Saving

It was on Vancouver Island that a principal of a tiny school in a small town discovered a huge secret.  False Bay School, on Lasqueti Island, with only two classrooms and thirty students, was being run on solar power. Yes, even during the dark and rainy fall months.  The town itself is completely off the electrical grid. This has forced all 450 residents to embrace the solar power revolution.   

Previously run on fuel, the switch to solar energy has saved the school nearly $25,000 per year.  And the principal, Reid Wilson, wholeheartedly believes that the technology will advance enough in the next decade that the school will be completely self-sustaining. He now realizes the opportunities alternative energy presents. His own home is powered mostly by a water turbine on his neighbor’s pond. This happens during the winter months and solar during the summer.  

Teaching Students About Living Off the Grid 

While some schools find going off the grid more convenient, others actually offer courses in it.  The Mountain School in Vermont is one of them. They don’t just study living life away from the industrial complex, but allows high school students to live on an actual organic farm for a whole term.  While keeping up with a normal course load, they must also learn the basics of organic survival. 

Chopping wood, taking care of animals, and growing their own food, these students are required to get down and dirty. They study forestry and agriculture, and other important topics.  The students and teachers live in tiny houses on the property. Perhaps the most challenging part is the lack of internet access. Talk about getting a real taste living off the grid!  

Serving a Greater Need 

It’s amazing for solar energy to save taxpayers thousands of dollars on a school’s energy costs. The problem is, there’s an entirely different side to this story we don’t often think about.  We are privileged enough to live in a society where we can take electricity use for granted. Saving a few extra bucks and cutting down on pollution is a great way to remain progressive. But there are still more than a billion people who live in non-electrified villages all over the world.

According to GivePower Foundation President Hayes Barnard, there are still 1.3 billion people who live without electricity.  That translates to 291 million kids who go to schools without any form of electricity at all. In poor, impoverished countries like Haiti, Uganda, Nigeria, Mali, and Ghana, GivePower has claimed to have powered over 1500 schools with a simple solar panel stationed on the roof for every two classrooms.   

Other companies, like GRID alternatives, has a program where they go into off-grid towns. Places like Nepal to help power schools, clinics, homes, and farms to help drastically improve their quality of life.  

Where it seems as if those in the western culture are looking for ways to get off the grid, solar technology in more disadvantaged parts of the world will help them catch up to the rest of us by providing badly needed resources, especially when it comes to education.   

Facebook Getting Involved

While the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, works hard to connect the world by providing internet access to these same impoverished nations, combined with solar energy to power tools like computers, the opportunities for education and growth are endless.  And according to Barnard, these opportunities are expanding rapidly. 

“We’re growing our company by 500 employees every month and competing for talent against Google and other tech companies.  Our employees would rather go to Nepal to be part of an earthquake relief effort or go to Malawi, Haiti or Ghana to install solar than go to a resort.”

Christmas is easily the most expensive holiday of the year. In fact, the average American adds $1,000 worth of debt to themselves each holiday season. That includes meals, gifts, decorations, travel, and other expenses. As we get closer to this time of year, we need to start preparing our budget right now. Here are 5 ways to prepare for holiday spending.

1) Take a Christmas Inventory

You don’t have to buy brand new things every single year. You may already have a lot of stuff laying around your home. Do you have a few dusty decorations hiding in your attic or basement? What about a few gifts you’ve received in the past and never used? Regifting isn’t a crime. Neither is using old decorations. If it saves you money, that’s what matters most after the season.

2) Make a List and Check It Twice

Take a look at how much money you’ve spent during other Christmas seasons. Then, write a list of everyone you want to buy for. You can start working on that list earlier in the year. For example, Amazon Prime Day is often in July. That’s a perfect time to get a lot of great stuff for Christmas earlier. Rather than going into debt buying everything in November and December, start early. Take care of each need little by little.

3) Set Up a Christmas Savings Account

If you’re someone who enjoys going all out for Christmas, then set up a savings account. Little by little, throughout the year, you can add to it. This prevents you from having to go into debt. You should also decide that whatever you saved is what you’re going to spend. Be disciplined and don’t go over that amount.

4) Cut Other Types of Spending

When you know you have a lot of spending coming up, it’s good to find other things to cut. Wasteful spending on top of everything else will only put you deeper in the hole. Again, it’s better to set a budget and stick to it.

5) Remember the After Christmas Sales

If you’re looking for new decorations and other things, it’s best not to buy them before Christmas. That’s when they’re the most in-demand and the most expensive. After the season, stores are looking to get rid of the extra stuff they have. That allows them to sell it at a discount. There’s no harm in waiting until after the season to get the decorations you need for next year. It will save you a lot of money in the long run.

Emergencies can happen to anyone and they can happen without warning. You never know what day you’re going to wake up and be fully immersed in a situation beyond your control. You don’t know if there’ll be a natural disaster later in the day or if you’ll get into a car accident. Life is unpredictable and we don’t like to talk about it.

It’s usually these unplanned expenses that can turn into maxing out your credit cards or they need to take out a loan to pay for it. For example, if you needed to take your dog to the vet and had an $800 vet bill, that’s a major unplanned expense. You’re more likely to put that on your credit card and without paying it off immediately, you get charged with interest.

While the safest route is to save as much as six months’ worth of income in the event of an emergency, even having $1000 is a great way to protect yourself. You never know when you’ll need that extra thousand dollars. According to recent surveys, most Americans don’t even have $400 to their name something bad happens.

Let’s take a look at several ways in which you can build up your emergency savings quickly:

1) Sell Some Stuff for Your Emergency Fund!

Outside of saving the money you earn, the best way to make up for emergency cash is to sell stuff that you have that you don’t use. You can easily find a few hundred dollars’ worth of stuff in your attic, garage, storage shed, or basement. Maybe you have a bunch of close or your kids have a lot of toys that they’ve outgrown. Have a garage sale and put 100% of the proceeds into your savings account. There’s also Craigslist and the Facebook marketplace. Whichever option you choose, it’s good to get rid of some stuff and declutter your life.

2) Fast from Spending

Cutting your spending doesn’t have to be a tragedy. There are certainly plenty of things that you spend your money on that you don’t really need. Can you cut back on getting Starbucks for a few months? Can you cut down your cable package if you’re not really using it so much? Don’t be afraid to sit down with your budget and look through everything you’re spending your money on. There has to be something in there that you can cut and put that money into your savings.

3) Open a Bank Account

There are a lot of banks that will pay you to open up a bank account. They might offer $300 or so for opening an account with them. Maybe you want to keep your savings account separate from your main bank account. It would be a good way to get a good jump on your saving.

The way Americans think about retirement has shifted.

For whatever reason, we’re less invested and concerned than we used to be. It was a priority to make sure we take care of ourselves and our future. Today’s generations don’t seem to care as much.

According to a new survey by Edward Jones, less than half of us contribute to a 401(k). When they asked those who have a 401(k) if they knew how much the monthly fees were, half of them had no idea there were any fees.

Ameritrade asked in a related survey if they knew how much they were paying for Netflix and other streaming services, and 96% said they did.

37% wrongly assumed they didn’t have to pay fees on their 401(k).

Surveys also found that only 37% are contributing to their retirement accounts and 18% through a health savings account.

These numbers are astonishing. It would appear as if Americans view retirement as a goal they should tap into later in life, but it’s not something they need to be concerned about right now. It reveals a real lack in financial concern.

Throwing in the Retirement Towel

If we take a good look at the last 15 years or so, the market has been virtually dead money. There’s a reason why a lot of baby boomers now plan to work until 60-65. They might’ve had a plan to retire at 45, but the market didn’t permit them and now they’re behind on their savings.

With all the rumors that social security might be dead in the future, regardless of how much we put into it, and the shaky evolution of the market, it’s scaring people away from investing. With health care costs shooting through the roof, the volatile housing market, and stocks that change with the weather, it’s making retirement investment into a crap shoot.

As Gen-Xers head ever closer to retirement age, they’re either not as concerned about retirement or see they have very few options that is guaranteed to last through their golden years.

According to experts, the best plan of action is to diversify their savings. Don’t put all your eggs into one basket and risking losing it when the market sours. There are recession-proof stocks, commodities, and other investments.

Either way, working well past retirement age is never ideal. We can only hope at this new optimism in our economic recovery continues. It allows each generation to have renewed faith in saving for the future.

It’s that time of year again! It’s autumn and winter will be here before we know it. If you haven’t turned your AC off yet, it will be time to do so soon. If you don’t own a wood-burning heater, then the winter heating season can get expensive. Sometimes the bill swells to twice its normal size, depending on how cold it gets where you live.

So, how can you stay warm while not spending a bundle? Here are 5 ways to slash your home heating costs this winter.

1) Dress to Impress Heating Costs

When you’re going out in the winter, you know you need a jacket, thick socks, and warm clothing. Why not do the same for your house? In the summer, it’s easy to strip down. But in the winter, you can put up thicker blinds, put down rugs, cover the couch with a warm blanket, and so on. You can even use flannel sheets and a thicker comforter for when you sleep.

2) Opening and Closing the Blinds

One trick is knowing when to open and close your blinds. If you open them in the morning and let in the sunlight, it will naturally heat your house during the day. It can heat things up enough that you can turn your heat off. As the sun goes down, close your blinds to keep the heat inside the house. With this natural heating, you won’t have to rely on your heat kicking on as much, saving money.

3) Don’t Use Your Fans as Often

Many homes have fans throughout the house. By fans, that includes in the bathroom and kitchen. They work wonders for clearing out the air, but they also suck out the heat. Usually these fans are meant to blow four odors outside of the home. But if the warm air goes with it, then you’re literally sucking dollars out of your wallet. Keep the fans off if you can. The exception here is the ceiling fan. Warm air rises, so turn on the ceiling fan to push that air back down to ground level.

4) Turn Down the Thermostat!

Turning the thermostat down a few degrees will have a huge impact on your bill. They say a degree or two can add or subtract as much as 10%. That’s a large chunk of change! If you can comfortably turn the thermostat down, do it. Especially do it at night and when you leave the house. During the daytime, you can benefit from sunlight entering the winters.

5) Add Insulation

Your home may need a little extra insulation to help keep things warm. You might have an area of the home where the warm air is sucked out or the cold air gets in. Insulation might mean putting plastic over the windows as well. There are tests you can do to find where the bad areas are in your home that needs extra insulation.

General Electric the latest company to freeze their benefit pension plan.

The pension obligations are GE’s largest liability, with future benefits estimated to be around $92 billion. This is second only to IBM’s pension plan of $93 billion, which they froze in 2008. What this means is that new employees aren’t enrolled into the plan and employees already in the plan cease accruing any future benefits.

GE’s pension assets only cover 75% of their liability and the company has to put forward $6 billion each year to fund the benefits of its current and future retirees. As GE faces more financial troubles, they are offloading all the liabilities that they can.

This problem is not unique to GE however, as it stands among 16 remaining Fortune 500 companies that offer benefits plans. These programs offered have been steadily discontinued since the 80s and the remaining few are slated to go the way of GE.

This issue of corporations struggling with pension plans is not isolated to just the US. The rest of the world is also experiencing low interest rates that make benefit plans unmanageable. Even Denmark which is historically known to have the best-funded pension plans in the world required their government to amend the regulations on how pension liabilities were calculated.

There are economists that prop up the benefits of low interest rates, which purportedly increase employment rates and economic activity. But there is also the flip side, as low interest rates make pension plans more expensive and companies end up offloading the costs to their employees.

The Pension Plan Killer

In the US, the enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 forced corporate plans to fully fund their internal pension plans. This resulted in many companies dropping their pension plans, leaving only the larger companies which were able to afford these plans and provide the benefits to staff that they wanted to keep on.

But as interest rates keep falling, this increases the costs of pensions, making them virtually too expensive for any firm to maintain.

The only employers that are still offering defined benefits are state governments and municipalities. These organizations face different accounting standards and are not required to use interest rates when calculating their funding liabilities.

Shifting the risk around

As companies drop their pension plans, the risk gets transferred to the employees. Most of them are oblivious to the fact that they bear this cost, as individual pension accounts only show an asset balance and not how much income the assets will have to provide.

That doesn’t mean that retirees won’t need income when withdrawing on their asset balances when they retire. Stable income comes from moving assets into fixed income or annuities, where low interest rates are a liability and make retirement more expensive for the individual. As a result, retirees could end up spending less, which cancels out the benefits of having low interest rates in the first place.

For any more financial advice, call the Financial Helpers, we are ready to assist you with planning for your future.

We all need to buy groceries to survive, that is unless you live off the grid and provide for yourself all your daily nourishment. For the rest of us, we’re inclined to go to our favorite grocery store. Sadly, most of us waste a lot of the food we buy. It sits in the drawer or on the shelf and is used maybe once before it’s tossed.

How many times did we buy avocados only to throw most of them away? Or the tomatoes that went bad before we got a chance to use them? And don’t get us started on all the leftovers we stick in the fridge and rather than eating them, order out the next night. How many condiments, sauces, and seasons do we buy that will sit up in the cupboard unused for the next decade?

Americans waste a lot of food. In fact, the average American household throws away 43% of the food it buys! That’s a crazy number! Imagine going shopping and spending all the money we do while realizing that almost half of it will rot or be thrown away. Here are 5 tips for preventing food waste:

1) Shop with All Your Meals in Mind

When you’re considering what to buy, plan out your meals. Look at common ingredients. For example, if you’re going to buy celery for a meal, then you might not use up all the stalks. Rather than letting them go to waste, find multi uses for them. Plan meals that will use the ingredients more than once so nothing is unused.

2) Don’t Be Afraid to Use Your Freezer

You can freeze almost anything and use it again later. From veggies, butter, cheese, meat, onions, pasta, sauces, beans, and on and on, everything can be reused. Why let it go back? If you buy a loaf of bread and only use a few slices, you can put your bread in the freezer. It only takes about 5 minutes to thaw.

3) Improve Your Storing Ability

Many people invest in machines that will allow you to properly store foods by wrapping them in plastic and sucking the air out of the plastic so foods last longer and stay fresher. Simply wrapping your veggies in foil to keep in the fridge will allow them to stay crisp for longer. Don’t just expose your food to the elements.

4) Don’t Cook as Much

How many times per week do you end up with leftovers? More times than not, those leftovers are tossed away. The easy solution to this is to make less food. When you get into the habit of making less, you will both start saving money on groceries and will be forced to throw out less. Stick to proper portion sizes per person you’re cooking for.

5) Stick a List on Your Fridge

One way to keep track of food is to post an inventory, maybe on a sticky note, so you can remember what you have in there. It’s a good reminder rather than just forgetting you have some celery in the veggie bin. You might decide it will make a good snack.

When it comes to getting better mileage out of your car battery, it isn’t too different from owning a conventional combustion engine car. Wiser decisions help improve the life and the range of efficiency of your vehicle.  If you drive like a lunatic through the city streets, it’s obvious you’re going to waste through an entire gas tank quicker than if you made better driving decisions.

The same goes with driving an electric car.  You can see just from looking at different models how the maximum range for both city and highway driving are different.  With conventional cars, you might be used to getting more bang for your buck by getting on the interstate and smooth-sailing it to your destination.  

The electric car is opposite.  Faster speeds drain the battery quicker, cutting down on the range you’ll get on a single charge.  While we wait for better technology to develop and to give us better overall range, there are a few tips and tricks you can learn to give yourself the best possible efficiency.

Tip# 1: Don’t Accelerate Harshly

One common thread about driving any type of vehicle is to not mash the gas pedal to the floor when trying to accelerate.  Yes, we all have that need for speed and accelerating is the fun part of driving. But whether you drive a gasoline or electric vehicle, acceleration is bad for efficiency.  Instead of being aggressive with your accelerator, just slowly make your way to desired cruising speed to save your battery’s juice.  

Tip #2: Climate Control Saps Battery Power

You should already know from driving conventional vehicles that making use of the climate controls, especially the A/C on those hot summer days, can really suck down the fuel.  Except, with electric cars, running either the heat or the cold can put a dent in your battery’s charge. There are a few tricks to help you save your battery.

The first is to take advantage of heated/cooled seating.  Some models of cars come with heated seats as a package and can help keep you warm rather than running the heat.  The second is to warm up or cool down the car while it’s still plugged in to the charger. If you ‘warm up’ the car unplugged, then you’re just wasting more battery power.  Do it while it’s plugged in for better performance.

Tip #3: Maintain Proper Maintenance 

Another way electric and conventional cars are similar is performing regular maintenance and upkeep will drastically improve your car’s function.  Small things, like making sure the air intake filter is clean of debris, can make a big difference in overall performance. Schedule regular trips to your mechanic for inspections and to keep an eye on your battery pack.  One of the biggest complaints about electric cars is the life expectancy of the battery. While this issue has largely been corrected with technological advances, you still want to make sure your battery’s charge is strong and up-to-date.  

Tip #4: Know Your Numbers

Anyone who has driven for any amount of time knows they must pay attention to all the dials and digits that alert the driver to the health of various systems in the vehicle.  You keep track of the fuel level, oil, temperature, water, and if there’s an error somewhere, you’ll most likely have a barrage of lights that will let you know what’s wrong.

Just like we’ve learned how to take care of combustion engine cars, we will also pick up better driving habits when it comes to electric as well.  You know how you drive and if you actually pay attention to the numbers, you can improve the range of your battery. With a process known as telematics, electric cars will give you the information you need to know so you can monitor your progress, and gives you feedback on ways to improve your charging and driving habits.

Tip #5: Learning to Use Eco-Mode

One of the main features people look for in any car is its performance.  Can it go from zero-to-sixty in under 3 seconds? Does it offer a certain amount of torque?  Researchers have been studying the various effects performance cars has on gas mileage (or in this case, battery life).  Much like the typical combustion engine vehicle, you have several buttons at your disposal that can increase or decrease various performances.  

Of course, as you increase performance, it will come at the cost of your battery range.  There are all different types of performance buttons that can help you save juice as well, including “Eco-mode”, which is designed to give you the best possible performance while saving energy.  New technologies have allowed smart cars to know when you’re going downhill to also save on power (available on the 2016 Nissan LEAF).  

Tip #6: “Power” Braking

It’s all about the transfer of power.  When you hit the brake pedal, it creates a force of kinetic energy that can be used to reenergize the battery.  Smooth braking puts a premium effort on adding more power to the battery, making your driving style even more important to your maximum range.  If you’re accelerating at a slower, more comfortable pace, then there will be no need to jam on the brakes, giving you better range.  

Most of the cars on the road today have a similar design.  The rules for safe and effective driving still apply when driving electric.  You must always be careful not to force it, as good driving habits will extend the life and the range of your battery.  By following these six tips and tricks, you just might get more out of your electric car than what is says on the sticker.

If you had to use one word to describe the Trump administration, that word would be “unpredictable”. Many older Americans are starting to feel the same about their impending retirement.

Trump seems to find enemies at will and won’t hesitate to attack them on Twitter. When the President of the United States goes after someone, the world notices. Stock prices drop. Whole industries have changed their priorities just to stay within his good graces.

While Trump’s policies mean a lot of good things for workers, he’s also come out swinging on spending. He has been working on cutting the benefits the Obama administration gave to college students so they wouldn’t be burdened.

Many have also lamented the proposals that set out to significantly cut other programs too. PBS funding and Meals on Wheels has been on the chopping block.

What cuts are going to come next? No one knows, and that leaves a lot of retirees (especially women) worried about their benefits.

A New Retirement Survey

According to a survey from the Nationwide Retirement Institute, 62% of women near or at retirement age plan to use Social Security in their golden years. 58% of them have a strong belief that Trump will cut their benefits in a push to roll back entitlements.

This is only a small part of the many challenges women face in retirement, especially this generation of women.

The American College of Financial Services recently conducted a survey of their own. They wanted to test the financial literacy of men and women. 80% of the women who took the test failed. Many do not know their options. They rely on their spouse to be the breadwinners and always trusted things were in order.

The problem with that is, women live longer than men. This makes it extremely important that they take better charge over their financial future and understand their options.

Knowing Your Retirement Options

 Roberta Eckert, the Vice President of Nationwide Retirement, believes women should understand their options.

“Too many women retirees have no retirement income outside of Social Security. And even for women that do, the fact that they live longer, makes considering maximizing Social Security benefits extremely important,” she said.

The majority of women nearing retirement age believes that Social Security will be enough only adds to their nervousness. Men tend to be investors and have different types of income flows ready. If Social Security is cut, they aren’t ready.

Women have different challenges and need to be even more aggressive about this issue. They should take the time to improve their financial literacy and know all their options. If not, they might end up finding themselves working past retirement age.

Not realizing what you don’t know could come back to haunt you later in life.

If you know someone or are yourself in or near retirement, it can be easy to misunderstand how Social Security works. It can be difficult also to estimate life expectancy or plan for big expenses like long-term medical care.

You may think you have everything planned out, but before you dismiss our advice maybe things won’t work out the way you think they will.

Most people don’t have the luxury to hire a financial planner, and therefore they don’t get the best, objective financial advice before retirement. Steve Vernon, a consulting research scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity, fears that many people today just go with the flow. He warns against thinking that a Social Security check and a little savings is enough, “There’s no way that somehow everything will work out.”

Retirement can get complicated, and sometimes decisions can have severe consequences. Talking with a financial planner can save you from making a costly mistake.

1. Assuming Your Funds Outlive You

If you die early into your retirement, your worries about paying for the rest of it are over right there. Live longer though, and you easily could outlive the funds that you’ve painstakingly accumulated.

This favors the decision of waiting to get on Social Security, since every year you put it off increases the benefit you receive. This is a guaranteed return on a stream of income that you can’t lose in a recession.

2. Ignoring Your Spouse

When one spouse passes, that Social Security check goes away. The surviving spouse has to get by on the larger of the two checks. To maximize this benefit, it will be prudent for the higher earner to delay filing for Social Security for as long as possible.

Married couples who are on track to receive a pension should also consider applying for a “joint and survivor” option that allows payments to continue in the event one partner passes prematurely.

3. Procrastinating on Debt into Retirement

Being rich has its perks. Debt may not be a big deal if you have the means to cover the payments and interest. If you are not rich however, you may be pulling too much from your savings to pay off your debts. If you dig into your retirement funds early, that could push you into a higher tax bracket or even increase your health insurance premiums.

Consulting a financial planner will give you some options to have your debt paid off before retirement. It would be wise to do so before you think of digging into retirement savings to pay off big debts like a mortgage.

4. Sidelining Plans for Long-Term Care

A big fear of many people is that they slowly slip into infirmed care in their golden years. Roughly 70% of people over 65 will need help in the future with daily tasks such as bathing, eating or dressing.

Family and friends can only help so much, and long-term care costs can balloon to over $250,000. A solution to prepare for this will be to apply for long-term care insurance.

5. Getting Realistic on your Retirement Date

Half of retirees believe that they left the workforce earlier than they had intended. Some are lucky enough to retire early due to windfalls or high-performing stock markets. Many more start retirement early due to losing their jobs or being too ill to find another job.

You can choose to work longer in an attempt to save more, but it is not an option that is guaranteed.

Understanding that time and good health are finite resources, it is better to not put off retirement for too long. Give the Financial Helpers a call today – and you can find out if it’s time to start saving for the future that you want.