Cheap Meal Plan Ideas Contest

Frugal Mavens is a fairly new website that aims to bring together expert cheapskates from all over the land! They plan on running some simple contests with the basic theme of saving money. The first one is a cheap meal plan tip contest, and it is very simple.

They want meal plan ideas that are:

• Fairly quick and simple to prepare.
• Cheap – Some entries are running about $2 a person.
• Healthy – they want to concentrate on balanced meals, though the use of some prepared foods to save time is ok.
• Good – they want meals that will please a family, make people feel satisfied, and would tempt people to prepare and eat them!

How Does the Contest Work?

Meals plan tips are simply entered in the comments. Visitors vote upon them, and informally, the website’s editors will pick some of the best. All entries will be moderated, but posters can include a link back to their favorite website. The best entries will be rewarded with a full article with more links back to their favorite website!

This sounds like a fun way to help other people provide inexpensive, healthy, and easy meals, and to get some new meal plan tips yourself.

Visit Here to Learn More – Cheap Meal Plan Ideas Contest

Have You Gotten Your COBRA bill?

With rising unemployment, it is only natural that the US health insurance problem is getting worse. There is nothing like a bad in a good economy that is not attended to that grows huge when the economy is weak. Many unemployed Americans do have access to a COBRA health insurance extension. That sounds great until they get their bill and realize that they had no idea how much health insurance costs!

With COBRA, you pay the whole health insurance premium!

Active employees usually pay a portion of their premiums, but many companies contribute a huge share. Terminated employees must pay the entire amount, and they are shocked by the bill. You would be surprised by how many do not realize this and think that the $100 contribution they make every month pays for everything. Then, when they lose their jobs, those same people cannot understand why health insurance costs $1200 for their family. This is just an example, and is not meant to represent any particular situation.

Health Insurance Choices

Some people, like those with severe health conditions and pregnant women, should probably do anything to stay with their group health if they have no other alternatives. However, many people do have a choice: COBRA Health Insurance Alternatives

Even people who cannot get accepted into regular private health insurance may get some state from their state or local government. Every state has a program for high risk individuals, but this program comes with a price tag too. Low income families may get help from Medicaid, CHIPS (children), or county health programs.

I still believe the US health system needs some work to make quality health care available to everybody, but you should know what choices you have.

Pay Less With Good Credit

One thing you really need to do, in order to save money on everything from buying a car to buying car insurance, is to repair your credit. It is a fact that you will pay more when your credit is poor, and you will pay less when your credit is very good.

Now you can hire a service to help you repair your credit, but you probably can do it yourself.  BadCreditBlues.com has lots of resources on repairing your own credit.

It is a fact that most credit reports have errors or data that misprepresents a credit situation. You do have the right to challenge those items, and if the credit bureau cannot prove they are right, they must remove the damaging items. The fact is, that most of the time when you do challenge errors, you will get those errors removed in a prompt manner. Your credit score should improve dramatically.

Another quick thing you can do is, of course, to pay down unsecured debt. One part of your credit score is the amount of credit you can access vs. the amount you actually use! You could have a great record of paying bills, and then suffer because you have used up most of your credit. 

If your credit is still ok, you may qualify for some 0% interest balance transfers.  Then, when you have the balance moved to a lower (or no) interest rate credit card, please take those high interest rate cards and put them away! I would not cancel them because that will lower your available credit, but I would stash them in a safety deposit box or some other safe and inconvenient location.

I think it is more important than every to keep a detailed home inventory. We just got through storm season, and I saw all of the people that had to leave their houses, and even the area their homes were in. It isn’t just that they could not live in their homes, but they could not even get back to them!

But in order to collect on their home owners insurance policies they would need to be able to make a claim. Well that’s where online home inventory software comes in. Since the software works on the internet, files can be pulled up from any pc that is online. If your house is damaged, and if you need to leave, you can pull up records from a library, your sister’s house, or any other internet access!

Related: Best Homeowners Insurance Companies and Discount Homeowners Insurance Quotes.

Do You Need A Health Or Dental Plan?

Most of us have seen this statistic many time: 47 million Americans lack health benefits! Almost as troubling is the fact that about twice that many Americans do not have dental benefits. With increasing unemploymet figures, this is even more troubling. How can you keep health and dental benefits when you are uemployed?

We want to thank USHomePay.com for a couple of contributions. First, they posted on unemployment health insurance options that may be available to you. These range from an extension of your work benefits through COBRA laws to individual health insurance to lower cost state and county health programs.

Then, in their quest for budget solutions, they posted about unemployment dental discount programs which can help families get access to routine care and major work, and can even save money when times are not so hard.

If you need to find a family health plans, consider the disadvantages and advantages of HMO or HSA or PPO health insurance plans too!

Just when we thought it could not get much worse, we find that the holidays are coming. We have already endured higher credit card interest rates, lower investment values, and a scary job situation. Now, with everything from holiday feasts to a gift list that must be satisfied, it is hard to see how we are going to make it through without increasing our debt or depleting our savings accounts.

We did find some good tips on cutting back on holiday spending though. If you cannot survive without using a credit card, consider transferring high interest balances with a 0% balance transfer if you can qualify. Of course, it would be better not to touch the plastic at all.

Some cheap alternative presents that still say you care:

• Make festive cookies and package them up nicely in tins, boxes, or gift bags. I would certainly not mind getting cookies for a present. If somebody is watching their cookie intake, as I should be, consider learning how to dry fruits as an alternative.
• Make a “mix in a jar” with computer generated instructions. I have seen plenty of ideas for pre-mixed cookies, cakes, etc. on the internet. You can put them in a nice container, stick a ribbon on, and have a thoughtful gift.
• If cooking is not your thing, put together a a “kit” for something from inexpensive items purchased at a discount or dollar store. You can put together a drawing set, simple took kit, or other creative set, and again, box it up nice and send it on.
• If you cannot afford the whole item, such as an electronics item, consider a gift card to the store where they can be purchased. A $150 IPOD may cost too much, but a $30 gift card is a start.
• Movie rental gift cards, packaged with some microwave popcorn and a couple of candy bars, make a “movie night” gift that men and women appeciate. You should be able to knock this one out for $10.

Stay organized, make a list, and try to make that list fit your budget. You should not have to suffer in January and February for your holiday spirit!

It isn’t really easy, or maybe even relevant, to come up with an average funeral cost in the US. So many factors can afffect the final tally. But people are curious to find out how much it costs for a so-called traditional American funeral. The article links above show that it is easy for the cost to top $8,000 – $10,000 or even more!

Suggestions like holding the ceremony away from the funeral home and purchasing a plain coffin can trim hundreds, or thousands, of dollars from the bill. Coffins can vary in price from less than $1,000 to over $20,000! Gravesite monuments can also vary in cost from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. The best way to avoid spending too much on a burial and funeral is to do some prior planning.

If you want to plan for your own funeral, or if you need to take care of final arrangements for a loved one, go ahead and find out what you need to do, and how much it will cost. Look at the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Funeral Consumer Guide to help you get started. It is amazing how much good, free information that the US federal government publishes if you know to start looking for it.

Options for coming up with the cash to pay for a funeral include a savings account, pre-need plans from funeral homes, and final expense policies from insurance companies. It is really important to think about the money you will need, and also where you will get it from. After a loved one dies, the family will have plenty of sources of stress and grief without having to quickly come up with 8 to 10 grand in a hurry!

And now for something a bit different……

Poker, and other forms of gambling, are very restricted in most US states. So while it is legal to play a game of skill, like tennis or golf, for prize money, it may not be legal to gamble or play a game of chance. However, where does poker fall? Is it a game of skill or a game of chance. I mean, even an obvious game of skill like tennis, has some chance elements to it.

Well, a game called skill poker is legal in most US states, and you can play practice games of legal skill poker for free here. The free practice games should be legal anywhere.

However, not that if you want to take the next step and play for money you must check with the website to make sure you state is legal. I am NOT A LAWYER, but I believe it is illegal to play skill poker for money in the following states:

Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vermont

Generating Your Own Electricity

This has got to be a cheapskate’s dream. People are building their own solar and wind power generators, and using them to power their homes! Commercial systems are pretty expensive to start, but apparently you can build a do-it-yourself starter system for less than $200. You can shave your power bills, cut them out, and even produce excess electricity to sell back to the grid.

You can also find tax cuts for using renewable energy, which is another incentive, as if you needed another one!

Find do it yourself plans for homemade wind power generators and homemade solar electric cells.

You can prepare for a job loss by doing a bit of planning. And beliee me, a bit of planning make the difference between a crisis and an opportunity.

First, think about your rainy day fund. Do you have enough cash to pay essential bills for a couple of month? Experts tell us that we really should have 3 – 6 months worth of cash saved in case of an income loss, but a couple of months or 6 weeks would be better than saying you have enough cash to fill your gas tank and then you are done! If you have not managed to save money, maybe you should look into unemployment protection.

Second, can you access all of your business associates, coworkers, and friends without logging into your workplace computer? You’d be surprised how many people organize their life at work. Imagine the catastrrophe of losing all of those records if you cannot get back into your office one day.

Third, are you prepared, emotionally, to lose your job. Many of us go through periods where our work is a big part of our identity. Maybe most of your friends are at work, and it is a big part of your day. Maybe it is time to expand your lifestyle to include other activities or hobbies so you do not feel like you lose your center when you lose your job.