Recover Wasted Money

We are all guilty of leaving money on the table; just wasting it. Maybe it’s that forgotten free trial you gave your credit card number to. Maybe you buy things you don’t need and they sit collecting dust for months or years in their original packaging. Whatever your money-wasting habits are, you can change them.

Here’s a list of ways you can recover wasted money. I know I don’t cover every scenario but maybe reading these gives you ideas or motivation to tackle your own bad habits.

Spending because you got a sale email

We’ve all done it. The worst is when you go into your email to conduct important personal business and you get distracted by sale emails. Some people shop during work because they got an email about a hot sale while working. Heck! That’s the whole premise of cyber Monday/ cyber weeks.

What you can do:

Create an email address just for stores ads and online shopping. If a store asks for your email address, don’t give your primary, personal email address or work email; give this one.

  • If you don’t have money, don’t look at the store email account.
  • If you have money to spend, check your emails for deals first.

Stores and restaurants usually have members only or app only deals. Often, the employees are told not to tell customers about these and to let customers pay higher prices!

  • Use your advertisements only email address to sign up for those apps and start saving!
  • Always download the app for any stores and restaurants you go to more than twice per year BEFORE YOU GO. In fact, take a moment to do that asap. If you go to a store or restaurant and realize you don’t have the app, sit or stand there and download it before you shop.

This is also a great way to limit spam on your other email accounts!

It will take awhile to de-junk your other accounts but you’ll get there!

Keeping unopened, unused purchases

Always make note of the return policies of the stores and websites you use AND USE THE ABILITY TO RETURN. Some stores have up to a year no questions asked. Also, know your managers; some are more linient than the company policy, some are more strict. Along those lines, always be kind to store employees even when they tell you no. I have a story about getting a return after it was too late on my Patreon.

  • If you buy an item and you don’t like it or do not use it, RETURN IT.
  • This may require you to keep receipts. Keep them in an organized fashion. You’ll be a happier shopper.
  • I hate keeping up with paper receipts so I love that many apps will keep electronic copies of my receipts.

If a store has an e-receipt option, I give them my advertisement email address. Two reasons, they will probably add you to a mailing list, and you will rarely need that receipt.

  • Also, return policies come in handy for sales. If you see something you bought more than $1 lower, get a price adjustment. (I have a story about saving a significant amount of money like this on Patreon)
  • If the store will give you store credit for being outside the return window or not having the receipt, take it,

I’ve been told the generations after gen x hate returning items. I honestly hate it too! But I like not wasting money more than I hate it. Because I hate doing returns, I don’t return an item necessarily every time I go to the store. I have a place where I organize unwanted items and when I accumulate a few, I do a return trip to the store.

You don’t need every tv subscription available

If you get a tv app because its free or at a reduced price, IMMEDIATELY put a notification on your phone or computer calendar reminding you to cancel ONE DAY before the trial period expires. When the notification comes up, CANCEL!

Speaking of tv apps, place a habit tracker by the tv or your computer if you watch tv on the computer. Write all your tv apps on it. Mark each time you watch each app. Set a threshold for how many times is too little. cancel unused or under used apps

Purge

You can make money for things you aren’t using. Right now they’re sitting around collecting dust. SELL THEM!

One note about unused items- whether they are unused with tags or used, you will rarely sell things you aren’t using for more than you bought them. So make sure you keep that in mind from here forward if you elect to not take my advice about returning items to the store. You lose money when you sell unused items; you’re only minimizing your loss by sell.

Think outside the box when getting rid of unused stuff. I don’t like those apps that promise to help you sell but take a big chunk. I prefer to list large items like washers and dryers on apps like Offer Up. Smaller items like shirts and blenders on Facebook.

We have even sold cars online instead of trading them in because we get more money that way.

*A note about safety- if at all possible, DO NOT meet people at your home to do the sell. If you must have multiple people present acting casual like 700 people live at your house. This may scare them but it’s better they’re scared than you get hurt or worse. Take down information of anyone you invite to your home for sales- they might be back. I’m not trying to scare you; this stuff happens.

Along those lines, try not to meet people at public places alone. And always meet at a police station or a Walmart or Home Depot. Why Walmart or Home Depot? Because they have the best parking lot cameras. If you get robbed, all you have to do is file a police report and they’ll give the police the footage.

Ready? Start looking for ways to recoup wasted money!

You’re Taxing Yourself

I know that many of you aren’t even thinking about your taxes, yet. Many of you will be waiting until the very last moment to file. That’s not a judgement, just an observation. Because I can claim no superiority for being an early filer- we’ve been filing as soon as possible for years only because most of our marriage my husband has worked a seasonal job and we need the tax refund to supplement our Winter income.

But anyway. I’m posting this public service announcement early to each my early filing peeps.

Stop paying a tax preparer to file your taxes!

Stop it now!

Today! This year!

You can do your own taxes for 1/8th to 1/10th what a tax preparer would charge.

I’m not saying, “Make this the last year you pay someone to file your taxes for you.” I’m saying, “File your taxes yourself this year! You can do it! I believe in you!”

Please, hear me out. I have a few fancy letters behind my name but I’m no genius. If you follow me for any length of time, no doubt you’ve seen grammar and spelling errors and probably you’ve had some serious, “I’m smarter than her,” moments.

Yet, I’ve been doing our taxes since we were freshmen in college.

…and we’ve NEVER been audited.

One year, we were applying for a home loan and the loan officer noticed a mistake on our taxes. They said in order to close on our house we had to correct the mistake.

I went back and re-did our taxes, did the walk of shame to the local tax office, refiled and went on with my life. That was over 10 years ago so we’re FREE from that error with no fear of recompense.

Taxes aren’t as scary as we’ve been conditioned to believe they are.

I rarely think the annoying inspirational, “Look at her. If she can do it, surely you can” is applicable. But this is one of those times.

I have absolutely nothing to gain if you listen to me. I am not plugging a particular software and I’m not getting compensated to tell you to do your own taxes.

There is not Society For Those Who Convince People To File Their Own Taxes Award.

Talking to you about filing your own taxes will not get me to the UN to speak about this great humanitarian effort.

Seriously Though

You pay some company HUNDREDS of dollars to file for you. Why?

Do you think they can get your money faster?

Do you think you are “covered” if you make a mistake?

Are you worried that you don’t understand the tax process enough to do it yourself?

Do all of the different “schedules” scare you?

What is your hold up?

Let me say this: If you think your taxes are super-complicated because you have multiple properties or you run your own business, dude. No, they are not too complicated to do them yourself.

I’m not suggesting you go to the post office and get a paper 1040 and sit in the corner with a beer and a pizza and suffer.

Do they still keep the tax papers at the post office? I don’t know.

This is what I do

If I currently own a slow computer and/ or I have slow internet, I go to the store, to the tax software aisle and I find the program that is most applicable to me. If I have quick download ability, I simply go to the company’s website and download my copy.

In order to determine which version of the tax software I need, there are huge, green checkmarks next to each version telling you which “schedules” that software has. If you have more complicated taxes; own a home, run a business, have rental property, etc, the software is more expensive but it is still about 1/8th to 1/10th what a tax preparer would charge.

Be prepared to pay a filing fee of about $20 in addition to the software cost for the filing fee. You can avoid this by printing out all the forms and mailing them instead.*

I want my money fast and the fastest way is e-filing.

And here’s why

If we file in January or February, we usually have our money back within a week or so. The only hitch in this had been a few years back the government did some weird thing where they held the refunds of people with dependents until the end of February. I was HOT but we still got our money quickly.

The later you file, the more people are filing.

When you prepare your taxes with a program, you don’t see the tax forms the program is filling out for you. It asks you a series of questions much like filling out an online application

The software updates itself with the newest tax information available the date you start and finish your taxes. Just like those preparers get.

The software checks for errors and it will tell you exactly what to change and will not let you proceed until you fix it. No. it doesn’t find every error, like the time I made a mistake on our income but it’s pretty thorough.

*When you file electronically, some IRS program or person at the IRS somewhere will accept or reject your taxes within 24-48 hours. This is the other reason I like filing electronically. If I use the software then print and mail to file, I don’t know how this is handled and if they do give me the opportunity to correct my taxes, the process could take weeks instead of hours.

You will have access to your tax information on a hard drive all year. This has proved very helpful to me through the years. My kids have needed tax information for FAFSA and we have needed it for other reasons. Doing this makes finding the information super-easy.

I no longer print out all those pages of tax forms. I only print past taxes if someone requests it.

Another benefit is the the tax preparation software uses your tax file from the year before to start your taxes each year. This saves you time filling out information like names, social security numbers, addresses, etc. -The program auto-fills a lot. You only have to change whatever information changed that year.

Once, my computer died and I lost my copy of my electronic file. In order to load tax information from the previous year, you need the software from the previous year on your computer and access to your tax file that software made. Don’t ask me why it needs the software. I don’t understand. I contacted the company and they sent me a copy of the software so that I could load the info I needed. Easy peasy. It was like a 12 hour delay. That’s it.

Tax prep software companies usually send returning customers coupon codes for reduced cost on the program. I like saving money.

Bonus: The program I use allows us to use the filing code 5 times. In the past, I have let my parent file with the software I bought. And as my kids get jobs and need to file taxes, I teach them how to use the program to file their taxes using my 5 free codes. LEGACY SELF FILERS!

FILE YOUR TAXES ON YOUR OWN THIS YEAR!

You’re welcome.

Tackle Those Boxes of Photos

Today, let’s talk pictures! I know many people don’t bother printing pictures anymore but if you are of a certain age, maybe you’re like ma and you’re dedicated to having tangible pictures. Or you may have old pictures just sitting in boxes.

I have at least 7 boxes of pictures in varying sizes. This weekend, I addressed all of my 4 by 6 and wallet sized prints. I grabbed some of these photo storage boxes on sale, of course, and got busy!

To the right is all of my photo storage boxes piled on the floor.

I love these because they are one large box that incapsulates a bunch of smaller boxes. I treat mine much like a file folder on a computer. I have one large box with that I have used to file all of our family pictures. For my family’s privacy, I didn’t photo my sorting process and I’m not showing the box with our pictures but I’ll walk you through the process.

One cardboard box at a time, I sorted through all of our pictures. I made piles of pictures that had each of my children alone. I made another pile for pictures with one or more of them together or with us. I was on the fence about pictures f one of use with one child. Where would you put those?

I made piles for pictures of my husband and myself alone and us together. Then piles of pictures of us with extended family and friends.

All mixed in with those pictures were various pictures I took of scenery while we were on family trips, pictures of different home improvement projects, pictures of various crafting projects and pictures from my elaborate theme parties. I made different piles for all of these.

You may not need as many piles as I did but the more pictures you have, the more piles you will need because the boxes can only hold so much. Along those lines, I have about 4 small boxes of pictures for each child. So for now, I separated their childhood pictures from their senior pictures; senior portraits, senior awards, graduation day and graduation party pictures. All the senior pictures went in one box so that I can find them easily and I promised myself that when I’m bored one day I’ll go back ad sort each child’s pictures by age. (I’ll do it! I love organizing)

I decided one large box would be all family pictures because we have so many. The second large box is miscellaneous pictures. I took all of my piles, put them in the small boxes, made labels on my Cricut, and put the labels on the boxes.

One last note: The reason I separated the family box and the miscellaneous box is because separating is not organization. You know you are organizing when you can find what you need without searching. I know if I need a picture of a child, I can grab the family box. To that end, I put the children little boxes in birth order and I put all of their boxes together. If I just put the boxes anywhere, The pictures would be hard to find.

When Your Piles Have Piles

Do you ever wish you can put your finger on that one piece of paper for that one thing you got that one time?

Mastering the art of great filing can make your life so much simpler! Unfortunately, many people just don’t know how to start so they  just label a file folder “work,” for instance, and start stuffing all papers they get from their jobs in the folder. Or worse; they toss papers and receipts into a box and before they know it, they’re searching through hundreds of papers of all sizes when they need something. Or worse, they haphazardly leave papers all over their home and they go on a full Carmen San Diego mission to find something. 

Full disclosure: By nature, I’m a piler so I’m kind of the second example but since I’m responsible for so many other people, I force myself to go through my piles when they fall over as I walk by or whenever I have the energy, whichever comes first. By doing this, I rarely find myself into a situation where I can’t find something. I follow my strict filing method.

Why? So that I can find things when I need them. So that my life isn’t complete chaos. So that I am less stressed and exhausted.

Sadly, many people try to stay organized and they put papers in file folders only to realize they can’t quickly find what they filed. This can be frustrating and discouraging. The key to successful filing is to know where something should be, how long to keep it, and when it’s safe to let it go.

Well, call me your exhausted expert filing friend because I have 2 filing kits that can help you! I have written down all of my filing procedures so that you can duplicate it for yourself. I have a kit for filing all of your important papers and a kit for filing your child’s k-12 papers. Both include guides to suggest how to organize your files that serve as a map to finding papers if you forget and notes on how to keep your files organized. The Exhausted File Kit tells you when it’s safe to throw something out. As an adoring mom, I’d NEVER suggest what of your child’d is ok to throw out so I don’t go there.  Though my eldest is now 25, I still have my children’s boxes with all of their school work and artwork, as well as other memorabilia. 

If you’d like my help, check out my products.

Goal Tracking

Goal tracking can be gratifying or intimidating. Some people revel in the seeing their accomplishments on paper. Others imagine goal tracking as another reminder of their inability to stick to goals.

A major mistake people make is getting frustrated when they fail to stick to a habit in order to reach a goal. They get discouraged and they just quit. The key to accomplishing a goal is to restart whenever you find you have lapsed in keeping up with your habit tracking. You don’t fail when you lapse, you fail when you quit.

A great way to stick to your goals is to make sure you format your goals as SMART goals.* SMART is an acronym it stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant (or reasonable, or realistic), and time bound.

Be specific about what your goal is. Stating, “I want to raise my grade” is not specific. State, “I want to raise my grade by 10 points”

Making your goal measurable isn’t always included in its specificity as it is in my example goal. The measurability in my example is how many points. Your goal may require specificity and measurability separately.

Your goal must be achievable. If the maximum grade in a class is only 5 points higher than the grade you currently have, raising your grade by 10 points is not achievable much like a goal of walking from Florida to Canada within an hour is not achievable.

The “R” in SMART can mean different things depending on the circumstance in which the goal is being made. “Relevant” could mean whether or not the goal it is even important to you personally or an organization. It could mean whether it is reasonable. For me, I don’t use the “reasonable” or “realistic” as standards because that is covered under “achievable” but there is an argument to be made that “reasonable” or “realistic” and “achievable” can be individual tests.

Your goal must have a deadline in order to be a goal. A goal without a due date is just a wish. Set a realistic deadline for your goal.

When you set SMART goals, it makes it much easier to see what you plan to accomplish. After setting a goal, use goal trackers to visually track of your progress.

*I did not create SMART goals. They are attributed to a couple different educators. For more information about SMART goals, you can google it.