Tahnya is a Certified Financial Planner and former Investment Advisor turned marketing and communications professional She holds a degree from Concordia University, is debt free and currently works in the field of digital marketing.
Good morning Dinks and Happy Friday. I hope you had a great Halloween. Now we are into November and it’s time to focus on Thanksgiving. Actually some stores already have their Christmas items on display…oooh scary thought! Snow, presents, money…..AAAHHH!
We have some great posts for your reading pleasure this weekend so let’s get into it.
OH but first let me congratulate our good friend J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy on his big news. This week Jay announced that he, Mrs. Budgets Are Sexy and little Baby Money – do you love how I capitalized that as if Jay really named his first born Baby Money. LOL. Anyways congrats to Jay and the Money Family because they are now expecting their second little money-maker. CONGRATS!
Have a great weekend Dinks. Enjoy!
My Diary Entry is giving away a portable speaker for your iPod/iPad
So Over This – 3 Tips for Obtaining Health Care Coverage
Financial Samurai – The Best Strategies To Get Out Of Debt And Become Happier In The Process
Gajizmo – How To Impress Your Boss And Get A Promotion
Money Crashers – How to Prevent Identity Theft and Protect Your Personal Information
Wise Bread – 25 Easy Ways to Make Your Life More Interesting
Save Up – Save, Save, Save: Blogger Interview with Go Girl Finance
Good morning Dinks. As you may know I am not a tech-enthusiast, I would still have my old iPod with the wheel if I could find a new cover for it. Instead I now have the iPod touch that I really can’t stand using because it takes five different actions to turn it on before I can listen to music, but hey, someone thought that Apple was a good idea.
The one great thing about having and iPod or an iPhone or any type of Smartphone is that I have access to my money at all times without having to wait in an unbearably boring line at the bank. Have a Smartphone lets me keep in touch with all the happenings in the world without actually having to talk to someone – and since I’m kind of a loner this is a perfect scenario for me.
Banking online anytime you want it
I think social media is great for my money and honestly I can’t even remember a time when I had to write a check or go into a bank branch to do a transaction, but not everyone is as enthusiastic as I am about the advancements in banking.
My father is 60 years old and he thinks that telephone banking means that he calls his personal banker and asks her to process a transaction. My father prefers to go into a bank branch to get money rather than make a withdrawal from an ATM. He doesn’t have a cell phone or a computer so online banking and mobile banking are absolutely out of the question for him. I am not sure if this is the norm for an older generation or if it’s just my dad.
Do your parents use mobile apps and online banking to manage their money?
3 Ways That Social Media Can Help Your Money
Access to up to date news. I follow several newspapers on Twitter as well as Bloomberg and CNN. I like to know what is happening and instead of surfing several different websites from my favorite news sources I can just get the headlines in 140 characters or less on Twitter.
Get the latest stock prices. If you subscribe to any financial sites such as Yahoo! Finance you can get up to the minute stock prices. When you combine that with the latest headlines in the market news you always have instant access to up to the minute happenings on Wall Street.
Check your account balances any time. I love the fact that I can check my account balances anytime through the mobile banking app on my Blackberry. Yes I have a Blackberry and I know that’s a whole other conversation, trust me I get comments about it all the time. Admittedly there are not as many apps for Blackberry as there are for iPhones or Android phones, but thankfully TD Bank does have one.
Learn about new rates, products and promotions. Joining the LinkedIn page or Facebook group of your bank allows you to get exclusive information on new rates, products and promotions. Companies love using Facebook to connect with their clients. Some companies even have contests exclusively for their Facebook fans. So if you want to know what your bank is up to then Like them on Facebook and Follow them on LinkedIn.
Good morning Dinks. It’s time to think into the future, let’s talk about our retirement. I want to ask you a question and let’s be honest…are you worried about retirement?
You are most likely saving money for retirement, but what are you going to use that money for? I can’t emphasize enough that saving for retirement is not as important as planning for retirement. When do you want to retire? Where will you live? And what are you going to do every day from sun up to sun down?
Retirement doesn’t always work out like you planned
The truth is that a lot of people are saving for retirement, but they don’t actually plan how they are going to spend their retirement. My Dad retired after 35 years of service at the same company and he thought that his summer days would be spent playing golf and his winter days would be spent ice fishing (we’re Canadian) but after he got injured he isn’t doing much of either.
Unfortunately my dad lives with a demanding woman who controls his life. At her request they sold their home and now they pay rent for an apartment all year round, they have a mobile home in the country where they spend their summers and another mobile home in Florida where they spend their winters. If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought my dad would be living in a trailer park the answer would have definitely been no…and I don’t think that he ever thought so either.
My dad now pays 3 rents and can’t afford to do much else. Yes of course there is the bigger problem of his controlling girlfriend, but the big picture is that my Dad’s retirement didn’t turn out exactly as he hoped and that’s probably because he didn’t plan for any of this to happen.
What should you worry about in retirement?
Income. Where is your money going to come from during retirement, when will it start and how much will you have? These are all questions that you need to ask yourself when planning for retirement. It’s also important to set a budget to determine how you will spend your money because when you live on a fixed income, you also have to have fixed expenses.
Healthcare. The reality of life is that we usually develop more health concerns as we get older, but we may not have the group medical insurance coverage that we had with our employer. Retirees need to consider where their monthly prescriptions are going to come from and how they will afford to pay for them.
Housing. I see it every day, retirees want to keep their house because of their memories, but they can’t afford to keep it and they don’t have the energy to maintain it. Maybe you plan to move to a smaller house or apartment and maybe you plan to relocate to an entirely new city; either way this decision requires planning and will have a major impact on your budget. When planning your living situation in retirement keep in mind that your plans have to be realistic and affordable. What we want to do and what we can afford to do are sometimes two very different things.
What are you planning to do with your days in retirement?
Good morning Dinks. Are you looking for a new job? If so let me help you nail your next job interview. I recently attended a career training session with my employer and I was shocked to learn a few key facts that interviewers hate from potential job applicants.
I always knew that I was being judged in a job interview, but I didn’t know that employers were actually looking for mistakes.
What recruiters want to see and hear in a job interview?
Recruiters are looking for candidates that are team players and who are likable. If you have a great personality (but are still professional) you will easily integrate into your new job and the odds of you remaining an employee are very high when you fit well into the work environment.
Nowadays people can change jobs every two years and that is a red flag for employers. Recruiters are looking for candidates who will be loyal to the company. No workplace is perfect but if employees leave at the first sign of unhappiness it can be very costly for employers.
Be good on paper and in person
With the job market being ever so scarce recruiters want to know what you have done in your career to warrant the new position and why you are looking for a new job. You should have really good answers, meaning not text book answers, to these questions because they may just be a deal breaker in your job interview.
I learned that a good resume is the key to getting called for a job interview, but once you are in the room your personality accounts for 90% of the job interview evaluation. Basically your resume will get you the interview, but your personality will get you the job.
So what does that mean? It means that you need a killer resume to showcase all your skills on a maximum of 2 pages and you need to shake off your nerves to really let your personality shine in the job interview.
Here are 3 questions that interviewers will always ask during a job interview:
What are your career goals? (I.e. where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?)
ANSWER: To use my experience to develop my skills with this company. Eventually I would like to (your long term career goal) but for now I want to excel at this current position.
Why do you want to change jobs right now? (Don’t say bored, awful co-workers or money)
ANSWER: I have been with my employer for a while and I am looking for a new challenge or I am looking to make a career change into a new field. I feel that I am a perfect fit for your company because….
How long do you plan on staying in this new position? (New question that is popping up in job interviews and I personally think it’s a trick question)
ANSWER: I researched several employers and I want to work for your company because of the internal growth opportunities within this company. I also like the fact that your company has a program to cross train employees and encourage personal learning with external courses because I like learning new skills and taking on new tasks.
Good morning Dinks. I hope you all had a great Halloween. It’s November 1st and I think the cold is here to stay. I thought that maybe the cold weather was just a little front, but I think this is the start of our cold winter season.
The change of seasons, especially cold seasons, always wants to make me shop. But as a former shop-a-holic I have to resist. I am definitely tempted to go out to the mall and buy bags of warm sweaters, turtlenecks, mittens and boots. I have to remember that I already have a closet full of those things and if I spend money my credit card will never forgive me.
How do you resist the urge to go on a spending spree?
Good morning Dinks. As many of you know I work full time in corporate communications but I also have my own business where I work as a freelance writer for various employers and write about various finance, career and women-focused topics.
One of the most frequent questions I get from aspiring self-employers is “How can I start working as a freelancer?” Like many people in their career I never aspired to be self employed, I just kind of fell into the profession by using skills that I already had. Actually I loved my cushiony bank job as a financial planner and my fixed salary – until the market crashed and I quickly needed to move into survival mode to earn more money and I came up with my career Plan B…start working for yourself.
Being self employed has its pros such as having a flexible schedule and the ability to make my own rules, I like not having to justify my time and not having to answer to anyone. But there are also some cons of being self employed such as the added stress that comes with not having a stable pay check as well as the enormous amount of time that it takes to start a business and keep it profitable.
Here are my 3 rules to successfully work for your self
You have to look for clients. There is no magic formula that will help you find freelance business except for making sure you are doing it 24 hours a day 7 days a week…even on Sundays. So many people think that they can put a website online and the emails or phone calls will come rolling in, but that’s just not true. Looking for new clients in any industry is difficult, but looking for clients in an industry when you are a newcomer is even harder. Whether you are a writer, photographer, speaker or graphic designer you have to work hard to find new clients and keep them.
Never say no. I have been working as a freelance writer since 2009 and to this day I never say No to a client. If they ask me to find a reliable source for an article, check facts or write a series of articles in a very short deadline I always say yes. I never say no to existing or new clients because I know that next time they won’t ask me to help. If clients don’t keep me at the top of their list of experts and go-to-girls then it means that I will lose money and I hate losing money.
Expect to work more. So many people that working for yourself is all fun and games; well, I am living proof that this is just not true – actually the total opposite is true. Your pay check as a self employed professional depends on how much you work so if you want to make a lot of money you have to work a lot of hours. I personally don’t mind the level of work involved in growing my own business because I am doing something I love and I’m doing it on my own terms. However, the fact that I don’t really get to take a 2 week vacation every year is kind of a downer.
Good morning Dinks. It seems like everywhere I turn I hear about “proper” money management and every news caster or reporter wants to tell us how to “properly” spend our pay check. Every time I see an article about how to manage my money I think to myself – how can someone else tell me how to manage my own money?
Money is personal, so let’s talk about it
As a former spend-a-holic and a former girl who was drowning in debt I appreciate the fact that someone is trying to help me learn how to spend my money, but as a financial planner I have to say that there is not one money management rule that applies to everyone. Why is that? It’s because money is a part of personal finance, meaning it’s personal. How much you spend depends on how much you make and where you spend your money depends on your financial priorities – and these are all different for everyone. That’s why there is not one perfect one size fits all answer to money management.
If you are finding yourself in the red at the end of each month I would love to help you out and tell you how to spend your money, but I can’t. All I can say is that if you live within your means you will always have money.
We don’t have any secrets here
I once had a client ask me, what does that mean to live within my means mean? Well, that question I can definitely answer. Living within our means means that we spend less money than we make. How do we do that? We set financial priorities. Some people say that we should spend 25% of our after tax income on housing and 10% of our after tax income on transportation, but I choose to live in a city center and therefore I don’t have any transportation costs because I walk everywhere. I feel that if it’s not in my neighborhood then I don’t need it and this lets me spend a little more of my pay check on housing, for the convenience of it.
How to set financial priorities
After I decided to stop overspending I stopped accumulating debt. This was a huge change for me because not only did I start spending less money each month, I had to cut out a lot of my favorite things because now I had to include a debt payment into my monthly spending.
Now I live by the rule that my housing is my focus and food is my second priority. Nothing else really matters. If I don’t need it to stay warm, keep full or be clean then I really don’t need it. Sometimes I treat myself to personal items, but I have come to learn that I really don’t need a lot of stuff to be happy. I save my money instead of spending it to try and buy my personal happiness.
I know this is going to sound crazy but although I am living on less I don’t actually feel like I am missing out on anything. This is probably because I am happier living without the stress of being in debt.
Good morning Dinks. Today we are going to have a little bit of fun, sometimes talking about money can be so boring, but not today. Let’s play fantasy for minute or two, not the 50 Shades of Grey kind of fantasy, the loads of money kind of fantasy. We live in a world where we can sign up to create our own fantasy stock portfolio and our own fantasy football team so why not have some fun where we can create our fantasy bank account.
So that’s exactly what we are going to do, we are going to imagine a world where we have a little bit more money. I know we have sort of talked about this before here on Dinks Finance. We discussed what we would do with a boat load of money if we won the lottery, but today let’s talk about a world where we have a little bit more money. Let’s pretend that we have some extra pocket change, a nice hefty chunk of pocket change, that we don’t have work for, it’s just give to us. After all the best kind of money is the kind that we don’t have to work for.
So Dinks tell us, what would you do with?
An extra $10,000 per month that you had to only use on yourself?
An extra $10,000 per month that you absolutely had to spend on other people?
I’ll go first…
If I had an extra $10,000 per month that I could only spend on myself I would probably save most of it for the first few months. I have been known to make some really bad (and really expensive) impulse purchases. So I would let the initial money bliss where off and get my head straight before I actually made any decisions on where and how to spend the money.
I would continue to maintain my lifestyle for the most part, just a little bit better and without the stress of having to work for a pay check. I would move to a larger apartment, but I would still live in the city and I would still live in an apartment. I would definitely quit my 9 to 5 job, but I would continue my own business as a writer and dedicate all my time to becoming an author. Money gives us the freedom to live a better life, have a little less stress and be just a little bit happier.
If I had an extra $10,000 per month that I had to spend on someone else I would create a charity that provides breakfast and snacks to elementary school kids. I think it’s so important for kids to have a full belly all day and I would love to make that happen. Or maybe I would just give the $10,000 per month to my boyfriend so the money stays in our family – just joking, blurred line in the rules of our fantasy game.
I would also create a financial program in elementary schools where kids could earn money on a credit card for good grades and chores at school such as washing boards, working in the office or cleaning up the playgrounds. Then they could buy clothes, books etc. on a website with their credit card. This helps teach kids about earning money and spending money responsibly. Yep, I don’t have plans to have kids, but that’s what I’d do.
Good morning Dinks and Happy Friday. For those of you who could make it, I hope you all had a great time in St. Louis last week for FinCon. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it this year, but the other members from Team Dinks were present, so I hope you got a chance to meet them.
I want to live vicariously through you all, please share your favorite moment from FinCon13. I definitely want to hear all about it. I saw some posts on Facebook and some pics on Twitter and it looks like everyone had a lot of fun.
Please share – what was the best part of FinCon13?
Have a great weekend Dinks.
My Diary Entry is giving away a Cera portable speaker from Tego Audio – $90 value
Good morning Dinks. Let’s start our day by talking about the place that we are all about to head out to…our place of work. Today I want to talk about our jobs. Do you have a career or a job? The reason I ask is because if you are in the career of your dreams maybe money is a secondary concern because you go to work every day to do what you love.
Maybe you have a job and money is a primary concern because you don’t necessarily love what you are doing, but you continue to do it every day because it’s a pay check and it gives you money every month. Is that the case?
Do you have a job or a career?
I am having an issue in my team right now with two of my coworkers, and we are only a team of four. As you may remember that in January I made the career change from being a financial planner in a bank branch to being a senior analyst of external communications. I love my job a lot more than I did when I was working towards sales in the bank branch, but unfortunately one of my coworkers is not as grateful as I am for my newfound career.
My co-worker’s main priority is his life – which is kind of a mess right now. He is over 40 years old, lives in a tiny one bedroom apartment, and has no savings and no spouse. I am not judging, I am just stating the facts. He took the job as a senior analyst in communications because it is a level higher than his previous position where he was stuck for eight years. His dream is not to be a writer; he doesn’t like being creative and he didn’t graduate from university in journalism. Doesn’t that say something about his character and work ethic?
Why do people make the same salaries if they don’t have the same work ethics?
They say that our starting salary will determine the amount of money that we make during the rest of our careers so it’s best to negotiate as much as possible from the get go. In January when I received the original offer from my new employer I counter offered for a salary increase. My employer was unable to offer more monetary compensation because they said that as a new department all four team members were starting off at the same salary.
At the time I thought this was a little bit strange because I am sure that all team members brought a different level of education and experience to the table. Now that I have been at my new job for over ten months I can confirm that not only is the same salary for all team members strange, it’s also unfair.
I don’t think that I should be making the same amount of money as someone who has no writing experience or journalism education. I also don’t think that I should be making the same amount of money when I work hard to make this my career and my co-worker’s priority is his personal life and this job is just a pay check.
Do you think that a commitment to your career justifies a pay increase?
About Kristina Tahnyak
Good morning Dinks and Happy Friday. I hope you had a great Halloween. Now we are into November and it’s time to focus on Thanksgiving. Actually some stores already have their Christmas items on display…oooh scary thought! Snow, presents, money…..AAAHHH!
