Pumpkin Spice Latte Financial Planning

Yes, I am exploiting the PSL (Pumpkin Spice Latte) seasonal bandwagon. I’m not the first in the financial business to do so. One of the weirdest was a link from a credit union offering Pumpkin Spice Loans. In the years since, media outlets are hijacking the seasonal treat to link to their own brands. You can also follow the PSL at Twitter-@TheRealPSL.

Now, we all know that there is just a little pumpkin (used to be none at all) in this drink, so I can use pumpkin photos to spice up this post.

Ingredients in this latte:

Pumpkin: Vegetables and Fiber (Needs)

Dairy/Dairy Substitute: Protein (Infrastructure of the Plan)

Sugar: Energy and Taste (Motivation to Act)

Seasonal Spices: Extra excitement (Yes, you can have Wants!)

Whipped Cream: the initial exposure, getting a fresh credit card in the mail, a new job or a raise or (Treats and Rewards.)

Needs

What are your monthly financial needs? Consider the Maslow hierarchy, in which his original definition consists of “air, food, drink, shelter, clothing, warmth, sex, sleep”.

1. Rent or Mortgage (cost of shelter)
2. Utilities and Communications
3. Groceries and Food (Groceries are needs-meals out are wants)
4. Clothing (jeans, er pants, are a need-a specific brand is a want)
5. Time to rest and sleep (hopefully no double shifts)

Financial Plan Infrastructure

1. Spending Plan
2. Income and Expense Monitoring
3. Revise and Adjust
4. Musts:
   1. Data Security (online banking and credit accounts)
   2. Credit History Report Maintenance and Annual Monitoring
5. Financial family meetings or date nights
   1. A family meeting can be a useful way to involve everyone in planning a summer or winter vacation.
   2. I am a big fan of financial date night. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it is a terrific way to catch up with your sweetie on monthly goals and progress to date. It is also a way to have a planned conversation about cash flow, credit use, and new expenses. Proactive chats, not reactions are, in my experience, easier on a relationship.  This is especially important if financial tasks are divided between a couple or you handle your own money separately from each other.

Motivation to Act

1. 1. External events: job change or loss, promotion, relationship status change, current events, goals achieved, change in incentives from work or hobbies, marketing convinced you, peers or affinity group, family member asked 
   2. Internal events: ruminating, growth, illness or treatment for same, goals achieved, goals or needs changed (See Maslow)

Advertisement

Financial Checklist Fall 2022

Five Tasks for Fall Finances

• Quick and Dirty Tax Planning Check your W4, review your year to date retirement contributions, update year to date business expenses, check for any tax losses in your taxable investment accounts
  • Catalysts for Action: Did you welcome a new family member? New job? Second job?
• Speaking of Retirement Contributions: what about planning to Save More Tomorrow^TM ? This simply means to up your retirement deferral percentage next time you get a raise or COLA. Or you can increase your automatic contributions to savings in a similar manner.
  • Catalysts for Action: new job, promotion, COLA, side hustle
• Organize Your Files for yourself, your business, your family. If you are hit by the proverbial bus, where is everything kept? Online in a folder labeled _____, in a home safe, safety deposit box, behind a password vault, under the mattress etc. This means life and death papers, but also the financial minutiae of daily life.
  • Catalysts for Action: a broken shredder, new caregiving tasks, becoming self employed, working from home
• Mitigate Risk Did you have a big life event this year? (marriage, divorce, birth or adoption, commitment, new business etc.) Check for proper insurance coverage (s) and confirm that your written beneficiaries match your wishes. Retirement accounts and life insurance policy designated beneficiaries take precedence over a different designation in your will. (meaning they will supercede your written will wishes)
  • Catalysts for Action: How old is my will? Do I have a will? Do my children have guardians?
• Check Your Spending [Plan] Winter family holidays can be expensive, as they can involve family obligations (real or perceived), special food and drink, travel, and gifts. What is your spending plan? Experiences, gift cards, or wish list items from an online shopping cart? Practical, homemade, high quality, fast fashion? Do you tithe or make additional charitable donations at the end of the calendar year? Are any of those decisions made by the entire family? Some families involve their children in their charitable choices, which allows for immersion, learning, and connections to the world around them.
  • Catalyst for Action: What holidays are celebrated on your family calendar?

Want the experience or the items?

Old Habits & New Resolutions July Update

July can be a time to review those New Year’s Resolutions. Did you make any for 2018? 

Even if you didn’t,  now is a good time to revisit the subject, as the year still has five months to go!

             Aauugghh!                                   Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

 

 

Often the calendar can help create structure for you. Bills get paid after payday; retirement plan contributions occur on paydays, etc. If you can itemize on your taxes, you may have dropped off many bags in the last week of December at your local thrift store. In my home town, Macklemore helped us out one year. Parents of college bound students have a date with the revised FAFSA; and by the end of January, you’ll have some thoughts about your past year’s tax return. For a quick read on what you can learn from your 2017 tax return from Morningstar, check here. Also, with that 2017 tax return near your screen, take a few minutes to run through a paycheck “checkup”. The IRS wants to help you with this, so you can withhold more in taxes if you need to, or loosen up those purse strings due to the increase in your standard deduction for 2018.

 

 

As mentioned in a previous post, Fidelity and others generate helpful suggestions for our annual resolutions. One study indicates that financial resolutions are easier to keep than those about food or exercise.

Let’s begin with the one geared for success! Financial tasks and affirmative statements.

In five months you can:

• Make 5 Roth IRA contributions
• Set up and fund an emergency savings account with $500-$1000
• Check all your accounts with beneficiaries- retirement, insurance and banking
• Increase your charitable giving in order to get that company match or set aside funds for a non-profit, instead of the IRS.

What do you want to improve during the balance of 2018?

 

Tax shelter or just an espresso?

 

Old Habits and New Resolutions

January 1-31 is traditionally a time of making [and breaking] New Year’s Resolutions. Is it  crowded at your gym? Apps and online tools abound. Books and blogs on decluttering, tidying and organizing can easily be found in your inbox. It is said by some that a habit takes at least 6 weeks to create and people such as Gretchen Rubin and Beth Dargis have multi-day programs on offer. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely created  a short program in this  blog post.     To see the results of his research, visit this link from WYNC.

by Charles Duhigg

Often the calendar can help create structure for you. Bills get paid after payday; retirement plan contributions occur on paydays, etc. If you can itemize on your taxes, you may have dropped off bags in the last week of December at your local thrift store. In my home town, Macklemore helped us out one year. Parents of college bound students have a date with the revised FAFSA; and by the end of January, you’ll have some thoughts about your 2015 tax return. For a quick set of tax facts and limits from Morningstar, check here.

As mentioned in a previous post, Fidelity and others generate helpful suggestions for our annual resolutions. One study indicates that financial resolutions are easier to keep than those about food or exercise.

So let’s begin with the one geared for success! Financial tasks and affirmative statements. What do you want to improve in 2016?

Where to begin:

Meta Topics: There are meta topics, like what you learned from your family of origin about money, and if money represents the same thing to you and your partner (freedom or security for example).

Or

Nitty-Gritty Topics: There are also the nitty-gritty topics such as how to cut spending on meals out or groceries, am I saving enough for retirement,  and the ever popular  “am I spending too much on fill-in-the-blank ?”(e.g. coffee, furniture, clothing, wedding stuff, organic food, books).

This will be a series on how make the incremental changes which can be permanent, instead of the ‘cold turkey’, ‘all or nothing’ ‘you should do this’ framing which is [mostly] guaranteed to fail. Think of financial wellness, and small successes. Avoid binary thinking, see your progress on a continuum, and remember that like the stock market, it is time, not timing, which makes the difference. Ready, set…

#NotBuyingIt: Anti-Black Friday

During this season of Black Friday, and holiday sales, I’d like to offer some thoughts on an alternative-Not Buying It. Ways to change your behavior so that you can take a step back from consumer culture. This topic has interested me for years and authors and bloggers keep coming up with new ways to…buy nothing. Most recently in 2015, outdoor retailer REI decided to close on Black Friday, pay their employees for the day, and encourage all of us to #OptOutside .

Remember Amy Dacyczyn and The Tightwad Gazette from the 1990’s? In 2009, she was interviewed by New Hampshire Public Television. (5 minute video)

2001 After 9-11, President Bush is rumored to have said just go shopping-he really didn’t say it that way; his statement was more highfalutin’-he suggested ‘continued participation and confidence in our economy.’ It was Mayor Giuliani who actually said go to restaurants and go shopping-on Sept 12^th. Then the American public was practicing patriotism at the mall, and the ball games….and then the bubble happened…

2006 was when a funny piece in the Atlantic  by the writer and actress Sandra Tsing Loh, was published.  It was called Cheap Thrills: American Women in Financial Jeopardy. It was about women and money, Individual Retirement Accounts  (IRA’s) and shopping. Tsing Loh wrote about her friend Carolyn, who wanted to lose weight and proceeded to lose 12.5 pounds in three months. She also lost a lot from her wallet. Fees and food from Jenny Craig, some nice running shoes-only $100, a new haircut, a gym membership at $40/month etc. And last but not least, the new $300 distressed jeans in two sizes down-only $300.

It cost her $196.50 per pound.

I can distress anyone’s jeans for less than $300, just sayin’.  By the way, by her own admission, Tsing Loh comes from a very cheap immigrant family-her sister once gave her a library book for Christmas with a time limit on it for return.

2006 Judith Levine in her book,  Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, links her shopping memories to Sept 11^th as well-“Buy that big screen TV or the terrorists will have won!”

Not Buying It Judith Levine (Photo credit: Gauravonomics)

2008: Remember September 15^th 2008 when Senator McCain was feeling Presidential and said “the fundamentals of our economy are basically fine, despite tremendous turmoil…just before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Recession and many people have struggled with their finances-fair, fowl or fun money. Still are-According to Al Lewis’s Emporium WSJ column, the people wrote in to say two words: We’re broke.

“We want to maintain our financial strength, not transfer it to the mass market retailers.”

— “I already own 50 neckties, three cars, four TVs, etc. Why should I blow money on Chinese junk at Target and Wal-Mart when I can save money for retirement?”

2008-2010 For many of us, the Great Recession changed our buying habits, albeit involuntarily.  However, there have been many enlightening stories written in the last 15 years about people’s voluntary changes in their relationship with consumer culture, stuff and even patriotism. Before that it was Voluntary Simplicity, a movement pioneered by authors Cecile Andrews , Janet Luhrs, and Duane Elgin, among others.

In summary, whether you  reduce your things down to 100 for a year, (2012 link to TedX video from author Dave Bruno) or some other number, go cold turkey like Judith Levine and her husband did for one year, stop spending $200/pound to lose weight or some other self-improvement scheme, try something new this holiday season. Maybe you have gotten very good at substitutions (library for bookstore) (brand declines-Nordstrom to Macy’s to Marshall’s to thrifting)  You can observe Buy Nothing Day on Black Friday – and on Thanksgiving.

You and your family could even introduce these ideas around the Thanksgiving table for some lively conversations. I’d love to hear how that works!

What to talk about, besides football and turkey?

Related articles

• 11/16/2013 Shopping Log, Or the First Anti-Shopping Log (extremecheapness.wordpress.com)
• Thanksgiving shopping ruffles Facebook readers (pressrepublican.com)
• http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/ 
• http://www.zipcar.com/ziptopia/around-the-bend/10-things-to-do-on-black-friday-besides-shop