Here’s my annual Valentine’s Day dilemma: If I go with the traditional gifts – chocolates and roses or dinner at a fancy restaurant – will my wife think I’m unimaginative? She loves roses and fine chocolate, but won’t she be somewhat offended that I didn’t put more thought into it?

And then there’s the expense: Roses aren’t cheap, and my wife, who’s watching our household dollar pretty closely these days, may not be able to enjoy their beauty knowing what they cost.

So this year my plan is to do things a little differently. Not only am I going easy on my savings account, but I’m also going to blow her away with how thoughtful and creative I am.

That said, here are some of the options I’m weighing:

• Miniature potted roses: Long-stem roses are pretty ostentatious, but these quarter-sized flowers will not only last longer and continue blooming well past Valentine’s Day, but my wife will be able to plant them in her garden this spring and think of me every time she walks past them.
• A picture of the two of us: I’ve got a few images from a summer camping trip we took, so I’m thinking about having one of those printed in a large 11-by-17 format that I can slip into an inexpensive prebuilt frame. I noticed at Christmas time that the craft shops were putting a lot of their frames on sale, so I’ll probably grab one of those.
• A homemade card: This might the biggest bang for my buck. It will take some time and some thought, but my time – and more than a few of my thoughts – are pretty cheap. I might use Photoshop to paste together images from the past year, or I may make a collage from past snapshots. Either way, the surprise and delight of seeing a homemade card will warm my sweetie’s heart.
• Homemade coupon books: Use your imagination. What does your honey desire, yet might be too embarrassed to come right out and ask for? Well, if you give them a coupon for that thing, they won’t have to ask for it. Get it? I can’t spell it out for you but you can certainly spell it out for them.
• A home-cooked meal: The jury is still out on this one. Some people think cooking dinner for your baby on Valentine’s Day reeks of cheapness. What she’d prefer is dinner at a nice restaurant. But what if the meal you prepared was really, really nice? Like shrimp cocktail, a nice wine, prime rib or poached salmon and berries and fresh cream for dessert? Won’t your baby just melt in your arms over your thoughtfulness and hard work?
• A series of small surprises: Decorate a bunch of empty match boxes or old jewelry boxes with leftover wrapping paper and stick little treats in them. Then hide the boxes around the house in places you know he or she will find them in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. Mix it up – an exotic chocolate one day, an earring then next, the second earring the following day and so on – and make the final gift something a little more special – such as a necklace that matches the earrings or a gift card for dinner that night.

Let us know what you are doing for Valentine’s Day this year, and remember that keeping your sweetie and your savings account happy can both be priorities this Valentine’s Day.

Jim Sloan is a freelance writer in Reno, Nev.

Image: markuso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Source URL: Frugal ways to be sexy on Valentine’s Day

Copyright Protected © 2011 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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By Maricelle Ruiz-Calderon

When I got my first credit card, I didn’t know too much about how to use one, or the benefits, or drawbacks of credit cards. I didn’t shop around – I simply accepted the credit card that my bank provided. Luckily for me, it offered a good deal and my family advised me to never charge unnecessary expenses. Even so, there are definitely some things I wish I knew about credit cards back then.

Credit Cards 101

Since a credit card is a loan, MasterCard recommends that you pay by the end of the month or as soon as possible to avoid interest charges. If you use your credit card responsibly, you should obtain a high credit score, enabling you to take out other loans to pay for school, a car and a home.

“[A credit card] can be very helpful in case of emergency and definitely help in establishing a credit record,” Mary Sommers, financial aid director at the University of Nebraska, tells Omaha.com. “If you have no credit record and you’ve paid cash all your life, you may be a very good money manager, but you’re still going to have trouble getting a house mortgage or a car loan.”

However, irresponsible credit card use can definitely hurt, including keeping you from getting a job out of college, so make sure you have a plan for credit card use prior to getting one.

Here are a few credit cards that, used responsibly, can help you gain a foot hold in starting credit.

Zero interest credit cards for beginners

Although I got my first credit card in college, even teens may get pre-paid cards nowadays.

• Teen pre-paid cards

If you’re a teenager, with your parents’ blessing, you may get American Express’ pre-paid PASS Card. For a $3.95 monthly membership fee, your parents add money to the card and you may pay for what you need. Be careful, at the end of the month, your parents may call you in to explain charges. Also you shouldn’t make too many ATM withdrawals since each costs $1.50.

• Student zero interest credit cards

If you’re in college, you could get the Citi Platinum Select MasterCard for College Students. For the first seven months, MasterCard says it’s a zero percent credit card. It also has no annual fee, but after the initial seven months, the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) – the yearly percentage cost of credit – ranges between 11.99 percent and 20.99 percent.

You could also apply for the Discover Student More Card, which Discover says allows you to earn cash back. It’s a zero interest credit card for the first six months and later the variable APR ranges between 12.99 percent and 19.99 percent. The credit card also doesn’t charge an annual fee.

If you are into clothing, Visa student cards are offering rewards for purchases at Delia’s, Gap and Target. Also offering rewards, Blue from American Express is a zero percent credit card for the first six months. After that, American Express says your APR will vary from 15.24 percent to 19.24 percent.

• Young adult zero percent credit cards

You could check out the Capital One Secured MasterCard for Young Adults, a credit card with zero interest during the introductory period, a variable 19.8 percent APR after that, and a $24 annual fee, according to MasterCard.

Protecting your credit

Since good credit is essential, use your credit card responsibly, even if it’s among the zero percent credit cards. As MasterCard says, if you can’t afford something, don’t buy it.

If you buy items on credit, don’t exceed your credit card limit. When you receive your credit card bill, review it carefully to make sure charges are correct. If possible, pay the full bill by the due date to avoid ongoing charges. If you can’t pay in full, make sure you check interest rates beforehand to avoid surprises. Also find out cash advance charges prior to withdrawing money using your credit card.

To avoid credit card scams, protect your mailbox and shred documents including personal information. If a bill doesn’t arrive, contact the credit card company. Only provide your credit card number and personal information to reputable companies. And while paying, keep an eye on your credit card at all times to avoid what happened in a Barcelona restaurant. A waiter there would collect a credit card to settle a check, and once he was out of the customer’s sight, he would write down the credit card number to use to go on a shopping spree when his shift ended.

Maricelle Ruiz-Calderon has worked as a marketing consultant, professor, and journalist in the United States and Europe. She possesses experience in a variety of sectors, including technology, education, consumer goods and financial services. Maricelle earned a Master in Journalism from Northwestern University and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Source URL: Zero interest credit cards for beginners

Copyright Protected © 2010 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Back in the early to mid-1990s I made my living by sitting in front of computer monitor with green and red glowing pixels that flashed stock and commodity prices. I was an off-the-floor stock and commodity trader, and in my world, green and red meant everything. Green meant I was making money, and red meant I would be drawing out of my savings to pay for monthly expenses.

Fortunately for me, I was given some sage advice from a wealthy mentor of mine who was about 25 years my senior and knew of an obstacle that I was likely to encounter. I still remember his wise words: “Kid, make sure you put money into an account you can draw from when times are lean–and expect some lean times. It’s part of the game.”

Even though I heeded his advice, there was one thing I didn’t account for: the feeling I’d have when trekking to the bank to withdraw those savings. While I had been diligently depositing money in my high yield savings account specifically to be drawn on when needed, the mental anguish of seeing my balance decrease–sometimes month after month–was one of the biggest challenges I had to overcome as a trader.

From Retirement Saving to Retirement Spending: Getting Past the Anxiety

Fast-forward 16 years: now I manage other people’s money for a living. I’m on the phone with a client in his mid-60s who recently retired. He asks me if taking $10,000 out of one of his accounts to purchase a timeshare is going to throw his retirement savings into a flat spin.

I remark that he could buy ten such timeshares without making much of a dent in his financial resources. But thinking back to those down months from my trader days, I quickly add, “I think I understand where your mind is and what you may be feeling. The retirement transition is a little bit like buying an umbrella and then worrying it will get wet when it rains.”

Learning how to develop the retirement spending mindset is a major challenge for many retirees. There’s already a lot of change when you retire: a shift in routine, of people you spend time with on a daily basis, maybe even a new home in a new city.

Add to the mix a wrenching shift in habit from saving for 35 or 40 years (or more) to actually spending down the funds carefully grown in that retirement account–no wonder it’s a jolt. Seeing that balance drop month after month, even if you’ve planned for it, is profoundly unsettling.

Another issue is that many people who enter retirement now have access to the most money in a lump sum that they’ve ever had in their lives. This alone can bring a suite of emotions, from fear and paralysis to greed.

You may have gone over financial variables in retirement planning over and over through the years–average lifespan, rates of return, annual income needs, and so on–but nobody prepared you for these particular mental adjustments.

How to Combat Retirement Spending Anxiety

The upshot is that these feelings are normal, and there are strategies you can use to ease yourself into retired life:

• Set up a “retirement bucket.” This strategy simulates the consistency of earning a steady income. With your “retirement bucket,” you spill some money into a separate deposit account that you access for regular expenses. You might accomplish this with a scheduled transfer on the first of each month from a high-interest online savings account to a linked checking account, for instance. The retirement bucket method provides stability, creates a natural budgeting mechanism, and shields you from the dread of treating your retirement funds as an ATM.
• Test-drive retirement. You may have long imagined what life you’ll lead in retirement, but the truth is, you won’t know until you get there. You might find yourself drawn to different activities than you expected and budgeted for. This is the “human factor” of retirement planning that no computer model can simulate. For example, I have clients who eat out more frequently now that they are retired because they have more free time to socialize. By all means, estimate your fixed expenses before retirement, but get into the swing of retired life for a few months before locking into a budget.
• Set a deadline. That said, don’t let fear of handling a large sum of money (especially in uncertain economic times) lead you put off budgeting forever. If making big decisions about retirement spending frightens you, let yourself have a few months to just get used to your new life. But set a precise date in the future to revisit decisions, or several milestones spaced out if you prefer–something to make sure that you take some thoughtful action in a timely manner.
• Blow your money–but just a little. Some new retirees have the opposite reaction to financial anxiety–they convince themselves that they deserve new cars, designer shopping sprees, and luxury vacations. Deserved they may be, but these large purchases come at a great cost if done on an impulse. If you’re worried you may be the type to come back from the Porsche dealership with a big case of buyer’s remorse, try this: take a very small percentage of your retirement money and go blow it on something frivolous. It could be that you just needed to get that impulse purchasing out of your system, and this way you can satisfy that impulse without doing yourself some major financial damage.

Above all, I encourage new retirees to view money as a tool. When we make financial decisions out of emotion, we often satiate an emotional need at the expense of good financial judgment. Unless you can identify the emotion driving that financial judgment and adjust accordingly, all that careful number crunching, planning, and forecasting from your working years can become meaningless.

Marc Pearlman is the author of the Positive Money Mindset and host of the popular radio show Your Money Matters! For more about Marc, visit marcpearlman.com or www.Yourmoneymattersradio.com.

Securities offered through Securities America, Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Securities America Advisors, Inc. Marc Pearlman, Representative. Your Money Matters! radio show and the Securities America companies are unaffiliated.

Source URL: Overcoming Spending Anxiety: When Financial Planning for Retirement Isn’t Enough

Copyright Protected © 2010 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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As a part time personal finance blogger, book publishers and book authors frequently send me free personal finance books to read and review. After blogging about making money and a whole slew of financial topics for several years now, in this span of time I’ve probably received well over 30-50 books about money (the vast majority of them parroting and repeating the same material frankly). If I did not periodically sell them online or donate them away to friends and readers of this blog, the incredibly large pile of books would probably have winded up clogging a large corner of my house, gathering dust and taking up space.

College and graduate students in particular have the greatest to gain from not delaying in their efforts to sell off their old and used textbooks online. School textbooks are by their very nature profitable exchanges for the book authors and publishers who issue new editions every few years and force all current book owners to buy the new versions to stay current. Thus, limited in terms of value by short multi year lifespans, school text books are only as current and up to date as the next year’s release date. That is why I always strongly recommend that students sell their books quickly and convert them back to cash form as soon as the school semester or school year is over, lest they delay and wind up in ultimate possession of yesterday’s edition.

Where To Sell Your Used Books To Get the Best Price and Most Money Back

I started selling new and used books online back in 2000 when websites like eBay.com, Amazon.com, and Half.com were just gaining prominence. While I sold my fair share of unwanted books to local used bookstores, thrift stores, and even pawn shops for cash, I focused primarily on online selling due to the higher prices I could fetch over the Internet. Selling back used textbooks has always been a great way to recoup some of the expensive costs of expensive textbooks, but unfortunately, college and university bookstores these days continue to pay students the worst prices for book buybacks. In most cases, college bookstores usually only offer half or less of the original purchase price for buybacks so that they can in turn sell the used titles back to other students for huge markup profits. Today, there are many places over the Internet where you can sell your used books for much better returns – each with its own host of pros and cons.

1) eBay (Auctions) – If you’re a regular consumer looking to buy a new or used book for cheap, eBay will probably be your best bet as auction deals abound there and final sale prices are incredibly low. However, if you’re a seller of used books or textbooks, the general public perception that eBay offers super low prices definitely works against your favor. But due to eBay’s incredibly large customer base and superb ease of use, it’s an online book selling resource you simply can’t ignore. eBay is one of the very quickest, easiest, and simplest ways to sell used books online. Oftentimes if you’re listing an auction for a used book, you can simply utilize eBay’s book template setup feature, punch in the book’s ISBN number, and have an effectively designed eBay auction ready to go in just a moment’s time.

Even if you don’t always get the best prices for your books with eBay, it’s almost a solid guarantee that they will sell (albeit at eBay market determined prices). If you’re looking to sell an obscure, rare, or valuable book, or perhaps you’re looking to capture high traffic volume for an auction involving a collection of books at the same time – eBay might be your best bet due to its ability to offer up maximum public exposure. But because eBay auction consumers have been conditioned and accustomed to seek out and demand almost unreasonably low prices for their bids for some time now, you’re unlikely to make a tremendous amount of money with eBay book auctions if you’re a seller. Ebay’s continuously increasing listing fees and rising commission charges have definitely taken a serious toll on seller profit potential in recent years.

2) Craiglist.org (Classified Ads) - Craigslist is a very popular online classified ad listing website and is also truly the wild, wild west of market place transactions. The greatest appeal of Craigslist for online book sellers and buyers is that there are no commissions, advertisement listing fees, or special mandatory shipping charges required. Pretty much anything goes on Craigslist – with all transactional terms and conditions negotiated and worked out between sellers and buyers themselves. If you have used books for sale and do not wish to be constrained by the auction rules or regulated limitations of policed sites like eBay or Amazon, you might want to try out Craigslist. Prices vary wildly however – sometimes they offer prices higher than eBay listings while other times they’re lower. But in terms of saving time and effort, if you’re looking to get rid of your used textbooks or old book collections all at once in large parcels, Craigslist is ideal.

Here’s a suggestion for Craigslist sellers – if you’re looking to sell a large bundle of books at once, try putting multiple books together into a single collection and posting the listing for sale on Craigslist. If potential buyers express interest, try throwing in additional books to spicen up the pot in their favor if you’re willing to do so. This type of book selling strategy works incredibly well for smaller and lower priced books that don’t sell as well individually.

3) Book Buyback and Textbook Rental Websites - The biggest problem with utilizing do-it-yourself (DIY) type sites like eBay, Amazon, or Craigslist to personally list and sell your used books is the time and effort involved to list and market every one of the books for sale. Trying to keep shipping costs down and save money on the cost of packaging envelopes isn’t easy to do if you’re not an adept micro-tasker. One viable alternative to the do it yourself approach is to solicit the services of an online book buying website that will pay you a one time bounty for all of your available and aggregate used books in one fell swoop. Usually after you’ve provided the book buyback website the names and ISBN numbers of all of the books you have for sale, the site provides you pre-paid postage labels for you to ship the books to them via the postal service. With book buyback services, there is no need for you to manage auctions, handle customer service inquiries, or follow up regarding timely payment. Once the folks at the book buying firm have received your books and reviewed their condition, they usually issue payment directly to you in the way of a check, PayPal payment, or even a direct deposit into your checking account in some cases.

The biggest downside with these online book buyback websites is the incredibly low price they generally pay for used books and textbooks. Because they pretty much do all of the work for you, these companies generally pay only small fractions of the original retail price for these books. Rarely do their offers ever match or exceed the prices that used book sellers can fetch on their own via eBay, Amazon, or even Craigslist. While I don’t necessarily vouch or recommend any one particular site for its quality or reliability – here are a few book buyback and book rental websites I’ve come across that you might want to follow up on – Chegg.com, eCampus.com,  BookByte.com, Cash4Books.net, Barnes & Noble, TextbooksNow.com, Textbooks.com, BooksValue.com, WeBuyTextbooks.com, BooksValue, TextbooksRUs, and CollegeBooksDirect. Let me know if there are any other sites worth mentioning, worth reviewing in detail, or even worth criticizing.

4) Amazon.com Used Books and Textbooks (Recommended For Most Sellers)

Compared to all of the other online ways of selling used textbooks and old books, I prefer listing books for sale on Amazon.com because it is much more intuitive to use than other alternatives. Signing up for an Amazon seller’s account is straightforward and listing your used books for sale is easy. You will be asked to describe the condition of your book, set your desired fixed price, and denote your available shipping options. Amazon.com ultimately reimburses sellers for their shipping costs but charges a $0.99 fee plus an additional fee based on a certain percentage of the final list price. Here are a few Amazon quick links for sellers that want to get started:

• Amazon’s textbook store - Click here if you’re looking to sell a used college or graduate school textbook.
• Amazon’s used book store – If you’re selling any other used book, try this link to get started.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed a lot more regular success and have earned more profit with Amazon than say, eBay or Craigslist. Quite possibly because Amazon.com started out as a book store and many people still see and trust Amazon primarily as an authoritative source for buying books at a reasonable price, it seems visitors to the site are more willing to pay a slightly higher price premium than at other websites. But perhaps the greatest benefit of using Amazon to sell books is the ability to take advantage of the natural flow of visitors coming to the site and looking to buy a brand new book. Because used book listings are displayed alongside the prices for new book titles, you may be able to siphon off new book seekers and convert them into buyers of used, lower priced versions. Rather than go to Amazon.com and shell out $25 for a new book, you may be able to successfully lure prospective buyers into going for your cheaper $15 used version instead.

Obscure, rare, and collectible books tend to fetch higher prices via an auction or free-for-all classified ad listing than you may be able to get by selling the title via a fixed price listing on Amazon. If you prefer to sell a whole selection of titles simultaneously as a pallet or collection, you might be better off using eBay or Craigslist. Non textbooks or expired textbook editions tend to sell much faster on eBay and Craigslist where aggressive deal seekers and bargain hunters abound. But if you’re selling either a popularly used and update-to-date school textbook, or trying to sell an otherwise recognizable bestselling title, Amazon will probably be your best bet. So long as your textbook has not been discontinued due to the release of a newer edition, you should not have any trouble selling your new condition book on Amazon somewhat close to what you paid for it. Standardized books such as school textbooks and popular bestsellers almost always perform better on Amazon.com listings than on other alternative sites.

If you’re thinking about selling used books on Amazon, here are a few important tips and pointers I’ve learned and picked up in recent years:

1. Always list your used books for sale at prices lower than your closest competitor.
2. Always track your used book listing periodically to ensure that it’s being priced at the lowest it can be.
3. If your competitors attempt to low ball their prices and undercut your title listing, instead of getting into a pointless price war, try matching prices tit for tat rather than beating them instead.
4. List your used book’s condition accurately. Even if your used textbook is really in “like new” condition, you might want to list it as “very good” instead. You don’t want future potential buyer complaints to cause your Amazon seller rating to suffer.
5. Keep your shipping prices low by utilizing free shipping boxes that you naturally come across, or buy them from deep discounters like Walmart, Target, or even your local supermarket. One great way to save a lot of money on packaging and shipping supplies is to buy them through eBay. For example, check out the following prices for eBay bubble wrap mailers, and eBay bubble envelopes.
6. Always ship utilizing the cheapest method possible – For used books and textbooks, the cheapest way to ship is usually through the postal service’s media mail option. However, with certain smaller books, it might very well be cheaper to go with First Class Mail – just ask the post office to ship using the cheapest way possible.

Regardless of which method you use to sell your used textbooks and unwanted books, selling back books (textbooks in particular) is simply a great way to recoup original purchase costs. But bear in mind, unless you are somehow a very large power seller with access to special shipping discounts and access to very cheap shipping supplies, you are unlikely to get rich or make a lot of money online through selling used books alone as a business form. Like those money making paid online surveys you always see, they may be otherwise legitimate ways of earning some extra cash back, but it’s doubtful you’ll ever become a millionaire in the process. It’s theoretically possible, but highly unlikely.

Source URL: Sell Your Used Textbooks and Old Books Online

Copyright Protected © 2009 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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