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Friday, December 31, 2010
Handy reminder: Get your calendars for cheap tomorrow!
These are seriously nice calendars -- big, glossy pages, or fat planners, or gorgeous art collections. Among the brand names available will be the Sierra Club (their planner is currently retailing for $13.89 on Amazon.com or $13.95 on the Sierra Club site), Taschen or Pomegranate.
You can hit Pegasus Bookstores at 5560 College Avenue (Oakland), 1855 Solano Avenue (Berkeley) or 2349 Shattuck Avenue (Berkeley). Buy your calendar early, spend the afternoon penciling in all your personal finance and consumer spending to-dos.
I swear, I have no connections to anyone at any of the bookstores. This is just a great sale for those of us who still like using a paper-based calendar to remind ourselves where we are in a particular year.
| Dec 31 at 09:28 AM
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Oh, this old thing?
Of all the pregnancy-related expenses that cropped up, the one that I resented acutely was maternity clothing. I bought as little as possible; fifteen pieces of apparel comprised my entire wardrobe, and carried me from bedtime to exercising, from to working in an office to painting the house, from meeting with my company's CEO to attending a wedding.
At first, having a roomy closet and comparatively few options for clothing felt liberating. Packing for travel was easy. I never had any mornings where I stood in front of the closet in an agony of sartorial indecision. How freeing! Then I hit week 35 of my pregnancy and suddenly got heartily sick of everything I could fit into. The last weeks of gestation were filled with anticipation, both for meeting my daughter and for building a bonfire and using my maternity wardrobe to fuel the flames.
(Kidding! I'd never violate a Spare the Air day.)
As I shrink back down to my pre-baby body, I have had the pleasure of shopping my closet. All my old clothing is new to me; it is a pleasure to put on something that's a few years old and feel surprised by it. My prepregnancy wardrobe takes up one dresser drawer, one six-compartment sweater bag, three clear acrylic shoe drawers and twenty items on hangers; it feels luxurious to have so much choice.
My temporary apparel diet has given me a fresh appreciation for the people who embark on The Great American Apparel Diet. The GAAD is a year-long project in which participants vow not to buy any new clothing for a whole year. The reasons for embarking on the GAAD are varied -- some people do it for environmental reasons (cheap chic chains generate tons of waste as they produce what is essentially disposable clothing), some for human rights reasons (have you seen the kind of conditions in which much of the clothing available to consumers is produced?), some to curb a spending problem. The overall objective is the same: Drop out of the American clothing-shopping cycle for a year and see what you learn about yourself as you do so.
Another experiment in the less-clothing-is-more vein is Six Items or Less, which challenges people to really pare down their wardrobe. The New York Times covered them last summer, along with slide shows illustrating how people mixed and matched the six items they restricted themselves to for a month; it's an instructive look at how much more valuable the versatile items in one's closet are.
These exercises in sartorial abstention are intriguing, living as we do in a consumer culture where Old Navy dangles new, cheap and colorful wardrobe updates seemingly every week, and the changing of the seasons is hailed as an excuse to reinvent one's public presentation via new clothing. And let's not forget that folks on the GAAD had to sit on their hands as retailer after retailer slashed their clothing prices by 30-75% the day after Christmas.
Forsaking new clothing may be one of the quieter yet more radical ways of dropping out of commercial American culture. It's one thing to do so by necessity -- my pals and I did in graduate school, since we were living on grad-school stipends -- but another to voluntarily say, "Enough." And to reinvent the way one presents oneself to the world with the same old glad rags? My hat's off to those who do it.
Would you voluntarily forsake shopping for any new clothing for a year? Have you done so? Share your experiences at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| Dec 30 at 09:09 AM
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Adults and allowances
Quick question: Have you put yourself and/or your adult partner on an allowance? Do you limit the amount of walking-around cash you're allowed to take out of the bank account on a weekly basis?
We do. I can't recommend the practice highly enough. Here are the five reasons why having an allowance has been good for my family's financial health:
1. It forces me to question every little expenditure. The only reason I have not given into my impulse to have a peppermint mocha from Peet's every day is because that habit would seriously bite into my cash stash.
2. It gets us off the hook on tracking every single little expenditure. Rather than logging each purchase and adding them up, we have a line item for our walking-around money. So long as we're under that amount -- and we usually are, unless there are extenuating circumstances -- we know our spending on discretionary items is under control.
3. It helps us plan ahead and prioritize our little luxuries. I like getting pedicures. There's something indulgent about taking thirty minutes and sitting in the massage chair and reading while someone makes my toenails pretty. And in order to get a semi-regular pedicure fix, I have to plan ahead -- especially since my allowance also covers less fun expenditures like doctor-office copays. Figuring out how to swing both requires that I anticipate my expenses -- and that sharply curbs impulse spending. The same general practice goes for my husband, who has to balance his "I'd like a beer" impulse at Sharks games against the other expenditures that come up.
4. It helps us see whether or not we're spoiling ourselves or depriving ourselves. Right now, the yearly total for our allowance accounts for approximately 4% of our net income. At some point, we may decide to slice that and redirect the money to another goal -- or we may decide we deserve a bigger allowance. But we can make that decision only because we have the hard numbers on how much "play" money we have.
5. It keeps things equal. Because my spouse and I have the same weekly allowance, we've sidestepped the issue of one partner spending more on "fun" items or frivolous items than the other partner. We get the autonomy of having a chunk of money that's all ours, but we are still accountable to the family financial unit as a whole.
Are you and the people in your family on an allowance system, or did you toss that practice once you hit legal adulthood? Weigh in on allowances for grown-ups at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| Dec 29 at 09:53 AM
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Flashback: How did you do with your financial resolutions?
So last year, I suggested a few very simple resolutions for stronger personal finance habits. They were:
Keeping a log of daily expenses: "One of the simplest and most effective ways to get a handle on your everyday spending is to keep track of every penny going out."
Never pay an ATM fee again: "Simply vow not to hit any ATM that will charge you money to withdraw cash from your bank account."
Be more mindful of the little things: "The point is not to cut all discretionary spending out of your life, but to look at whether the discretionary spending you're doing is the best possible use of those resources for you."
I freely admit that I blew the ATM fee vow once this year: I wanted to splurge on a cab ride home after getting dismissed from jury duty, and since I only had $10 cash to my name, I wanted to pick up another $20 or so to cover the fare. It was a really hot September day and I didn't relish the idea of hauling my 36-weeks-pregnant self all over downtown looking for my bank's ATM. So I called an audible and hit the nearest cash machine.
The ride was a guilty delight, the same way watching a matinee when one ought to be studying for finals is.
Otherwise, I kept an eye on the little things and it worked out well enough.
How did you do with your personal finance resolutions? Share at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| Dec 28 at 09:18 AM
Monday, December 27, 2010
Flashback: How to regift without irritating anyone
So the stockings are no longer hanging by the chimney with care, the last of the gift wrap has been crammed into an overfull recycle bin, and you're left staring at a gift basket filled with biscotti and white chocolate hot drink mix and wondering what to do with it.
Answer: hit the Dollars & Sense archives. We've covered the finer points of regifting and provided some do's and don'ts for passing along your presents to someone who will appreciate them more.
Now go forth and pass along that plumeria-scented bodywash to someone who would really appreciate it.
| Dec 27 at 09:14 AM
Friday, December 24, 2010
Flashback: How to return gifts without headaches
It's the day before Christmas and really, at this point, you should stop worrying about shopping for presents -- you can always hand them over later with a "Happy Boxing Day!" "Happy 2011!" "I have twelve days in which to give you presents, up to and including twelve drummers drumming" or "I'm on the Orthodox calendar now, so this is actually early" -- and start worrying about what to do about any unwanted stuff you receive.
INSERT DISCLAIMER HERE: You're all civilized human beings, so I'm sure it goes without saying that you receive gifts graciously, thank the giver warmly and cherish the notion that you mean enough to someone else to merit a gift in the first place.
However, you can totally be touched by the sentiment and less than thrilled by the actual gift. And if you want to return it, here's how to do so with as few headaches as possible. At least, the return process will be headache-free.
| Dec 24 at 08:20 AM
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Padding your holiday budget for the unexpected
Despite my best plans, despite the email reminders and spreadsheets and so on, today I had to hit the holiday slush fund. The reason: I had two presents that I didn't get around to mailing until today.
For those who were unsure, here's what a facepalm looks like. Think of it as the kinesthetic equivalent of "D'oh!"
Yes, I blew past the USPS shipping deadlines for first class mail. (In my defense, I'm balancing the holiday prep with taking care of an infant who nurses every two hours or so, and that's blown holes in my errand-running routines.) So I went to Fed Ex today and ponied up for two-day shipping, just to be on the safe side.
It killed me to spend the money. But fortunately, I had it to spend -- we always set aside a little for unforeseen situations. Some years, it's an impulsive gift purchase for someone new. Some years -- like this one -- it's a stupidity tax.
Have you ever had a holiday expense that was completely preventable? Or one that was unexpected and sort of irritating? Share your stories of facepalm-inducing outlays at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| Dec 22 at 09:49 AM
Monday, December 20, 2010
What you could do without this season
I snickered my way through Drew Magary's Deadspin entry, "10 Things That Christmas Would Be Better Off Without," (warning: the language is a little adult) if only because I too really, really dislike those Lexus ads where someone surprises someone else with an expensive car.
That entry got me thinking: What would I eliminate from Christmas? I'm still noodling that one over, but I'd love to hear what you'd eliminate if it were possible. Think big -- car commercials, shrink-wrapped gift baskets of cheese-like products -- and sound off at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| Dec 20 at 10:27 PM
Try talking your family into this one
Six days from now, nearly every retailer in America is going to launch their after-holiday sales. For those of us on the West Coast, any time after 9 p.m. PST on Christmas is a great time to begin the bargain-hunting, as that's when many e-commerce sites switch to their December 26 sales.
I usually reserve a chunk of cash for shopping the sales, and I've got a running list of things I either want or need at specific stores; this way, if the opportunity arises and the price is right, I can pounce. My mom and I also use the after-holiday sales to grab our holiday cards for the next year. Why pay full price for cards in the fall when you can just buy a few boxes for 50-75% off and keep them stashed in a drawer for the next 10-11 months?
I've been thinking: If you and your family are truly committed to wringing the maximum value out of your budget ... why not celebrate Christmas in the very last week of the month? Instead of shopping Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales and hoping that prices don't drop any further, why not wait until they've bottomed out, then scoop up your presents at their lowest prices?
To be sure, this is a hard sell for anyone who's got small children in the house. Explaining to them that Santa's not showing up until December 30 because he needs to shop the sales is probably going to diminish the magic of the season. But for folks whose circle of gift recipients are all of legal age? It's doable. And it might even be a fun way to extend the warmth and fellowship of the season -- or observe it once the hectic crush of end-of-year obligations has eased.
Would you ever consider holding off on gift exchanges until the post-Christmas sales are in effect? Weigh in at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| Dec 20 at 09:27 AM
Friday, December 17, 2010
Making gift shopping easier -- now and later
Another short entry, and one that will probably do you more good later than now ...
The only reason I'm able to get my holiday shopping done anywhere near on time this year is because I set myself up last year. Saved to my Google Docs account is a spreadsheet in which I keep track of the following on a year-by-year basis: Who is on the household gift list, what the dollar limit is for their gift, what we actually bought them, and what it cost us.
The spreadsheet is handy for several reasons: It prevents embarrassing repeats (a hazard when you're sending something to an elderly relative and you're tempted to fall back on old reliables like fruit baskets). It helps keep track of spending trends. It curbs impulse purchases and budget-blowing: If you have already committed to spending $75 on your sister's kids, then you're likely to keep that number fixed in your skull and get creative about how to get the most bang for the buck, as opposed to wandering around throwing stuff in a basket and being shocked when you've blown $125. And when you do blow your budget, you can see how it happened and take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.
If you're more of a pen-and-paper type than a spreadsheet type, consider visiting Organized Home and printing out their holiday gift handouts. In addition to a holiday budget worksheet and a holiday gift list, they've also got printouts for folks who have gift closets and folks who are making, rather than buying, their gifts. I know it's too late to get really organized for this year's gift-giving season, but if you take a few steps now in anticipation of the 2011 holiday season, you'll be glad you did so in the fall next year. Take advantage of the holiday momentum and set yourself up!
| Dec 17 at 09:13 AM
Dollars and Sense is about finding new ways to inject dollars, cents and sensibility into your everyday spending.
By Lisa Schmeiser, Read Bio
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