gourmet and Bon Appetit
magazines. It’s always been the place to turn when searching for
great recipes for culinary treats like rhubarb strawberry cobbler,
for instance. (I made one this week, using a recipe from the site,
and it was filled with the tart sweet taste of spring!) Now
Epicurious has launched a tool called Epi to Go, which will make any
working woman’s life easier. Not sure what to cook for dinner
tonight? Find a recipe online and e-mail the ingredients to your
cell phone for easy reference when you stop at the store on your way
home. Try it once, and you’ll be hooked.
Want
to save some dough on your book, DVD and CD purchases? Visit
www.zunafish.com, where you can trade media items with others
for $1 a trade. Think of it as a virtual swap meet.
The
folks at Good Housekeeping have come up with a real women’s
survival guide, or operating manual, for daily life. It’s called
Quick & Simple, and it’s chock full of tips for making your life
easier and more enjoyable. Best of all, each week you’ll find
contests and sweepstakes for items big and small, both in the
magazine (available at Target, Wal-Mart and other retail outlets)
and on the Web site. Go to
www.quickandsimple.com and enter to win a different prize every
day. Share memories of your funniest family trip by April 25, and
you might win a five-night stay for four at the Nickelodeon Family
Suites in Orlando (round trip airfare and tickets to Universal
Studios and Islands of Adventure included). The trip is worth
$3,510, and all you have to do to enter is describe your favorite
vacation misadventures in 400 words or less. (Hint: I’ve just
written 328 words.) Visit
www.quickandsimple.com for more information.
David Bach, author of “Smart Women Finish Rich,” “The Automatic
Millionaire,” and “The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner,” among other
personal finance best sellers, has a sale on. Visit
www.finishrich.com, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and
check out his special promotional package: seven books, eight audio
sessions, and a Latte Factor coffee mug (to remind you how quickly
the cost of little things eat into your budget), all for $149, or 65
percent off the retail price of $397. With this library of
information and inspiration, you’ll be well on your way to putting
your financial house in order. It is time for some spring cleaning,
after all.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
|
|
Read More |
Add Your Comments |
Send to a Friend |
|
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Yup to the Prenup!
‘Tis the season for wedding bells. One recently engaged
friend just wrote, asking me whether I thought she should consider
getting a prenup. My answer: Yup—especially considering that she
owns her own home and, in her mid-30’s, already has a substantial
nest egg saved up. In the 19 issues of MAKING BREAD magazine that we
published in digital form over the last three years, we’ve offered
tons of advice for women about to trade their singlehood for marital
bliss. We covered everything from solid financial reasons for
keeping your maiden name to how to be a “Frugal Bride.” There was
the painfully truthful “Advice for All Young Brides-to-Be: ‘Love Is
Irrational … Marriage Is Financial: Reflections on the Slow
Unraveling of a 20-Plus-Year Marriage” and the stylish “Bridal
Grooming.” We’ve published financial quizzes to take with your
fiancé, and checklists for brides who are saying “I do” the second
time around. And, yes, we’ve written about the importance of
prenups and postnups (it’s never too late to put financial
protections and expectations in writing).
The bottom line in all of these articles: hope for the
bliss but prepare for the worst— those scary “D” words, death and
divorce. We even published a terrific piece (written by my newly
engaged friend) offering “The Rules for Living Together” when you’re
“Playing House” without the ring.
All of those articles are still available in our
Issue Download Center. Three-Day Access costs $2.95, or less
than a dollar a day. You can download as many issues as you want in
that time and store them on your desktop or burn them to a CD. The
sound financial advice, inspiring women’s stories, and laughs they
contain will never go stale.
Here are a couple of my favorite suggestions for throwing a frugal
wedding: hand out cheap disposable cameras to each of your wedding
guests and ask them to play photographer, capturing your joy in
candid shots, instead of paying a fancy photographer a fancy price
to stage stiff tableaus. If you’re looking for an original and
loving wedding favor, check out UNICEF’s “Wedding Gift” program.
Here’s how it works: you make a donation to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF
from a link on its Web site and UNICEF will send attractive tent
cards to be placed on your wedding-reception tables, recognizing the
donation you made in your guests’ names. Go to
www.unicef.org or call
212-922-2570
to
find out more about it. As for flowers, my fiancé and I picked
wildflowers by the side of the road on the way to our outdoor
wedding for our flower girl to carry. She looked lovely. The price
for those blooms: $0.
Use the money you save planning your frugal wedding to
start a mortgage down payment fund. Use the time you save keeping
your wedding simple talking with your fiancé about your hopes and
dreams, financial goals and personal aspirations. Then when you say,
“I do,” you really will have a shot at marital bliss.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
|
|
Read More |
Add Your Comments |
Send to a Friend |
|
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Taxing Times—and a New Kind of Wallet
Whew! Jumped that hurdle again. Tax time is over for
another year. For me, it’s always a mad scramble, coordinating
getting forms back from the accountant and signed by my husband on
the fly, then off to the post office under the deadline. This year
there was a mini-crisis when we realized on Monday morning that we
owed nearly $1,000 we couldn’t easily spare, because my husband’s
payroll department neglected to withhold local taxes (or so we
thought). Turned out that they’d sent us an amended W2 form,
documenting the local taxes withheld, but I didn’t learn that until
after the deadline had passed. So now I’m playing catch up, sending
an amended form to reclaim my dough. A good problem to have.
The New York Times warns us of a bad tax problem
that a lot of us will face next year in a recent article titled,
“With Tax Break Expired, Middle Class Faces a Greater Burden for
2006.” According to the paper, a “stealth tax increase … has
begun eating into the 2006 income of nearly 19 million households.”
It seems that a tax break has expired, which had exempted millions
of struggling middle-class households from the impact of the
alternative minimum tax.
If Congress doesn’t act to restore this break, “the
A.M.T. will cost Americans who earn $50,000 to $200,000 nearly $13
billion more next April,” according to The Times. “One in
four families with children—up from one in 22 last year—will owe up
to $3,640 in additional Federal income tax” next year.
Scary stuff! Yet another reason to write your
Congressmen. We’ve given you these links before. Why not bookmark
them, so that you’ll have the addresses handy whenever you feel the
need to make your voice heard:
www.house.gov and
www.senate.gov.
Wondering what to do with your tax refund, besides invest
it (always a good idea)? If you’re carrying a lot of high-interest
debt, use it to pay that debt down and save yourself thousands in
interest charges over time.
To hold your carrying-around cash, try the new wallet
“for people who hate wallets.” Called the Jimi, this plastic money
box, keeps your dough dry, comes in cool colors like magenta, sea
glass, smoke and stealth, limits the number of credit cards you can
carry, and only costs $15.75. It’s available at the Museum of Modern
Art’s Design Store, and many other retail outlets, or online at
www.thejimi.com.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
|
|
Read More |
Add Your Comments |
Send to a Friend |
|
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Mama’s Got a Brand New Bag
We just received a letter from Diane, a MAKING BREAD
reader from Florida, who wanted to share the sad saga of her new
designer purse. The cost: more than $200. After three months of
normal wear, Diane says, “the purse looked shabby and worn.” She
sent it to the manufacturer, hoping for cleaning or replacement, and
received an unsympathetic response. Granted, the purse was white,
and the leather had apparently absorbed a stain that could not be
removed. But the experience for this shopper was disappointing. She
spent good money, splurging on something that had always represented
top quality to her, and her illusions were shattered.
“I believe that women (of average income) should be
aware that purchase of an expensive handbag does not mean a long
purse life,” she wrote, adding, “Thanks for letting me vent about
the first expensive purse I’ve ever purchased, which, after three
months, has been relegated to my closet!”
I’m sorry for Diane’s bad experience.
Buyer’s remorse is one thing when you experience little twinges of
regret over a splurge. But when the item you splurged on turns out
to be a dud, that’s a double dose of regret. The pits! It’s too bad
the company’s customer service folks weren’t more helpful.
I
have to admit I’ve been guilty of succumbing to the lure of
designer handbags, knowing full well that they’re status symbols, a
visible sign of affluence, of membership in some wannabe “in”
crowd. What I’ve learned is that it’s better to count on this
invisible sign of affluence: big bucks in your bank account.
If
the lure of designer logos is too much for you this summer, check
out Dooney & Bourke’s very cool
acrylic lunch tote over at
www.dooney.com. Covered with brightly colored logo initials,
it’s almost large enough to use as a work tote and is priced at a
very reasonable $30. Note to the curious: No, Diane’s splurge purse
wasn’t made by D&B. Got a magical home remedy for cleaning stains
embedded in leather? Send me your suggestions by clicking on the
comment link below, and I’ll pass them on to her. Or use the link to share
some of your own buyer’s remorse stories, and we’ll post them here.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
|
|
Read More |
Add Your Comments |
Send to a Friend |
|
Monday, April 17, 2006
The Minimum We Can Do
Last Friday, Oprah shone her spotlight on the working
poor: those struggling to house, clothe and feed themselves and
their families on a minimum wage. Listening to one working single
mom recall how she and her daughter had to sleep in a car after she
hurt her wrist and lost her job; how torn the mother was about
whether to turn her daughter over to the authorities so that she
would have a proper roof over her head; and how the daughter, a
young teen, refused to leave her mother’s side, was one of the most
moving television moments I’ve witnessed in a long time. “This is
what dignity is,” said Oprah, and the audience gave mother and
daughter a standing ovation.
Experts on the show talked about the minimum wage (stuck
at $5.15 for the last 10 years) and about the high cost of health
care. Oprah, who has exposed many dark truths, from child
molestation to the crisis in education, in recent shows, often
resorts to volunteer donations to solve problems. She created her
Angel Network to harness the power of her media celebrity for good.
But this is one problem that volunteer dollars alone can’t fix. On
www.oprah.com, Beth Shulman, author of “The Betrayal of Work:
How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans,” one of the experts
featured on the show, suggests that people write their
representatives in Congress, urging the passage of a long-overdue
bill to increase the minimum wage, and of bills that would put in
place a solution to the health care crisis that leaves 40 million
Americans uninsured. Visit
http://www.house.gov
and
http://www.senate.gov
to find the names and addresses of your representatives.
As good as the show was, there is one point that wasn’t
mentioned: how the wage gap exacerbates poverty for women.
Statistics show that if the wage gap were closed and all women
earned the same as men doing the same work, 40 percent of poor
working women could leave welfare programs! I think that’s an
amazing statistic. There are bills in both houses attempting to put
sharper teeth in the Equal Pay Act. So if you’re writing to gripe
about the minimum wage, why not mention your concern about the wage
gap, too.
Your daughters (and mothers) will thank you.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
|
|
Read More |
Add Your Comments |
Send to a Friend |
|
If you like the blog, you’ll love the book.
For more savvy
finance advice, buy
“Making Bread: The
Ultimate Financial Guide for Women Who Need Dough,”
by Gail Harlow and Elizabeth Lewin, available on
Amazon.com and at your local bookstore |
|
|
