Kitchen Repair: How Mom and Dad Can Save Money on Simple Fixes

The kitchen is one of the most important rooms in the house. It is where you eat, drink your first morning coffee or gather to entertain friends. This makes it especially important to have the right facilities for your intended purpose. 

Some people need a lot of room and some just need a little. But, if your kitchen is in need of repair there are inexpensive ways to keep the room looking great and functioning properly.

Kitchen Supplier Outlet Stores Help Save Money

When repairing or replacing the kitchen floor, you should look to a kitchen supply outlet store to meet your needs. Outlet stores carry a variety of products from reputable brand names at pennies on the dollar. 

Typically, product is sent to an outlet store because it is being discontinued or because there was too much of a given item within the stores themselves. By shopping at an outlet store, you get the look that you want in the kitchen at a price that you can afford. 

Repair or Replace Kitchen Counters Yourself

Over time, your kitchen counters may become worn, scratched or dated. The good news is that replacing them can be a project that you complete yourself. 

Those who don't have experience with kitchen repair projects can get the help that they need from family or friends or by watching tutorials on YouTube. In some cases, it may be possible to simply remove or cover the scratches, which can save even more time and money

Sink Repair Isn't Overly Difficult

It isn't uncommon to have a leaky faucet or a sink that is slow to drain. However, all you need to fix those issues is some basic tools and the ability to use them. 

Slow drains can be unclogged either with a plunger or by using hot water and gel to get rid of a clog. If the faucet leaks, you can use a screwdriver to tighten it in a matter of minutes. 

And lastly, if there is something in the sink that you just cannot fix then contacting professionals, like those at Young Plumbing Corporation, is the right move to make.

Use Sample Windows to Keep Costs Down

The kitchen can be a warm and inviting place when there is plenty of natural light. If your kitchen doesn't have a large window, you may be able to order one direct from the manufacturer. 

From there, you may be able to make your own frame and install it without paying a professional.

Maintaining your home is critical to preserving its value and making it an inviting place to live. However, if you know how to make basic repairs on your own, you can fix small problems in an affordable manner before they become major issues.

6 Habits That Can Be a Financial Disaster

It won’t be wrong to say that money is our lifeline. Without it, life cannot be enjoyed to the full. While doing all the luxuries, you need to save your money simultaneously. Savings is important to secure not only your future but also of your kids. Bad financial habits can put you in a risky situation eventually.

By saving, we don’t mean that you need to curtail all your wants. Just a little bit of change in your lifestyle can make huge difference.

Some of the bad habits surely can be avoided to help your finances from getting destroyed are as follows:

Careless Use of Credit Cards:

Having two to five credit cards in the wallet has become a common thing. However, it’s okay. But, if you’re using them irresponsibly, check your habit. It’s true that numerous credit card companies enable the users to earn lucrative awards by using cards. 

Yet you should know without making any profit, these companies aren’t going to give you a single buck. It means that common guys have to pay more interest than earning points from it.

There are chances of yours not belonging to the common class. Wait a second. Ask yourself- ‘Can I pay off the credit cards amount every month?’ Prior to using credit cards, determine whether you can afford to pay the monthly bills. 

Mostly, people frame their budget which they follow strictly to pay off credit card bills. Use credit card only when it’s necessary and not when you want it. 

Following Others’ Lifestyle Blindly:

Are you buying gold just because your neighbor did so few days ago?

Never let yourself to fall into comparison trap. It can have dire consequences. When you’re following the lifestyle of your friends and neighbors heedlessly, you’re ruining your income. You may have other necessities. Buying things to flaunt it to your friends may compel you to dig into the savings.

There’s no thumb rule that you have to cope up with your friends to get respect from them. Remember, you’re earning money to support yourself and your family. Hence, living with your means will be a prudent decision on your part. On the other hand, if you go on following others, you’ll start to take wrong financial decisions.

Spending Money on Cigarettes:

As per CDC’s view, “Use of tobacco is the single cause of death in the US that can be prevented.” Smoking not only kills a person slowly but also eats up his lifetime savings. As this process is quite slow, most of us neglect this harsh fact.

Let’s assume, you’re spending $4.5 daily on a single cigarette packet. And, if you’re buying two packs, the total cost stands to $9. Now, if you calculate it with 365 (number of days in a year), the overall expenditure becomes $3285. 

Isn’t the amount big? It is one of those bad financial habits that can be avoided. Moreover, if you’re a chain smoker, your insurance payment will be three times more than a non-smoker. Time has come when you should stop such bad habits. Kill it before it kills you.

Irregular Payment of Insurance Installments:

Insurances are useful. Paying the monthly installments may seem a burden to you initially. When you pay it regularly, you’re saving a lot for the coming years. However, there are many people who avoid paying the insurance installments on a regular basis. 

What they fail to realize is that if they don’t pay the installments monthly, then penalty charges will be incurred upon it making it a big amount.

Absence of sufficient insurance coverage may compel someone to use up his retirement account. Reviewing the coverage periodically is essential to make certain that you have insured all your assets properly.

Giving Info to Vendors:

Often visiting shopping sites may influence you to save your details with that specific vendor. Hundreds of them have easy shopping options. Shopaholics can purchase from these shopping sites with a single click. 

eware of such shopping options. They may make you bankrupt by offering lucrative things at discounted prices. These offering may be so irresistible that you won’t think twice before spending your cash on it.

Don’t allow the online stores to save your credit card info. If their catalogs and emails are tempting you to purchase immediately, skip signing up for it. Being a shopper, you may feel excited on hearing about a sale. However, it doesn’t mean that you should go for one.

Summing Up

Discipline is significant to get rid of the above-mentioned bad habits. Practice it again and again to get success quickly. If you can do it, you’ll find that you have saved quite a considerable sum at the end of every month which you can give you support during emergency situations.

Jennifer Cooper is a personal finance blogger and content writer. You can visit her personal finance blog at pro finance tips.

Erasing Debt: 5 Great Tips for Paying off Loans Quicker

Loans are the great discouragement in many people’s lives. Because of loans, you may not be able to take your dream vacation, invest money into your retirement fund, help your child out with college payments or even have a date night once month with your significant other. 

Unpaid loans can cause stress and anxiety particularly for women who long for that elusive feeling of security. Plus, it can be incredibly difficult to watch your loan amounts go down so slowly as you keep paying interest. 

Whether you have auto, home or students loans or some other type of debt, here are five easy ways to get your loan paid off faster than you imagined.

Round Up Payments

While creating and working closely with a budget goes without saying if you are trying to be wise with your money, you may want to rethink how much money you allocate towards your loan repayments. 

Consider rounding up your payments to the next $50 or $100 mark. For example, if you have a student loan payment of $256 per month, you could round it up and make it $300 per month. 

While an extra $44 per month may not be easily missed in your spending habits, it will make a great deal of difference in the amount of money you are paying interest on for your loan. In fact, just that small amount will give you over $500 in extra payments every year.

Make One Extra Payment per Year

Another way to pay down a loan faster is to make an extra payment per year. This is much easier to swing if you consider making payments on your loan every two weeks rather than once per month. 

Split your monthly payment in half, and pay this amount every two weeks. For example, if you have a monthly charge of $200, you would be paying $2,400 per year with the traditional method, but $2,600 per year with the every two week method. 

For a home mortgage, making one extra payment per year for a total of 13 full payments would help you shorten the time on your 30-year mortgage by almost 4 years.

Find a Way to Get a Lower Interest Rate

Even if you have no way to make extra payments every month or every year, you may still be able to pay off your loan faster while making the same monthly payments. 

The only way to do this would be to lower your interest rate so that more of the money you are paying in goes to principal rather than interest. 

You could simply ask your lender to match a new rate that you have seen a competitor offer, request to refinance a loan or combine all of your loans into one new loan that offers a better interest rate.

Take Control of Your Spending

When you carefully budget your money and control your spending, it may be uncomfortable initially. 

You may find that you cannot go out to eat as often as you once did or purchase so many personal choice items. However, this will give you more money that you can put towards paying down your loans.

Find a Way to Make Extra Money

If you have put as much money as you can towards paying down loans but still feel that you are not paying your loans down fast enough, consider how you can increase your income. 

You may want to consider getting a part-time job, selling some clothes to a consignment store, having a garage sale or selling some items that you have crafted. 

If you are stretched for cash one month, you could consider getting a payday advance that will help cover your needs until you receive your next paycheck.

When you have paid off all of your loans and are debt-free, the weight that is lifted from your shoulders is enormous. 

You can feel relief that you have more spending money as well as more funds to invest in what is important to you. Plus, know that the faster you pay off your loans, the less you will spend overall on interest.

What to Do When Unforeseen Events Hit Your Family & Your Finances

A severe car accident. A broken furnace. An unexpected opportunity to travel and work abroad. What do all these seemingly unrelated things have in common? They all have the potential to alter your family’s life and your finances. 

While sometimes these unexpected events can be good, as in the case of the job opportunity overseas, they’re often not positive. And either type of event can cause significant stress. 

If you’re dealing with the aftermath of such an event, or you just want to be prepared for some future event, try implementing the following four tips.

1. Prepare for it Mentally

To put it frankly, bad things just happen sometimes. Because you can’t always avoid such situations, knowing that they can happen and mentally preparing for such events can give you peace of mind. 

To help you prepare, visualize different situations and think about how you would handle those situations. Where would you go to for financing? How much money would you be willing to put towards certain events straight out of your pocket?

2. Save More Ahead of Time

Saving money for a rainy day can be one of the best ways to improve your finances this year (or any year), according to a Forbes article. 

If you’re saving with an emergency in mind, you’ll want to have two kinds of savings plans, a short-term and a long-term one. In the short-term, you’ll need between $1,000 and $2,000 for emergencies like a blown furnace. 

For the long-term emergencies like a job loss, you’ll want to save enough income to live without an income for six to nine months.

3. Get Help from a Professional

Some emergencies are so bad, you can’t dig yourself out of them by yourself. One of the best things you can do if you find that this is the case is to get help from a professional. 

As Clearfield & Kofsky points out, it’s difficult for the untrained to deal with the potential legal matters that can arise from events like an accident or a bad fall. Of equal importance is to find some support for your mental health as well. 

You can’t really make good decisions if your thinking has been skewed a bit by the accident. Having a professional around to guide you just makes sense.

4. Get Good Insurance

Having good insurance can go a long way to help you recover from an accident or other mishap. It also helps to ensure that tragic events won’t completely wipe you out. 

It’s okay to not know where to start when it comes to this. In fact, you should go ahead and shop around for a good policy. Doing so can save you some serious financial heartaches in the future.

The best way to handle emergencies is to be prepared for them. Just like cities and states have an emergency plan in place for when trouble strikes, so can you. 

Getting money put into a savings account and lining up some good insurance are some good first steps. Additionally, it’s critical that you know how to get professional advice when the need arises. 

Finally, know that everyone has challenges. If you prepare for them, however, they don’t need to wipe you out financially or emotionally.