Peer-to-Peer Travel
This is the new ‘sweet spot’ between renting a home, staying in a B&B, and doing a homestay. People will rent out a spare room or their entire apartment or house for a night or a few days. It’s like a one-to-one B&B and allows you to stay in some amazing, one-of-a-kind places around the world for much less than a hotel. You can opt for properties in which you have the place to yourself or others where you’ll stay with the owner.

The options: There are a few places to look, including Crashpadder.com, Airbnb,com,  and iStopOver.com. AirBnB is my personal favorite, with a wide selection of unique properties worldwide and a nice interface for browsing. The real value comes in big cities, where accommodation tends to run higher than outlying areas. A recent search found a modern, furnished beautiful loft and one bedroom apartments in the best neighborhoods in Barcelona for around $70 a night, or as little as $10 for a private room in one, compared with an average room rate of $137. The New York Times has a great piece comparing the leading ‘Virtual B&B’ services.

Tips: AirBnB handles all the payments and arrangements, which means less work for a traveler than a homestay which requires negotiations with the owners, a contract, deposits, etc. Also, if there is a dispute with the place you are staying at, they can act as an intermediary and even arrange another place for you to stay.  Be sure to look for properties with positive reviews from other travelers, as this is a sign of a good standing member.

Rent a Home
With the economy floundering, the market has filled with owners putting their vacation homes up as rentals. The savings really kick in with larger groups, often of four or more. Sometimes the rates depend on the length of your stay, and locking in a week or more will drop the price significantly. This option is fantastic for both work and vacation travel.

For vacation travel, the deals are fantastic. For instance on a trip to Hawaii, a luxury beachfront home in Maui could be had for $400 a night for 6 people. The cost of getting 3 rooms at a hotel of similar luxury would costs over $800. For a weeklong vacation, that’s a savings of $2800.

The options: Homeaway.com and Vacationrentals.com and VRBO.com.  All have the same parent company yet have  separate databases. It’s worth checking all three, but homeaway.com has the cleanest interface and an enormous database of over 200,000 properties.

Tips: With most rentals you will deal directly with the owners, so it’s good to connect with a person whose property has gotten positive reviews from fellow travelers. Expect to pay a deposit and always pay by credit card so if the place isn’t what you expected, the charges can be disputed. Often times there will be additional fees for cleaning, which you should make note of in advance.

Swap your House
Want to stay in a fantastic home for free? If you have your own home, why not swap it with another families home in the place you’d like to visit? Of course, if your house is in a place that doesn’t attract many visitors, it may be tough to find a match. But if you live in or near a popular vacation destination, this option is perfect.

The options: The biggest and best choice is HomeExchange.com. It has the most listings of any site.

Tips: Always check reviews and ratings on sites to see how the people stack up. Secondly, get in touch with the people you are swapping with beforehand to feel them out.

Totally Free
The practice of connecting travelers with a free home stay with people has been around since the 1950’s, and is known as ‘hospitality exchange.’  In recent years, the advent of online social networks has allowed the practice to flourish into large networks of kind souls around the world willing to put you up in a room or a couch for free, in the name of altruism.

The options: Couchsurfing.org, with more than 2.2 million members, is the worlds largest hospitality network and is hugely popular with backpackers and travelers around the world looking to stay for free with people around the world.  The sheer number of options of where to stay and with whom is mindboggling and even in extremely remote corners of the planet, there’s a couch waiting for you. There are also private homestay clubs, like servas.org, that have members around the world that exchange hospitality with free homestays wherever they go.

Tips: The online networks ensure safety and trust by verifying their members identities and encouraging reviews and recommendations from travelers who have stayed there in the past. Make sure to only stay with members who have positive reviews from at least five fellow travelers.

Private Hostel Rooms
Hostels and Pensions fly below the radar of most travelers because they are perceived to just be dormitories full of rowdy backpackers.  This couldn’t be farther from the truth. There are a high class of hostel and no frills hotels, in some parts of the world as a pension, that offer clean and safe private rooms and bathrooms, and are often within walking distance of major sites and attractions in a city.  Staying at a hostel can save you upwards of $50 to $100 a night off comparable quality hotels in the same area. For instance in Portland, OR, a private room in an upscale hostel  (in a cool neighborhood) was only $47.50 a night, compared to the average room rate of $125.

The options: Hostelworld.com has the largest listings of hostels (over 24,000 around the world). It lets you search by location, room type (dorm, shared room, or private room), and price. Also, you can cross-check with Lonelyplanet.com, one of the most respected names in budget travel, for their guide to the best hostels and B&B’s around the world.

Tips: Hostel quality varies widely so be sure to check reviews from other travelers on the Hostelworld.

Hit the Road-Rent an RV
If you’re traveling within the US or Canada, renting an RV can be an affordable and fun way to both travel and save a bundle on lodging. Renting an RV is best suited for short leisurely trips or family vacations to destinations within a days drive. Five nights in a hotel with two rooms would be around $1000 (for the average room rate in North America), whereas the same trip via RV might be half that, so the savings can be tremendous.

The options: At Cruise America, an RV that sleeps 5 people, for a trip of 5 nights, traveling around 500 miles, only costs $466 from Los Angeles, including all taxes and insurance. Add in the cost of staying in RV parks, about $100, it’s around $550. If you are able to take advantage of special offers and discounts found on the site, the rate can be even lower.

Tips: For trips longer than a few hours away, the price of gas and mileage starts to overtake any savings you might get. Also, be sure to scout out RV parks and campgrounds to park your RV before your trip so you know exactly where you’ll pull in at night. Insider Tip: Walmart and other big box retailers allow free RV parking in their secure, lit parking lots at all their stores for free.

Stay in a Monastery
Yup, that’s right. Around the world, beautiful and unique monasteries will rent their rooms out, often for a small ‘suggested donation’ of around $50 a night, or less, depending on what you might be able to afford. They are often well cared for, clean, safe, include meals, and are often found in beautiful locations.

The options: While in Europe, monasteries are easy to find out about in guidebooks.  Monasteries in the U.S. don’t advertise their facilities, so you have to know where to look. About.com has a decent guide to Monasteries in the United States that offer accommodations. If you are traveling in Italy, this is a very popular way to travel, and you can even book directly at http://www.monasterystays.com/

Tips: Since most monasteries don’t advertise, it’s worth checking with a local church to find out if there are monasteries in the area and if they house travelers.

Have any tips on lodging not shared here?  Share them with us in the comment section!

For example, are you a fan of chicken salad?   If so, you would probably love California Pizza Kitchen’s BBQ chicken salad dish that sells for for $12.  If your entire family of four orders one each, that’s $48.  With tax and tip, that comes out to almost $50!  This means making the dish yourself at home can save you around $35.  In my opinion, it is well worth the 30 minutes it takes to prepare.

So how do you make this delicious meal?  Here is my unique spin on it:

BBQ Chicken Chop Salad

(Compare to California Pizza Kitchen’s “Original Chopped”)

Preparation time: 30 mins

Servings: 4 – 5

Ingredients:

¾ lb. Boneless Chicken Breast ($3)                                  2 heads of Romaine Lettuce ($2.5)

2 Tomatoes ($1)                                                               1 Avocado ($1)

1 8 oz bag of frozen Corn ($2)                                          1 8 oz can of Black Beans ($1)

4 oz Mozzarella Cheese ($2)                                             Tortilla Strips ($1)

Hickory BBQ Sauce                                                            Ranch

(The price of the BBQ and Ranch sauces aren’t taken into account, assuming you have enough in the fridge to drizzle over each serving.)

Total Cost: $15

(Money Saving Tip: Keep an eye out for “red tag sales” or “manager’s specials” which will often have major markdowns.)

Instructions:

1.  Lightly season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper.

2.  Add a tablespoon of oil to pan on medium heat, then place the chicken breasts in the pan.

3.  Cook the chicken breasts on one side for 3-4 minutes, then flip and cook for 2 minutes on the other side. After chicken is done, set aside and let cool before cutting into strips.

4.  Rinse the romaine lettuce and separate the leaves. Then chop the lettuce into pieces and place into a large bowl.

5.  Strain the black beans.

6.  Defrost and strain the corn.

7.  Dice the tomatoes.

8.  Combine the black beans, corn and diced tomatoes with the lettuce.

9.  Add a ½ cup of ranch dressings, more or less to desired amount, then toss and mix salad.

10.  Slice chicken into ¼ in. strips.

To make your own tortilla strips:

1.  Slice corn tortillas into ¼ in. strips.

2.  Add 3 cups oil (vegetable or canola) into a pot and let it heat to 400*F.  Once oil is heated, place tortilla strips into the oil.

3.  Once golden brown, remove them from the oil and place on paper towel to drain the excess oil.  Lightly salt and let cool.

To plate, top the salad with mozzarella cheese and tortilla strips.  On top, place strips of chicken and drizzle with bbq sauce.  You have just saved yourself $35!  Bon appétit!

The answer is yes.  There are a few purchases that I have made that have helped me cut back on my expenses.  While making these purchases initially caused me to question whether or not it was really worth it, in the long run these purchases have saved me hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars.

Here are my top 8 money saving purchases.

Brita Filter

Before this purchase, I would spend around $20 per month on bottled water.  The Brita filter costs around $11 and the cost for one replacement filter is $7.  Each filter lasts the equivalent of 300 bottles of water.  For me, this is the equivalent of almost half a year of water, which equates to a first year savings of over $200.

Coffee Maker

Most people desperately need their caffeine fix each morning.  Going to your local coffee shop can cost $3 per visit.  This equates to $15 per week, around $60 per month, and close to $800 per year.  A decent coffee maker can cost around $50.  A pound of coffee runs around $10 and makes about 32 cups of coffee.  That’s $.31 per cup!  If you want to factor in the coffee maker cost in those 32 cups, each cup of coffee you make costs around $1.88.  So, for the first 32 cups of coffee you make at home instead of going to the coffee shop, you save about $36.  After that, you save about $700 per year.

Sandwich Maker

Ok, so this is probably an item you won’t find on many great buy lists, but I LOVE my panini maker.  I am a huge fan of sandwiches and used to be a frequent Subway customer, but since acquiring my panini maker, Subway doesn’t get a dime of my money.  I used to spend $5 each trip to Subway.  You can get a decent panini maker for about $70 (the cost of 14 trips to Subway).  You can get enough cheese, bread, turkey, mayo, or whatever else you like on your sandwich to make at least 6 sandwiches for about the price of two trips to subway.  So let’s say you go to Subway once a week.  This equates to 52 Subway trips each year.  It takes 14 trips to pay off your panini maker, so right around what would have been your 15^th trip, you start putting money back in your pocket.  After the initial cost of the panini maker, you save about $230 per year.

Toaster Oven

If you like to cook, chances are you use your oven daily.  Heating your oven to 350 degrees and running it for an hour each day costs around $90 per year.  A toaster oven run just as frequently costs $65 per year.  Yes, this is a $25 savings each year which may not seem like very much, but every little bit helps, especially when you consider that a decent toaster oven costs around $50 and an oven costs hundreds of dollars.

Blender

Like many people, I love smoothies.  I think Jamba Juice is awesome.  Sadly, $4 a drink isn’t so awesome.  The quick fix?  A blender!  A decent blender runs around $40, the equivalent of 10 trips to Jamba Juice.  And you can get the ingredients for 5 smoothies for the price of two Jamba Juice ones.  So, say you go to Jamba Juice once a week.  After your 11^th week of not going, you have started putting money back into your pocket.  Your yearly savings after recovering the cost of the blender?  $124 in savings each year.

DVD Player

I love movies.  The price associated with going out to watch one in the theaters?  Not a fan.  You can get a cheap DVD player for the price of going to the movies three times.  And you can about three movies for the price of going to the theater to see one.  So let’s say you go to the movies every other week.  By buying a DVD player and renting movies instead, you can save around $139 each year.

Laptop

Better yet, skip the DVD player and go buy a laptop.  Laptops do it all, from playing DVDs to letting you watch your favorite shows online to keeping you in contact with everyone from your friends and family to your boss.  Laptops eliminate the need for cable or satellite services and for buying an expensive TV to watch those cable or satellite shows that you love.  You can get a decent laptop for around $700.  This is about the cost of one year of movie outings, a nice TV, and whatever you are paying for your cable or satellite service.  Yes, it takes a year to see that you are recouping your loses on this one, however if you factor in the fact that your laptop keeps you connected to everyone important to you and you can use it for work related things (i.e. projects or searching for a new job), this is a fantastic money saving purchase.

Bicycle

This is another purchase you won’t see on many good buy lists.  However, dropping $300 on a bike can be one of the best money saving purchases you can make.  If you live close to where you work, you can completely eliminate your need for a car and all the expenses associated with it (i.e. gas, maintenance, etc.).  Not to mention you get plenty of exercise, eliminating your need for a gym membership.  The savings from this purchase can be HUGE, if you factor in the price of a car (because let’s face it, you won’t need one if you can use a bike), you can save at least $11,000.

While some of these purchases may seem a little unorthodox, all of them are great purchases to make if you are trying to save money in the long run.

Do you have any money saving purchases you made that aren’t on this list?  Share them in the comment section!

Initially I calculated that my cost for all our family pets ran about $1,017.00, but this was a bit too conservative!

First, let me list the pets that we have:

1. one dog (a chocolate lab)
2. one all black cat
3. two hamsters
4. 1 1/2 fish. Why 1 1/2 you might ask… because they die easily throughout the year…

Here is a break down of the our expenses:

Our dog eats about 1 bag of dog food a month (at $45 per bag). Unluckily, our dog has a food allergy (to beef) that requires us to spend $45 per bag. The cat eats about one bag of cat food every 3 months (at $10 per bag). Cat litter runs about $12 a month. The cost of the hamsters and fish are listed below. But the hamsters do require frequent bedding changes (once a week, but we stretch it to 2 weeks). So the bedding cost for a hamster usually runs about $5 per month and the fish cost about $3 a year.

Okay, now that the cost background is out of the way, I have to revise the cost number for my dog this year!

First, she has dreams where she believes she is digging, and since she lies on the carpet…well, you get the idea.  So one morning, we went down stairs to discover that we have a ugly hole in the carpet.  BAM, to replace the carpet and the labor to install it will run us a cool $1,000 (ouch)!  Then last week, my dog had a swollen ear from an infection and we had to take her to the emergency hospital for animals (not my idea!!!) and that cost $250. Did I mention the heart worm medicine? that’s another $160. And we plan on taking another vacation this year, so that another $180 for boarding!!!

So, if we add it up, our dog (and only our dog) will cost us $2,320 for the year! Rut Roh!!!

If you are on a tight budget, you might want to skip pets for a while or get a cheap one such as a hamster or fish!

And by simulating I don’t mean carrying a plastic baby around that poops and cries all day. That would be insane—why would I want to simulate the lack of sleep and shrill screaming that everyone complains about when they have a kid?

The simulation I’m talking about has to do with budgeting. Want to see if you can cut back on X or Y when the baby comes? Well then do it for a couple of months before the baby comes.

Makes sense, right? Well to that I say why the hell would I want to penny pinch and stay home every night by choice when I’m going to be forced into doing that when the baby comes?

I should be doing the exact opposite—partying every night, spending every cent I can afford to spend out on the town, and overall living it up before that baby comes kicking and screaming into the world.

Right?

There are two sides to the argument. The responsible personal-finance blogger would say to go ahead and simulate the budget beforehand. Otherwise, how will you know if you can pull it off?

But here’s where I split with conventional thinking. Life is still about happiness and living to the fullest, not about making the number match.

Am I scared? Sure. But I’m not about to start our lives as parents before we actually have to.

I’m obviously talking from a place of great ignorance, so I’m curious to hear what the parents out there have to say. Start living the life now or live it up before the big day?

I had one of the biggest financial lessons ever when my parents remodeled their home.

My parents aren’t great money managers. Both of them have done well with high paying jobs. They prepare their own taxes, and their retirement funds had been doing well for some time. But they don’t understand the more contemporary concept of cash flow. Similar to what most Americans practice, they are conservative spenders but like to live high on the hog when they’re flush.

A new generation of money conversations
That’s what happened with the house. Once both my parents went into retirement, they remodeled their house from the ground up. But they hadn’t thought it through financially. The market crashed and they had to put their dream home up for sale.

When your income is tied to a retirement fund tied to the stock market, you have to manage your money really carefully. Today’s tech savvy generation does this by using online financial planning tools. But my parents’ generation doesn’t live and breathe on Quicken files. They don’t know how to utilize the tools that are out there.

Their dialogue about money planning was indicative of their generation of spenders also. Instead of having fundamental kitchen table conversations about income and expenses, they’d only talk about money when they were feeling stressed out.

Bring digital value to money tradition
After the house debacle, I went back to teach my parents how to manage their finances in the digital world. We used GreenSherpa so that everything would be totally automated and display the information to help them make decisions.

My mom was thrilled. It was like magic for them. But they never logged on to check anything. My parents were still living by their bank balance, and letting that inform what decisions they could make.

Cloud computing as a financial solution
This is where the cloud computing generation can bring value to their parents. I realized that my parents needed a person, not a computer, to keep them on track. As magical as GreenSherpa was to them, it was still through a human interpreter that they were going to get value. So I offered to meet with them every quarter, to look over the software and make a plan for that quarter. Handily, one of the features of GreenSherpa is that an adult kid can be a partner on a parents’ GreenSherpa account.

Prior to now, my generation of consumers may have never known what its parents’ financial situation is, until they see what’s left in the will. But by having an ongoing conversation about money and using a software tool to facilitate that, adult children can help make their parents’ lives less financially trying. The sandwich generation–those of us in our thirties and forties–can be responsible for having important financial conversations with an older generation.

Having fun is an essential part of life.  Most people work extremely hard during the week to make ends meet and when the weekend rolls around, they want to let loose a bit and have a good time.  However, they don’t want to spend that hard earned money that made during the week.  So how can people have a good time without spending any money?

Here is a list of 10 fun things anyone can do without spending a single penny.

Get Outdoors

Go for a hike.  Ride a bike.  Go for a walk.  Head to the beach and go for a swim.  If it’s a nice day, just get outdoors and enjoy nature.  Don’t want to go alone?  Take a friend with you!

Unleash Your Inner Kid

Go to a playground.  Build a fort with your boyfriend or girlfriend in your living room.  Find some markers and paper and draw.  It’s always fun to do the things you used to love doing as a kid.  The best part is, most of these activities are free.  So let loose and be a kid for a few hours.  At the very least it will help you forget about all the “adult responsibilities” you have.

Volunteer

This is a feel good thing to do for free.  Whether it is walking a dog for your local animal shelter or helping Habitat for Humanity build a home, volunteering is a great way to have an awesome time for free AND give back to your community.

Go Camping

Grab a friend who has a tent and head to your closest state park for the night.  It’s a fantastic way to have a mini vacation for virtually no money.

Write

Start a journal.  Write a book.  Let your creative juices flow and see what you can come up with.  Or, if you don’t like writing, draw!

Go to a Free Show

Go online and search for free art shows in your town.  Or find out when the next free day at your local museum or zoo is.

Exercise

Go for a run, do some sit ups, or do some push-ups.  Exercising is not only free but it will keep you in shape and help you feel good about yourself and your body.

Read

Borrow that book you’ve been wanting to read from your friend and read it!  Or go online and read up about a subject you have been curious to learn about.

Cook

Go through your pantry and refrigerator and see what interesting concoctions you can come up with.  Get creative!  You could even pretend you are on an episode of Iron Chef and use some random ingredient in whatever recipe you decide to whip up.

Have a Marathon Movie Night

Get a group of your friends together, have them each bring their favorite movie, and have a marathon movie night!  Not only will you get to watch some awesome movies, but you will get to hang out with your friends too.

With these 10 ideas, no one has any excuse to not have some fun after getting through a hectic workweek.  This weekend, pick one, have a great time, and save some money!

Have any free things to do for fun that aren’t mentioned here?  Share them in the comment section!

2. Chores Pay
When you tie the allowance to chores, your child gets to experience the reward of working for something and getting it. Rather than offering a set amount per week, make a list of which chores earn what amount–i.e., sweep the porch = $1, wash mom’s car = $5, etc. This will help them to develop a financial goal and work toward it. If they want a new toy or to save vacation money for souvenirs for friends, they can calculate how many chores, and which ones, they can complete to meet their goal.

3. Income Covers Expenses
My parents have a letter I wrote them when I was “13-and-three-quarters years-old.” It was a pitch titled “Erin’s Expenses and Life Story.” I wanted $52 a month, an increase in my allowance at the time, because my parents system included me paying for my own expenses–things like clothing, shampoo and conditioner, teenage incidentals. I had to learn to balance my own income and outflow. If I wanted a new sweater, I wouldn’t be able to buy the shampoo and conditioner I liked. At 13 & 3/4, I discerned that I needed more to handle my expenses and itemized my proof. This method is great for older children. An incrementally increasing responsibility can be a really great element to add to a child’s allowance as he or she gets older, and begins to get a sense of what the world costs to live in it.

4. Saving Is Cool
Six to ten year-olds are not going to be buying their own shampoo. But they can learn to save the moment they start earning allowance. Teach them the practice of putting ten cents of every dollar they earn every week into a piggy bank. When they do, they get to see what is left over of their earnings (subtly training their early experience to income after expenses). They also get the joy of watching their savings grow, and to begin to understand the association of money to income isn’t solely: “I want,” thus, “I get  money,” then, “I spend money.” But, rather, they learn, “I work, so I get money for trade, and part of the system is putting money into my savings account.”

5. Money Is Outside Me
Allowance can teach about so much more than just money. It can offer children the opportunity to evolve their “I-want” into a community experience. If your children are too young to work around the house to earn an allowance, consider the jar system to teach the flow of money. Label them as “Savings,” “Fun,” “Gifts for friends + Charity.” Two of these jars are directing their money outside themselves. Rather than receiving money and spending it all on their immediate desires, kids get to see how their money affects their community. Let a child choose the amount he or she puts in each jar each week, and watch the amounts shift over time, as her awareness expands.

6. Charity Feels Good
Teach your kids the intrinsic joy of what it feels like to give money away. When their charity jar is full, take them to a local mission and let them hand it to their recipient.  Let them experience that moment, and ask them about it. Do they say, “I loved giving that money to a homeless family. Next time I want to give even more”? Do they find other charity interests that started from the experience of the first one? Getting kids actively saving for charity teaches them concepts of sharing, community, and lets them feel the impact their generosity–and their earning power–has on those around them.

You’ve managed to build up a healthy, three-twelve month emergency fund, enough money to cover you in a variety of adverse situations and give you a reasonable fallback. Good for you! Many people never get to this point, and here you are, with a healthy amount of money just waiting to help you out of any jam. You’ve beaten a big personal finance challenge: devoting yourself to setting aside money to cover you in emergencies.

But now, you’re facing a new challenge: keeping from spending or investing this money. You have a substantial pile, likely thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, just sitting in the bank, earning little interest. (Especially now, with even high interest accounts providing less than 2% interest.) One of the biggest risks to your emergency fund is that you won’t be able to resist the desire to invest it in a more profitable investment, or that you’ll end up simply spending it. Either one could have the unfortunate side effect of leaving you without money in your fund right at the time when you most need it.

How can you make sure that your money will still be there when you need it? Tempting as it would be to depend on your own ability to avoid spending it, having the will power to do so is not always easy. Much like resisting a freshly baked chocolate cake, it’s easier said than done. Instead, try these steps to make it much harder for you empty your emergency fund, even if that’s what you want:

1) Diversify: Just like diversifying your investments makes it harder for any one type of investment to sink your portfolio, diversifying your emergency fund makes it harder for you to empty the fund all at once. Keeping your money in three or four different places will add to the headaches of trying to get to the money, so you’ll be more likely to wait until you have a real emergency in order to do so. As for where to keep the money…

2) Make Your Money Harder to Reach: The more work and longer the period time you need to get to your emergency fund money, the greater chance you’ll be able to resist using it for impulse purchases. While keeping part of your emergency fund in cash is a decent idea (just in case you need some money immediately for a real emergency), having it harder to access places, like savings accounts or CDs, makes it harder to pull the money out on impulse.

3) Invest Some of Your Emergency Fund (Carefully): If your problem is wanting to invest some of your emergency fund money to increase your returns, you might be able to indulge your desire to some extent. Two big things to keep in mind: first, you need to make sure that your investments are very low risk; think high quality short term bond fund, not stocks or stock mutual funds. Second, you can’t put all your money into these types of investments; you should keep a few months of money in cash and other completely safe investments, so you can allow these investments the chance to recover if there is a short term decline.

If you put all of these suggestions together, a pretty good plan to arrange your emergency fund starts to emerge. You can layer your emergency fund in various investment types, building up in terms of potential returns and difficulty of access. A good plan might look like:

-A few hundred dollars in cash, to cover immediate, relatively small emergencies
-A month’s worth of expenses in a local bank, in checking/savings account, to cover larger emergencies
-Another few months of expenses in a high yield online account, earning higher amounts of interest but taking some time to access
-Perhaps a few more months worth of emergency fund money in a different high yield account, to lessen the temptation to empty your account
-Once you have a healthy sized amount in these accounts (at less four-six months’ worth of your expenses), then consider higher yielding (but still relatively safe) investments like short term bond funds

When you have this type of emergency fund in place, you can put money into the system and push it up the level of risk (putting excess cash into your local bank account, transferring that money into an online account, and investing that money into safe mutual funds). If you do have an emergency, it’s easy to start pulling out the money, using the higher yield accounts to replenish your supply of cash on hand.

In any event, good luck keeping your emergency fund well-stocked and ready to serve in case of an emergency!

Which Is The Best One? H&R Block At Home and TurboTax are so similar in how they actually  work its hard to pick a winner. They help you prep and e-file your taxes by asking questions, prompt you to provide information, offer error checks and give pop-up explanations and help. The only real difference is that H&R Block At Home Premium gives you free phone consultations with an H&R Block tax preparation specialists. while TurboTax give you the ability to import financial data from Quicken and Quickbooks.

Wait, can’t I just do this for free online? Nope. Not only are the’ Free’ versions extremely bare bones and appropriate for only the most basic of federal tax returns, its not actually free, since you’ll be paying around thirty dollars extra to file your mandatory state tax return. If you want to  maximize your deductions and refund, you’ll quickly run into shortcomings with the free version and will end up paying around twenty more dollars for deduction assistance which they will try to sell you during your filing process. Get this: Most people who begin with the ‘free’ offering end up spending over fifty dollars.

Always Go Premium. There are three things that make the premium versions an absolute must to me: special deduction finder add-on software (this is crucial to maximize your refund), inclusion of all the right forms (crucial if you are a homeowner, have rental property, and many types of investments), and comprehensive audit protection.

But isn’t the deluxe version the same and even cheaper? Not exactly. The audit protection and extra deduction tools to maximize your return are missing. Also, if you own property or have certain investments, you’ll need the premium version to properly file anyway.

So What’s The Best Deal? The big secret I found is that buying a downloadable software copy of H&R Block At Home or TurboTax is much cheaper than paying to use the identical software online.

In our research, we looked at a bunch  retailers selling the downloads. Amazon.com has the best deals by far, so that’s where the links to the download copies will take you.

TurboTax Deluxe (State & Federal)
Online: $66.95     Download: $45.59

TurboTax Premier Online (State & Federal)
Online: $86.94   Download: $59.37

H&R Block At Home Deluxe Edition (State & Federal)
Online: $59.94   Download: $27.99

H&R Block At Home Premium Edition (State & Federal)
Online: $79.94   Download: $42.74

And The Winner Is…..Based on the price alone it would be H&R Block At Home Deluxe Edition – Download, but the Premium offers full audit protection and free live phone support from a real tax adviser (TurboTax charges $30 extra for this!), so for me its H&R Block At Home Premium Edition – Download.

That being said…..If you are a current or past TurboTax user, don’t need live support, and/or rely on Quicken for your bookkeeping, you may want to stick with TurboTax. Just remember, forget the online version, save yourself a bunch of money, and go download it from Amazon!

One of the biggest surprises the “e-conomy” has uncovered is my relationship with my husband. Our lower bank balances and fiscal challenges have lain bare 1) the ways our individual money dynamics overlap, and 2) the relationship dynamics that money has covered up.

For us, having money and spending it on travel, food, and entertainment was a way for us to connect. After the dust of the recession settled, we started taking a look at how we spent less and less time with each other. Without employing the spending habits we had developed—going out to eat, taking trips, entertaining friends—we discovered we had less in common.

Facing the Spending Hangover

We had plenty in common before. But we began to notice that our things in common were more about what we were spending together than what we were doing together. We used money as a way to meet each other. Shopping together. Weekend trips together. It’s hard not to love the person you’re with when you’re at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa.

To me, along with every other challenge the recession has posed, it has offered a continued practice of ruthless honesty and recalibration. Together we have been asking deep questions: What do I like about you? What do you like about me? What are ways we overlap? And don’t? How have we bridged it in the past? Or not. How do we bridge it now?

Don’t Be Frugal with Your Efforts

If you’re facing this inquiry, too, and hoping your relationship will survive the transition, take the following suggestions to heart. If you have some of your own, write them in the comments.

1. Write down the things each of you loves to do. See where you intersect.

2. Then, write down the things you and your partner genuinely love to do together that don’t cost money. Not activities that are inexpensive, but the ones that cost no money.

3. Find a terrific counselor or relationship group that can give you ideas to recalibrate your partnership to your new personal economy.

4. Keep the conversation going. Remember that money has profound effects on a relationship. Be willing to learn from them as your relationship evolves.

5. Be open to new ways of connecting that previously were hidden by financial convenience.

Less Money, More Value?

The inquiry is about where relationships meet money.  How have we been living our lives through money? What choices have we made that don’t represent who we are at core? For my husband and I, getting to know each other in this raw and newly rooted way has been a surprising and fascinating journey.

For many people going through major relationship shifts and changes, money has represented access to what we think is important. Whatever it is that you’ve wanted to be or do, money is usually a vehicle to expedite it. Now that money is less available, ask yourself, what is the focus? Who am I in relationship with less money? What do I value?