make money from home stuffing envelopes uk

welcome nation to the financial rock starshow. i’m your host, scott alan turner ready to help you get out of debt, save more moneyand retire early. in the studio with me is producer katie who has the best lap for theryker the cat, who won’t leave her alone. on the show today we’ll be answering yourquestions about money, business and life, if you have a question you’d like answeredon the show visit goaskscott.com. last time on the show i shared how you can finally takecontrol of your spending. if you want to be in control instead of your money controllingyou or being completely out of control, please listen to that show. when i was 26, i was talking with one of mycoworkers one day. we were in the kitchen

at the office and she told me she was buyinga house. i said, “congratulations, that is great!” later on in the day, i was thinkingto myself, “wait a minute, my salary is more than hers. if she can afford a house,clearly i can afford a house, the thought had never crossed my mind.” now this isperfect logic when deciding on if you should buy house right? “well they have a house.i guess i can afford one too.” when i started looking at mortgages and mortgagerates, it dawned on me. yeah, i could afford to buy a house, i told my boss about it andhe gave me probably the worst advice i’ve ever received regarding personal finances.his advice was, “buy as much house as the bank will let you, your property value willgo up and your salary are going to go up over

time. so get as much a house as you can.” i started looking around, i had a real estateagent help me out and i fell in love with this house that was way over my initial budget.by “way over” what i really mean is “wayyyy over”. it was a two story home, it had anunfinished basement, had a creek in the back yard, backyard was full of pine trees, itwas located on the cold sack. it was beautiful. i put a 5% down payment on it, had a firstand second mortgage plus private mortgage insurance. i wiped out nearly every last dollarin my savings account to cover the down payment and closing costs. i had a beautiful new homewith a massive monthly mortgage payment and an empty bank account.

the worst part about it was the pmi, whichi did not know much about it at the time. i was paying $135 a month in private mortgageinsurance because my down payment was less than 20% of the sales price. that’s $1,622a year i had to pay that wasn’t going towards the principle or the mortgage interest onthis home. i started throwing every spare dollar i could at the second mortgage to getit paid off. because the real estate market was hot atthat time, the value of my home increased pretty substantially and pretty quickly. afterabout two or three years, i had my home reappraised. with the equity that i had put in it, i nowhad more than 20% of the value of the mortgage in equity. that’s great news because i didn’thave to pay pmi anymore. now, if i knew then

what i know now, i would have waited to saveup the 20% to avoid the pmi in the first place, it’s just wasted money. by doing so i would have had a smaller, moremanageable mortgage payment, not one so big that it kept me awake at night worrying about,“how am i going to be able to pay this?” you want your new home to be a blessing andnot a curse. if you buy a home with nothing or very little down and have a huge mortgagepayment with no savings, you’re just inviting trouble or at least excessive stress and worrybut you don’t realize that until after you’ve signed on the dotted line. before you buy a home, make sure you havea three to six month emergency fund and all

of your debts are paid off. it will help youa lot with your financial situation. what is the magic number, how much house can iafford if you’re looking to purchase any home or get in to one in the future? whatis it? well in order to avoid that nightmare scenarioof getting into a house that’s going to break your bank, destroy your relationships,destroy your sleeping habits, keep up at work at night, there are a couple of numbers thatare thrown around. one is called the 36% rule, that is, all of your debt payments shouldnever add up to more than 30% of your gross, that’s your pre-tax, income. for every pre-tax dollar you earn each month,no more than 36 cents should go to paying

off mortgages, student loans, car loans, creditcard debts and so on. because most people have their property taxes and their home insurancewrapped up into their mortgage payments, those get rolled into that as well. that’s onenumber that you can look at, it’s not a good number though. another number i’ve heard tossed aroundis 25% of your take home pay, that’s after all the taxes are taken out, your 401(k) isdeducted, it’s like, “what’s left over in my paycheck? let’s just take 25% of thatand use that as a number for your monthly mortgage.” works sometimes. if you’rein a high rent, high housing area like in a dense city, new york city, boston, san francisco,some of those places, you’re more likely

to be paying more in housing. that numberdoesn’t work for everybody. on top of that when you buy a new home, youshould account for 30 to 40% extra for home expenses. so if your mortgage is a thousanddollars a month or you think it might be a thousand dollars a month, you better expectthat home is going to cost you $1,300 to $1,400 a month. your utilities are going to be higherthan when you rent. you’re going to have upkeep; if you’ve got a lawn, you got tomow the lawn or pay somebody to mow the lawn. lawn mowers, they cost money, brooms, shovels,all these little things. pest control, lawn fertilization, if you want a green lawn, youdon’t care about lawn, you live in arizona where it’s erred, you don’t have any ofthat stuff, not a big deal, you got to service

the air conditioning systems, get those checkedon. on average it’s 30 to 40% more of a mortgage for the upkeep of a home. i’vebeen rambling on a little bit, what’s the number? “what’s the number turner? getto it, what is the magic number?” here is the magic number, there is no magicnumber. the financial advice you received, it needs to be given and changed accordingto what is happening in your own life. here’s where i would start. write down your spendingplan, everything you currently spend money on, if you’re thinking about getting a newhome. so you write down, “here’s how much we’re spending on groceries, spending ongoing out to eat. here’s what we plan on spending on vacation, here is all of our bills,our car payment, our student loans, here’s

what we’re saving towards investments.” write all that down then in the separate categoryyou’ve got your current rent, current utilities. now those are going to change, so just wipethose off the list and then see what’s left over. what’s left over each month when iadd up everything i’m currently spending money on, i take out my current housing expenditures,what’s left over? that’s your mortgage payment. that’s how much you can afford.don’t forget to factor in that 30, 40% on top of that. so if you have a thousand dollars left overfrom all your current expenditures, you have a thousand dollars to spend on a mortgageeach month and the upkeep of the house will

actually be about $700 just to be in the safezone. you can pay towards a mortgage. now, you’re going to be a lot better situationif you get some of those debts paid off first. take care of the credit cards, pay those off,take care of the car loan at least, get out from underneath the car loan. i understand people who have student loans,they’re expecting to pay them for 10 or 15 years. some people are going to chooseto do that, that’s a personal decision so you may say, “i’m going to have the studentloans but i still want to save for a house anyways because we just want to get into ahouse.” i get that, i can appreciate that. same situation, add up what you’re spendingon, what are the student loans going to cost

the extra, that’s what you have to spendtowards your house. and then look at your long term savings goals.if you’re going to save up for a vacation, some day you want a new car someday, you gotto factor those in. what you spend each month on a house is really a personal choice. rykerthe cat who is chiming in now he says he owns a cheap $20 little cat condo made out of cotton,he is perfectly susceptible to that. ryker, please be quiet. this is the home office,this is what we deal with. but if you’re comfortable with spending50% of whatever’s left over on a mortgage and you’re happy with that and that fitsin your long term goals, you live in an expensive city that works for you then that’s whatworks for you. if you only want to spend 20%

and you want to save the rest for above andbeyond your retirement, remember, before you get any of these homes, make sure you’repaying yourself first towards retirement, save 20% for the long term stuff. then youstart the house savings fund, then you save up for the down payment. after you add up all your monthly expenses,figuring out what’s left over, don’t save zero for retirement and put the rest towardsa home. put that 20% in there preferably at least for retirement. then you use the extrafor the home, figure out how much of that extra that you want to apply. you do that,you’ll be in a good situation, you’ll find a number that works for you dependingon where you live, how much you want to spend,

what your other goals are, what your currentexpenditures are, what your current loans are that’s a workable number. everyone’s situation is different. financialfreedom is having a paid for home, if you do all those things, you’re going to bein a much better position if something unexpected comes up like a job loss or a medical issue.you get that emergency fund in place before you get in the house, you get your retirementsavings in place, that’s how you’ll get to financial freedom. now, on to your questions. doug writes in, “i’ve heard that closingcredit card accounts that are paid off can actually worsen your credit score. at firstit sounded counter intuitive but i read that

you’re lowering the amount of funds thatare accessible to you to the financial institutions consider this a loss in creditworthiness.do you have any insight in this? would you recommend opening a no annual fee credit cardand not use it just to show you have additional credit available?” the single most important factor of a creditscore is paying your bills on time and the second most is called the credit utilizationratio. now, the utilization ratio accounts for 30% of your credit score and here’show it works. you add up all the credit limits of all the cards you currently have. so let’ssay you’ve got three different cards, mastercard, visa, sears and the total limits of all thosecards adds up to $10,000.

your fico score, they want to see that creditutilization ratio of 30% or less. so if you carry a balance of $4,000 total across thosethree cards, that’s bad for your score because you’re utilizing 40% of your total creditlimit, right? 10,000 max, you got a $4,000 balance, 40%. if your balance is $3,000, $2,500,$2,000 less? that’s what the fico people they’re looking for. credit utilizationratio of 30% or less because $3,000 is 30% of your $10,000 max. simple math. now, let’s consider if one of those threecards he had had a credit limit of $6,000, you closed it because you never used it sowe’re closing down the visa, we like the mastercard get better perks, whatever. nowyour new total credit available on the remaining

two cards is $4,000 right? we had 10, we closeddown the 6,000 we got four left over. if you had a balance of $4,000 between the othertwo cards and now your max is $4,000, what is your credit utilization ratio? 100%. 100%is very bad. so by closing old or unused cards, your availablecredit goes down which increases your credit utilization ratio. now, also, opening up anew card, that’s going to drop your credit score a little for temporarily. instead ofopening up a new card, you might consider calling your existing credit card companiesand request a credit limit increase. by having your credit limit increased, you accomplishthe same thing, you’re impacting your credit utilization ratio.

if you got your $10,000 max, now your maxis $15,000 across those three cards, you can have higher balances and keep your ratio lower.as long as you keep your spending habits the same, that’s important, you don’t wantto increase the max to $15,000 and say, “ooh i can go out and spend more money!” terribleidea. that’s how you do it, thanks doug for the question. viet from philadelphia writes in, and i apologizein advance if i butchered your name viet. “i love the show, your advice has helpedme start investing like a financial rockstar. i recently graduated with a doctoral degreeand a heavy well-paying job but i have $240,000 in student debt. interest rates aren’t terrible,ranging between three and seven percent. i

have a budget of $600 a month and i need tohelp deciding whether i should one, focus on building my six month emergency fund beforei start paying down my debt. or two, should i split the amount and contribute towardsboth an emergency fund and paid down in debt at the same time? it seems reasonable to save $400 a month anduse 200 as extra payments towards my loans. also, is it smart to consider my e-trade investmentsas part of my emergency fund if i have 10 to 20% of my fund in a liquid savings account?” in your situation you have to figure it’sgoing to take a long time to knock those student loans out, if you make good money, a fullyfunded emergency fund is likely to be in the

tens of thousands of dollars. funding it with$400 a month would take three or more years, that’s a long time. now that doesn’t factorin any raises or company advancement you might get. but even with those factors, a, it’snot enough to fund it quickly and b you’re going to be dividing your financial focus. the loans get knocked out quicker if you throwevery spare dollar at them and skip the three to six month emergency fund for now, you’llalso save a ton of money on those interest payments. now, your worst case situation is,you can’t work for an extended period. if that happens, your student loans can be putin deferment which can be up to three years or forbearance which can be up to 12 months.

if you’ve got a good degree, a good payingjob, you’re probably quite employable so let’s not focus on you being out of work.you do want to make sure you have disability coverage though through your employer, that’sgoing to be you weak spot. in the event you become unable to work, you want to make surethere is an income to cover housing and food, your most important expenses. if you have private student loans, check outgetting them refinanced with a company like sofi.com, see if you can get a lower interestrate. also you can consider getting your public student loans refinanced. when you do that,you lose the public loan deferment and forbearance benefits if you find yourself out of work.

now, some of these third party companies thatare doing refinancing, some of them have unemployment protection programs, forbearance, in the caseyou get into some type of hardship in the periods that last up to 12 months. you canlook at those as well. now, regarding your e-trade investments, yeah, any liquid assetsyou’ve got, whether it’s in a cash savings account or a money market mutual fund, typicallyheld at the brokerage, they can be used as an emergency fund. issue with the brokerage account, sometimesit takes a while to get the funds from the brokerage to your bank account if you needit in a hurry. typically, four to five days. again, all brokerage firms, they’ve gotsome type of cash mutual fund that is, it’s

just a place holder. you transfer funds inand it sits there until you do something with it such as invest it, do regular type of mutualfund. it’s not like a checking account where youcan write a check for the day you need the money or if you need to do a wire transferfund using western union because the third cousin of a sister in law needs some cashtomorrow or else he’s going to get kicked out of his house for missing the rent payment,so you don’t have that flexibility there. you have to consider what type of situationsmight come up, how quickly you’ll need that money. usually sometimes it depends if you have abunch of boneheads in the family that are

always attracting bad situations or not. 99%of the time, we can get away with waiting four to five days to access our cash. evenif the hvac goes out on our house, the water heater needs replacing, something like that,service companies are going to do the work first then you pay them when the job’s complete.writing a check within 30 days is usually fine in those type of situations. it’s okay,that four to five day wait period. thanks for the question viet. if you have a money related question you wouldlike answered, please visit goaskscott.com to get in touch with me, that website hasmy email address, twitter and you can also leave me a voicemail. please contact me, iam here to help you and this show is all about

you. otherwise i have nothing to talk aboutso send me questions, come on. alright, today i’m going to share with youanother one of my money moron moments, they’re kind of limitless, we’ve got plenty to gofrom. when i was in college, i signed a two year contract for a gym membership. now ididn’t know anything about gym memberships at that time. then when the end of the schoolyear was reached, this was my freshman year this happened. i just took off for home andthen i left my bank account in that other state to dwindle down to nothing because ididn’t know about keeping a balance in there either. the gym membership auto drafted out of mychecking account each month. well, pretty

soon, the bank account was empty and i showedback up the school the next year and they’re like, “hey, you’ve got an outstandingbalance here. you know, you haven’t been paying on your membership but you’ve signedthis contract.” i’m like, “what? i thought if i just skipped town, the membership wouldstop,” that really was my thinking. you leave town and then the problem or the gymmembership just goes away right? i didn’t know. what was i? 18 years old? 18 year olds don’t know that stuff, youdo now if you’re listening to me because i’m telling you about it. if you have agym membership that you’ve already signed a contract on, you’re not using it anymore,you’re taking a break, you’ve got an option

to put a freeze on that membership. you cango in there and, “say hey, i’m not going to be working out for a while, i would liketo stop payments on my membership.” it doesn’t get you out of the contract butit will give you a buffer so they stop charging you for a period of months. sometimes youcan go up to 90 days which is nice. in the winter time if you don’t want to work out,you’re going to be traveling a lot, you can put a freeze on that account, pick itup again in the spring or to see if you can cancel that outright and get out of it. the amazing thing about gym memberships wheni think about them, i pay less now for my gym membership than i did when i was in collegeor high school actually. when i was in high

school i was going to a gym there as well.in high school i was paying $30 bucks a month and now i’m paying $10 a month, it’s crazy.one thing that has never followed inflation, gym memberships. now, back to your questions. jc writes, “i’m currently employed andconsider myself blessed to be so. i have made a lot of money the past two years but i havezero savings to show for, about $350,000 over the past two years. no 401(k), i was severelyturned off by 401(k)’s during the last bubble when tons of people lost money. however irealize employment doesn’t last forever, i’m only 29, my wife is 28, we’ve gota kid on the way, she is happy spending money and having no savings. she does not work.

honestly, i’m not upset about her situation.i have no problem creating income right now. i want to buy a house in cash one day andhave no debt and plenty stored up so i can help my family members when needed. i wouldlove to hear about what your thoughts are on someone in my situation? you have a huge, huge income which is awesomein such a young age. the thing about the bubble and people losing a bunch of money is thepeople that stayed in it for the long haul made all their money back and then some afew years later. but many investors, they never got the chance to recover their lossesfrom the crash. people got scared, they sold at the bottom or as the market was falling,it’s the worst thing you can do.

market timing which we’ve talked about manytimes, it doesn’t work. the people who didn’t make their money back were the people whodidn’t know how to invest properly. they were emotional investors, they either soldon the down turn or at the bottom or were heavily loaded in their own company stockand not well diversified. buying into company stock, not a good ideaon your 401(k). you have so far let your money grow, you should be putting it into a 401(k)and a roth ira. you can expect the market to tank many more times until you pull yourmoney out. i’m expecting it too. ride it out, it’s okay, it’s expected. buy whenthe market is down, buy when it’s on the way down, buy when it’s on the way up. it’sbeen proven in study after study, you come

out ahead in the long run. for you, just automate your savings. pullthat money out each month so you never even see it and it goes away into your retirementaccounts. don’t even tell your wife, just don’t tell her. say, in a year from nowyou say, “hey, we saved up all this money, we’re going to be having it for retirement.”she’ll be like, “yeah, maybe not the best idea but sit down, talk with her, say hey,we’re making a bunch of money, let’s put a little bit away for retirement.” spending money, that’s fine, enjoy it. justmake sure that you’re saving while you’re young so that when you hit your 40’s, you’renot in the situation some of these people

are today where they don’t have any savings.you could be stocking away a huge nest egg now and then later on not so much. you canlive life now or live life later as well. take the extra later on and like you said,you’ll be able to give it away as you see fit and help people which is wonderful thingto do. thanks jc for the question. okay, quick break, back in 30 seconds andi’ll be answering more of your questions, you’re listening to scott alan turner. are you tired of scooping the litter box?sick of throwing away thousands of dollars on cat litter? what about that smell? my friendslaughed when i told them i never scoop litter and my cat used a regular toilet until i revealedmy training process and they saw the cats

using the toilet for themselves. hi, i’mkatie, expert cat instructor on how to train your cats so you never have to scoop or buylitter again. toilet training a cat has many benefits, notin the least is all the money you’re going to save by not having to buy litter anymore.the scoop no more system shows you how to do it and best of all, it’s completely free.you’ll love never scooping or buying litter again. toilet train your cat and start livinga litter free life. visitscoopnomore.com. welcome back nation, matilda writes: “my husband works pretty hard to supportthe family, we’ll be married 10 years next year, we’re completely debt free exceptfor the mortgage, i primarily handle the finances

in the family. how can i secretly set asidemoney for a surprise anniversary vacation? i’m planning a trip that will cost abouta thousand dollars.” i had a friend in college named matilda, ialways like that name. 10 years for you guys, congratulations on that upcoming milestone.crafty matilda secretly wants to buy a new wardrobe but it’s covering up under theguise of a vacation, how does she do it? well first, good for you to decide to save forit instead of reaching for the plastic, that way you’re not paying for that vacationover and over again for the next two to three years. now, putting a large purchase on a creditcard can cause you a lot more but with your

paycheck already budgeted for 20 differentthings, where would you start? you need to embezzle money from yourself. really? thatright? that’s what you need to do. first step is by setting a goal, let’s begin withan equation, some math. let’s say you want to go to a bed and breakfast for your anniversarytrip. it’s going to be a weekend getaway and it’s five months away. you think it’s going to cost you a thousanddollars after doing some research for gas, lodging, restaurants, something nice for agift. now, we want to figure out how we need to save between now and then based on yourpay periods. if you get paid twice a month, five months away, you’ve got 10 paycheckscoming in, you’re going to need to save

a hundred dollars from each paycheck to meetthat thousand dollar goal. if you’re getting paid once a month, you’regoing to need to save $200 out of each pay period. figure out how much paychecks you’regetting in, divide that by time and you’ll come up with the amount you need to save foreach pay period. if it’s a reasonable amount then just go ahead and start stocking awaysecretly. if that amount is a little ambitious for you for each of your paychecks, you’regoing to have to look for other ways to find some more cash. alternatively you can extend the amount oftime that you’d be saving for that goal. maybe you have that vacation in 10 months,that way you only have to save $50 out of

each paycheck rather than $100 if you’regetting paid twice a month. maybe that would be more manageable for you. but if you wantto still stick to your five month goal, then we need to find other ways to save money. you need to look at your overall spendingplan, see for ways that you can trim and cut without being too obvious, groceries and budgetare a couple of areas. if you have some personal spending for each of you, maybe you want tosave some of your own money so maybe you don’t buy as much in your clothing allowance thismonth for example, maybe don’t buy the kids as many toys, take that money out. there’sdifferent ways that you can do it. maybe sell a few things on the side slyly to save upfor it.

little things that you can do here and there.taking your lunch to work each day will save you a ton of money and you’d be able tosave up for that trip. once you figure out how much you need to sock away, you need toput it somewhere. if you’re talking a thousand dollars for vacation, probably your husbandis not going to notice that money hanging around your checking account. if you’re on the cash budget, it’s easy,you just skim it off the top like i said, you’re embezzling for yourself, puttingthat away, hide it in a sock in your drawer, if you’re cutting your grocery and entertainmentby a hundred bucks a month, take it out of the cash envelope at the beginning of themonth, go hide it, be sneaky. no matter how

you do it, it’s important to create a savingsplan that is going to work to get you to your goal. if you made it this far, i’m certain ofone thing, even though we may have never met, shook hands or exchanged an email or tweet,you’re not giving up. committing to that 20 plus minutes, you just did, getting thisfar, you’re in it to win it so i applaud you. silent though, i’m not going to clapmy hands right now and blow up your ears in the microphone. i congratulate you on notgiving up. getting out of debt, saving, being responsible, it’s hard work. it is hardwork, and it’s easy to give up. if you want to give up on something, give up on givingup. those are the words.

if you can do me one favor, please take 30seconds right now, text three of your friends the link getfr.com, tell them to check outthe show. i appreciate you guys listening, i love it if you could help me out and spreadthe word. super simple, just text them getfr.com, tell them how awesome my cats are and theadvice is okay too. next time on the show, if you’re strugglingto get ahead, i’ll tell you how you can make more money. that’s it for this episode,i’m your host scott alan turner, rock star katie is my producer, all the links mentionedin the show are available in the show notes on scottalanturner.com. today’s episodeis powered by ben and jerry’s ice cream. thanks for listening.

okay nation, for your free copy of the guide,“how to save $1,000 in one week”, simply subscribe to the podcast right now on itunesand text the word “saving” to the number 33444 to prove that you did it. subscribenow to get out of debt, save more money and retire early. see you next time.

Just got my check for $500 

Sometimes people don't believe me when I tell them about how much you can make taking paid surveys online...

 So I took a video of myself actually getting paid $500 for paid surveys to finally set the record straight.