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What To Do When Your Child Asks for a Present You Can’t Afford

November 13, 2023 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

White present trimmed with red ribbon.

Most parents will experience the uncomfortable moment when their child asks for a gift the parent can’t afford. This item may also be the one your child is most passionate about and feels he must have. In our case, my daughter, who was a huge Lego fan when she was younger, wanted a $300 Lego set. You may hate to say no to your child, but if they’re requesting a present you can’t afford, that’s what you most likely must do.

How to Prevent This Situation

I always like to be proactive, so from the time my children were little, they knew our gift-giving budget for their Christmas presents. Rather than being a damper on their holiday joy, my kids were able to work creatively around the amount. This had two benefits:

First, they didn’t ask for gifts beyond the budget because they knew we couldn’t buy them.

Second, my kids learned to look for deals. For instance, my 13-year-old daughter wants several items from Bath and Body Works, so she already gave me her Christmas list and told me that Bath and Body Works is currently having a sale, so that I can buy her more within the budget.

What to Do When Your Child Asks for a Present You Can’t Afford

If you can’t afford the item, you have several choices so your child can eventually get it.

Ask Grandparents to Chip In

If your child’s grandparents, aunts, and uncles typically buy her a present, you can ask them to all chip in with you to buy the expensive gift she wants.

If the gift is still too expensive or others who buy her gifts don’t want to chip in, you have other options.

Give Him Additional Chores to Do

You can explain that he would value the item more if he saved for it himself. To help him with that, you can give him additional chores around the house so he can make money more quickly than saving his weekly allowance.

Match Your Child’s Savings

As she earns extra money for chores, you can offer to match her savings rate. If she saves $100, you contribute $100. Especially if your child is younger, matching savings is a great way to keep her motivated; otherwise, saving for an item that is several hundred dollars may seem impossible to attain.

Final Thoughts

Some parents feel they should give their children the gifts they ask for, even if they’re expensive and require the parent to get a second job to give their children an unbelievable Christmas. However, my husband and I believe in setting a budget that the kids are aware of so they know not to expect too much. If the item is too expensive for our budget, we’ll help the child by offering extra chores and matching what they save. After all, we adults can’t get everything we want. We are constrained by a budget and must work extra hard to get those things we want that are out of our budget. This is a good lesson for kids to learn, too.

Read More

9 Ways to Get Your Child a Christmas Gift If You Can’t Afford One

What Christmas Expectations Are You Setting for Your Children?

How I Plan to Have a Low-Cost Christmas

Filed Under: Holidays & Vacations Tagged With: Christmas Gift, expensive gift, gift giving

Our Favorite Small Ways to Save Money

November 5, 2023 By MelissaB 3 Comments

Small Ways to Save Money

Even though inflation has tapered off a bit in the last year its long term impact is still being felt in households across the economy. We’re no different. Although we have improved our financial position over the last five years, we still aren’t where we want to be financially, so we continue to be cautious with our finances and not spend more than we need to. Lately, we’ve utilized small ways to save money that help us continue to improve our financial standing.

Let me clarify that we’re not saving a lot of money from any of these strategies, but, overall, they improve our finances.

Small Ways to Save Money

We try to save money in every aspect of our lives.

Discounts on Gas

We have a few ways we try to save money on gas.  Some of these work better than others.

Use a Grocery Store Rewards Card

Our local grocery store gives us points for our purchases. We can then redeem those points for an amount off gas. Last month, I redeemed enough points to get $1.00 per gallon off gas, bringing my per gallon price to $3.49 instead of $4.49.

Use a Credit Card With Cash back Rewards

One of our credit cards is giving 5% cash back on gas purchases for April through June, so whenever my husband and I fill up, we always use that card, so we get some cash back that we can redeem later.

Using Cash Back Gas App

We haven’t used these as much, but there are least two good cash back app that work for gas stations.  Upside is the number 1 in this space, followed by TruNow. The both work on the same model, you buy gas and scan the receipt, then you get credited for the purchase – usually pennies on the dollar.  Of these Upside is probably the better choice – they’re actively expanding their offerings and improving the app incrementally.   You can find them here.

Combining Errands & Staying Home

Not everyone has the luxury to stay home more, but we do because we both work from home. We try to limit our trips, but when we do make them, we try to combine errands so we’re not driving around multiple times per day or even per week.

Strategically Using Cash Back Credit Cards

I alluded to this above, but we strategically use our cash back credit cards to maximize the money we get back. We have three credit cards, all of which offer cash back. Every quarter, we opt-in for the cash back bonuses and utilize those categories for those purchases.

For instance, our Discover card offers 5% cash back for gas purchases from April through June, so we only use that card for gas. We use our other credit card that offers 2% cash back on all purchases for everything else.

Just as importantly, we also choose not to activate certain 5% cash back bonuses. For instance, one card is offering 5% cash back for dining out. We didn’t activate that one because we never dine out, and I certainly wouldn’t start dining out just to get 5% cash back.

Shopping Clearance Sales

I always like to browse the clearance section, but that’s more important now than ever.  The trick to doing this is finding out when the store posts the clearance sales.  Usually the good deals get taken fast.

Grocery Store Clearance

Recently, I have found some excellent grocery store clearance items. A week after Easter, I found a one-pound package of diced him on clearance for 49 cents. Yes, please! I bought two and used them as the meat in some soup recipes that I made.

Whenever I find clearance meat, I buy it and stick it in the freezer for later use. I also do the same with clearance dry goods, as long as they’re foods I know that we’ll eat.

Clearance Clothing

Small Ways to Save Money
Obligatory stock art showing a woman super happy with her clothes purchase after she used the methods in this article.

A few weeks ago, my daughters and I went to Kohl’s to shop the clearance winter clothes racks. We bought our clothes for next winter at a steep discount. We’ve packed them away and will take them out in a few months when the weather starts to change. To sweeten the deal, we received Kohl’s cash, which we redeemed to buy winter boots that were on clearance.

Incidentally, if you want a seriously good example of how to get discounts on clothing, read Lauren Bowling’s article on how she regularly gets 60% to 80% off designer clothing.

Canceled Excess Subscriptions

With two teens in the house and one pre-teen, we have a lot of streaming services. Most of these aren’t expensive–$5 to $10 a month. However, when you have several of them, the price adds up. I polled the kids to see what streaming services they use, and I cut the rest. That saved us $20 per month, or $240 a year. While this amount isn’t huge, why pay the money when the services weren’t even being used? That’s silly.

Waiting to Make Major Purchases

One of the biggest ways we’re saving money in this current economic climate is to avoid making major purchases. Our minivan is 18 years old and has 230,000 miles on it.  We’d like to replace it, but new minivans are out of our price range, and used ones now cost almost as much as new ones. In addition, we don’t want to take out a car loan since the interest rates are increasing. Instead, we are waiting to buy a replacement vehicle.

That means we spent $1,500 recently repairing the van. My kids are constantly embarrassed about driving such an old minivan. (To be fair, I understand their feelings. The paint is peeling off, and the hubcaps are off. One passenger side door no longer opens.) However, we’ve decided, for now, that holding on to our current vehicle is the prudent option. Besides, driving around in such an old vehicle is character-building for the kids.

Saving on a Rental Car

Small Ways to Save Money
More obligatory stock art.

We took a family vacation this month, so we opted to rent a car and saved two ways.

Use Our Costco Card

First, we used our Costco card to save more than 25% on the cost of the rental vehicle. We only book rental cars through the Costco travel section because the discount is enormous.  Incidentally, if you don’t have a Costco membership, I recommend getting one.  If you have a bigger family like mine the economics pan out. You can get it here.

Opted Out of Rental Car Insurance

We also opted not to purchase the rental car insurance. I called our insurance, and they confirmed that our insurance would cover any problems except for the rental car company’s loss of use charge should the vehicle be in an accident and unusable. We added a $6 rider to cover loss of use.

I also paid with our credit card that provides secondary insurance for a rental car. If we need to use our car insurance on the rental, this credit card would cover our deductible.

Final Thoughts

Living in a time of high inflation is difficult. We’re blessed that we’re both employed and are in a comfortable enough financial position that we can weather this current economic struggle. Even so, we’re taking these small steps to save money, so we can continue to improve our financial position.

The reality is that inflation will subside in the future, but if you’re able to consistently adapt these habits, you should save a ton in the long run.

Read More

8 Ways to Stop Food Waste

Save Money with Buy Nothing Groups

How We Save Money with Ting as Our Cell Phone Provider

Filed Under: budget, Frugality, Married Money, Saving Tagged With: car rental, grocery shopping, inflation, rental car insurance, ways to save money

1Q App Review: Get This Extra Money App (Updated for 2023)

October 22, 2023 By James Hendrickson Leave a Comment

1q app review
Snapshot of author’s 1Q screen.

Between declining real wages, naggingly high inflation and escalating real costs for housing and medical care, a lot of people are looking to build extra income.  With the growth of mobile technology, we now have various mobile apps that offer an opportunity to make extra money in a time efficient way.  The 1Q app is one of these apps that is currently becoming a popular choice. In this blog post, I will take you through an in-depth review of the 1Q app, outlining how it works and its benefits.

This review is largely based on my personal experience with 1Q.  During the covid-19 pandemic, my income crashed.  So, I had to find alternative ways of making extra money.  So, what I did was experiment with survey apps.  I tried about ten of them.  Of these 1Q was one of the winners.  And is one of the few I consistently use.  The overall verdict is 1Q is a good value for the time you spend answering questions – however its limited in the overall amount of money you can earn from the app.

1. What Is The 1Q app?

1Q, or 1Question,  is a mobile-based survey app that pays you in real-time for answering brief surveys. With one question popping up at a time, it takes no more than a few seconds to respond to each query, making the entire process very easy and convenient. You earn about $0.25 cents for each question you complete, and payments are made immediately.  Unlike other survey apps that take many days to pay, 1Q credits your PayPal account in approximate real team.  There also aren’t any minimums.  If you just answer one question – you get the $0.25 cents right away – no minimums.

2. How Does It Work?

To use 1Q for making extra money, you first need to download the app from either the Google Play Store or Apple Store. After that, you must create a profile and answer a few questions that help the app connect you with surveys that match your interests. Once your profile is complete, you will begin to receive notifications to take surveys.

Per Crunchbase, the app is owned by an Atlanta based market research company called 1Q, LLC (here).  Their business model is they basically maintain a panel of people who are interested in answering questions.  The app then works with companies to get feedback on their specific brands or products.

3. Benefits of Using 1Q

There are plenty of benefits of using 1Q app. Firstly, it is simple and quick, taking no more than a few seconds to complete a survey. Secondly, you earn money in real-time, making it a great option for people looking to make extra cash quickly. Unlike other survey apps which pay via PayPal, 1Q credits your account directly, ensuring you receive your cash instantly.

The app is also lightweight and doesn’t impact your phone’s performance or battery life.

4. Downsides of Using 1Q

Although 1Q is an excellent way to make extra cash, it also has some downsides. Since the app only allows one survey at a time, there is a limit to how many surveys you can complete in a day. This means that you cannot depend solely on 1Q for earning an income. You also need to have a PayPal account to withdraw your earnings since the app does not support any other payment options.

5. What Other People Say About 1Q

Lastly, some users often complain of not receiving many surveys, depending on their demographics and interests.  Here is a screenshot of one of the reviews from Trustpilot:

1Q app review example from Crunchbase, accessed October 15th, 2023.

There several reviews of 1Q on YouTube. Here is an exemplary one – it pretty much outlines the same things this article is discussing. The app is solid and pays well – but doesn’t pay a lot.

 

6. Who Should Use 1Q?

Who should use 1Q?  Pretty much anyone whose income situation would be helped by a high compensation per question survey.

Most survey apps pay a terrible rate.  In some cases they translate to an hourly rate of between $5 and $10 per hour.  This is substantially less than minimum wage and is frankly depressing. Since 1Q pays an excellent rate per question its a good way to make money on the side.   So, this means its probably a nice way to boost your cashflow for anyone whose income is say, below $60,000.

It works in North America only, so you have to be in the US and Canada to use the app.

You can get it here, or click on the button below.

Get 1Q And Start Earning Now

Conclusion – 1Q Pays Well, But Isn’t A Replacement For Your Day Job

In conclusion, if you are looking for a convenient and quick way to make extra cash, 1Q app is a good option to consider. The app is easy to use, and you can start earning immediately after downloading it. Although its challenging to generate substantial income using 1Q alone, it is still an excellent way to supplement your income. With its real-time payment, it can be a helpful tool for anyone looking to pick up some extra cash.

Here Are More Great Reads From Beating Broke

Four Ways To Find Extra Money To Put Towards Your Debt

Is A Side Hustle Worth The Sacrifice To Your Family?

Money Is A Finite Resource, So Take Care Of It

Filed Under: Making Money Tagged With: Making money

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