A Personal Finance Blog for Regular Folks
Chase’s program — Ultimate Rewards — is back this year to offer up holiday promotions and provide value and and extra rewards to their customers.
From the beginning of November through the end of the year, card holders of Chase’s Chase Freedom®, Chase Sapphire(SM), and Chase Ink cards (those with Ultimate Rewards) will be eligible for the holiday promotions.
After the recent governmental shut down, you may be feeling increasingly frustrated with our government.
You may feel that you have no voice in politics and economic decisions. Of course, you have the right to vote, but much of what the government does is largely out of your hands.
However, you can still take a stand and make your voice heard by voting with your dollars.
Every day that you spend money, you’re making a choice and choosing one company over another, one product over another.
How you spend money is your voice, your vote.
Due to the economic law of supply and demand, if enough people show that they want better or different items, manufacturers will take notice.
For instance, “Making your next car a hybrid shows the automobile industry that you want more eco-friendly, fuel efficient vehicles, which in turn forces them to produce more. Buying organic foods show that you care about our groundwater and the chemicals you are consuming. Using reusable grocery bags demonstrates that you don’t want millions of plastic bags ending up in our oceans and landfills. Buying products from corporations who are using methods to improve their environmental footprint helps their bottom line which shows their competition this is something important and forces everyone in their industry to raise the bar” (AG Beat).
Are you a member of Costco, or thinking about it? Want to make your dollar go even further there?
Then the TrueEarnings® Card from Costco and American Express may be for you.
Shopping at Costco (or any warehouse store) is one of those things you have to evaluate – is it worth it for your family at its current size and eating/spending habits? Buying in bulk can sometimes mean great savings but it can also be deceptive and even cost more than your local grocery store when all is said and done.
If you’ve calculated that Costco is right for you, the TrueEarnings Card from Costco and American Express can help you earn cash back on your purchases there and elsewhere.
While Americans often complain about our jobs getting shipped overseas, the simple fact is that the global marketplace lets us receive goods for an incredibly low price.
We are paying less than our parents and grandparents did for goods, yet we have more debt and less money.
What happened?
I recently watched the movie King Corn, a documentary in part about the way our crops are grown and our animals are fed.
Regardless of how you feel about genetically modified crops and conventionally grown beef, the documentary was informative about the agricultural policy change in the 1970s. While the United States used to carefully rotate crops and limit the crops that came to market, all of that changed when Earl Butz became the Secretary of Agriculture in 1971. He urged all farmers to plant as much corn as they could, and as a result of his policy changes, food prices dropped radically. Butz said in the movie, “The basis of our affluence is that we spend less on food now. . .We feed ourselves with approximately 16 to 17% of our take home pay.”
[Read more…] about Less Is More: Make 2013 The Year You Buy Things Differently
Are you feeling like scrooge yet?
I love the holiday season and all of the festivities, but the commercial aspect of it diminishes my joy.
Having to go out and fight the crowds to buy presents is an activity I enjoy about as much as going to the dentist for a root canal. The longer I wait to shop, the meaner and angrier people at the mall seem to be.
What’s even worse is that studies show that many recipients don’t even appreciate or value our gifts.
“Despite the fact that people spend a significant amount of time and money on gift-giving, their purchases often are less appreciated than they might hope,” say business school professors Francis Flynn of Stanford University and Francesca Gino of Harvard University in a study published in 2011 (WSJ).
Based on my own personal experience, I can attest that this is true.
Last year my mom was most happy to give me a Mint, which is a vacuum/mop that runs on its own presumably to clean the floors while you are doing other things. My mom is a clean freak, while we, well, we are not. She thought this would be the perfect gift.
The problem?
[Read more…] about 3 Ways to Have a Less Commercialized Holiday Season
