11/25 Consumerism Commentary: A Personal Finance Blog Since 2003

Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. Consumerism Commentary: A Personal Finance Blog Since 2003 Thanksgiving on a Budget November 24, 2009 at 11:00 am Over the past couple of weeks, six finalists have been auditioning for the opening of “staff writer” at Consumerism Commentary. Each is providing two guest articles to share with readers. After the six writers have shared their guest articles, readers will have an opportunity to provide feedback before we select the staff writer. This article is presented by Ray, the owner and primary author of Financial Highway, where he discusses investing, saving and practical money management concepts. Thanksgiving is just a few days away and with the new area of frugality most Americans are looking to enjoy a fun but frugal thanksgiving. A few weeks ago I posted some frugal thanksgiving dinner tips for our Canadian readers (yes we celebrate thanksgiving earlier), but since then I learned a few more tricks to cut down your thanksgiving costs. Dinner Free turkey. Yes I mean FREE turkey! Many stores have promotions during Thanksgiving, where they give away a free turkey if you spend a certain amount on groceries. You will be buying groceries anyways, just make sure you make the bulk of your purchases during this promotion and enjoy the free turkey! Take some time to check out several of these promotions, because every store will have a different spending limit. However make sure you do not make unnecessarily purchases just to get the free turkey. Avoid buying too much. At almost every thanksgiving dinner I have been to or hosted we have had tones of leftovers, only to have them thrown away. Buying too much and throwing things away is not very frugal, estimating the right amount can be difficult; you can use this turkey calculator to calculate how much turkey you should buy. Have a potluck dinner. This may not sound appealing to everyone, but for us Thanksgiving dinner is more about friends and family getting together and not so much about the food. If you are hosting the dinner you might want to consider a potluck style thanksgiving dinner where you provide the turkey and assign everyone else a dish. Not only will everyone save money by doing a potluck, but it also saves the host a lot of time. Use leftovers. No matter how hard you try to have the right amount of food, chances are that you will have leftovers. Do not just throw away your leftovers use them for future meals. The leftover vegetables can be used to make soup and you can just freeze the leftover turkey for future meals. Decorations In Recent years thanksgiving dinner decorations have become more and more popular, these can be a strain on your budget if you are not careful, so here are some tips that can hopefully help. Make your own. Instead of spending money on decorations, just buy some supplies to make your own. If you have kids this can be a fun family event. You can easily save a large chunk of money by just buying a few supplies from your local craft store and make your decorative items at home. Forget paper and foam dishes. Paper and Styrofoam dishes can save you some time cleaning up, but is it really worth the extra cost? An easy way to stay on budget is to just use your own dishes rather than paper and Styrofoam – this is also a more environmentally friendly alternative. Forget the centerpiece. I personally am not a big fan of centerpieces so we rarely ever use one. How many people will really pay attention to the centerpiece? Plus they obstruct your view and often limit conversations. I suggest you forget about it and spend the money on something more important. Decorate from nature. A great way to have some thanksgiving decorations is to use the nature. Just head out and grab those colored fallen tree leaves and arrange them neatly around the table. Thanksgiving does not have to be a budget buster; by just using a few of these tips you can trim your budget. Remember to keep thanksgiving about family and friends and enjoy each other’s company. What are your frugal thanksgiving tips? Do you have any other savings tips or tricks? This is a guest article by Ray, one of six finalists interested in being Consumerism Commentary’s staff writer. Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast) The Consumerism Commentary Podcast is in full swing with new episodes every Sunday. Listen and subscribe now! Thanksgiving on a Budget 6 Items That Exemplify Conspicuous Spending November 24, 2009 at 8:00 am This post is part of the one day blog event “The Spectrum of Personal Finance.” In this event, comic book nerd Brian of My Next Buck, will discuss 8 different emotions (taken from the Green Lantern comic series) and relate them to personal finance. Here at Consumerism Commentary we will be looking at Avarice. To view the rest of the event look at the bottom of the page to see the other blogs hosting articles. Conspicuous spending and greed have played a large role in bringing us to the current fledgling economy. People overextending themselves and buying things they don’t need (too much house, too much car) are stories that have been replayed over and over in the media and are nothing new. It’s the items which return almost no tangible value after purchase that we should be weary of. There is nothing wrong with expensive items. I recognize the difference in value between a Ferrari and my Hyundai. However, regardless of your income, there are items which scream that they exist solely for someone to be seen owning them. Today I’ll outline a few items that I have seen over the years that have enormous price tags and exemplify conspicuous spending but don't bring much value to their owners – except for the fact that they like owning them. I am Rich App – The $999.99 iPhone app entitled, “I am Rich” stirred up lots of controversy last year. The app itself flashes a computer designed ruby on the screen – and that’s it. The app is no longer for sale, but a similar one has been released just recently for $99.99 under the name “You are Rich.” Diamond Studded Sauce Pan – One of the most expensive undertakings a homeowner can undertake is refurbishing their kitchen. If you are feeling the need to add a bit of glamor to your kitchen, check out this $78,000 saucepan. With about 2.0 lbs of gold and 200 diamonds, you can cook your way to retirement as gold slowly appreciates. iPhone 3G King’s Button – I love my iPhone and wouldn’t want to live without it. I even think I should spend a bit more to get one that is a bit larger. However, I am not one of the ones that feels the need to carry around a jewelry store on my phone. While the gems and metals certainly add to the aesthetics of the phone, it seems overly extravagant to carry a $2.5 million phone that can become a small paperweight if you accidentally drop it into a puddle. Amex Black Card – The Amex Centurion “Black” Card is maybe the one item on this list that does carry a significant amount of value beyond just having one. However, at $5,000 up front and a $2,500 annual fee, it’s an expensive card to whip out when shopping at Costco (a paradox in and of itself). TRI Golf Ball Marker – Golf is one of the most expensive sports in existence. Even with such a high cost, it’s a very serene experience. Think of what this $10,000 ball marker could add to your day at the links. Even Tiger Woods doesn't have this item, as he uses a plain old marker to mark his ball. DualTow Watch – I think this watch is awesome. Without knowing much about watches I would venture a guess that the engineering is a true artistic masterpiece. I actually would love to see this on my wrist (even just to try it on) because of how cool it looks. Then again, for $300,000 you would hope that the watch would tell you the exact time instead of telling time in 5 minute intervals. The devil’s advocate would say that people wanting to spend an exorbitant amounts of money on items like these would stimulate the economy. They would be correct. In fact, there are several stories of people who can afford luxury goods are altering their conspicuous spending because of the recession. This hesitation to purchase luxury goods is aiding in the slow recovery. We see goods like these everyday. Some make us stop and shake our heads, and others make us stop and think “maybe someday.” What are the conspicuous goods you have seen others possess? For further reading of the Spectrum of Personal Finance Event, please see: Fear at Bargaineering Hope at Budgets are Sexy Avarice at Consumerism Commentary Willpower at Debt Free Adventure Death at Free Money Finance Compassion at Get Rich Slowly Love at Mrs. Micah Rage at Poorer Than You To view a recap of the event, check out the Spectrum Roundup at My Next Buck. Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast) The Consumerism Commentary Podcast is in full swing with new episodes every Sunday. Listen and subscribe now! 6 Items That Exemplify Conspicuous Spending GAO Report Seems to Back Up Convenience Stores November 24, 2009 at 6:00 am We told you back in July about the Credit Card Fair Fee Act of 2009. To summarize: Visa and Mastercard skims a percentage of the retail price every time you use a card to buy something. It’s called an “interchange fee”. Allegedly, U.S. merchants pay up to six times more for this service than merchants in other countries, and are unable to negotiate fees. Generally, this sort of scenario is called a monopoly, but so far the arguments I’ve seen for and against have avoided that word, probably because Visa and Mastercard are different companies. Duopoly, maybe? Anyway, lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to review the options on the table, namely: setting or limiting interchange fees requiring their disclosure to consumers prohibiting card networks from imposing rules on merchants that limit their ability to steer customers away from higher-cost cards; and granting antitrust waivers to allow merchants and issuers to voluntarily negotiate rates The GAO concluded: If these measures were adopted here, merchants would benefit from lower interchange fees. Consumers would also benefit if merchants reduced prices for goods and services, but identifying such savings would be difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. The merchant groups argue that if the interchange fees could be reduced, the prices of everything in the store could be reduced. But at the same time, they also argue that high interchange fees are squeezing them out of any available profit margins and forcing them out of business. And if the profits are non-existent, they won’t be reducing prices. Interchange fees resulted in $48 billion dollars in revenue last year, through what I suspect are mostly automated processes. Credit Cards: Rising Interchange Fees Have Increased Costs for Merchants, but Options for Reducing Fees Pose Challenges, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 19 November 2009 Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast) The Consumerism Commentary Podcast is in full swing with new episodes every Sunday. Listen and subscribe now! GAO Report Seems to Back Up Convenience Stores   This email was sent to carpenter.autoblog@gmail.com.  Manage Your Account Don't want to receive this feed any longer? Unsubscribe here.