More, Personal Finance

The Inflation Rate Slows, But Is It the End Yet?

I have been talking and writing about the inflation rate in the U.S. (and around the world) for a year now and I am worried about it. That makes me a little different than say Jay Powell over at the Fed who keeps saying that inflation isn’t quite a “real thing” and it’s “transitory”. If you don’t know what that means, it means that it’s just a fad and isn’t going to last. If you believe that one, well there’s that proverbial swamp land in Florida that I’d like to sell you.

A roller coaster at sunset, representing the wild ride the inflation rate is taking us on

The inflation rate has been climbing at the fastest pace in over a decade, as Americans pay more for gas, groceries, and many other items. The rate of inflation has slowed over the past few weeks, but don’t get too excited by that news. Inflation will be hanging around at high levels for quite a while longer: this year, next year, and even beyond that. If inflation were a stock, I’d say invest in it. It’s guaranteed to be going up!

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Personal Finance

Women and Personal Finance: How Women Can Boost Their Financial Power

Women and finance. It’s not a secret and we all are well too aware of it: Women lag behind men when it comes to their finances. Sadly, despite some of the glass ceilings that have come down over the recent years, financial inequalities between men and women continue to be a hot spot of major concern. I guess on the surface it may be puzzling for you to hear a man say it and that he would write about such a subject or even care about it. But I do care. It’s an important subject to understand and to make it change. So the discussion today is about how women can boost their financial power.

Woman holding hundred dollar bills representing women and finance

The Basic Facts

Many women try to do it all. They care for the kids, for aging parents, and even for their partners. With all these responsibilities, they try to earn money, be a great wife, and in the end, get totally stressed out along the way there. It creates an enormous amount of pressure that women didn’t face as recently as just 50 years ago. Ironically, the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s may have ended some problems, but invented new ones.

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Food

Pandemic Profiteering Raising Meat Prices? You Better Believe It!

Have you been confused about the rising inflation rate and wondering when this cycle is going to end and “normalcy” will return to your world? Have you just been wondering about it? Or did you figure that inflation comes and goes? And given the way things have been affected with COVID-19 it’s just no wonder that inflation came along now due to high demand and the difficulties in both getting workers and the supply chain issues? Did you just figure that is the way it is and resign yourself to it? Well there is also that other thing that is affecting you and your wallet too. It’s pandemic profiteering and it’s raising your meat prices!

Man looking at high meat prices in butcher case as a result of pandemic profiteering

Don’t Be Naïve About the Profit Motive

Profiteering is a tough subject for me personally to deal with. That’s because I spent so many years in the retail world and I’d like to think that what I always did and the companies I worked for did was to do the right thing for themselves and the consumer. I’d like to think that, but I know it’s not the truth.

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Insurance

Preparing Your Life Insurance Beneficiary: 3 Steps to Handle Now

I have written several blog posts over the years about insurance of all kinds. Insurance is so important to have for many reasons, but it is also a very unpleasant thing to think about, discuss, and to shop for and buy. That’s mainly because you are hoping you never really need it, but yet you know that you will or just might someday. That’s why you pay for it so grudgingly. It’s protection for you and your assets for the things that your fear will happen.

Grieving loved ones who were prepared to be your life insurance beneficiary

With things like a house, a car, or a boat, well, they are all just things. When it’s just a thing, insurance can cover it and even replace it so you’re as good as new…well almost. Just ask anyone who just experienced Hurricane Ida and all of the damage done to property for example. But with your life insurance policies it’s a little bit different.

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Retirement, Taxes

Will Your Taxes on Social Security Income Spike When You Get Your Next COLA Increase?

At first thought, I was pretty happy about the idea of getting the largest Social Security COLA (cost of living adjustment) increase in decades, whether it is 6.0%, 6.1%, or 6.2%! It seems no matter what that final number is going to be, it will be a big increase. Let’s face it: even with all of the financial pressures and problems we have been dealing with for the past year and a half, the cost of living for Social Security recipients is always a topic of drama and concern. If you aren’t one of “us” now, you will be one day and then you will be much more sensitive to it, I assure you.

Elderly woman’s hands clasping her cane as she considers whether she will have to pay taxes on Social Security income

But what about your income taxes on Social Security income? If you receive Social Security, will your taxes spike because you just got a big COLA increase in 2022?

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Retirement

Retirement Plans: Do You Know What You’ll Do The Day After You Retire?

You’re focused on that big day, the day you retire. It’s something that you have been thinking about and planning for years now. You even have a “pre-retirement” checklist drawn up so you can get to your destination with ease. Well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t actually have it all written down and planned, but if I were to ask you, you’d probably say you did. But whether you have it all planned out and written down or not, there is usually one great big hole in just about everyone’s retirement plans and that is this: What are you going to do the day after you retire?

Senior woman holding her hat in front of blue sky, thinking about her retirement plans

“There’s Got to Be a Morning After”

Out of all the items that appear on your real or make believe pre-retirement checklist, having something to do after your retirement might be the most neglected item of them all.

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Food

13 Ways We Save Money on Grocery Shopping Without Really Trying

Please note this post contains affiliate links which help to fund this blog at no cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Because I give advice each week here at Super Saving Tips and because I spent almost a decade working with supermarket chains learning all the secrets that they know and use, people constantly ask me about ways to save money on grocery shopping.

Couple in supermarket trying to save money on grocery shopping

On the surface, it seems pretty challenging. You have to buy food and you have to spend money, big money on it every week and there’s really not a healthy way to avoid it. The biggest challenge, however, may be the constant bombardment of advertising that you are exposed to. That influences you and your family about those “must haves” that are really not and that clogs up your budget.

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Food

Grocery Store Problems: What You Want Is Becoming Harder to Find and More Expensive

Are you getting increasingly more frustrated when you’re shopping for groceries these days? Now that you are doing it more, are you enjoying it less? That is probably because you are having some trouble finding many of your favorite items when you are out doing this weekly chore. And if you do find them, you are paying more for them, too. As you may have heard, there are grocery store problems: supply chain and labor shortages.

Empty grocery shelves a sign of grocery store problems

Grocery store chains are grappling with major supply challenges, with some supermarket executives saying they are as bad now as when they saw them occur back in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic first struck the U.S. and some of the staples we use every day left holes on the supermarket shelves!

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