Chill Maadi

Dealing with a salary cut off or losing a job or Living a good lifestyle are some common reasons for developing the second source of Income. These incomes are usually known as Passive Income also. While the earning from your job or self business is known as active Income.

How will the second source of Income help you?

• Helps you to increase your savings.
• Losing a job or pay cutoff situations can be managed easily.
• No need to worry, you can earn it even after retirement.

Let’s move further where many of us think that we have to bind for another part-time job to earn as a second source, but it’s not that much true. You can devote time as per your convenience, daily or weekly and still make a handsome income.

Now in the era of the Internet, it is simple to generate a second source of Income, you need a Laptop or Mobile phone and a Good Internet connection.

So, here I’m sharing with you the best sources, which I’m also using to develop another source of income besides my active income.

1. Freelancing: Freelancing is the most recommendable stream for the second source of Income. It merely means devoting your few hours in a day to earn by using your skills, hobbies. Here, you need to complete short term projects, and once you complete it, you will get paid. Many websites are there like Fiverr, which allow you to connect with people who will hire you for work and pay.

You can take freelancing writing work, software development, website designing, App development, SEO services, etc.

2. Online Tutoring: The education sector is a broader sector where you can teach someone at home, can associate with some institutes to teach or even the most suitable which parents prefer is to teach online. Online teaching demand is not limited to foreign country’s students but highly increasing in India as well. You can devote 3-4 hours daily or weekly and earn on per hour basis.

Apart from this, you can also create an online course or content which can be sold through the online platforms Udemy.com, Lynda.com or skillshare.com. You can make an insane amount of money by selling courses.

3. Blogging: You must have heard about Blogging, if not. Then let me tell you in simple language blogging mean writing about something. It could be anything like health, lifestyle, food and many more. However, one should have good writing skills and patience to earn a good income through blogging. Many people also opt for it as their full-time career and now earning lakhs of rupees in a month.

Not sure, how to start? Contact bloggers or content development companies, they hire you for work from home-based even and pay a good amount of money for your quality articles.

Moreover, those who are thinking to start it from your website, here’s the idea, if you can consistently create a lot of value for people with your blogs, and you can generate an unbelievable amount of passive income. Continuous posting of blogs will start bringing in traffic whether you devote any additional time or not.

4. Affiliate Marketing: This is an excellent way to earn passive income who has a website or blogs. Through an affiliate program, you can promote amazon, eBay, Clickbank products wherein case of every sale through your site; you will earn a fixed amount of commission.

It’s always best to sale those products you are either very interested in or one which is highly relevant to your website. This will genuinely help to build trust in the product.

5. Online Business: There is no doubt the tradition of buying and selling things on a store has been gone, and E-commerce has taken its place. Now, with the help of various E-commerce platforms like Shopify, eBay, Amazon, Flipkart, you can quickly start your business with little investment and earn a handsome side income along with your active income.
6. Write an E-Book: Higher efforts in your free time will result from you with higher income. Once you have written an excellent trendy e-book, you can publish and sell it on your website or at Amazon, kindly (highly recommendable platforms) and earn a recurring income for many years.

You can choose any of the alternatives depending upon your skills to generate a second source of Income. Opportunities are everywhere; you need to grab it before your competitor. Proper planning and experience of different types of passive income streams will never let you down at the time of recession.

Title Insurance, should you get it or not? Title Insurance is a type of insurance that most homeowners get when they purchase their home. It’s quite different from homeowner insurance or life insurance. Title Insurance protects the ownership of your home for as long as you own your home.

Why is Title Insurance important?

There have been many situations where individuals have lost their title due to theft. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you own your home, and your identity was stolen. Identity theft is when one person pretends to be someone else by assuming that person’s identity. This is most often done to obtain credit in that person’s name. Your identity can be stolen in several different ways. Some of the ways are a lost wallet with all your identification and your credit cards, unshredded mail, and inputting personal information on a fraudulent website.

Check out Susan’s story. What happened to Susan is very unfortunate. Her identity was stolen, and her title for her home was taken without her knowledge. This can happen to anyone. Here are some tips on how to protect yourself:

• Check your title annually to make sure no changes have been made – a real estate lawyer can check this for you
• Check your credit bureau periodically, you can obtain one free credit report at Equifax or Transunion. Look for any inaccuracies. If you discover you are a victim of identity theft, report it to the authorities immediately and to the credit bureaus to add a fraud alert on your file. Also, contact your banks and credit card companies
• Get Title Insurance with identity theft protection

First Canadian Title is one of the more popular title insurance companies in Canada. The price varies depending on the province, value and type of home.

First Canadian Title’s price includes the following:

• Fraud and forgery – protection against fraudulently registered mortgages against your title
• Duty to defend – the legal fees associated with resolving insured title issues will be covered
• Building permit coverage – coverage for renovations completed without a permit that result in a loss
• Zoning coverage – protection should a property not meet municipal zoning requirements
• Competing interests – protection in the case of someone claiming an interest in your land; for example, an easement for a driveway or a builder’s lien
• Problem-solving/facilitates closings – First Canadian Title will frequently provide coverage for known defects such as encroachments, delays in registration and zoning violations (these are directly from FCT’s website)

Title fraud can be a nightmare to deal with if you’re not protected. It is a shame that we have to think of protecting the title to our home. Whatever happened to just buying a home legally and assuming that the house is yours. I guess those days are over.

One of the things I feel guilty about is my wardrobe. Sometimes I feel like I am not “girly” enough because my clothing pile is very slim-especially now. If I were to examine all my shirts, I am pretty sure that almost half of them would be filled with holes. I am almost afraid to go into my closet right now because of what I might find. Despite this, I find myself feeling bad every time I think about clothing shopping. Maybe it’s because of the constrained budget I have just recently been under. Perhaps it’s my newly adopted minimalism. Maybe its because I have been feeling cheap lately. Whatever the reason, buying clothes has not been at the top of my list.

I used to be really into clothes. Never to an insane degree, but I remember being super excited to go shopping at least once a month or so. I would buy earrings, necklaces, fashionable tops, skirts, whatever I thought was cute and usually on sale. As old as the story goes, I look back on it as now as a way of trying to fit, especially in those all too important high school years. It all seems so silly now. There was more than one time where I felt like I had wasted good money buying things that I didn’t even like the next day or didn’t even wear. Looking at all that wasted money, it became one of the reasons for the catalyst for me being more careful with cash.

I think lately, though, I have been a little too over careful with spending money at least on spending on clothes. As referenced before, my closet has been looking rather sad lately, and I really can’t justify not getting some new stuff. My boyfriend has been experiencing the same thing as well. We both are looking rather raggedy these days. I think I am going to take my next paycheck and spend it on some much-needed clothes for us. With the credit card debt finally paid off, I need to put some effort into getting some much-needed clothing. Although I have resolved to do this, I feel this sense of guilt. It irks me a little bit that I feel like this when it is something I really need. I am going to have to get over it.

Have you ever felt guilty getting something that you needed? Have you ever felt like you needed to put it off even more?

I decided to write about something that has been on my mind a lot lately: charity giving. It is something fundamental to me, but it is something hard to do when you are on a budget. I wish I could donate hundreds of dollars each year to different charities that I like, but the truth is that it is just not possible. Right now, I give money to a few causes where I can. I know that I can donate more once my debt is erased, but until then, it is tricky.

My favorite charities are the ones that deal with helping animals or helping people get back on their feet after a tough situation (job loss, disability, etc.). I had also tried to donate my time, such as to the animal shelter when we fostered dogs. These things make me feel good, but I honestly wish I could do more. I guess it will just provide more motivation for me to kick this debt in the face and move on with my life.

We are still waiting to hear back from the new job for my boyfriend. He is going to call the owner of the company to see what is going on today, so fingers crossed. He has been getting steadily busier with the job he has now, so at least there is that.

We even had the chance to sell a few things over this past week. These things include some old appliances and an extra iPod we had leftover from our house (currently being rented). All in all, these items will help us clear another $600, which will go right into our savings account, of course.

Is your charity giving costing you?

I don’t know if other people get this, but lately, I have been feeling a little frustrated with the rate we are paying down debt. I know it took time for us to accumulate it, but it can be a bit disturbing at the time when I see that we have been working so hard, and there is still much to be done. I am trying to work on this.

I have been dying to take a trip to New York, but I know we must wait until the credit card is paid off. Maybe I will write a post about these nagging little feelings later. It does help to write it out. Anyways, we are going to a friend’s house tonight, which will be a helpful, inexpensive way to relax and socialize. Maybe that is what I need more than anything.

Market Capitalisation based index and its wide adoption as the proxy for the market has been controversial for several decades now. The opponents are right in saying that the market cap index keeps overweighting past winners and underweighting past losers. Yes, that’s the biggest drawback of a cap-weighted index. It is nothing but the aggregation of all the active bets in the market.

Buying a market-cap-weighted index is akin to purchasing the most significant bets placed in the market. If a particular stock increases in value, the market cap index assigns more weight to that stock hoping it would go even higher and when it does, it further increases the weight of the stock expecting it to go even higher and so on.

A straightforward consequence of that is the occasional huge drawdowns. In the US, the Energy sector was the largest in S&P 500 precisely at the start of the gulf oil crisis; the IT sector was the largest in S&P 500 precisely at the beginning of the dot-com bubble burst; the Finance sector was the largest in S&P 500 exactly before the 2008 Financial crisis and as of today, it is all about the FAANGs and IT again – I am not speculating here; just saying the mechanics of how a market cap index works.

If it is that bad, then why is it considered the benchmark and why is it so difficult to beat such a stupid benchmark by some of the smartest intellectuals on the planet? Well, to be regarded as a proxy for the market, any portfolio must be capable of accommodating every single investor in the universe. All individuals, institutions – everyone should be able to hold the same portfolio at the same time.

A cap-weighted portfolio is the closest that can hopefully accommodate such a hypothetical situation and no other portfolio comes even remotely near-universal holding. For instance, every investor in the world can’t hold an Equal Weighted portfolio. In other words, despite all its drawbacks, the market-cap-weighted portfolio is the only macro-consistent benchmark available today.

Why is it difficult to beat? Let’s see. If we take every single security in the market and cap-weight them, we get the market index. Similarly, if we aggregate every single active bet in the market or every single active manager in the market (passive managers are already the market) by the size of their outstanding values (AUM), we should get the market. In other words, an average active manager (includes active managers, individual stock pickers, entrepreneurs, everyone who is not passive) should produce zero alpha. That’s not bad. I am not choosing an average active manager, but a smart one; extraordinary; above-average one.

Here is the catch.

A mediocre manager produces zero alpha before trading costs and management fees. Once all the management fees and expenses are accounted for, an average active manager underperforms the market precisely by the average prices and costs. The probability of finding a good manager is no longer 50-50 but significantly less. It is still not zero, though. You can even find some managers beating the market, and I am confident many of you can come up with several names.

However, studying long track records of the active managers, finding a consistently outperforming active manager for the long term is minuscule. So many researchers have documented this. So keeping track of whether your supposedly good manager is still good is a massive headache and introduces an additional problem – Manager Selection.

Once again, there has been documented evidence, the even sophisticated institutional investors are terrible at manager selection. There is a high probability of committing Type I (false positives – hiring a bad manager) and Type II (false negatives – firing a good manager) errors.

What about those small-cap funds that were consistently beating the small-cap index? The consensus is that for large-cap exposure – indexing is the best, but for small-cap exposure as there is still some alpha left in that space and active managers are doing well consistently. How are we so sure? Let me introduce you to the world of factor investing and address the second biggest criticism of the cap-weighted indices.

Ever since the introduction CAPM (single market factor model – I am sure most members of AIFW must be aware of it given the frequency of the model being used by Pattu sir in his videos), there have been well-documented anomalies in the market. A specific set of factors (Small-cap, Value, Momentum, Low Volatility, Quality) produce CAPM alpha over a very long term. These market anomalies once considered as market mispricings were so persistent and pervasive and led researchers to take a risk-based approach.

It was proposed that Equity risk is not solely consistent with Market risk but these additional risk factors and so the extra returns are merely compensations for these extra risks. It is still a widely debated subject lacking broad consensus. However, one interesting study by Ang et al., 2009 on Norwegian Pension Fund found that the exposures can explain all the CAPM alpha (good and bad) of the active managers to these additional risk factors. Thus born a new industry called factor investing. A very cost-effective systematic way of exploiting these extra risk factors became so popular in the Developed World with the number of ETFs on track to exceed the number of stocks shortly.

Why am I saying these?

When we say active small-cap managers comfortably beat the benchmark, do we have some evidence whether is it skill based alpha or is its exposure to these documented additional factors? Small-cap fund manager with a Value tilt or momentum or Low Vol tilt could outperform a plain vanilla small-cap index. If that’s the case whether the 2% fees is justified?

Has anyone or any study attempted to answer this question?

It is a genuine question out of curiosity. I don’t know much about the Indian AMC industry.

If you haven’t fallen asleep by now, please give your comments – supporting or opposing – it doesn’t matter – just please be polite and respectful.

Having your own home is the most expensive purchase and in the ordinary person’s life, it is usual to take a loan for the funding your home. However, there could be the chances that one might get stuck somewhere due to the shortage of funds and not able to pay EMIs of Home loan. There could be several financial crises including loss of job, illness, some medical emergency, etc.

“But if you continue in defaulting to pay EMIs, Bank would seize your home and auction it in the market” This statement creates tension and make you panic because the reality is you are legally bound to pay off your loan.

So, No one wants to let such situations arise. Although, if you treat such situation carefully, it might never arise.

Now, the question is how to treat with the situation when you can’t pay your home loan EMI?

Don’t worry! Here I’m going to share with you the practical options available to come out from this problem, all you have to do is to take initiative:

1. Negotiate with your lender: Your lender is the first option to help you. Yes, Contact them, arrange a meeting and explain your genuine situation that why are you not able to pay EMIs. Take the active step before the issue arises. It would be beneficial if you could take your all loan documents to show them that you have a good past record.

As a genuine borrower, you will be able to convince them to pay your loan as soon as you can as were paying earlier EMIs on time, there are high chances that lender will allow you some time to pay EMI.

2. Restructure your loan: Sometimes situations arise when EMI is too high, due to an increase in interest rates or might be some other temporary financial problems and you are not able to pay such a huge amount of EMI.

In such cases, you have an option to restructure/reschedule your loan. Here, the bank reduces the amount of EMI and increase the tenure of the loan period. You just need to approach the bank with the relevant documents and convince them that the problem is temporary and would be resolved soon.

3. Grace Period: When you are in shortage of money for some time like you have lost your job but sure enough to get another one within few months and will be able to repay your EMIs again time, you can approach your bank for deferral of your payments.

Bank will help you to grant some relief by allowing you a grace period and you can start repaying your EMIs after some time as discussed with the lender. However, it should be noted that with the deferred payments you need to pay late payment penalties (Delayed payment charges).

4. Lump-sum settlement: If the crisis is too deep and you feel that there are no chances of any improvement in your financial status in the near future, you could go for a Lumpsum (one-time) settlement.

Here, you have to negotiate with the bank and the bank settled the case by taking the lump-sum amount from a borrower but, for this to happen, you will have to negotiate with the bank and convinced them.

However, you should be careful that settling your loan would get reflected in your credit report and could create in the problem while looking for another loan in the future.

5. Liquidating your Investments: In case you are not able to negotiate with the lender or the cash inflow problem is regular, you have the option to liquidate your investments such as Fixed Deposits, Mutual funds, etc. which will help you to pay your EMIs and save you home.

Conclusion: You are not the single person who faces the challenge of paying EMIs on the due date and the bank knows well how to help you out when you stuck in such financial problems. Therefore, banks are always with you to deal with it but you have to take a step before the situations get worse. So, they were few effective ways to deal with a problem of not able to pay EMIs, which eventually bank allows.

Healthy financial conditions will open multiple options for you to utilize your money and take decisions accordingly. Based on your options, choices, and finances your life goals will be impacted. So, it is always advisable to consider various parameters while making any decision.

Similarly, when a question comes on decisions of spending or saving, a question that many people would like to ask is “Should I prepay my home loan or invest for retirement?”

Trying to decide between eliminating debt (Home Loan) and investing in the future is a difficult decision.

No doubt clearing a home loan with prepayments will reduce your burden but on the other hand, saving for investment also lets you enjoy life without any worry. So, both the options for your benefit but the matter are what to choose?

Let me help you to give a glance at the benefits available under both options.

Prepayment of the loan will not only help to reduce your burden but also gives you the benefit of saving tax.

As per current income tax laws, you can avail of the deductions for the payment of principal amount under Section 80C up to the amount of Rs. 1.5 lakh and the interest portion of the EMI paid for the year can be claimed as a deduction up to a maximum of Rs 2 lakh under Section 24.

So, if your annual interest outgo is higher than Rs 2 lakh, it makes sense to prepay the loan and save on future interest payments.

Alternatively, Investment instead of prepayment of home loan should have opted only when the after-tax return from the investment is likely to be higher than the effective cost of the housing loan. Although, there are several risk-free, tax-free debt options such as PPF, SIPs, Mutual Funds, Sukanya Samruddhi Yojana and listed tax-free bonds, which offer higher annualized return than the cost of EMIs.

Moreover, in case you are looking for long term benefits and also a risk-taker, you can also consider investing in equities, which will provide you higher returns in comparison with the expense of EMIs. Usually, investment in equity funds provides you with returns ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent (Higher than other investing options).

So, generally, we can sort out such a decision by comparing the opportunity costs. In simple words, opportunity costs compare the return you will get when you invest the lump sum amount and the EMI into another product versus invest in your property investment after bearing the costs of interest and maintenance and adding rent (like income if you get any).

Now, How to calculate the benefits of prepaying a home loan?

Here are the few steps you need to follow to find out the opportunity cost to take a rational decision:

• Plan your calculation sheet by asking for the prepayment EMIs schedule options from your bank and look for the other investment options return available.
• Now, compare the expenses of housing loans along with the returns of investing options (or you might simply compare the rate of returns in both cases).
• Lastly, consider all the tax benefits you can avail as well as the tax you have to pay on your invested returns (generally in case of equity) or can opt for the tax-free investment options.
• If you have the opportunity to earn a higher return than the interest on the home loan, prepayment would be beneficial in financial terms.

However, one should not only stick on the number of calculations to take the decision but also consider other factors as well

• You have to think mentally which alternative will give you more leverage like will being debt-free make you happy or enjoying returns on investments.
• If you thinking to get higher returns in equity, will you be able to take the risk and have other options of earning to cover up in case of loss as the market remains volatile and emotions never play any role.
• Consider your liquidity position as well as if you need to have liquidity for short term, equity investment might not be a good option.

Demanding a new opportunity might cause a reduction in your current payout. Pay cut simply means a reduction in an employee’s salary. There could be various reasons including layoffs, corporate restructuring and cost-saving initiatives by the employer.

Apart from these, there could be reason from your side like you may decide to switch companies or careers and ready to work in a lower salary because the opportunity for growth is great or you want to work with a company having less stress.

Of course, reduction in anyone’s salary is unfair, and unjust, which gives an unpleasant reaction and you have to sacrifice a few of your dreams as well and deal with a pay cut.

So, you have to take immediate action to deal with the money effectively. Here are the small six steps that will help favorably to manage your money and deal with this problem:

1. Revise your Budget: You should consider all your money inflows and outflows again and revise your budget based on your new paycheck. You might have to consider factors like in case of shifting jobs, the cost of living might get changed. Try to make a list of necessary things and check that your current salary is enough to cover the necessities. If yes, you might look for other luxurious items or savings, depending upon your needs.
2. Eliminate unnecessary expenses: This is the foremost advice to manage your earnings. You should not only focus on saving but also cutting down or limit your expenses. Try to eliminate expenses from clothing, entertainment (Netflix, fast food), trips, etc. Go for a local grocery store instead of spending much on restaurant meals.

Don’t worry this cut in expenses is for the short term. Once you start getting a higher salary, you can start it again or might be till then you got habitual of saving from one more option of cutting down unnecessary expenses.

3. Look for Side hustle: In the Internet era, you can look for various freelancer or part-time jobs where you can devote 3-4 hours (depending upon the type of work) daily to earn some extra income. This will help you to compensate your salary which was offered earlier at the higher rate.
4. Save your rent: Another good option is to save from paying higher rent. Yes, if you are living in a rented property with a high rent rate, you can look for another rented space with lower rent costs. This will help you to save this money and use it for other important necessary payments.

Alternatively, you can ask someone to share your room by paying rent. It is beneficial for both as you will able to earn and another person could eliminate their own expense.

5. Debt Priority: Don’t forget to pay your debts in due time. It’s difficult to manage the payment of others but it could worsen the situations if you don’t pay your debt on priority. Moreover, being too late in repayment will also give an adverse impact on your Credit score.

So, what you can do is, in case you have taken any loan, you can negotiate with the lender and it will help you to offer an extended time to repay your debts.

6. Don’t liquidate your investments: The biggest mistake people do is to liquidate their investments of Fixed Deposits, Sips, and Mutual Funds. No doubt this will help you in the short term but what about after retirement? How are you going to manage that time?

It is better to manage your current salary for the short term rather than compromising the long term goals.

Saving a penny could lead to filling a box, no matter how much small saving it is, it will eventually help you somewhere to manage your living. It is always advisable to maintain good savings not only to secure your future but also to deal with unexpected emergencies.

Saving money might not seem easy for everyone.  Some people get stuck in a financial dilemma every year.  If you plan to save money in everyday life, it can save you from such unplanned worries. It is important to know the details of your income and expenditure before making a saving habit. There are so many things in everyday life we tend to buy instead of following a sustainable idea. Here is a brief idea of the money-making habits in everyday life.

Plan your week

• Who does not love weekends? And most of us love to splurge on luxuries during vacations on weekends. But at the end of the month, you are unable to spend even an extra penny. So this is not the way to save smartly.  Plan your week according to your budget and income.
• Do not go overboard with expensive dinner dates! It will help you to save more for your everyday groceries.
• You can always opt for a coffee machine at home to make more cappuccinos at lower costs. A single investment in a coffee machine will save your money from regular bills at cafes.

Save on your everyday commute

• Opt for public vehicles whenever you can. It will retain your savings by cutting the expenditure on fuels. Moreover, it will also contribute to a greener world.
• Offer your colleagues a seat in your car by sharing the fuel expenses.

Uninstall on-line shopping apps at some certain intervals

• Online shopping stores always offer lucrative vouchers to attract customers. The more you visit these apps, the more you become an impulsive buyer.
• Uninstalling such apps will help you to splurge less.

Install some financial planning apps

You will be much benefitted if you install some financial planning apps. Apps like Mint and Acorns can help you to create plans according to your budget. So, cut off expenses by setting an alert on your smartphone.

Cook at home

• Most of us end up ordering from restaurants or some food chains at the end of the day. This happens to have unplanned meal preparations. Curtail your expenditure by cooking at home more often. It will not only make you healthier physically but also financially.
• Try to use the food wastes in making different recipes. You can always learn these from online tutorials.

Do not keep lights on during day time

Allow keeping your windows open to let the sun rays in your rooms. Cut off your electric bills by using natural light as much as you can. It will also make you feel fresh and happy from within.

Do not overcharge your gadgets

We always tend to forget to switch off the electric supply even after a full charge of a gadget.  This is harmful to the gadgets also. Moreover, it will increase the electricity bills to some extent if you make it a habit.

Catch offers whenever you can

Look into the offers online and offline while buying anything. Research and compare product prices to save more in daily life.  It will allow you to buy more things in a short budget.

Opt for wholesale markets

If you buy your daily needs like groceries and stationeries from wholesale markets, you can save more than you expect.  You will be able to manage to buy more things in the small budget from wholesale markets.

Get customer reviews before buying new things

We love to experiment with new things like beauty products and gadgets. But it is seen that new things might not be as satisfactory as the old ones. So, get customer reviews before buying new things. Do not experiment after investing hard-earned money in these.

These daily habits will curtain unwanted expenses from your day to day life. Thus we can manage to have more savings from the very beginning of our earning days. Save more to get more!

One of the things we’ve noticed in our family is that the more advertising we see, the more stuff we are likely to want. This is especially true with our children. We try to minimize the amount of advertising they are exposed to, which helps to alleviate some of the “I wants”. It is tricky, though because advertisers are always trying to woo our kids.

One of the ways we attempt to keep marketing material away from the children is to minimize their tv time and their exposure to commercials. We have a rule in our house, “when the commercials come on; the tv goes off”. They are trained to shut the tv off for a few minutes while the commercials play and then turn it back on when the show they are watching resumes. We are usually close by to enforce this rule. The kids have limits on the shows they are allowed to watch as well as the length of time per day.

Another way we minimize their exposure to advertising is by throwing out all the toy catalogues and magazines that are sent their way. American Girl is one of the worst offenders. We have never purchased anything from them, but somehow they got our daughter’s name. They faithfully send her their latest catalogue so she can see all the dolls she must have, at the cost of $100 or more per doll. Yikes! Now we sort through our mail before bringing it into the house and toss any catalogues or sales flyers directed at the kids.

For myself, I don’t browse catalogues or stores where I know I will be tempted with impulse purchases. I have come to recognize that merely removing these things from my line of vision helps me to see more clearly our goal of saving money and living within our means. When I am feeling particularly emotional, I avoid advertising like the plague — no TV, magazines, online shopping, etc.

Now we don’t tune out all advertising. That would be impossible to do. However, we find that by keeping it too low levels, everyone in the family is not focused on the next “thing they have to have”.