Category: Frugality

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7 Tips to Get Your Home Ready to Sell

For today’s guest post on getting your home ready to sell, please welcome Logan Allec from Money Done Right.

Selling your home can be a time-consuming process, and you can typically increase the sale price by making a few last-minute changes. Depending on the home’s current condition, your real estate agent may recommend drastic transformations or just some simple adjustments.

If you're getting your home ready to sell, it's important to spruce it up a bit to maximize your home's value. Here are some of the best ways to prepare.

This article will cover some of the best ways to prepare your home for sale and maximize its market value. Again, you should talk about these ideas with your agent—they have the knowledge and experience necessary to identify the most effective strategies for your unique situation.

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Debt, Home

How to Choose a Great Home Lender for Your Mortgage

Once upon a time, getting a home loan was as simple as walking down to the local bank, sitting down with the manager, shaking hands, and presto! You’ve got a home loan and your local bank was your home lender. That’s pretty much the way it used to be.

With low interest rates, it's prime time for getting a mortgage or refinancing your home. Here's how to find the right home lender for you.

Today, with the advent and popularity of online lending, times have really changed. Borrowers are now spoiled with so much info and so many choices! Right now (and how many times have you heard it over and over again in recent years) mortgage and refinancing rates are at really low numbers. With so many different lenders beating a path to your door and giving customers so much different information, how do you know when you’ve chosen a great deal from a great home lender? Well, wonder no more!

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Food

April Prices on Groceries Were Highest in Decades

It was only a matter of time. The coronavirus is wreaking havoc with our health, our jobs, and now it’s busting a big hole in our grocery budgets. The prices on groceries for April were actually the highest they’ve been in decades!

Prices on groceries rose to their highest in decades in April. Here are some of the reasons why, along with what else is happening in our economy.

Prices at your supermarket are rising sharply because coronavirus has disrupted the food supply chain. You’ve been hearing for weeks that there are cracks in the supply chain even though the government has tried to deny it. It is just starting to reach into your pocketbook and the score for now looks like we are in trouble. When you are out of work, as over 30 million Americans are right now, the last thing you want is to have prices on groceries busting wide open!

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Shopping

Online Shopping Is How You Will Shop…Forever?

Getting into the swing of the online shopping experience right about now? It seems that you have to simply because for the past two months almost every “non-essential” retail outlet has been closed down due to the coronavirus. So like it or not, your computer/tablet/phone is your shopping outlet. But, pandemic or not, don’t be too surprised if online shopping will be how you will shop…forever!

Online shopping has been around a long time and is flourishing with current events. But will it be the way we shop from now on?

A Little Retail History

I’m going to skip past Org and Thor exchanging animal furs for food and go right up to the world of America in the 1800’s to save a little time here.

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Family & Relationships, Shopping

Celebrating Mother’s Day in a COVID-19 World

As a former boss of mine once said to me (and I have regretfully repeated over the years), “Father’s Day is the most important day of the year”…not! Let’s get real here, your mom was, has been, and still is the very most important person ever. I’m not here to list all the reasons why and that is because you already know that without her, you just wouldn’t exist, so case closed. If you are fortunate enough to have your mom still around, it’s really important to recognize her. But how will you celebrate Mother’s Day in a COVID-19 world?

Mother’s Day is coming, but this year it may be difficult to see your mom in person. Here are some ways to celebrate from a distance.
Family Together in Bedroom

Some Things Still Haven’t Changed – Yet

Whether you’re staying at home or not (and you must social distance in order to protect yourself and everyone around you), you can still send your mom a heartfelt or funny greeting card and you can do it without ever leaving your house.

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Food

Is Always Dining at Home the New Normal?

If you can’t remember the last time you joined your family and friends for a big shindig down at your favorite local restaurant, you are not alone. I can’t either and neither can millions of other people these days. With the coming of COVID-19, restaurant dining rooms are closed and any of the ones that are open are being forced to serve take-out or delivery only. Frankly, that just isn’t the same thing to me. You do lose a little of the “flavor” (pardon the pun) carrying home a brown bag. So that makes it a real challenge to make your dining at home in any way special or fun. That raises the question: “Can it ever equal dining out and be your new normal dining out experience?”

Dining at home may just be your new normal, but that doesn't mean it can't be special. Here are some ways to make it memorable and fun.

There Are Adjustments

You have always had to prepare dinners at home, haven’t you? Sorry, if you are one of the ones who always did pick-up, delivery, or constantly dined out for reasons which I will never I understand and neither will your wallet! For now, those days are over (which may actually be forcing you to save some money), so what will you do?

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Frugality

Can You Save Money by Staying at Home?

I sometimes would kid my wife about our spending during a typical week; at least I used to do it before COVID-19 that is. You see, we had become really predictable in our spending habits. Because we don’t work at a “job” outside the home, we save money by staying at home. But now you are, too!

Staying at home is the safest place you can be right now, but it's also the place where you can save money. Here are several ways you're saving at home.

Shaped over time by careful budgeting, and concentrating an awful lot on spending on our needs and not on wants, we came in pretty much like clockwork on our budget numbers for years. The only exceptions were almost always centered on medical expenses for doctors, tests, and medicines which ebb and flow on their own course and occasionally throw the budget out of whack.

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Food

Lost Your Job? Get Help & Get Food Stamps Now

It may be something that you thought was totally unthinkable a few short weeks ago, but the reality of the coronavirus pandemic is facing everyone right now, and for some it is both a health and a financial nightmare. If you recently lost your job, are not getting any unemployment compensation, haven’t received any stimulus check yet, or have no emergency funds to back you and your family up, you may now need and qualify to get food stamps.

If you've lost your job and need help with food, you may be eligible for food stamps now. Read on for the details and rules.

The “Families First Coronavirus Response Act” and Food Stamps

In general, people usually need to meet some kind of work requirement to be eligible for SNAP (otherwise known as food stamps), but those rules under the new pandemic guidelines are now in suspension so that losing your job and not being able to find work right now will not disqualify you.

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