Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Managing Money Wisely

My grandfather taught me "A penny saved is a penny earned."

A few years ago I took a money management course in conjunction with refinancing my mortgage.  While they had some interesting things to tell me, through experience I had already put a lot of their tips into practice.

As background, I have been identity thefted and know how cumbersome it is to correct what someone else has attempted to do to your credit worthiness.  Luckily, in my case I caught it early because I put into effect one of the most important ways to use your money wisely.  That is to keep an almost obsessive compulsive check on all of your banking and credit accounts.

In my case, I keep an excel spreadsheet that outlines all of my income, bank accounts and monthly bills.  I check my bank balances every day online and match those against what payments I have scheduled or sent checks and what has cleared my account.  If there is a discrepancy, I make a note of it and check the same a few hours later.  If the discrepancy continues, I then contact the bank or vendor to question what has occurred and to make sure it was something that was legitimate.

On the spreadsheet, I have notated the date a bill is due and by color coding if I have scheduled the payment and with another color code if the bill has cleared my bank.  In another column, I keep track of what the bank shows as my balance and what payments have not yet cleared the bank.  This tells me how much money I have free to spend on other cash expenses such as food, prescriptions or gasoline for the car.

I had been in the habit of using my debit card for cash expenses and getting rewards for using that card.  Recently, my bank terminated the practice of giving rewards for using the debit card but are giving rewards for using my credit card with them.  As a result, I have started moving the cash that I had used to pay bills to my credit card by making payments in advance to cover certain bills.  This way, I am continuing to get the rewards for using my card.

Now here is a tip that I learned at the money management class.  I'm not totally in agreement with using this method but this is what they told me.  When you are paying your mortgage, you are delinquent if you don't pay them on the date the payment is due or prior to that date; but, it is prudent to hold off making that payment until just before the end of your grace period.  Like I said, I don't totally agree with this but as it was explained, this gives you more control over the usage of your money.  You do what you think is prudent.

I have paid off my mortgage due to an unexpected insurance claim.  Because I no longer have a mortgage, I am now able to pay down some of my credit cards with the money that was being used for that payment.

I have taken great care to make sure that my payments are on time and to some extent paid well in advance of my due dates.  This keeps the credit reporting agencies happy and really does have an impact on your credit score and worthiness.  The other toss of the coin, is that you should never owe more than 20% of your credit limit on any account.  It's the old adage, if it appears that you don't need the money, creditors are more apt to loan it to you in bigger abundance.

Another thing to watch is the type of credit cards you are holding.  Try to acquire cards that don't require an annual fee and have the lowest interest rate.  As you use your cards wisely and your credit score climbs, you will be offered cards with better rates.  If you decide to take the offer of a lower rate, pay off the card that has a larger interest rate but don't close the account.  By doing that, you have a larger amount of available credit and still only owe the original amount.

I took out a home equity line of credit that has a much smaller interest rate than any of my credit cards.  With the money, I paid off store cards with high interest rates and a couple of my credit card balances.  With this money, I now pay the monthly payment required by the bank towards my interest and make additional payments against the principal.  As I pay off the amounts I used to pay off each card, I then pay off an additional card with the next highest rate of interest again using that payment money to pay against the Line of Credit.

As you pay off your debts, take the money that you used to pay those bills and put a percentage away each month in an interest bearing account.  Be sure to notate what you are saving this money for so that you are less apt to go on a spending spree.  With the remaining percentage of the previous payment, pay down another creditor until it is paid off.  Each time you pay off a creditor your credit score gets a little better due to your income to credit ratio.

I have now put interest rates next to my creditors name on my spreadsheet.  When I am making a larger payment to pay down my credit card debt, I pay more on the ones that have the highest interest rates first.  On another note, I get invitations from banks every day for additional credit cards with transfer of balance offers.  Some of these also give rewards.  I have found that these normally carry higher interest rates and I shred everything that I get like that before discarding them.

It all boils down to knowing at all times what you have as assets and using them to your best advantage.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Convention Hospitality Room Dishes

The Spring state convention is this weekend; so what do I bring for the Hospitality Room?  My husband and I would drive to conventions and we bought an igloo cooler that could be plugged into the car cigarette lighter and then adapted to regular electricity in the hotel room.  We were then able to travel with things that would be available at home for entertaining.  The following recipes are some of my favorite suggestions for entertaining and taking to the Hospitality Room.

picture from billscottgroup.com

I have two favorite dips for parties and usually my daughter makes the spinach dip that is served in Round Rye Bread that is hollowed.  The dip is poured into the hollowed out part and the bread that was pulled out is then broken  up into bits around the bread.


I find that the dip is gone before the bread and the bread is then left to be thrown away.  My suggestion is to put the dip in a shallow bowl and then slice the bread into larger cubes so that there is less to throw away.


It has been my experience that vegetable trays although popular to bring are not ones that are eaten at parties.  I'm always looking for ways to use the leftover vegetables.  When I saw the above photo for illustration, I was intrigued by the notion of combining a popular dip with a tray that may or may not be eaten. Once the chunks of bread are gone, this tray offers a second choice for the dip.


My second favorite dip is one that my friend shared with me a few years ago at Christmas time.   It is a very tasty Shrimp Dip that you make with salad size shrimp.  I make this shrimp dip more than just at Christmas time because everyone in my family seems to like it.


I had bought an extra pound of shrimp when I made the Macaroni Shrimp Salad .  This is a good place to use it even though it is sometimes hard to find the salad size shrimp at our local market.


Another great dip is a crab spread which is made with cream cheese and seafood cocktail.  This one can be taken to the convention and made there since the cream cheese needs to be room temperature.  It can be served with crackers around it or in a serving tray by itself. 

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Gardening with Lilies of the Valley


In the past, I have told you how I love Lilies of the Valley and how I was thinking of putting them into my little garden out front.



My neighbor who had them growing in her front garden has since moved away and the ones she told me to take did not survive.I took about six of her plants which are pictured above and put them into my garden around the lone white lily that is coming up.

If there is one thing I know about Lilies of the Valley, it is that if they take hold they will multiply and in a couple of years my Lilies will have to vie for space in the garden.  My grandfather had a row of them along the back fence near the gate and every year they came up in profusion and the smell of the flowers was pungent when you went to the back gate.

A neighbor in my new neighborhood has them growing in bunches by her back gate.  She also offered them to me.  This year I will either have to buy the plants or see if I can get them to grow in my garden.  Even though they only flower once around in June, the tight green foliage is pretty in itself the rest of the growing season.

This is how you can grow lilies of the valley in your garden:

  1. Make sure the ground where you plant them has good drainage.
  2. Lilies of the Valley like partial sunlight and shade.
  3. Soak the flower stems in lukewarm water to give them a faster start.
  4. Snip off the end of the roots before inserting them in the soil so that the plant will take up water and grow faster.
  5. After planting, soak the plants with water to get them started
  6. Snipping the blooms will not hurt them after they have bloomed but they only bloom once.
  7. Leave the plants in place after the flowers have gone to give the plants strength.
My first attempt at transplanting this flower was a complete failure but the second plant took and came back last year with bigger and more aromatic flowers.  As I said earlier, these flower tend to spread over the years and multiply.  I have lost most of my lilies of the valley but will continue to try.  I'm sure sometime I will have my favorite flowers back again.