Australia’s Superannuation Guarantee requires companies to contribute the equivalent of 11% of an employee’s monthly pay to an investment account that is controlled by the worker, who can also put in additional money. > (continued)
Just cruised through a reddit post about a guy who explained how his daughter went to an Ivy League College debt free.
I cruise through these reddit posts about finance because I have no education in personal finance. Like having the $1000 emergency fund. That seems like a good idea.
Anyway, the title explains it like his daughter did all the work, but my take was, her parents had money and enough financial knowledge to start saving when she was born. #thread#savings
Okay let's break this down as I understood. When the daughter was born the parents opened a 529 account. I'm 43 and today years old when I heard of this.
They opened the account with $1000 and deposited $50 a week into it. The OP actually said it meant one less Starbucks and one less lunch out. When the daughter got monetary gifts for birthdays or Christmas they took half the money and put it into the 529 and the other half the girl got to spend. #thread#savings
In High School the girl got a dual credit and graduated HS with an AA. In my opinion, wow, congrats. That's awesome. Then she got her bachelor's degree by taking online courses, living at home rent free, OP says this, and applying for scholarships.
The daughter is apparently taking a year off to save for her master's degree working a government job, but she still has enough in her 529 to pay for half of it. #thread#savings
So let's back up a bit. The OP stated that they were financially stable enough in 2004 for his wife to be a full time stay at home mom, but did take part time substitute teaching jobs occasionally. OP had a government job. This all screams privilege to me. And I want to point out this guy's post was paragraphs long. #thread#savings
In 2004, I was 23. I had a 3 year old and a 1 year old. I was making $9.50 an hour at Sam's Club. I'd worked there for 2 years. My husband also worked at Sam's Club, he made $10 an hour. Our apartment rent was $475 in 2004. We brought home $1600 a month, COMBINED after taxes, but doesn't include 401k or health insurance. Our rent was more than 1/3 of our monthly income. Then we had utilities, car insurance, gas, groceries, and two kids in diapers. #thread#savings
Don't get me wrong I tried to open penny savers accounts for my kids but we never had a savings more than a couple hundred. We never went on vacation and I sure as hell wasn't getting Starbucks or eating out. We never had new cars, new clothes, or cable TV. It seemed that something always happened to use all our savings, medical bills, car repairs, etc. #thread#savings
One important aspect of being financially vulnerable is the amount of #savings you have for a 'rainy day'.
A new Resolution Foundation report suggest more than 11 million #workers (and working-age people) have a saving buffer of less that £1k... & less than a third of working-age households had more than three months income in reserve (saved).
If you were a (UK) business with more than 85,000 GBP to stick into savings accounts, how would you handle it?
Related but separate: I vaguely recall a service which keeps an eye on different banks' accounts' rates, and does periodic sweeps to make sure that no single account is outside the #FSCS coverage limit (of 85k) ... but I can't remember its name 🙄 #UkBusiness#Banking#FinancialServicesCompensationScheme#Interest#BusinessBanking#UK#AskFedi#Business#Savings
Tired of Gillette Razor blades costing US$3.58 each then try Safety Razor Blades costing only US$0.08 Each
There’s a lot more to traditional wet shaving than just price, but for many, price is the big deciding factor. Safety razor blades work out to being 44x cheaper than Gillette Fusion5 blades (both as bulk buy items).
It’s true that a quality safety razor is ...continues
I love my solar panels. But the solar panels don't love the British midwinter. Most of the year, my panels produce more electricity than I can use. But in winter we're lucky if they produce 3kWh per day - and most of the time it is considerably less.
So our winter electricity bills must be massive, right?
The Octopus smart tariff charges us a variable amount throughout the day. Every 30 minutes the prices change to reflect the demands on the grid. During peak times, it can go as high as £1/kWh. That's a good incentive not to run the tumble-dryer at the same time as the rest of the country is cooking dinner!
During quieter times, the price of electricity drops - there isn't much demand at 3AM so prices fall. Sometimes they fall to zero. Other times, they fall into negative territory and we get paid to use electricity.
Now, that's all well and good, but most people don't want to shift their consumption habits. The dishwasher goes on when it is full and dinner is cooked before Coronation Street starts. That's where the battery comes in.
We have a 4.8kWh battery. It is hooked up to the Internet and knows what our energy prices are minute-to-minute. When electricity is cheap, it charges up from the grid. When electricity is expensive, it discharges into our home. If we boil the kettle at 7pm, the sensors on the battery detect that we're using expensive electricity and starts outputting stored electricity.
Essentially, we don't have to alter our lifestyle at all. Here's a typical December day. The graph is quite complicated, so let me step you through it.
The bottom graph shows how expensive it is to buy electricity throughout the day. As you can see, there is a peak in the early evening when electricity becomes expensive.
The top graph has two interesting lines on it. The purple line shows how much electricity we're drawing from the grid, the blue line shows what the battery is doing. Early in the morning electricity is cheap - you can see the purple line rising as the blue line falls. That shows the battery is charging. You will notice that it only charges at the cheapest possible times.
In the evening, you can see the purple line dip to zero and the blue line rise. That shows the battery is discharging into our home and there in no electricity being purchased from the grid. There's a similar dip at about 0830 when there's a little spike in price. Clever battery!
I want to stress that is is all automated. I don't have to do a single thing. The battery speaks directly to my electricity provider to get the half-hourly costs. The battery can predict what our usage will be, but keeps most of the electricity for the expensive times of day. Our smart meter sends our usage back to the energy company automatically.
Against a normal tariff of 28.5p/kWh, I'm paying 12.4p/kWh. That's a saving of 16.1p/kWh.
The bill above shows 320kWh per month, which means a saving of £51 from the electricity I buy. That's approximately a 55% discount.
We've had that battery since August, so about 5 months. In that time it has saved us approximately 500kWh. We only moved onto the smart tariff a few months ago, so work out the savings there is complex - but I estimate it's about £130.
December is a high use month (lots of lights on and oven cooking). During summer, the battery mostly fills up with free solar power. It is hard to predict exactly what we'll save in a year, but it should easily for 50% off our electricity bills.
But, of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Our 4.8kWh battery cost about £2,700 to supply and install. That's a large chunk of change. Based on our current projections, its payback period should be about 7 years. Of course, if electricity prices rise significantly, the payback period will shorten.
Solar panels are also expensive to install - between £4,000 and £12,000 depending on your property and how complex your roof is. They mean we pay virtually nothing for electricity in spring and summer. Again, the payback period is under a decade.
We can also sell our excess solar back to the grid. In theory we could also buy cheap electricity in the morning, store it in the battery, and then sell it back at peak times. In practice it isn't worth it; the cost of buying electricity at peak is higher than the price we could sell it for. So it makes sense to use the power rather than selling it.
If you can afford the large up-front capital costs, solar + battery allows you to make massive savings with a dynamic tariff. In times of solar excess, we pay close to nothing per kWh. In winter, we shift our consumption to pay at the cheap rate.
Effectively, it's like pre-purchasing all your electricity for the next decade.
There's no doubt that the cost makes this prohibitive to many people. Ideally, the state should be mandating that all new homes have solar panels and space for optional batteries. We also need V2G (Vehicle to Grid) to allow electric cars to act as home batteries.
But there's no doubt that these technologies actually work! Yes, solar works in rainy London. And, yes, even fairly small batteries can make a significant difference in winter. We're on the cusp of a domestic energy revolution. When coupled with a smart tariff, it means people don't have to change the way they behave in order to save energy.
Hmm, discovered 540 watts of excessive power usage at this house. Security lights are still 90W halogen lights. Can get that down to 66W, saving 474 watts when those lights are on (at night or when accidentally left on). I wonder how many other people around here have failed to change out their lights and are paying way too much for energy usage? #EnergyEfficiency#energy#savings#lightbulbs
We use French press when wife & I drink #coffee together. Lazy me makes instant for just me but that's expensive, more so 'cos decaf organic.
A Keurig helps but that's expensive. Until my #Goodwill luck yesterday went beyond BT Type Cover☝️ and also gave me a near-pristine K-Elite K90, a 2022 model, w all features I need.
This one brand new is $190, sale price $120 but I paid what? 🤪
Oh, did I mention coffee this morning was awesome? 😉
Last time you will see this in 2023. Eveerything ships for FREE. Even really large prints that can be extremely costly to ship. Just about everything you have seen here will come with zero shipping within the USA. Ends Sunday at midnight EST.
are there any online calculators out there to compare putting money in a savings account vs an ISA and when it makes sense to use one or the other? I guess this wouldn't be hard to do in a spreadsheet #finance#savings
It doesn't surprise me, because many people still live paycheck to paycheck and, even if they have some savings, it would not be enough for retirement (even if designated as such).
Something that may not be reflected in the chart are any potential (or actual) pension & Social Security benefits availble as income, which would not be included as "savings."
When I calcuate the savings/investment equivalent value of my combined penion & social security benefits at a modest 3% rate of return, I come up w/a cash equivalent of about $2.6 Million; at 2% it would be equivalent to $3.9 Million; and, at only 1% it would be equivalent to $7.8M.
While I have more "savings" than most people (based the chart), I don't have the kind of cash on hand that would be necessary to pay me the pension/Social Security benefits that I currently receive at those rates of return.
So, I'd be cautious making any firm conclusion about the lack of financial security of future retirees based on this chart.
For anyone looking to flexibly maximize a bit of cash, Fidelity has a great savings offer right now tied to their Bloom app.
If you sign up, complete your account, and deposit $50, they'll give you $105 ($100 for the deposit, $5 for account setup). Not only that, but they will give you an annual savings match of 10% on your first $300 of deposits for the year.
It pains me when I hear how much people spend on their cell phone plans.
I have been happily using Mint Mobile for years in various parts of the US with good coverage (uses the T-Mobile network). I do the 5GB/mo plan that I buy in 12 month batches (the cheapest option), which costs me $200 up front after taxes and fees, which breaks down to about $16.66 a month. I'm often on some wifi network or another so I never even come close to using the full 5GB.
They have several plan options, the most expensive/highest data one has 60GB of high-speed data (after that speeds slow), 20GB hotspot data, and videos stream at 480p. For the 12 months at once after taxes and fees it's ~$510, or ~$42.50/mo.
Plans can also be purchased in 3- or 6-month batches that cost less money up-front but break down to more money per month.
They also have great deals for new subscribers who bring their own phones (try any of the plans for 3 months for $45 + taxes and fees upfront) and even better deals for new users who buy a phone through them (right now it's half off any 12 month plan).
It's worth it regardless for the savings imo, but if you wanna try them out and get a $15 credit to your account 15 days after you start your first plan and get me a $45-$90 referral credit:
Once you start your first plan you'll be able to share your own referral link. They have a "family plan" but there's no discount, just the option to control multiple accounts from one log-in. Split your family into their own log-ins and get the referral credits!