Investing 17
Use These 10 Tips and Tricks And You’ll Never Overspend Again
Shopping can cause problems, whether you are a compulsive shopper or an occasional impulse buyer. Spending more than you can afford, running a balance on credit cards and feeling stressed out from debt — all these behaviors can pose a risk to your financial stability.
Turning the pattern around involves changing habits. Here are tips, strategies and skills to help stop impulse spending.
34 Things You Shouldn’t Buy at Sam’s Club, Costco, and BJ’s
Worst of the Warehouse
Sam’s Club, Costco, and BJ’s Wholesale Club make items a bargain by selling them in bulk, but the savings don’t always add up. Sometimes, shoppers are actually better off buying the small size. The following items are just a few of the warehouse-club wares worth avoiding.
10 Items That Will Change Your Mind About Generic Brands
Not too many years ago, cutting expenses by buying a generic brand brought with it an air of compromise, settling for a slightly inferior product rather than brand quality. Today, retailer brands now compete with national brands in quality while still delivering steep savings.
Although not every generic brand meets or exceeds product standards set by national brands, there’s an ever-increasing number of generics that come out the clear winner. We checked out store brands competing with national favorites to see if the generic brands are always worth the savings.
20 Home Improvements That Cost Less Than $1,000
You don’t have to spend big bucks to increase your home’s value. In fact, lower-cost home improvement projects, such as a garage door replacement or installing stone veneer siding, tend to return a greater value than more upscale projects. It’s a tip home remodelers learn right away.
If you want to spruce up your home but have a limited budget, there are plenty of inexpensive projects that offer a big payback — and the sooner you do them, the better.
Click through to see 20 ways you can renovate your home for less.
USE These 13 Expert Tips to Boost Your Social Security Checks
If you have focused all your planning energy on your 401(k), you may be missing a key piece of the retirement puzzle: Social Security.
You can influence your eventual payout from this safe, dull old-age safety net to a surprising degree by making some adjustments and changes in your planning.
Now is the time to get started pumping up your Social Security checks, even if you’ve got decades to go before retirement.
Here are some ways to do just that!
15 Big Cities from USA Where Prices Dropped Off Astonishingly
Believe it or not, housing is actually becoming more affordable in a variety of major cities across the U.S., despite the fact that home prices in America are on the rise as a whole. In these cities, aspiring homeowners might now be able to purchase homes they couldn’t afford the previous year.
We compared the change in the home median list value of the 200 most populous U.S. cities over the past year, two years and three years to determine the major cities where home prices are plummeting.
15. Austin, Texas
- March 2017 median list price: $390,000
- March 2018 median list price: $389,000
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$1,000
Despite — or maybe because of — its decreasing home prices, Austin continues to be a hot real estate market. As of April 2018, the demand for homes was higher than the available inventory in the mid-Texas city, according to the Austin Board of Realtors.
14. Tulsa, Okla.
- March 2017 median list price: $165,000
- March 2018 median list price: $163,740
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$1,260
It’s a great time for buyers to get more bang for their buck in Tulsa, Okla., Gannon Brown with McGraw Realtors told the city’s NBC affiliate. Brown also said that homes priced below $250,000 tend to sell very quickly in Tulsa, so if you want to get an affordable home there you should move fast. Then do some home upgrades that won’t blow your budget to quickly increase your new home’s value.
13. Naperville, Ill.
- March 2017 median list price: $435,238
- March 2018 median list price: $433,495
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$1,743
Until recently, home prices in Naperville were rising due to a demand for homes in family-friendly communities outside of Chicago. But they’re now on the downturn. The city features a well-developed downtown area and a historical district.
12. Fort Wayne, Ind.
- March 2017 median list price: $146,900
- March 2018 median list price: $144,900
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$2,000
Not only does Fort Wayne have increasingly affordable homes, but with an overall low cost of living, it’s one of the best places to live on only a Social Security check, a separate study found.
Take advantage of low housing prices in Fort Wayne while you can. The city is the 10th-hottest housing market in the U.S. as of May 2018, according to Realtor.com. That marks a 20-spot jump from the previous month.
11. Overland Park, Kan.
- March 2017 median list price: $399,000
- March 2018 median list price: $395,000
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$4,000
Older homes could be the main factor behind Overland Park’s decrease in home prices. Many residents in the area have been flipping their homes in order to appeal to buyers seeking move-in ready homes, Kansas City’s Fox News affiliate reported.
10. Richmond, Va.
- March 2017 median list price: $239,000
- March 2018 median list price: $234,900
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$4,100
Although listing prices are lower than they were the previous year in Richmond, competition between buyers is high due to high demand and low inventory. This means that homes have been selling for above asking price in some areas, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
9. Toledo, Ohio
- March 2017 median list price: $79,694
- March 2018 median list price: $74,900
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$4,794
Home sales have been down in Toledo in recent months, The Blade reported, which could mean sellers are lowering prices to appeal to buyers. Toledo is one of the major cities with cheap homes: It now has the second-lowest median home prices of all the cities included in this list.
8. San Antonio
- March 2017 median list price: $234,500
- March 2018 median list price: $229,500
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$5,000
San Antonio is known for its affordable and family-friendly real estate, and homes have become even more affordable in the Southern city in the past year. Home prices have remained low despite an influx of new residents — 24,000 people in the last year alone — Bisnow reported.
7. Shreveport, La.
- March 2017 median list price: $164,900
- March 2018 median list price: $159,900
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$5,000
Home prices in Louisiana as a whole have increased over the past year, but they’ve decreased in Shreveport. Many of the homebuyers in the city are first-time buyers, KTBS, the local ABC affiliate, reported.
6. Birmingham, Ala.
- March 2017 median list price: $79,900
- March 2018 median list price: $69,000
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$10,900
Although home prices in Birmingham were higher than in Toledo in March 2017, thanks to a large drop in prices, Birmingham now has the most affordable homes of any of the cities on this list. Perhaps due in part to its more affordable housing, home sales in the city are also up from the previous year, according to data from the Alabama Center for Real Estate.
5. Honolulu
- March 2017 median list price: $650,000
- March 2018 median list price: $639,000
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$11,000
Honolulu is one of the few U.S. real estate markets where inventory is growing, according to the May National Housing Report from Re/Max. Although Honolulu home prices have dropped, they are still among the highest of all the cities included in this list.
4. Lafayette, La.
- March 2017 median list price: $239,000
- March 2018 median list price: $224,000
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$15,000
Low home prices plus a booming market make Lafayette a hot housing market for millennials. More than 56 percent of homebuyers in the Southern city are now millennials, the local ABC affiliate, KATC, reported.
3. Greenville, S.C.
- March 2017 median list price: $277,000
- March 2018 median list price: $260,000
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$17,000
Although prices in Greenville have decreased significantly over the past year, the median home list price might still make homes out of reach for lower- and lower middle-income families in the area, Greenville News reported.
2. Santa Rosa, Calif.
- March 2017 median list price: $579,000
- March 2018 median list price: $550,000
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$29,000
A main contributor to the dip in Santa Rosa home list prices were the Northern California fires, which took place in October 2017 and destroyed thousands of homes. Home listings in the area reached a low in January 2018, according to a Trulia report.
1. Arlington, Va.
- March 2017 median list price: $679,000
- March 2018 median list price: $645,000
- Year-over-year change in median listing price: -$34,000
Arlington is the city where home prices have plummeted the most — though it still has the highest median list price of all the cities included in this list. Overall, the real estate market in Arlington has remained flat, according to data from Northern Virginia Housing Market.
Cities Becoming More Affordable for Homebuyers
Most of the cities with the biggest home price drops are located in the South, with the Midwest being the second-best area to find cities where home prices are plummeting. The two geographical outliers are Santa Rosa, Calif., and Honolulu.
If you are interested in buying a new home in one of these cities, your first step is setting up a timeline with goals and deliverables. Next, get your finances in order. This means making sure your credit score is high, you have enough savings to cover a down payment and closing costs and you’ve been pre-approved for a mortgage.
Then, you can secure a real estate agent, and begin the home searching and buying process.
Retirees Are Wasting More Than $8000/Year on These 10 Things
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Trim these expenses to save more in retirement
With a lot of discussion about how to have enough for a comfortable retirement revolving around stock markets, bond yields and 401k accounts, it’s easy to overlook one of the simplest tools for ensuring that your nest egg doesn’t crack early: good old-fashioned budgeting.
A new survey polled more than 1,000 Americans on their spending habits and revealed that retirees can save an additional $8,000 a year if they cut certain expenses from their budget.
Click ahead to see them!
This Is How You Could Spend Your Tax Refund
P IS FOR PRACTICAL
Hotly anticipating your tax refund? Before you splurge on that Jacuzzi you’ve always wanted or pile items into your virtual shopping cart, do yourself a favor: Hit pause, and consider finding a practical use for your money. What’s practical, of course, is relative to your circumstance, but mull over these ways to spend your check from Uncle Sam.
25 Credit Card Mistakes You’re Probably Making
Here’s what to avoid
Credit cards are rather important items in our financial lives. About 70% of us have at least one credit card, according to Federal Reserve data, and with about 250 million adults in the U.S. recently, that amounts to more than 175 million card-carrying Americans.
It’s no surprise, then, that we’re likely to make mistakes regarding our credit card use now and then. Since such mistakes can be costly, here’s a look at a bunch of common ones. See which ones apply to you.