Month: April 2021

Categories
Savings

Investing Vs. Saving: Which Should You Do?

Investing Vs. Saving: Which Should You Do, When, And How?

When you look at your opportunities in investing your money compared to your opportunities from saving your money, you might wonder: Is this a difference in quality, or kind? Is your money going to be more valuable in the future, or less?

And how do you act on these evaluations?

The Qualities of Investing and Saving

You have probably heard that when a person wins the lottery, they are given two ways of claiming their prize money: Either by taking it all in one big, heavily taxed, cartoonishly-oversized check, or in smaller installments overtime that ultimately amount to more money.

It seems obvious that the smaller installments overtime would be the more economical option. It amounts to more money, doesn’t it? Only a short-sighted fool would take the smaller sum.

Thinking about this is very similar to thinking about investing versus saving. Even a static amount of money has forces acting upon it.

Imagine you have a healthy sum of money in your bank account. After a year, your bank provides you with a 1% allowance of the money you have. So, a bank account with $100,000 in it would yield $1000 in interest.

However, the economy grows by more than that percentage every year. In fact, inflation goes up by more than that every year. Inflation usually results in every dollar losing 3% of its value. So while you may be given 1% in interest, you lose 2% of the value of that inanimate $100,000.

But if you invest that money and grow it by 4%, then in that case you have affected a growth of 1%. Granted, this is not a large increase. But it at least offsets the natural entropy of money’s value in the face of inevitable inflation.

Investing comes with risks that saving does not, however. Investing can make you lose money if you make a bad investment.

When To Do Either

For this reason, if you are currently managing your debts and not seeking to buy a house, car, or start a business, then you should save rather than invest.

The reason is because of the aforementioned risk involved in investment. You don’t want your ability to pay a bill to be reliant on the whims of the market.

Once your income eclipses your debts, then you can risk investments.

How to Invest and How to Save

The methodology of investing and saving are far more similar than you might expect. Saving your money means giving it to a bank. A bank will turn that money into loans, and the interest rate of the bank will see your savings grow as the bank grows.

Investing money is similar, as you still essentially give it away, but this time to a hedge fund. They will invest your money into venture capital and start-up businesses.

These will allow your money to grow as those businesses grow.

When, where, and how to invest and save is a matter of your own personal trust in these institutions. Use your money responsibly, and stay safe.

Categories
Financial Real Estate

How To Be Approved For A Mortgage

mortgage approval for buying a home

As we continue to come back from the significant recession that the housing bubble caused, more and more people are thinking about buying a home. With many being first-time homebuyers, we’ve compiled a list of the essentials you’ll need to know to get mortgage approval.

1.   Look At Your Debt-To-Income Data

The very first step to mortgage application preparation is to determine your monthly income as well as your debt payments. Your potential lender will want to see evidence of employment, generally going back two years, but often a few recent pay stubs can get you started with many lenders.

If you are one of the millions of Americans who are self-employed or have variable income such as performers, be prepared to have that process be much more involved. Getting the best mortgage overall, as well as the best payments and interest rates, is going to be dependant on your debt to income ratio.

2.   Clean Up Your Credit Health

This is often one of the largest challenges for many people. Your credit history report and your credit score will be instrumental in your lender’s eventual decision. You should aim to have a FICO score of 680-700 as a floor. However, if your credit score is only missing 680 by a small margin, you may want to look into an FHA loan, which has a little bit easier approval requirements in some cases.

3.   Calculate Your Mortgage Budget

Before you make an appointment with any potential lenders or mortgage officers, you will want to know for sure, how much house you can afford, and what you can commit to in terms of a monthly payment. This payment will include your taxes, fees, and insurance, and should not be more than 33%-35% of your pre-tax income. This can be a difficult stage, since many mortgages have variable interest rates, meaning your payment could fluctuate at some point in the future.

4.   Plan To Save For Your Home Down Payment

This is a very significant step and can make or break your house hunt. Many lenders will require you to be able to put at least 10% down unless you are participating in an FHA loan or other special lending program. If you can put at least 20% down, you can avoid having to obtain PMI, or private mortgage insurance, to protect your lender against a possible foreclosure of the property before it has enough equity built up.

5.   Figure Out The Best Time To Apply

You can often get a pre-qualification without a hard credit pull. It will however stay on your credit report for some time. A pre-qualification can give you a good indicator of whether you can obtain a mortgage at a glance, and is often a very strong indicator of being a serious buyer.  You can often get a pre-qualification letter that will be good for 60-90 days depending on the lender, it’s non-binding, and will put you in a great position to start looking around.

Categories
Career Career & Education

Interview Mistakes & What to Say Instead

6 Phone Interview Mistakes & What to Say Instead

Phone interviews can be stressful. They can feel like do-or-die moments that decide whether you get your dream job or live in poverty. In short, it is important you get them right.

So here are a few ways to develop your interviewing skills, from someone who does interviews all the time.

1.  Be More Specific Than Honest

You probably want to know up front: Do you have to be honest during an interview? The answer isn’t easy to swallow, but the truth is no. As long as you can’t get caught, enhance the truth.

But that does not mean lie. It’s illegal to lie during an interview. What you should do instead is take your normal answers and spice them up with details that will make you stand out.

2.  Never Show Fear To The Recruiter

Interviewers are fully aware of how scary interviews are. This makes them perfectly environments in which to evaluate a candidate’s ability to act under pressure.

Hesitation is fine. It can make you seem thoughtful, measured, and patient. But fear is unacceptable. If the recruiter gets the impression you are rushing through an answer, babbling nervously, or cracking under the pressure of having to answer a question, they will notice.

3.  Still, Take Your Time

Many people imagine fear to only manifest as reluctance or the petrification of panic. But more often people who are afraid express this by being jittery, hurried, or over-eager.

If you are asked a question and you draw a blank on the answer, do not panic. Don’t stall for time, ask for it. It takes a lot of courage to ask for time to think of an answer, and your recruiter will appreciate that you are communicating a need to them in a calm, collected manner.

4.  Respond to Red Flags

This is one of the hardest pieces of advice to follow if you have been out of a job for a long time. As much as it sucks to hear, there are some jobs you are better off not getting.

Don’t be afraid to walk out or hang up on an interview if you get the impression a workplace is abusive or incompetently run. Places like that will leave you out to dry without a reference eventually, so it’s better to distance yourself sooner than later.

5.  Remember The Recruiter’s Name

This is an uncommon bit of humanity to exhibit in an interview, but if you remember your recruiter’s name and show that you remember their name, they are far more likely to remember you than if you didn’t.

6.  Don’t be Right, be Human

It’s natural to go into an interview thinking of the recruiter as an emotionless robot who is looking for a candidate that is ideal on paper.

That is the job of the robot that scans resumes for keywords. Indeed, every step of the job process up until the interview lacks humanity. But once you’re at the interview it behooves you to represent yourself not as the best employee, but the best person you can be.

Good luck in the job market. Now more than ever, you’ll need it.

Categories
Financial Health & Home Savings Wellness

5 Things To Do For Your Future Without Spending

5 Things You Can Do For Your Future Self That Don’t Cost A Dime

So many people have a good idea of where they want to be in the future. We envision ourselves working until a certain age in a career that we love, often living in a particular area in our dream home, while not worrying about money, and being able to live a life that we enjoy.

While this is something that many people can admit that they do, often advice on how to get there can seem sparse. But luckily there is some good information out there, and we’ve compiled 5 of the best things you can do today to put yourself on a better path for the future, for free.

1.   Start the habits that you want to see your future self practicing.

This goes for just about anything, from quitting smoking, exercise more consistently, painting, reading more, spending money more sensibly, literally anything. If you take small steps to incorporate this new activity or habit into your life, it will be easier to carry that small step into additional actions. If you are wanting to start a new hobby or learn a new skill, try to set aside 30 minutes a day to work on that activity. It will pay dividends.

2.   Keep your credit in the back of your mind.

It is used to score you for so many things, it just makes sense to keep your credit in as good of shape as you can. This means monitoring your credit and credit score, paying down old debt if you have any, and improving your credit where possible.

3.   Automate your saving and investing.

With apps like Stash, Acorns, Robinhood, and even Cashapp, you can automate saving and investing your money. Make sure you aren’t letting all your money sit and die of inflation in a savings account, though. Keep a liquid emergency fund, and invest the rest in stocks, bonds, and crypto to generate passive and retirement income with almost zero effort over time.

4.   Learn the difference in various retirement accounts before you need one.

The best time to start investing is whenever you can start. Employer-offered funds like a 401(k) are perfect starting points, particularly with many companies offering matching up to a certain point. Not only is it smart to invest early and often, but you can invest from pre-tax money to reduce your tax liability, and an employer match is basically free money.

5.   Test yourself monthly by cutting out one paid “extra” each month.

This can be almost anything that you pay for as an extra. One of the many streaming services, eating at a particular fast-food restaurant, a subscription box, and so on would be a perfect example. You cancel or cut one out for a month, and see if you can live without it. Many times we forget that we have grown attached to many “needs” that are actually well-disguised “wants”. Skipping a month here and there can save big bucks and build big discipline.

Categories
Financial Health & Home Home Improvement Tax Services

Are Home Improvements Tax Deductible?

are home improvements tax deductible

Tax code is a complex web of rules and regulations. Things you would never expect to be tax deductible are, while others that you might be certain are tax deductible are not. So, are home improvements tax deductible?

No, they are not ordinarily tax deductible. But that is not the full story.

What Home Improvements Are Not Deductible?

Home improvements will not count as tax credits on a home that you are currently using yourself. Whether it is a home you live in year-round, or a beach house you live in during the summer, these are the kinds of homes that you get no tax credit for improving.

However, you can get tax credit for the improvements you make to a home (or part of a home) that you use as part of a business.

If you sell a home, for instance, or if you rent it out during certain parts of the year, then the improvements you make to it become business expenses.

What kind of improvements count as the kind that will give you tax deductions?

Well, so long as the improvements extend the life of the home, or adapt it to new situations, the improvement will count as a tax deduction. Sadly, this means that luxuries like entertainment systems and saunas do not count as tax credits.

Interestingly, the definition of “improvements” in the context of taxes is rather specific. If you repair your roof or prepare it for harsh weather, that counts as an improvement that can be tax deductible if you sell or rent out the home.

If you call an exterminator to clear the house of bed bugs, rats, or termites, that can also count.

But what if you do not have a second home to rent out?

What if you do not plan to sell your current home before the end of the year? Is there anything you can do?

Well, yes. Odd as it is, if you register your home office as a part of your business, then money that you spend on that office is tax deductible. Sadly, this does not come with as many loopholes as you might think it does.

You cannot just install a new entertainment system, call it your office’s break room, then expect to be able to write that off as tax deductible.

A good example of how the office deductions work is thinking of replacing your roof or windows. If you replace five windows, but only one window for your office, then 20% of the cost of those window replacements is deductible.

One very important note: Improvements can only be deductible if they exist at the time taxes are incurred. So, if you install weathering on your home, but that weathering is gone by the time you sell your home, then you cannot use that weathering as a tax deduction.

Taxes are a truly dizzying maze of rules and regulations. While home improvements are not meant to be deductible, doing so is still possible.

Categories
Tech & Media Technology

The 8 Best Apps You’ve Never Heard Of

8 Best Apps You've Never Heard Of

You probably have all the most popular apps already installed, sure. But now and then you find an app that is just perfect for what it does, even if it is incredibly specialized. Sometimes you find one that just helps you enjoy your life activities a little more.  We’ve rifled through the depths of the app stores, and have found 8 apps that are surprisingly amazing, let’s take a look!

1.   Zombies, Run!

Running can be boring, even when you love it. You can let your playlist run on random sure, or, you can spice up your run with some wandering undead! Zombies, Run! is a great running app that not only tracks your runs but offers timed scenarios and objectives to gamify your run. You can even have your tunes in the background.

2.   iNaturalist

Machine learning is incredible. Now it’s been harnessed to help you identify plants and animals while out and about in nature. Simply enable GPS, take a picture, and upload it. The app will attempt to use your location and native species lists with photo recognition to determine what you’re looking at.

3.   What The Forecast?!!

This app is perfect in its simplicity. It takes the weather, the most boring, small talk abyss of a subject, sautes it with some sarcasm, spices it with some profanity, and serves you up a delicious helping of…well…sarcastic and profane weather. We swear it’s awesome. You can even set the intensity level to ease yourself into it if you like.

4.   Drunk Locker

If you, or someone you know (wink, wink), needs a little help controlling their communication when out having some liquid recreation, Drunk Locker is clutch. It locks out all social media, messaging, and so on, to help you, we mean your “friend”, keep their feelings from running amok while under the influence.

5.   RunPee

RunPee is a gem of an app. It tells you the best part of a movie to make a run to the facilities and can set an alert to give you advance notice. Simple, but useful.

6.   Flush

Frequently looking for a public bathroom at the most inconvenient of times? Flush give you access to the locations of nearly 200,000 public bathrooms, so that no matter where you are, you can stop in for a pit stop if you need to.

7.   Way Of Life

This is the perfect app for making positive changes in your life. Whether it’s quitting smoking, walking more, or just remembering to take lunch at work, Way Of Life will help you build or change those behaviors. Set milestones and celebrate them to bolster your progress.

8.   Wakie

I won’t sugar coat it. If you are a snooze button addict, and it’s gotten you in trouble, get this app. Now. Do it. A stranger will give you a wake-up call, without having to share your number with a stranger. Someone you don’t know, telling you it’s time to get up, is incredibly effective, and only a little bit weird, promise.

Categories
Financial Savings

The Low Effort Ways I Earn An Extra $125 A Month

Earn Extra Income

Earning money in my spare time has always been a kind of hobby for me. I love hacking my spare time and using it to generate income, even if only in passive ways. There is nothing like being able to pay all my bills, have some spending money, and still have money left at the end of the month after budgeting for everything else.

The only problem is, I don’t generally like to stick to anything with a very rigid schedule, so any thought of a dedicated side hustle went right out the window. So after a lot of digging and some research, I found a healthy handful of ways to earn both active and passive income. Here are some ideas to help give your account some wiggle room.

Surveys and Focus Groups

This is the one that most people focus on, largely the portion of the survey since there are so many paid survey companies. The caveat of doing surveys is that there are a lot of spammy and even outright scammy survey sources. But once you find a reputable survey site, such as HiveMind or Respondent, you can spend a good portion of your free time answering questions and earn modest sums. Focus groups pay much better but are rarer and harder to do continuously.

Cashback Cards

If you can effectively manage your credit spending, be sure that you are taking advantage of a solid cash-back offer. Find one with a 1%-3% cashback deal, and use it for anything it qualifies for. Just be sure that you keep an eye on your utilization ratio if you’re concerned about your credit score.

Gig Opportunities

The gig economy is booming, and there are tons of organizations that need help on a daily, weekly, or gig basis. This could be working as an extra in a local film project or even working election polls or walking dogs. The money is modest for the hours you may work, but it’s a steady bit of income if you need it and most gigs will pay for training as well.

Selling Items

This isn’t one you can do all the time, but if you were looking to minimize some of the clutter in your life, you could use a marketplace app like Facebook, Poshmark, or LetGo to pare down your stuff. I use this method about every three months or so, just to keep up on it and make a little scratch as well.

Rebates

Rebates from shopping rebate apps are a great way to earn passive income on money you’re already spending for things you already use. Ibotta is a popular app, but there are several that all serve a similar purpose.

Selling Plasma

More profitable than blood donations, and it can be done more often as well. Many plasma centers will allow three donations per week, paying up to $50 per trip, with bonuses for those that are new to donating.

Categories
Tech & Media Technology

Venmo vs. PayPal, which one should you use?

Venmo vs. PayPal

In our largely digital culture, we often need to send someone money or pay for something in person, when we don’t have cash on hand. Luckily, there is no shortage of digital or app-based payment options, but even with all the competition in that particular market, there are two heavyweights that most people use, Venmo and PayPal. This has evolved to the point that both brands have become a common meme verb. “Just Venmo me.”

If you are thinking about picking a new digital payment app, you might be wondering whether PayPal or Venmo is going to be right for you. You will need to consider who you will most often be exchanging funds with. Mostly friends and family? Business use? Splitting the occasional dinner tab? Some of these are certainly more suited to one app over the other, let’s take a look.

Accessibility

Both apps are available for Android and iOS, and both also feature full-featured desktop sites. While PayPal can initiate payments either via app or web, Venmo can only initiate payments on the mobile app. PayPal can also be used by a huge variety of merchants and vendors.

Sending Money

The process for sending money in both apps is more or less the same. You sync your contacts, find the username for the friend you want to pay, set the amount, and off it goes. Both apps also have functionality for sending money to those for who you only have an e,mail address for, or a mobile number, for example.

Requesting Money

Both apps allow anyone to request money from others. In most cases this is done as a reminder, since it will generate a notification and essentially, an invoice. Once the recipient receives the request, they can either act on it and pay, or deny it. In both cases, the balance hits your account nearly instantly.

Fees

Both offer free payments from bank accounts that you’ve already linked and verified, but they also allow credit or debit card payments, with a fee of about 3%. Venmo extends the no-fees to debit cards, whereas PayPal only allows free payments from linked accounts.

Limits

PayPal is a much stronger choice if you need to send larger amounts. PayPal will allow sends of up to $10k in a single payment, with daily caps around $60k, or more with further verification. Venmo’s limits are around $7k per 7-day period, with max of $5k in a day.

Business Features

PayPal is a much better bet for small busiess, or not so small business users. They have a robust array of merchant-oriented tools that can be used to sell online, and accept global payments.

Bells & Whistles

In many ways, PayPal and Venmo have a lot of similarities. There are some places where they vary a bit more. With Venmo, the focus is very much on the social side; you can check out your social feed and who is paying whom and notes sent with the payment, just not the dollar amount.

Categories
Health & Home Recreation & Leisure

TSA Pre-Check & Global Entry: What To Know

What You Need to Know About TSA Pre-check and Global Entry

Veteran travelers leverage Global Entry and TSA Pre-Check programs to make sure they speed through security checks, get stuck for fewer screenings, and overall enjoy a less personally intrusive pre-boarding experience. Many people who do not fly much aren’t clear on the differences, or what each program entails. That’s what we’re going to break down and look at. Is one better for your personal travel style? Let’s find out.

What Is TSA Pre-Check

At its core, TSA Pre-Check is a membership program with dedicated lines in security checkpoints. Membership in the program allows approved travelers to use expedited services and deal with less personally intrusive screening methods than non-member travelers.

At security points, member travelers will go through metal detectors instead of the full-body scans that people often find uncomfortable. They get to keep their shoes and light coats on. They do not have to remove their computers or liquids from their storage area.

TSA PreCheck uses more than 200 airports across the US, with a total of 73 airlines accepting passengers with TSA PreCheck clearance. The drawback is that it is only used for domestic flights, so if you’re traveling abroad, TSA PreCheck is not going to do you any good.

What Is Global Entry

Global Entry is a membership program designed for international travelers. Not only does it grant member travelers all of the same domestic benefits of TSA PreCheck, but it also provides speedier entry to the US upon return through customs and immigration. This can make the return home from travel abroad smoother for travelers since re-entry to the US can be tedious.

Global Entry member travelers can use their benefits at 75 US and international airports. Some international airports even allow Global Entry members to get their customs clearance prior to their initial departure, instead of once they arrive back in the States.

What You Need To Know

Global Entry and TSA PreCheck are just two of the US Department of Homeland Security Trusted Traveler programs. There are also the Canadian NEXUS program, as well as the Sentri and FAST programs of both Canada and Mexico. All of these all the prescreening of travelers in order to get expedited admission to the country of destination.

Who Is Eligible To Get TSA PreCheck Or Global Entry?

Any US citizen or permanent resident can obtain applications for TSA PreCheck and Global Entry, as well as citizens of:

  • The UK
  • Taiwan
  • Switzerland
  • South Korea
  • Singapore
  • Panama
  • India
  • Germany
  • Colombia
  • Argentina

Canadian and Mexican citizens as well as residents can also apply for Global Entry benefits when applying for NEXUS.

There are some disqualifying factors that will prevent some people from being able to gain membership to the Trusted Traveler programs. These include:

  • Conviction of a criminal offense, have pending or outstanding warrants
  • Ineligible for immigration
  • Providing incorrect or inaccurate application information
  • Cannot prove low-risk status to Customs & Border Patrol
  • Previous violation of customs or immigration law
Categories
Tech & Media Technology

How to Make Your iPhone “Aesthetic” With Shortcuts

How to Make Your iPhone “Aesthetic” With Shortcuts

If you are looking to aestheticize your life, then your iPhone is a perfect place to start.

Phones are miniature portraits of modern life. You carry it around in your pocket and take it out to see what sort of day you are having or are about to have. So it is only natural that you would want your phone to be an aesthetically pleasing bearer of this message.

In March of 2021, Apple released iOS update 14, which finally, finally allows users to modify their interface. The biggest change included in this update is the ability to use different icons for apps than the ones provided.

Replacing icons is just the first step, however. Your creativity can go further than that.

These icons can also change in size. Try this for a fun experiment:

  1. Find a quote that inspires you or makes you smile.
  1. Change your apps’ icons to be the words of this quote.
  1. Organize and resize the icons to make the quote visible.

Suddenly your iPhone is inspiring you every time you open it up! Changing icons means you can make them say whatever you want, and changing their size means you can make them as visible as you want.

There are also things you can do that take a bit more precision.

Imagine you have a group photo with all your friends. You want to use it as your phone background, but you do not want it hidden behind your app icons.

The icons of iPhone apps are usually sized at 180 by 180 pixels. Knowing this, you can divide your picture into a grid, where the squares are 180 by 180 pixels big.

Then, save each square of the grid as its own image. Once you replace your apps’ icons with the squares that they are covering up, it will appear as though there is no app icon at all.

But sometimes, you don’t want a seamless image. After all, not every aesthetic is seamless. Seamlessness hides the effort that goes into creating an aesthetic. It creates the illusion that the aesthetic is natural, that all the component parts fit together.

But what if you don’t want to hide your effort? What if part of your aesthetic is showing that you made it out of disparate parts?

Here is a fun thing to do if mosaics are more your aesthetic:

  1. Get the AutoDesk Sketchbook app from the app store.
  1. Just doodle. Draw curves, loops, and whorls that appeal to you.
  1. Cut that image up into 180 by 180-pixel pieces, but don’t pay too much mind to making it a perfect grid.
  1. Replace your app icons with the images you made

The best part about this is that rather than just using your app icons to remake the same image, you can make an entirely different image out of the components you created out of the doodles.

These are just a few experiments. Hopefully, this will help you express yourself and find a way to show off your aesthetic using your shortcuts.