More and more people are budgeting these days, and I’ve been getting lots of questions about where your money should be going each month – in other words, how much you should be spending on each area of your budget, from housing to entertainment to everything in between. The pie chart below – which we used on Oprah’s Debt Diet – outlines all the details:
As I write this, Teddy, my beloved cockapoo, has snuggled up to my feet (the benefits of working at home). He doesn’t know it, but last weekend he almost got a brother. We were out and about with our next door neighbors in a nearby town. They’ve been talking about getting a puppy. And together we wandered into a local pet store where there were two cockapoo puppies — brothers we were told — from a nearby breeder. “If you take one,” we’ll take the other, Eliot, my fiance, told my neighbors, not wanting to split them up.
In the end they opted to pass. I was disappointed. But then I thought about how much better this would be for my bottom line. Two dogs would mean twice the vet bills, twice the grooming, twice the food, twice the dog-sitter (when I travel for work, she often takes him overnight). In other words, thousands of dollars a year. And that doesn’t include start-up costs. More…
Yesterday, I spent a few minutes helping a young friend search for low-enough airfares that her dad would agree to a quick Florida getaway this coming weekend. I struck out. There didn’t seem to be much under $600 – $700 person round trip — especially if you wanted to go early enough on Friday and return home late enough on Sunday to actually have a substantial weekend.
Today I have a new trick to try. According to my friend David Bach’s new bestselling book Fight For Your Money, searching for tickets for a family is often more costly than searching for tickets for individuals. He demonstrated the trick for Harry Smith on The Early Show finding a $275 difference per ticket — $1100 in total! — for a family of four flying from NY to LA. To find out how it works from NY to Florida stay tuned…..
Kev wrote: Do we really all have the new sensibility now? Are the Jones’ out of fashion or out of style for good? I think the American consumer will come back, though never as bold as we were – at least not for a while.
I for one think thrift is going to be hip for a while. Just check out the style section of yesterday’s New York Times where there was a story about how less expensive labels like Ann Taylor, Talbot’s, Isaac Mizrahi’s new Liz Claiborne line for Macy’s have become suddenly alluring to the Prada shopper.  And the story in today’s WSJ about the slowdown in global consumerism.
Are you actively shopping less? Because you want to? Because you have to? Lemme know….
You're paying too much...
They say every person has the ability to maintain only a few intimate online relationships — the kind of site you visit every day, if not more often.  I have more than a few of those (thedailybeast, huffingtonpost,  my daily pleasure/temptation gilt for online sample sales).  But every Monday, I also make sure to go to consumerworld where I learn about new ways people are making money, saving money, spending money or getting ripped off.  Today’s big aha? More…
THE DIFFERENCE
Recently, my 11-year-old daughter came home from Health class with a pocketful of Hershey’s Kisses and a new strategy for eating them. If you just put one in your mouth and let it melt, it will last longer, you’ll enjoy it more and you won’t need to eat as many, she told me.
Of course, she’s right. But not, as it turns out, just about chocolate. The Mind column by Benedict Carey in yesterday’s Science Times takes the position that stretching out almost any enjoyable experience seems to make it, well, more enjoyable. He didn’t go for what would seem to be the easy example (sex, see Tantra), he went with one that wouldn’t seem to be enjoyable at all: television commercials. More…
They say three makes a trend. At least, that’s what my editors at monthly magazines used to say. And this morning I got three in five minutes.  From TodayShow.com a story entitled, Is The Recession Making You Fat? And two from The New York Times, one about how the menus on charity fundraisers have been tweaked from filet mignon to chicken pot pie and another that says: Food Magazines Begin To Consider Cooks’ Budgets. “As the high-end magazines try to survive a shaky 2009,” it reads, “it is out with the truffles, in with the button mushrooms.” (Oooh, wait, there’s more. A piece by Ask Kitty, Today’s depression-surviving 86-year-old columnist, about how gardening can help you eat well in troubled times.)
There is definitely something cooking (pun intended). More…
The last time I went to Costco — about three years ago — I came out with two bathing suits my daughter never wore, boxes of snack foods that purchased in a normal size my family would have devoured but in supersize we never seemed to eat, and a surprisingly big charge on my credit card. One friend of mine went in for dog food and came out with a tent. Yet I know others, people I trust, for whom a trip to Costco is a bi-weekly must. They swear by the white fish salad, the bags of frozen shrimp, the turkey meatballs.
I was afraid to get back in there, renew my membership and start again. But this weekend an opportunity presented itself. More…
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