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Week
of July 31 |
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Friday, August 4, 2006
The Financial Rules for Living
Together
A
book called “The
Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right”
became an instant best seller when it was first published 11 years
ago, and it’s still going strong in paperback. Much debated and
often criticized for the shallow game-playing they encourage, these
rules admonish women in no uncertain terms to play hard to get.
Take, for example, Rule No. 5: “Don’t call him and rarely return his
calls.” Bridget Jones, heroine of another chick lit classic, was a
Rules Girl, for sure.
I
have to admit I haven’t read “The Rules,” so I can’t say for
certain, but I would bet that living together, at least before a
proposal and a very big ring, is verboten under these rules. I guess
Angelina Jolie and Katie Holmes aren’t Rules Girls, either.
Reality check: both women and men are waiting longer to marry (the
average age for women went from 20 in 1960 to 26 in 2005), and the
number of adults who are living together without the benefit of
marriage is increasing.
“Most people now live together before they marry for the first time.
An even higher percentage of those divorced who subsequently remarry
live together first. And a growing number of persons, both young and
old, are living together with no plans for eventual marriage,”
according to “The
State of Our Unions 2006,” a report prepared by the National
Marriage Project.
Women who enter into these informal living arrangements
are often vulnerable. They make a large emotional and financial
investment, and when the relationship falls apart or their partner
dies, they have no legal protections. If their partner falls ill,
they can’t act in his behalf. They don’t even have the right to be
at his bedside at the hospital. Legal documents can be put in place
to cover all of these eventualities, and more women should consider
them. For some smart “financial rules for living together,” read
“Playing House: How to Protect Your Heart—and Your Wallet—If You
Don’t Have the Ring” in
Making Bread’s
March/April 2004 issue, downloadable here. Or visit the
online legal encyclopedia
www.nolo.com, which has information on “living together”
contracts and the rules pertaining to “common law” marriages.
Following these rules won’t guarantee that you capture
“the heart of Mr. Right,” but at least you won’t lose your shirt
trying him on for size.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Thursday, August 3, 2006
Tis the Season . . . to Plan for
Holiday Savings
Talk about
“Christmas in July”! Neiman Marcus did it again—caught me off guard
with its “A Season of Celebrations” holiday catalogue, which I found
in my mailbox this Monday, the last day of July. Temperatures may be
flirting with 100 degrees outside, but retailers are already gearing
up for the biggest budget buster of the year: holiday spending. From
the glossy pages of the catalogue, cashmere sweaters, shearling-lined
boots, diamond-encrusted watches, glistening ornaments, china and
crystal offer up fantasies of a life well spent. Get a grip. Close
the catalogue. Place it gently in the trash.
And
sometime during your end-of-summer vacation with family and friends,
maybe over lunch or lounging at the beach, agree to cool it in
December. Limit your gifts to one item under a certain dollar
amount; or contribute to a pool to make a charitable gift in the
family name. Make a summer resolution not to get caught up in the
hype again. Plan to spend your holidays five months from now
honoring the true spirit of the season. Batteries not included—or
required.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Wednesday, August 2, 2006
The $64,000 Question
On The New York Times Top 10 e-mailed articles
list this week is a piece reporting a rise in the number of wealthy
“tax cheats” pushing the legal envelope with complex schemes
to shelter income from Uncle Sam. Far more Americans can’t even
afford to take advantage of plain vanilla tax deductions like
mortgage interest payments and IRA’s to shelter income, much less
create offshore accounts. For them, the $64,000 financial question
is more basic: “How
do I know how many exemptions to claim so I don’t have to pay taxes
at the end of the year?” is the most often asked question on
this site. If we had a dollar for every time someone read our answer
to that question, we’d probably have to open an offshore account.
It’s worth taking the time to make sure that you are
having enough tax withheld throughout the year. Sure, you’ll get any
excess taxes back in the form of a refund next year. But why give
Uncle Sam use of your money until then? You’re better off stashing
that dough in a savings account and letting it earn interest for
you. So how do you know how many exemptions to claim? The easy
answer to the question is: use the
IRS’s Withholding Calculator
available on
www.irs.gov. For more advice,
CLICK HERE.
Want to raise a baby with expensive tastes—literally?
Gourmet baby food, featuring sophisticated herbs and vegetables you
won’t find in everyday pablum is the latest recipe for parenting
success. Experts say that developing an appetite for tasty, healthy
food at a very young age may be one way to stem the rise in
childhood obesity. If you’re looking for the perfect baby-shower
gift (which I was this week),
www.homemadebaby.com has a reasonably priced “Yummy Tummy Club”
package: a customized bundle of organic baby food every week for a
month for only $99. The site also features a nutrition expert who
will answer your questions, free of charge.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow
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Tuesday, August 1, 2006
A Magazine for Smart Shop-aholics
A few years ago, when so-called “shopping” magazines
like like like Lucky and Shop, Etc. and Domino were
launched, a new genre was born, and it was called the “mag-a-log”—a
catalog masquerading as a magazine. Many readers (and editors) felt
this new genre was just a more honest incarnation of the
magazine-reading experience. Honestly now, don’t we all read
magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and Elle
and even People as much for the ads as for the stories?
Well, today a new “shopping” magazine hits newsstands,
800,000 copies, to be exact. The magazine is called ShopSmart
and, though in some ways it looks more like a catalog than the real
mag-a-logs do, it is less like one than its cousins. Brought to you
by the people at Consumer Reports, ShopSmart is a
slightly more relaxed, homier, woman-friendly version of its parent.
Both magazines are published by the nonprofit consumer-advocacy
group Consumers Union, perhaps best known for its exhaustive car and
other product ratings guides. Neither one carries any ads and so can
offer totally unbiased opinions.
In a play for hipness, ShopSmart has
inexplicably added a ;) after its title. Are the editors winking at
the reader, as if to say, “We know you love to spend money”?
Or is that ;) a wink at the ad community, as if to say, “Relax, we
may not carry any ads, but our readers are going to buy (some of)
your products”?
Aimed at women over 30 (though those under 30 will find
plenty of useful advice in it, as well), ShopSmart intends to
“blow up a lot of myths about shopping,” according to its editor,
Lisa Lee Freeman, in an interview with the Associated Press. The
first issue features “Cars for Moms,” “Knives That Are a Cut Above,
“How to Buy the Coziest Mattress,” “Non-iPods That Rock” and much,
much more. A feature called “Between the Sheets” (maybe that’s where
the wink belongs) gives you the lowdown on thread count. Busted Myth
No. 1: higher isn’t always better, despite what all those pampered
celebrities would have you believe.
Busted Myth No. 2: a plain old-fashioned
mop and bucket outperforms the Scooba robot vacuum. (Maybe so, but
with more effort on your part.)
Kidding aside, I did find tons of useful
info in the first issue—from advice on shopping for a new fridge to
kitchen countertops and washers and dryers, all things I happen to
be in the market for. I liked the zippy presentation of the quick
tips—things like “How Much Is Your Caffeine Fix Really Costing You?”
and “3 Things Not to Buy Your Kid”—and I may even use the “Take-out
Tips” tear sheet, which offers handy lists to tuck in your wallet or
purse on the way to the store.
Bottom line: ShopSmart is well worth its $4.99
cover price. But its message is relentlessly consumerist. Flipping
through its pages made me want to rush right out to the nearest
store and shop, shop, shop—perhaps not the message its
editors intended. At least I know if I follow their advice I will
get the best bang for my buck. I just wish that the magazine would
let down its guard for a couple of pages and throw in a short trend
or lifestyle piece. Something we can read for entertainment and not
feel like we’re studying for a quiz. Cute headlines only lighten the
earnest load so much.
ShopSmart is a quarterly, and I’m looking forward
to seeing what they’ll put on my shopping list with their next
issue. Any new magazine needs feedback from readers. Pick up an
issue yourself, take a look, then write the editors at
www.shopsmartmag.org/letters to tell them what you think.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Monday,
July 31, 2006
Check Out Google Checkout
Google, the company that has made it possible to search the world
for any item your heart desires from the comfort of your home, now
offers a way to pay for it when you find it—in the United States,
anyway. Launched last month, Google Checkout is a one-stop
credit-card-information repository. Create a Google Checkout account
by registering one of your credit cards with the service, then look
for the Google Checkout shopping cart when shopping online. Buy from
a merchant who offers Google Checkout and you’ll never have to
re-enter that credit-card number again.
For those of us who do a lot of shopping online and
always hesitate at least a nanosecond before entering, yet again,
our credit-card digits, even on a secure site, because we can’t help
wondering whose nefarious hands those numbers could end up in,
here’s one way to have a little more peace of mind.
On the plus side: the merchants you shop from never see
your card numbers; they won’t even see your e-mail address if you
opt out, so you’re protected from those annoying follow-up retail
pitches. As long as Google doesn’t experience the kind of security
lapses some credit-card companies and banks have fallen victim to in
recent years, and as long as you keep your log-in information
private, your credit-card information is safe. As a failsafe, Google
offers a fraud-protection policy, guaranteeing a refund against
unauthorized purchases if you report them within 60 days. Another
handy feature: you can easily track all of your online orders in one
spot by checking your Google Checkout Purchase History.
The downside: it will take awhile for Google to sign up
a significant number of Web merchants. (For a list of stores
currently accepting Google Checkout, visit
http://www.google.com/buy/m.html. And don’t miss out on the
promotion offering $10 off any order of $20 or more at any of these
stores.) Also, you can only register one card per account; and, as I
mentioned earlier, only U.S. sites accept the service so far. For
more information and a tour of how Google Checkout works, visit
http://checkout.google.com.
What I want to know is: can we buy Google stock using
Google Checkout yet?
Shopping Buzz:
The folks who publish Consumer Reports (www.consumerreports.org)
are launching a new magazine aimed specifically at women who want to
shop smarter. Called ShopSmart, it debuts on a newsstand near
you tomorrow. I’m browsing through my review copy today, and I’ll
tell you what I think about it in tomorrow’s blog.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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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 |
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