FitSugar

Weight Watchers Points Calculator Online

FitSugar — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 07:30:00 PST

While I don't personally follow Weight Watchers, I know a lot of you do so I thought you'd be interested to learn about this nifty little points calculator online.

All you have to do is fill in the calories, fat, and fiber and the calculator will tell you how many Weight Watchers Points it equals. Pretty easy if you ask me. Check it out here.

10 Grocery Deals That Trick You Into Spending More

Business Insider — Tue, 08 May 2012 00:15:24 PDT

To help you avoid an expensive grocery bill, Business Insider shares grocery deals that aren't really deals.

These days everyone's trying to make the most of their trip to the grocery store, but it's hard to tell when you're saving big if the grocer is using tricky marketing tactics.

We tapped deals expert and founder of the excellent site Grocery Game, Teri Gault, to help us decipher the deals from the duds and share her exclusive tips for stretching your grocery budget. Try them this week.

1. Reaching for big packages. "People are reaching for the big packages all the time but a lot of times the medium package is cheaper," says Gault. "It's just a marketing thing. We think the bigger package will give us the bulk price but that's not always the case." To find the real steal, calculate the cost per unit using the prices on the shelf.

2. Falling for the "buy one, get one half off" routine. "Whenever you see these they sound like a great deal but the two items together are only a 25 percent savings," Gault says. "Buy one, get one for free is truly half off, not this."

3. Hitting the clearance shelf. While there are good deals to be found here, the problem is that most of the items are only 50 percent off and damaged, says Gault. "You can score good groceries that aren't damaged whenever a sale hits instead."

Read on for more.

How Women Should Save at Every Life Stage

Wise Bread — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:15:50 PDT

We all face different money issues at every life stage, so figure out what you need to save for with this helpful Wise Bread guide.

The recession has pushed almost all of us, regardless of age, a decade behind in building personal wealth. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re in your 20s and haven’t paid off student loans, or in your late 30s or early 40s and still paying off debt or saving up for a down payment. If your retirement account isn’t where you’d like it to be in your 50s, do the best you can to build it up. What matters is doing the best you can to make sound financial decisions so you can enjoy the important things in life without worrying too much about money. Here are few tips for women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s on saving and building wealth.

In Your 20s

I can’t stress this enough - start saving early. Even if you think you’re broke, give up lattes twice a week and put the $25 a month you save into a retirement account. The hilarious truth of the matter is that the earlier you start saving, when you can least afford it, the harder that money works for you to earn interest. Investing just five percent of a $40,000 salary annually from age 25 to 65 can pay off big in the long run. Assuming a six percent rate of return, at age 65, you’d have $479,241 in your 401(k), thanks to the magic of compound interest. Invest 10 percent of a $40,000 salary, and that number grows to $830,678 by age 65.

On to credit card debt, especially important in your 20s. I know about this one first hand. I thought I had a great handle on my credit card spending in my early 20s. So great, in fact, that over the next several years I didn’t bat an eyelash at charging multiple plane tickets to Europe, rounds of drinks with friends, and several pairs of new shoes.

Several years later, I was still paying it off. The only way I dug myself out of debt was to get a second job in addition to my full-time job while I was finishing school. That meant a 60-plus-hour workweek, no social life, no excess spending, little sleep, and a lot of headaches for over a year. Trust me, you do not want to put yourself through the stress that excess debt causes. Before you whip out the credit card to travel or go out or buy a new gadget, ask yourself if you really need it. Force yourself to spend responsibly. If you want to travel, set aside 10 percent of your earnings and take one great trip a year.

Read on to find out more.

Best Credit Cards For Wedding Expenses

Emily Co — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:05:26 PDT

Wedding season is here again, and brides and grooms everywhere are busy calculating the expenses of their big day. When you're paying for your wedding expenses, you might decide to use a credit card to enjoy some of the rewards. Before doing so, keep in mind that you should only charge what you can pay off immediately. It's not worth going into debt for just one day, no matter how special it is.

That said, if you know you can pay off what you owe (preferably within a month!), charging the expenses on credit cards will be a neat way of earning back cash and other rewards. Here are some good options:

Best Overall Cash-Back Card

Pick the Chase Freedom card for more change in your pocket.

You get $200 bonus cash back if you spend $500 in the first three months of signing up for the card.
No annual fee.
Five percent cash back up to $1,500 in certain categories that rotate each quarter. Here's the calendar for 2012:
January to March: Gas Stations, Amazon.com
April to June: Grocery Stores, Movie Theaters
July to September: Gas Stations, Restaurants
October to December: Hotels, Airlines, Best Buy, Kohl's

When planning your wedding, aim to charge your down payment to the restaurant from July to September. And perhaps if you want to buy wedding favors or knickknacks from Amazon.com, January to March would be a good time to do so. If you're planning on using the same card for your honeymoon, you should opt to buy tickets and add hotel charges onto this card during the last quarter of the year.
One percent cash back on everything else.
The APR rate is zero percent for the first 15 months, then 15.99 percent to 22.99 percent.

Read on for more.

You Know You Need to Drink Water When . . .

Heather Dale — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:03:33 PDT

Did you know that once you hit the point of being thirsty, you're already dehydrated? Our bodies are 2/3 water, so once you're dehydrated, the amount of water in the body has already dropped below what's needed for normal body function. We offer a nifty calculator to figure out how much water you should be consuming daily, but what are signs that tell you it's time to re-hydrate? Read on to find out.

What to Do If You Made a Mistake on Your Taxes

LearnVest — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:35:39 PDT

Not everyone's perfect. People make mistakes, and if you made a mistake on your taxes, don't fret. LearnVest gives advice on what you should do.

Woman makes mistake on tax return. Files an amendment. Sending off your completed tax return is an amazing feeling. Goodbye to all that work until next year!

That is, until you realize you’ve made a mistake.

Maybe an extra 1099 came in the mail. Or you read one of our many tax articles and found out you missed a huge credit that could save you a couple thou. Ummm, what next?

Mistakes happen. So the IRS has a special form just for you: the 1040X. It’s what you use to file an amended return.

Should I File an Amendment?

File an amendment if you:

Claimed a dependent you shouldn’t have, or now realize you can claim a dependent you didn’t
Need to change your income, like if you forgot to report some freelancing gigs or interest income
Need to add or eliminate credits or deductions
Need to change your personal exemptions
Need to report additional withholding

Read on for more.

Why Is Retirement an Uphill Battle For Women?

LearnVest — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:15:02 PST

We're thrilled to present this smart LearnVest story here on Savvy!

There are a lot of ways that men and women differ, but we bet there’s one you might not guess right off the bat.

Retirement.

Yes, retirement. According to a January 2012 study by Ameriprise Financial, more men than women have determined how much money they’ll need to retire, have set aside money in their investments for retirement, and feel confident that they’ll reach their goals.

In fact, a 2010 study found that 92 percent of women don’t feel educated enough to reach their retirement savings goals, but that 56 percent of them want to be.

Luckily, financial education is our specialty.

We spoke with Stephany Kirkpatrick - CFP, AIF, LearnVest financial planner in residence, and former director of retirement planning at Pension Architects - to figure out why women have such a hard time with retirement saving . . . and how you can get on track.

It’s in the Numbers

Women face some challenges that are purely logistical, like the simple fact that they live longer than men. Today, the average American white male can expect to live 76.2 years, whereas the average American white female can look forward to 80.9 years.

Read on for more

10 Really Surprising Things That Hurt Your Credit Score

LearnVest — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:15:05 PST

We're thrilled to present this smart LearnVest story here on Savvy!

Most people know the typical credit no-nos:

Don't make a late payment. Don't allow an account to go into collections. Avoid tax liens, bankruptcies and foreclosures.

And of course, paying off credit card debt should be one of your top financial priorities. (To find out your other top financial priorities, use this simple tool.)

But there are also lesser-known ways you could unintentionally damage your credit score.

Here are ten actions-from least to most harmful-that could make your number take a plunge.

10. Renting a Car With a Debit Card

While many rental agencies require that you pay your deposit with a credit card, some will accept your debit card instead. However, agencies typically have a clause in the contract stating that they can pull your credit report if you choose to pay with a debit card. That credit check causes a hard inquiry, which will ding your score a few points.

A hard inquiry is when a lender, credit card issuer or other financial institution requests a credit check in order to decide whether or not to extend a line of credit to you, such as a credit card or home loan. Each hard inquiry usually drops your credit score by a few points and will remain on your credit report for two years. The other kind of inquiry, soft inquiries, are made by people who don't intend to take action, such as your landlord checking your credit, and won't have any effect on your credit score.

Read on to find out more.

Getting Back on Budget: How to Escape a Downward Spiral

LearnVest — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:15:02 PDT

We're thrilled to present this smart LearnVest story here on Savvy!

I recently fell off my budget-or, rather, got pushed off by a large, unexpected expense at the dentist’s office.

I negotiated a payment plan so I wouldn’t have to pay more than $1,000 all in one go, but that night, as I was walking home, I became really irritated about the payments I’d have to make for the next few months.

Then, I saw-and was lured into-one of my favorite New York City institutions, the Strand bookstore, whose memorable tagline is “18 Miles of Books.”

That’s 18 miles of used books. Used books are cheap, right? Cheap.

That’s what I told myself as I proceeded to walk out with $75 worth of new reading material.

As I walked home, I thought, “I’m so far down the hole already anyway, what’s another $75?”

It turns out that this is a common way of thinking-about budgets, diets (“I already gorged on that cake last night, so what’s a little cookie?”), exercise (I already missed two workouts, who cares if I miss a third?) and more. But a few easy tricks-and our easy-to-use, goal-setting calculator below-can lift anyone out of a damaging downward spiral. If you want to jump right in to calculating how you can undo any damage you’ve done, scroll down.

First, let’s figure out why so many of us fall prey to downward spirals in the first place.

Why We Dig Ourselves Deeper in a Hole

Carmen Wong Ulrich, personal finance expert and author of “The Real Cost of Living,” says that once people fall off their budgets, they feel helpless. “You’re beyond the point of seeing yourself getting out. The pit is so big, it’s exhausting to look at, and that exhaustion wears down your ability to make a good decision.”

It’s a sad fact: Once one financial defeat saps our energy and willpower, we tend to make yet another bad decision, which makes us feel even worse, engendering yet another budget-busting decision, and so on. (A lot of it comes down to the psychology of sunk costs.)

So, how do you reverse course?

Read on to find out.

How Wanting It All Can Make You Unhappy

LearnVest — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:15:27 PDT

We're thrilled to present this smart LearnVest story here on Savvy!

Are you ready for this?

Back in the ’70s, all we wanted was to “have it all.” A happy marriage, a good job, healthy kids - and a little bit of work/life balance. Ever since, working moms have put up the good fight, struggling to juggle a career and a home life without dropping the ball (any ball!).

Now a new study suggests women who want it all - and believe it’s possible to achieve - are actually unhappier. According to a study out of the University of Washington, working mothers who profess that their home and office lives can be seamlessly juggled are at a greater risk for depression than their more realistic colleagues.

In other words, the happiest working moms are “willing to let some things slide,” reports Katrina Leupp, a sociology graduate student and the study’s author.

How We Got Here

The study has tracked the same set of 1,600 married women - a mix of stay-at-home and working mothers - since they were between the ages of 14 and 22. Way back when, researchers started by asking for their reactions to a series of provocative statements, such as:

“A woman who fulfills her family responsibilities doesn’t have time for a job outside the home.”
“The employment of wives leads to more juvenile delinquency.”

Now, as adults, Leupp analyzed the women’s answers, as well as their comparative levels of depression (while controlling for marital happiness and hours worked). Her calculations turned up two key findings: First, the research confirmed earlier studies, which have shown that moms who are employed generally report better mental health than their stay-at-home counterparts. On the other hand, working moms who attempt to achieve Supermom status-in other words, those who try to have it all, without admitting that it’s difficult - are more likely to exhibit symptoms of depression.

Read on to find out what it means.