planning

It Costs How Much To Get Married!?

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According to a new report by a leading wedding magazine, The Knot, the average American wedding cost has eclipsed $35,000. That’s more than half of the yearly median income! Most of that spending isn’t on lavish luxuries for bride and groom – it comes from the guest list. Couples are inviting more people and doing more for them, trying to create an unforgettable experience for their loved ones.

If you’ve got an event planned for the coming year, read on. Your bill doesn’t need to be that extreme. Here are five ways to save on the cost of your big day! 

1.) Schedule smart 

Saturday is the most common day of the week for weddings. It’s automatically attractive, since everyone has the day off and most churches aren’t available on Sundays. Because of this popularity, venues are often more expensive on Saturday than on other days.

While the appeal of a weekend might not apply to a random Wednesday, you can pick a date that offers some of those same benefits without paying the Saturday premium. Try setting up your special day before a holiday, like July 3, or on the Sunday of a long weekend, like Labor Day. Your guests will still have time to enjoy themselves, and you can save as much as 15% on the cost of your venue. 

2.) Untether yourself


When it comes to picking a venue, the first obligation should be to find a place that speaks to who you are as a couple. Practically, though, there are several important factors that should influence your decision. Most importantly, pick a venue that allows outside vendors for food, music and photography (or negotiate with the venue you already selected). Places that do a lot of business in weddings may have existing relationships with businesses that can charge more because they’re not competing.
If you can get this kind of flexibility, shop around for better prices on some of the more costly parts of the wedding. You also gain the flexibility to get exactly what you want out of these services. If you want a signature cocktail instead of a full bar, for example, contracting with an outside party may be a necessity.
3.) Keep the ‘W’ word to yourself
From cake decorating to flower arranging, everyone has a “special” wedding price. Many vendors know they can get away with charging more for a service if it’s wedding-related than if it’s for another occasion. You can catch some savings if you keep the reason for the occasion to yourself.
For example, when shopping for a dress, buying a formal gown that’s not specifically labeled as a “wedding dress” can translate to savings. Getting a custom-decorated sheet cake (or buying a big cake and decorating it simply yourself) can save a few hundred dollars. By not mentioning the word “wedding,” you can easily save 30% at various vendors.
4.) Put your guests to work
The biggest costs for most wedding-related items is in labor. When you pay for flower arrangements, you’re paying about 10% for the flowers and 90% for the florist’s time. The same is true for cake decorating and place setting. Instead of hiring professionals, consider putting your guests to work.
It may seem awkward, but many wedding guests would love the opportunity to feel like they contributed to your special day. They get the feeling of participating actively in making your event a success, and you get to save a few bucks on nearly every service. It’s a win-win!
5.) Spread out the cost by using a savings club account
One of the biggest challenges for newlyweds is coming up with that much money all at once. All the wedding bills come due at the same time. For many couples, that means using consumer debt to finance the whole cost of their wedding. Doing so can make your dream wedding all the more unaffordable, as interest and financing charges add up.
Instead, consider setting up a club account to help defray costs. Set up an automatic withdrawal from your checking account into a dividend-bearing savings account. When the bills start coming in for the big day, you’ll have money set aside to defray the costs. Remember, a dollar you don’t have to finance is a dollar you don’t pay interest on. Even if you can’t absorb the whole cost of the event out of savings, why not borrow less?
Your Turn: What are your best cost-saving wedding hacks? Share your wisdom in the comments!
SOURCES:
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/5-clever-ways-to-save-on-your-wedding-2.aspx
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/top-10-ways-to-save-money-on-your-wedding-3.aspx
http://www.realsimple.com/weddings/budget/save-money-wedding/venue
https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelwmiller/insanely-smart-ways-to-save-money-on-your-wedding?utm_term=.nh9zY22pG#.ulOdbrrz8

What To Do When The Rent Is Due – But You’re Coming Up Short

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“Yikes! I’ve got a rent payment due in a couple of days. Payday will come too late and I’m a few bucks short! What can I do?“
Everyone can relate to this experience or one that’s similar. An unexpected bill or a short paycheck puts you behind, and you spend the rest of the month playing catch up. Finally, a big, important bill comes up and you’re out of backup plans. That grim feeling of panic creeps up your spine. Your heart races.
This is a financial crisis!
The first step is to silence that panic. Take two or three deep breaths. Although it is a problem, it’s one you need to solve, not one to give up on. A practical plan is needed to come up with the money.
Rather than going through a list of things you can do, it might be easier to talk about places to look. Let’s go through a few locations you can go to try to find those few extra dollars. This task is going to be equal parts creativity and hard work, so roll up your sleeves and get your thinking cap on!
1.) Your job
You may be thinking that if your job paid more, you wouldn’t be in this mess. That may be true, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t a few ways you can get a couple extra bucks out of your place of employment. Much of this is going to depend upon the kind of employer you have, but some of these suggestions may be of some help.
Begin by asking for a few more hours in the next week. Explain your situation briefly to your employer to see if there are special projects coming up in the future that you could get a jump start on now. Most employers are carrying around long lists of projects to be done and they’re waiting for someone to have the free time to tackle them. This could be the opportunity you need to prove yourself for a promotion while helping to bail you out of your tough spot.
If this doesn’t work, you might look for other odd jobs you could do around your office. If the floors need sweeping or the bathrooms need cleaning, this could be a way to turn a few hours into a solution to your financial woes. Your boss knows you and your work ethic, so she may be more likely to trust you than a stranger from off the street.
Consider asking your employer for an advance on your next paycheck. If your current situation is the result of an emergency, explain that to your employer. This will certainly be cheaper than a payday or title loan. Your “collateral” for the loan is your good name with your employer, so do this sparingly. Too many requests for an advance could be a red flag, signaling to the employer that you’ve got serious problems on the home front. Remember that this is money you’re borrowing from yourself from next month, so if you’ve got no cushion next month, all you’ve done is bought yourself a small bit of time.
2) Your house and neighborhood
Now might be a good time to take stock of your furnishings and appliances. Are there any you’ve been planning to upgrade in the near future? If you can do without them in the interim, you could move up your plans a little bit and put them up for sale. If you do, be sure to do as much maintenance as you can beforehand. If it’s a piece of furniture, give it a quick rub with furniture polish to cover any scratches or dings before you photograph it. If you have the time and energy, sanding and re-staining furniture can make an old piece of wood look new and beautiful. This little upgrade can mean the difference between selling for $20 and $100!
If it’s appliances you’re considering upgrading, the smaller it is, the easier it’ll sell. If you can use an old phone for a few months until your contract upgrade comes up, putting a smartphone up for sale can net you a few hundred dollars. The same advice applies to electronics. Dust them, polish any dings in the case, and round up the original box if you can. Make it look as new as possible.
For items that don’t sell well, like CRT televisions, you’ll really need to flex your creative muscle. It won’t sell as a television, but the front might work as a mirror frame! Taking the guts out and converting it into a planter or terrarium can also turn something worthless into something that might net you a few dollars.
While you’re testing the market for your used goods, you might also keep an eye out for day labor positions. Is your neighbor planning on doing some serious landscaping this weekend? Offer your skill with a rake for a few hours. The new parents next door might want a night out; could you sit for them while they grab dinner and a show? Maybe a bachelor neighbor can’t cook toast. He might enjoy a home-cooked casserole that just needs to be thrown in the oven! These likely aren’t enough to make you rich, but they could get you out of a jam.
3) Destinations Credit Union
That’s right. Destinations Credit Union is here to help you through thick and thin. Many of the services offered at our branch location are meant to solve the very problems you’re facing. Before you give up or turn to a title loan or payday loan service, give us a call.
There are several options available to you, including many services that other lenders charge much, much more for. As a member of Destinations Credit Union, you can get better terms, better interest rates and more personal service than you can at any place you’ve seen advertising on TV. We also provide financial self-help services that can help you avoid these sticky spots in the future. Whether you need help drawing up a budget, setting up a savings account for an emergency fund, or dealing with out-of-control debt, Destinations Credit Union is here for you!
SOURCES: 
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/employee-salary-pay-advance-1273.php http://www.moneycrashers.com/craigslist-selling-tips/ http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2013/11/14/5-ways-to-make-money-faster-than-fast 

Finals Week

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Around the country, college campuses are finishing their semesters.  While your families are thinking peppermint mochas and gift wrap, you’re probably running back and forth from the library to professor’s offices, maybe also holding a peppermint mocha.  Finals week is no fun.  It’s an unsanitary, stressful, hectic time, in which the weather is usually either overcast or snowy … or both! 

The worst part is that you know most of it could be better, and you know it’s mostly your fault.  You’d probably made plans to start studying earlier, take better notes and generally act more like those students who have it all figured out.  If you’re being honest, though, are you really going to do all that?  The more complicated your resolution, the less likely it is to occur. 

Here’s an easier solution you can actually accomplish in a single day, which will make every finals week so much easier:  Stack your schedule based on the final exam.  Email some of the professors you plan to take in the spring with a simple question:  What is the format of your final exam? 

Knowing this can help you strategize your efforts. For instance, try not to take classes with all multiple choice exams in the same semester, because there’s only so much cramming a brain can do. Try not to take too many classes in which you turn in a final paper, because you can only format so many citations before your hair falls out.  You can even use this strategy to make the whole week make better sense:  If you have to take two math classes and you hate math, schedule them the same semester as courses with final papers.  That way, you can turn in your final papers before finals week begins, and all you have to do during finals week is math.  No distractions! 

You can do a lot of the same things with your budget.  Just like with finals week, the end of the month is the time you make strong resolutions to make better decisions, even when you know you’ll be going out way too late on school nights next month, too.  Of course, going out late on school nights is how you get into trouble with school and money at the same time. 

So, let’s apply the same principles as we did to finals week.  Go through your budget and find out when your bills are due.  You can often change the date with a simple phone call.  Spend some time this month rearranging your bills to come out the day after you get paid, spread out for each of your paychecks. That way, you never see money in your account that you can’t spend, because the money you need to pay the bills will disappear immediately.

Nightmare On Your Street – Finances And Horror Movies

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As Halloween gets closer and you want to avoid the chilly darkness of October evenings, grab a blanket and stream a marathon of scary movies. Horror flicks are classic fun, whether they’re good enough to keep you up all night when you’re home alone or bad enough to laugh at while with a group of friends because we all know what’s going to happen next. The classics follow a simple formula, but it works. 

The same is true when it comes to your finances. Spend less than you earn, pay off debt and invest your money with trustworthy people.  Still, we have trouble getting all of the complex parts of our financial lives sorted out.  Let’s try applying the scary movie formula to your finances so you’ll never have that heart-racing moment of panic when you check your balances again. 

The scary cat.  In the first 15 minutes of all the classic horror movies, our protagonist gets startled by a cat. It’s a silly little trope that keeps coming up, but screenwriters use it because viewers tend to get bored without a scare in the first few minutes. Bringing out the monster too early can kill the suspense, so it’s an easy-to-insert moment to keep viewers on edge.  Watching scary movies in my household, I can tell you that it works: That stupid cat has caused my heart to race faster than any workout I’ve done.

Are you jumping from the cat?  Does every market hiccup cause you to change strategies?  Are you yanking money out of savings to throw at the stock market (or vice versa) every year?  It’s time to get past that initial scare.  The market isn’t going to kill you overnight, just like it won’t make you rich overnight (Black Tuesday 1929 and Google’s record-breaking July 15th notwithstanding). 

If you want to develop a plan with which you can feel safe during the scary cat moments, give us a call at 410-663-2500. If you want to do it yourself, we can get you into a safe plan for saving with a high yield account or certificate in just a few minutes, which can help balance the risk of your other investments.  If you’re trying to build a safer safety net for retirement or college savings, we’ve probably got more savings options than you’ve ever heard of, many of which have major tax benefits. We can walk you through a few plans, help you pick the one that’s right for you, and in many cases, we can even set it up with automatic deposits so you don’t have to think about it again.

The victim who runs upstairs when she should run out the door. Why?  Why?  Why are you running upstairs, you silly soon-to-be victim?  Of all the silly horror movie clichés, this is the one that drives me bonkers.  We always get a few establishing shots of the house early in the movie, which shows us that this house is enormous enough for a final-reel chase scene with the killer.  No one needs this much house. It’s usually a teenage girl with a single parent (who is not at home) in a house big enough to hold the entire football team of her late boyfriend.

Do you have too much house?  Are you cleaning extra bedrooms you don’t use? Do you have a home gym, office, or library that you never visit?  Maybe it’s time to simplify.  You can sell that house and move into something a little sleeker, and use your windfall to put in all of the custom features you’ve ever wanted on that new house.  Which would you rather pay for:  the storage room that’s basically a walk-in junk drawer or a dressing room with a walk-in closet?  Give us a call to find out how we can help you. 

The killer who just won’t die.  In every great horror movie, there’s a killer with an uncanny ability to survive anything the protagonists throw his or her way.  In your finances, sometimes large debts can feel that way.  No matter how fast you run, they just keep coming, like Michael Myers chasing Jamie Lee Curtis through two decades of Halloween movies.  You throw cash at the balance every month, but nothing happens.  What can you do?

If you want to kill a scary movie monster, you can’t do anything that the protagonist does in a scary movie.  After all, the scary movie wants to make a sequel, but that’s the last thing you want out of your debt. Instead, let’s adapt a strategy from the Terminator:  Even an unkillable robot from the future can’t stand up to a vat of molten steel. You need to submerge your debts in one large vat that can consume them all: Turn all of your high-interest, variable-rate, hidden-fee credit card debts into one simple, low-interest, fixed-rate homeequity or debt consolidation loan with all of the transparency and confidence you’ve come to expect from Destinations Credit Union.  The first step is calling a Loan Officer to discuss your goals. Through our partnership with Accel, you can also get free unlimited financial counseling to develop a plan. 

Hopefully, your finances aren’t a horror movie.  Horror movies play on our fears for entertainment, but it’s not as fun in real life.  If they are, though, it’s better to call in some help than it is to split up and try to explore the woods alone. That’s why we’re here.  With a little help, your money can look more like a swords-and-sorcery epic:  Everyone’s a hero and everyone gets a happy ending.