Photo by LCNA

Good Morning Everyone.  It’s Monday December 19th and that means there are only 6 days until Christmas Day.  Christmas can definitely be an expensive time of the year and if we get carried away in the spirit of gift giving we can definitely break our budget.  Green Panda is here to help everyone save some money during the holiday season and start some new (inexpensive) holiday traditions.  Today in our “Home for Holidays” series we are discussing different ways that we can save money during the holiday season with some inexpensive (and maybe some new) holiday traditions.

What are your family holiday traditions?

Here are some Holiday Traditions that Won’t Break Your Budget

Ask Everyone To Bring Something.  It is very expensive to host a holiday party.  It is also very time consuming to plan and prepare a holiday dinner.  It is a lot easier and definitely more budget friendly to ask our guests to prepare and bring a dish.

Don’t Serve Dinner.  We can host a party with a buffet style menu that serves hors d’oeuvres and snacks.  We can invite people over after lunch around 2 pm or we can start our party after dinner around 7 pm.  This will ensure that people have eaten before they come over.  We will have more time for gift giving and socializing with our friends and family when we don’t have to sit down at the table for dinner.

Get Outside.  The holidays are about spending time with family, so dress warmly and get outside to spend time with your family and enjoy the winter weather.  You and your family can make Snow Angels, Build a Snowman, or go Ice Skating.  Outdoor activities keep us active and let us get some fresh air.  When we party inside during the holidays we sit and watch TV, eat food, and drink. Getting outside is definitely a healthier and more active way to spend time with our family members during the holidays.

Go To The Movies.  If you celebrate Christmas on another day  of the year (i.e. December 24^th or January 7^th) or if you find yourselves with nothing to do after the gifts are exchanged and the presents are opened on December 25^th then go to the movies. I personally love going to the movies, and the last two years I have gone to the movies on Christmas Day with my friends after our family holiday parties were finished.  I was surprised to see how many families spend the holidays together at the movies.  There are always some great movies that come out during the holiday season so what better time to see a great movie than on Christmas Day.

Tell us about your family holiday traditions.  Do you drink hot chocolate in front of the Fireplace? Do you exchange gifts on Christmas Eve? Do you sing Christmas Carols with your neighbours?

How do you and your family celebrate your holiday traditions?

If you like this post be sure to check out the previous posts

in our “Home for the Holidays” series:

Don’t Let the Holidays be Costly

Don’t Be Tempted to Swipe Your Card

Travelling Home For The Holidays

Holiday Dinners on a Budget

Good Morning Green Panda Readers.  Happy Civic Holiday to (some of) our Canadian Readers. Today we are discussing the right time to buy our first home.  Homeownership is definitely a privilege and not a right.  Not everyone can afford to buy a home, and not everyone is responsible enough to own their first home. Before we decide to buy a home we should definitely research home ownership to get all of the relevant information, get information regarding the process of buying our first home so we know what to expect, and go over our finances to make sure that we can afford to buy our first home.

In an ideal world the right age to buy our first home is when we have saved enough money to pay for our down payment, moving expenses, and closing costs.  However, the reality is that not everyone who can save money is responsible enough to buy a home.  And in more cases, not everyone can afford the continuing expenses that come with homeownership.

Buying our first home is a big commitment and we should be both mentally and monetary prepared for the responsibility that comes with buying a home.  Just because we can afford to buy our first home doesn’t mean that we should.

The Pros of Buying a Home in our Twenties

Buying a home can be a good investment.  However we have to make the commitment to stay in the home for several years and allow the value to increase over time.

We will learn financial responsibility.  Buying our first home may be the biggest expense that we will ever have.  Even if we aren’t totally ready, we will quickly learn how to budget our income as well as become financial responsible.

It Gives Us Freedom and Independence.  Once we move out of our parents home and into our own home or condo our parents can never again use the phrase “As long as you live under my roof, you will live by my rules.” In our own home we make the rules (and break the rules) as we see fit.

The Cons of Buying a Home in our Twenties

There are a lot of reoccurring expenses that come with buying our first home. Buying a Home is not a one-time expense. This is why having money saved for the down payment is not enough of a reason to buy a home.  Property Taxes, heating costs, and electric bills can all add up to be very expensive.  We should also have an emergency fund in case of an unforeseen expense such as a new roof, replacing a water heater, or a plumbing mishap.

Buying a Home is a lot of work.  The upkeep of a home is enormous.  There is always something that needs to be repaired or something that can be improved.  People who own a home instead of rent an apartment tend to spend more money on the upkeep of their home because it is an expense.

Buying our first home a huge commitment. When we own a home we are committed to our home and to our mortgage. If we need to move or want a change of scenery we can’t just sublet our apartment or move out of our parent’s house. So many things are uncertain and unclear in our life during our twenties and owning a home may not give us the flexibility that we need.

Here are Previous Posts in the Investing Our Money in Our Twenties series:

Traditional Savings Accounts Are Boring!

You are only 20. So take some risk!

You Won’t Get Rich Overnight

How Much Money Do I Need To Buy My First Home?

Photo by Images of Money

Tips for keeping your apartment looking clean, quickly

• Make your bed after you showered and get dressed. It keeps the appearance neat and gives the bed a chance to air out. Remember to change your sheets once a week.

• Have one basin filled with soapy water and put dishes in there to do later.This is a source of stress for many couples as one wants the dishes done right away and the other takes their time. A compromise is to have the dishes ‘soaking’ in one basin. That person can come back to it later. If dishes are in the second basin, then it’s time to do all the dishes.

• Clean as you use in the bathroom. This room can get messy quick, so it’s best to wipe the sink off when your finished and clean around the toilet. When you wait a week to go back and clean, it’s usually disgusting and you put it off more.

• Throw away excess paper around the front of the apartment. Throw the junk mail out as soon as you get it. By just doing that, it’ll make the apartment seems tidier and more organized.

There you go, just 4 quick things that will make your apartment seem cleaner without scrubbing or toiling a whole day. Little by little helps out more as well.

Photo Credit: Green Panda

I had a lot of fun this past Friday: a friend came over and helped organize and redesign the living room space in our apartment. She has a real eye for spaces and she was kind enough to offer her help.

We have been in the apartment for about 8 months and we needed to rearrange it a bit. We have fireplace and since winter is approaching, we want to be able to gather around it. We also want to have a more open feeling with the spot. When we bought the second couch and chair from friends, we kind of just dumped them where we could.

The big concern was budget. We wanted to spruce up the place without spending a ton of money. Fortunately, our friend brought over some stuff she had in her basement and storage and gave us some ideas on how to use what we already have and change it up. Sometimes you don’t have to buy stuff new, you can just reuse items that you have or reuse other people’s ‘treasures’.

Not only are we happy with our living room, we saved hundreds of dollars. It goes to show that with some planning, you can upgrade your space without killing your bank account. We couldn’t do it without our friend. Now I just have to keep the apartment clean.

How did I calculate how much we saved?

I went to Target and Walmart’s site to find a comparable product. I’m not including the fee for a stager/interior designer into the total (for our city, a stager can charge $200 for  de-cluttering and rearrangement!).

• 4 Solid Color Pillows: 4 @ $12.50 => $50
• Patterned Pillow: 1 @ $25
• Set of Curtains: 1 @ $30
• Decorative Candle: 1 @ $10
• Decorative Plate: 1 @ $3
• Poster: 1 @ $5
• Couch Slipcover: 1 @ $60
• Candle Holder and Votive: $10

Total Saved in Living Room: $193

Some Tips on Creating More Space in an Apartment

1. De-clutter your room of unnecessary furniture. We moved the back shelves to the home office where it fits perfectly between our two desks.
2. Keep the walls light in color. Our apartment was painted in tan, so it wasn’t changed. Tan is better than that harsh white shade many apartments complexes use. If we decide to paint later, I prefer light blue, green, or even a pale yellow.
3. Make sure your furniture size works for the room. Our other living room chair was switched with the office chair. While it was comfy, the size a bit too big and made the space seem crowded.
4. Let in more light. The living room has a great view outside, so we leave the shades up and curtain pulled during the day. The natural light helps open up the room.

How much have we spent since the move on fixing up the new apartment?

Here’s what I came up with so far. I might be off by a little, but here are the big purchases in the last 8 months:

• Curtain rods: $30 for a set of 3
• Couch & Comfy Chair w/ Ottoman: $100
• Whirlpool Washer & Dryer: $150
• Washer Cable: $20

For those keeping track with me with Ramit’s 30 Days to Save $1,000 Challenge:

• Tip#1 $45/month
• Tip#2 $10/month
• Tip#3 has brought me $15 for two books I haven’t used.
• Tip#4: $10 for an ING Referral bonus
• Tip#5: $7.25/month
• Tip#6: $235/month once the car loan is paid off
• Tip#7: $80/month
  
• Tip #8: $20/month *note we did this before the challenge
• Tip#9: $240 this month * this also include items we got for the dining room

Grand Total:$407.25

Photo Credit: uzvards

The following is a guest post by Green Panda’s husband, Blue Panda:

Last week, my wife posted about the apartment complex’s claim that our automatically-mailed check was not received.

As it turns out, we left the apartment letter off of the address we were sending the checks to. So, technically, the fluke was that the previous checks made it to the correct destination.

Not that we trust the postal service to deliver mail to the correct location. So far, I’ve had insurance papers and the title to my car be handed to me by friendly neighbors who noticed that they received another person’s important mail. And, of course, there’s things we never received, like the PIN to my wife’s Wachovia check card and who knows what else. If the postal service can’t be trusted to deliver such important items as a title deed or the PIN to a bank account, what chance does an itty-bitty thing like a rent check addressed to the same street have of being delivered correctly?

ING Direct credited the full amount back to our account, which should be available 3 business days after the amount was credited. It seems we were not charged the $25 fee for stopping payment on the check, perhaps because the previous checks had been delivered successfully to the intended location and so we would have expected subsequent checks to clear as well. Whatever the reason, we’re grateful for that.

The apartment managers are being more stubborn, though. They still insist on the late fees. We haven’t heard anything from the complaint sent to the parent company. The late payment is now on our record, along with documentation explaining the circumstances (i.e., that this is a rare circumstance). The management claims that the incident won’t be reported to any other companies, but we have a copy of the documentation just in case.

Even though the check is most likely in a neighboring apartment to the leasing center, from what I’m told, the computerized system they use will not accept late checks as they are statistically more likely to bounce. The fact that ING Direct will not send a check if it would bounce makes no difference to the policy. The level of customer service is far, far lower than that of our previous landlord.

We now have a few options for future payments:

• Continue sending paper checks to the corrected address and hope the postal service is competent enough to deliver them properly. (The landlord in our previous location never had any problems receiving paper checks from ING Direct.)
• Pay with money orders delivered in person. This costs about a dollar per money order and isn’t automatic like bill pay. It’s annoying, but guaranteed to be reliable.
• Pay with electronic checks. Normally, this would be free but the service the apartment complex uses charges a $2.50 “convenience fee.” The incredibly irritating thing about this “convenience fee” is that it should be quicker and easier to process an electronic payment than a paper check. If it isn’t, then do I really want to trust sending my money to such an inefficient electronic system? Neither possibility puts me at ease.
• Pay by writing a check using one of our Wachovia accounts and deliver them in person. This circumvents the $1 fee a money order would cost, but the money could potentially make more than $1/month if it stayed in the ING Direct checking account, so nothing would really be saved.
• Pay using paper checks using next-day certified mail. ING Direct charges a $15 fee for this, so it isn’t cost-effective since there are other, cheaper reliable methods available.
• Pay with the “credit” feature of a bank card. The service the apartment complex uses charges $17 or so for this, so that’s right out.

We’re not completely sure which option we’ll use just yet. Personally, I’m feeling vindictive and would like to choose whichever is the least cost-effective for those who would try to take as much advantage of us as they can. Of course, I can’t know which one that is and so the money order is likely the best choice. The other choices are unreliable or potentially involves what I consider to be an unethical “because we can” fee.