Now More Than Ever Your Family Needs a Budget

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Thie cost of living has skyrocketed in the last three years under the current administration and it is not improving as we speak. If you do not have a family budget start one now. It is so easy now for a family to find that the dollars will not stretch for a full month of expenses if you do not control the family spending. Groceries have gone up in price so much that families have to decide what kind of meat they can afford not necessarily what kind of meat they would prefer. As percentage of income food costs have risen over 30% in the past three years even looking for the lower priced items. Gasoline is up over $2.00 a gallon, than it was before Biden took office. Eating out is up over 35% more than three years ago. I used to take my wife to breakfast for under $20 for both of us, now it cost me over $35 with tip at IHOP. Steaks are up percentagewise even more. Haircuts have risen in price also. With all these variables you need to prepare a family budget now.

Below is a framework that might be helpful for you to prepare your family budget.

Start with Income:
His Income
Her Income
Outside Income
(A) Total Income

Fixed Expenses
House Payment
Car Payments
Gasoline
Utilities
Electric
Gas
Water
Total
Medical Expenses
Internet Expense
Cable TV Expense
TV subscriptions like Netflix
Other Fixed Expenses
(B) Total Fixed Expenses

Variable Expenses
Groceries
Eating Out
Personal Expenses Him
Personal Expenses Her
Personal Expenses Children
Pet Expense
Medical Expense
Home Improvements
Car Repairs and Licensing
Other Variable Expenses
(C)Total Variable Expenses

Compute your family funds remaining by Subtracting the Fixed Expenses (B) and Variable Expenses (C) from your total Family Income (A)
The result is the income available for savings, investing, and emergencies. If you do not have a positive amount remaining you need to adjust your family budget downward until you are satisfied with the distribution of the available funds.

GOOD LUCK WITH PREPARING A FAMILY BUDGET THAT WILL WORK FOR YOUR FAMILY.

Your Family Budget and Retirement Alternatives

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Even if you are a younger working person it is good to investigate retirement living alternatives. As your working years progress you and your family can get some idea of how much money you will have to work with in your retirement.

We were living in Grand Junction, Colorado when I retired. A friend of my wife ask her to go with her to visit her mother and present the benefits of DoTerra essential oils. My wife took the friend in our car and drive about 180 miles to a place called CORA (Campground of The Rockies Association). It was an HOA type campground where all the people owned their own property and could have a motor home, fifth wheel, park model home, or trailer on a lot that had purchased within CORA. My wife went to the office and got a list of available properties. She stayed with Dave and Lou the parents of her friend. They invited her to bring me back the following weekend to look at properties. My wife was very excited at the location and the affordable prices for the properties. My wife had a favorite on the list she wanted to see again on our visit. We drove our 1983 Volkswagon Vanagan to CORA and stayed on the lots Dave and Lou owned who were the parents of my wife’s friend. They fed us and took us on a walking tour of all of the properties on the 10,000 ft. elevation level. It was dark when we returned to our Vanagan but we got to see about ten properties that were for sale. There are 500 properties on the 10,000 ft level and 350 properties on the 8,000 ft elevation level.

We were running two tables in an indoor flea market so could only go up the first part of the week, the flea market was open Thursday thru Sunday. We went back to CORA and decided to make an offer on a property. The owner was a very difficult person, when I made an offer close to his price he would raise the price, I decided I was not going to play games with him and looked at other properties. The place next to the place we made the offer on had a very new looking Everest fifth wheel and the lot had an unobstructed view of 13,000 ft. Buffalo Peak. There was a real estate for sale sign in front of it. I called the number on the sign and instead of the real estate agent I got the owner. He said he had just cancelled the listing with the agent and was going to sell it himself. He explained he purchased the Everest fifth wheel in 2002 new for $66,000 and had it towed to that location from Denver and it had not been moved. He said in six years they had only stayed in the Everest about six weeks so it was like new. The real estate agent had it for $87,000 then $78,000, then $68,000, then $52,000 when I looked at it. I ask the owner are you asking $52,000 for the lot and the trailer? He said oh that is too much, how about $45,000, I said how about $38,000? I ask if I was in the ballpark? He said yes but I want to have one more party up there this next weekend, you come up after 4 on Sunday and look at it. We went up and looked at it and he accepted $38,000 for the Everest and lot. Lots were going for about $24,000 at the time, so we got a fantastic deal to get the fifth wheel and the lot for $38,000. The seller needed cash right away to buy a lot to build a home near Breckenridge, Colorado.

CORA has a large indoor swimming pool, a clubhouse, a tennis court, cow pasture golf with sand greens, horseshoes, and playgrounds for the children. The annual cost is less than $1800 for dues and $100 for electricity, and the property taxes were less then $300. The insurance on the property was about $500. The property is only usable about nine months a year. In the heart of the winter the temperatures get to 40 below zero. The roads are kept clear year around so people do go up there in the winter to cross country ski and to go hunting. There is a large reservoir across from CORA. Antero Reservoir is one of lakes that supplies Denver with water. There is fishing and boating allowed at Antero. There is also a fishing pond owned jointly by CORA and Ranch of the Rockies which is stocked with trout.

We sold our home in Grand Junction Colorado, and moved our possessions to CORA and to a home we owned on rented land in an RV park in Apache Junction, Arizona. We spent the summers at CORA for
eight years until COVID 19. We did not go there in 2019 and 2020 with COVID. In 2022 we went to CORA in June with the idea of putting our place up for sale and if it sold right away we would come back to Casa Grande, Arizona where we had purchased a home. We sold the place within two weeks and returned to Casa Grande.

SO YOU CAN SEE THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO RETIRE AND PROVIDE LIVING PLACES WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK. GOOD LUCK IN YOUR RETIREMENT!

Your Family Budget And Planning For An Affordable Summer Vacation

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With the high cost of gasoline and so few have electric cars families are looking for an affordable family vacation this year. We live 40 miles south of Phoenix and 70 miles north of Tucson in the city of Casa Grande, Arizona. Yesterday on a local TV news station they showed eight different botanical garden related parks in the Phoenix and Tucson; area. Last week they showed a list of a large number of museums located within the Phoenix and Tucson areas.

I live 10 miles east of the city of Casa Grande but it is in the Casa Grande city limits. We live two miles from the Pinal County Fairgrounds and the adjoining auto racing track.The fairgrounds have lots of activities during the year, The Pinal County Fair is held the third week of March each year with a big carnival and all the displays that go with a county fair from animals, paintings, garden plants, quilts, and much more. It was attended this year by a very large number of people. It is like people want to get out after being restricted with COVID-19. The auto races go Thursday thru Sunday from March to September. There is a National Gourd festival held at the fairgrounds in February each year.

Coolidge Arizona is just ten miles from our house and on the north side of Coolidge is the entrance to Casa Grande National Monument. It is open from 9 to 4 every day but Monday. There is no fee and it is an interesting composite of ancient Indian ruins with one very large structure and lots of surrounding adobe ruins that are built like a fort to protect the larger building and it’s occupants. Coolidge is a quaint little town of approximately twelve thousand people. It has a Walmart, MacDonalds, Sonic, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Subway, Safeway, and several good restaurants. Since it is an equal distance compared to our trip to Casa Grande we go there to shop fairly often. Casa Grande is a town of approximately 60,000 people in the winter and up to 100,000 in the Winter with all the “Snowbirds” in the RV parks in Casa Grande. Casa Grande has several business areas but has one primary main street called Florence Avenue. Florence Avenue is about seven miles long in the business area from Interstate 10 to where the Gila Bend Highway begins. Florence Avenue is solid businesses from one end to the other on both sides of Interstate 10.

There are several historical museums in Casa Grande. An electric neon sign display dating back to the 1940’s is on Florence Avenue.

Eight miles south of our home is Sky Dive Arizona near Eloy , Arizona. It is a a large sky diving and hot air balloon facility. In fact the world championship sky diving competition is held at Sky Dive Arizona annually with divers coming from all over the world. There are two large landing areas like football fields located near a large group of buildings that support the sky diving activity. They have a packing shelter where they pack their parachutes. There is a dormitory, restaurant, swimming pool, massage parlor, training rooms to prepare jumpers, staging room where to they sign up to jump and wait to be transported to the plane, military training buildings, and recreational area with a basketball court. The Eloy airport adjoins the sky diving facility. There are over eight planes used for sky diving, six for Sky Dive Arizona and two for the military. Trained repeat jumpers can pay and be scheduled from about nine in the morning if the wind is not an issue that day. The cost for repeat jumpers is about $80 a jump. Tandem jumpers are those that want to be strapped to an experienced jumper for the experience. A three hour training session is required in the training rooms before jumping. it costs about $150 for tandem jumpers. The jumpers are scheduled and announced, when their group is called they load on a trailer with benches and are taken to the plane a short distance away, loaded and taken to an elevation of 5000 feet and then to 14,000 feet. Usually the plane goes to 14,000 feet where the jumpers are dropped. The 5,000 elevation, I understand, is for first time solo jumpers for them to get used to jumping. There are grandstands where observers can come and watch the divers as they dive and come onto the two large grass fields. I go to watch them fairly often. They come in fairly fast. Some do not hit the grassy area and they have a pickup truck and trailer to go get those that miss the target area. It is a great activity.

The point I am making is no matter where you live if you look around their are vacation type activities your family can experience at a small cost. You do not need to spend hundreds of dollars on gasoline and lodging to get to a place that may not be as interesting as places right near your home. Good luck in planning a great close to home family vacation.

Frustration Trying to File My Personal Income Tax Return This Year

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I have used Turbotax to file my tax return both Federal and State since 2013 and been happy with it. This year is a new ball game mainly because of new identification requirements set up by the IRS.

I got all my tax information together, the 1099INT from the bank with the interest on it earned in 2022, the 1098 Form from our home mortgage company with the property tax and interest paid information, Form 1099 Composite from Stash where I had investments during the year, Form 1099 R for retirement money paid to me during the year, Form SSA-1099 for me and one for my wife for Social Security paid to us during the year, and contribution statements from the two Churches we attended during the year. In addition to this information, I prepared comprehensive financial statements for the casual used golf cart business I ran the last five months of 2021 requiring a Schedule C be filed.

I went through the whole process on Turbotax answering all the questions they had. Turbotax starts out by telling a person how long they think it will take for them to complete the return. The time estimate for me was 4 hours and 30 minutes. The program ran all the checks on both the Federal and State returns and found one question I needed to answer. Then Turbotax told me which version of their software I needed to use to complete this return and how much it cost, $112 for the Federal, and $49 for the State. It asks if you want to pay from your refund or by credit card. I chose to pay by credit card. Turbotax congratulated me and stated that I had completed the return in two hours and twenty minutes far ahead of the national average.

Then it asks do you want to file electronically or on paper by mail? I always have filed electronically. When I made this choice that is when all Hell broke lose.

They tell you for the 2022 return you must complete an identification process. The first step in the process is tell us what your adjusted gross income on your 2021 tax return was? I have a new computer and downloaded all my previous tax returns onto a memory bank. When I went to the memory bank and clicked on my last year’s return it ask me how do you want to open it file? Windows 11 does not have the right software to open it. I could not find anything program that would open that file. Turbotax says not to worry click on this IRS link that takes you to ID.me to verify who you are. So, that is what I did. ID.me asks you to get your smart phone and use the camera to take a photo of the back and the front of your driver’s license, but not to use your camera use the software link that comes up on the screen from the link ID.me texts you. That took a while and several retakes and adjustments, but I finally got the photos to ID.me. Then they say you are not through yet “You need to take selfie on your phone using the ID.me software that has an elongated oval in the center of the phone screen. I played with that for a while and it came up with multiple messsages, “You are not close enough lay your phone on a table bend over it look into the oval center your face”. All I saw was black lines that look like long hairs and it is an outline of my head. ID.me says, You are not close enough maybe if your nose was right on the screen.” I tried two or three times and it said they were not getting my photo. I decided this must be a scam or a joke. I Googled Id.me and apparently it is an arm of the IRS. There are lots of negative comments out there about this truly non-functional software. I AM JUST GOING TO SEND MY RETURN IN ON PAPER THIS YEAR

Well today is another day, I decided to follow through on the ID.me system and see if I could get to efile my return. It took about six tries and authorization numbers before ID.me accepted my photos taken on their system with my phone. Then came the “Selfie” phase where you need to put your face in the oval. It really is just showing a bunch of black lines where your face is looking into the phone. It came back with messages we cannot see your whole face get closer, and even said I was too close once. But after about eight tries it finally shifted to another screen so I guess they liked my Selfie. Then I had to set up a pen for the eFile for each of us, and a Credit Karma password for the tax return tracking and finally got to the “E-file” button for the Federal and then the Arizona. MY RETURNs ARE NOW IN THE HANDS OF THE GODS.

2022 Tax Brackets for Your Family Budget Calculations

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2022-2023 tax brackets and federal income tax rates

Tax Rate Single filers Married filing
jointly or qualifying
surviving spouse Married filing
separately Head of household
10% $0 to $10,275 $0 to $20,550 $0 to $10,275 $0 to $14,650
12% $10,276 to $41,775 $20,551 to $83,550 $10,276 to $41,775 $14,651 to $55,900
22% $41,776 to $89,075 $83,551 to $178,150 $41,776 to $89,075 $55,901 to $89,050
24% $89,076 to $170,050 $178,151 to $340,100 $89,076 to $170,050 $89,051 to $170,050
32% $170,051 to $215,950 $340,101 to $431,900 $170,051 to $215,950 $170,051 to $215,950
35% $215,951 to $539,900 $431,901 to $647,850 $215,951 to $323,925 $215,951 to $539,900
37% $539,901 or more $647,851 or more $323,926 or more $539,901 or more

STANDARD DEDUCTION TABLE
Filing Status

2022 Standard Deduction

Single; Married Filing Separately

$12,950

Married Filing Jointly; Surviving Spouse

$25,900

Head of Household

$19,400

If you’re at least 65 years old or blind, you can claim an additional standard deduction of $1,400 in 2022 ($1,750 if you’re claiming the single or head of household filing status). If you’re both 65 or older and blind, the additional deduction amount is doubled.

The IRS and TurboTax offer free versions of filing a person’s Federal Income Tax Form for 2022 if the only thing you have is W-2 forms and do not intend to itemize your deductions. Otherwise, if you want to file your 2022 Federal and State returns yourself, I would suggest you select the appropriate TurboTax version for your situation. There are three main versions for individuals depending on what your return needs to include. TurboTax Deluxe if only W-2’s, interest income, dividend income, and you can itemize or take the standard deduction. TurboTax Premier for those that have stock transactions, rental income and other sources of income that do not require itemizing like a business. The third version is TurboTax Home and Business that allows you to file a schedule C for Business Income no matter how small your business or rental income might be. In general allows virtually anything an individual might need to report as far as W-2, 1099, and business income.

TurboTax is available on a CD or on line. Since many new personal computers do not have a port for a CD, most people choose the on line versions. If you can do your income tax yourself you can save a pretty good chunk of money. TurboTax ranges from about $60 to $150 depending on what version you buy. There are also TurboTax versions for Partnerships and Corporations.

Good luck in filing your 2022 tax return by the due date Tuesday April 18,2023.

Begin Including In Your Family Budget Insurance And Investments

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The sooner that a family begins planning for the future which should include life insurance, 401-k’s, 403b’s if eligible, or Fed 457 programs, they will be better prepared for retirement. It is shocking that so many people do not recognize the necessity of Life Insurance. If a person purchases life insurance when they are in their 20’s or even 30’s, the premiums are surprisingly affordable. When I sold life insurance it was very difficult to get people in their 20’s to even discuss life insurance , they considered the salesman totally interested in making money for themselves. Term life insurance policies are very inexpensive. A person can have live insurance with a million dollar benefit for less than $100 a month if they begin before they are thirty years old. If they are in their 30’s when they begin a term life insurance program they can still have a fairly high benefit amount. If a person waits until they are in their forties the premiums are higher and the benefit is lower. Insurance sales people will sometimes try to convince a person to buy whole life policies which means you pay the premiums your whole life and they accumulate cash surrender value. A lessor amount of insurance is affordable if a person buys whole life and even with the cash value it is generally not a good investment. One of the sales pitches is that you can borrow against a whole life policy cash value. If a person borrows on their whole life policy, they pay interest and at some point are supposed to pay the money borrowed back to the insurance company to restore the original cash value accumulation. Most people that borrow from their insurance policies do not attempt to pay back the money they borrowed.

The premium costs saved by purchasing term life insurance could be used to systematically purchase mutual funds that will accumulate through the years and be available for major purchases such as a home or for retirement. Most of the time those funds should be used for retirement because the person may have to pay income taxes at current rate and possibly a penalty for early withdrawal. This applies if the funds come from a 401-k program of they choose to cash some or all of this money in before retirement age. A person may still have to pay income tax in the tax deferred portion and earnings of a retirement program when they retire, but there will not be a penalty charged under current tax law.

By all means a person should participate in 401-K, 403-b or 457 programs to the maximum offered or the maximum they can afford at the time. It is important that a person study the funds offered and discuss with their broker or agent the goals and timeframe that each fund is designed to accomplish. There are times when it is necessary to get out of a particular fund because of diminished performance and go to another fund. Keep informed on what your funds are doing and ask your adviser their opinion concerning needed changes.

Small business owners, like mom and pop operations, that have to set up their own retirement and investment programs should set up a 401-K and may want to select Roth plans so the taxes are paid as you go on the investments made. Likewise they should purchase life insurance on the main income earner and possibly a smaller amount of life insurance on person that is not working or contributing considerbly less to the family income.

Good luck planning as a family what is necessary to provide for your family not only now but for the extended future.

Your Family Budget And a Suggestion of How to Supplement it with Photos of Properties

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When a person decides they want to purchase a home or property, the financing entity usually requires a “Broker’s Price Opinion” or a full appraisal by a licensed appraiser. The “Broker’s Price Opinion” or BPO as it is commonly called is where you come in. Many real estate agents do not have time to go chasing around to take photos of what an agent calls “Comps”. So, they hire someone with a good digital camera or a phone with great photography ability to go out to the addresses they will furnish you with. Most BPO’s require photos of three properties of similar structure and lot size within close proximity that have sold within the last year. The photo person must be able to take good clear photos of those properties, three additional properties of similar size and lot size that are currently listed within a defined geographical area will need to be photographed. Usually six photos is all that is required for a BPO.

How do you find out about where these properties are located. Go to a real estate agency that has a record of selling and buying a lot of properties and ask if they need someone to take photos for their listings of for people asking them to establish a listing value for their property which could include a BPO? Also ask if they farm out the exterior and interior photos for properties being listed. Go to a bank or real estate financing company and find out if they farm out photos for the properties they are planning on financing that will have BPO’s?

There is another aspect when dealing with Real Estate agents, some of them farm out listing brochure compositions for the properties they have listed. The person would be asked to prepare a one or two page brochure to be put in a box outside the property for people driving by the properties. There would be several photos and graphics explaining the home and it usually includes the price but not always.

Another job real estate agents do not like to do themselves is take an agency sign out and dig a hole and put a stake in to mount the “For Sale” sign. Then after the sale they need someone to go get the sign or if the listing has expired the sign needs to be collected.

Sometimes the real estate agent themselves pay for these services or in some cases the agency pays for multiple agents. Keep in mind there may be a large number of agents in an agency but you need to deal with the those too busy to perform these duties.

There is usually a tight time frame to get the photos, they may need them within a matter of hours or two or three days. If you are asked to take interior photos for a listing or brochure you would generally have to coordinate with the occupant if the property is occupied as to when you can perform those duties.

if you like photography you will love the jobs associated with the loan and real estate business. I audited real estate appraisals for several years for properties in all fifty states.

Your Family Budget And Setting Priorities

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Certainly Food , gasoline, and your financial obligations for housing and committed payments take priority. Just recently it has been mentioned that the United States only has a five week supply of diesel fuel. Diesel Fuel is necessary for the whole trucking industry and many other industrial uses. At a press conference John Brennan, a spokesman for the State Department was ask “Is there a plan to deal with the fact that we will be out of diesel fuel in five weeks?” His response was “There is no current plan to deal with the diesel fuel shortage, but we will be working on it. Well, this is a week later still no announced plan has been disclosed to deal with the shortage of diesel fuel.

What can we anticipate will happen if the United States runs out of diesel fuel? First and foremost all the trucking transportation system would come to a halt. No more Safeway, Prime, Walmart, and other supply trucks on the highway system, as we drive them. Grocery stores will not get their shipments and the shelves will again be bare in many places throughout the store. Transportation of gasoline to the filling stations would cease we would not have fuel to get to work.

Probably people would still have water in their homes, but staple food items would be in short supply or not available. Jessie Kelly on “The First TV network on Pluto TV” is advertising food packages for survival in the event of a food shortage. Several talk show hosts on TV have mentioned the diesel fuel shortage and encourage people to stock up on staple food items in the event our transportation system comes to a halt.

Responding to the warnings and apparent lack of a plan to deal with the diesel fuel shortage, we have stocked up on flour, sugar, beans, and a number of canned food items. It is costly to stock up with the increase in current inflationary financial climate. Many people are having to try to find supplementary sources of income to deal with the high prices for everything.

One thing I stumbled onto was buying and selling golf carts. A neighbor was moving and had an older golf cart for sale for $1500. I ask my wife if she would like a golf cart, she emphatically said “No we don not need one.” Just about everyone in our 55 and over housing area and the RV park less than a mile from us has a golf cart. A week later the neighbor dropped the price of the golf cart to $1,000, I again approached my wife and the answer was the same, “No”. The day my neighbor was moving to Florida I went by to see him and he said he was going to have a neighbor try to sell the golf cart for $1,000 and was going to pay them a commission. I casually said, “I will pay you $750 for the cart.” He said , “Cash?” I said I will go home and get the cash and be back in a few minutes. I got the cash took it to the neighbor and drove home in the golf cart. My wife still did not want to have a golf cart, so I advertised it on Craigslist and Offerup for $1150 and sold it the next day. I realized at that point there is a big demand for used golf carts in the area of Arizona where we live. I started looking at golf carts on Craigslist and decided to buy a cart for $1800 that looked like a good deal. I did not have a way to haul carts, so I called a cart hauler advertised on Craigslist to pick up the cart. The hauler charged $120, I now had $1920 invested in the cart.

It was a Hyundai golf cart, I placed it on Craigslist and Offerup for $2500 and sold it for $2400, a $480 profit. Since that time only three months ago , I have had 14 golf carts and have sold eleven of them. I have a large garage that will hold four carts, so I keep them concealed. It is against the rules of the HOA to have a business within the Wildhorse community. To get around the no business rule, there is a desert area next to a busy highway near us, I take my cart with a for sale sign, that includes tabs with my phone number, lookers can pull the tab off and call me. Several carts were sold from roadside lookers. I physically go the location of the cart and handle the transaction there. There is also a large RV park, with 557 spaces, only 3/4 of a mile from my home. They have a bulletin board for items for sale, I put a flyer about my carts on the bulletin board and have sold three from that source. The other sales came from ads on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Offerup. I have lost money on two carts that I did not personally go see. I sent the money with the hauler on those carts and took the word of the seller that they were in excellent shape and they were not when I got them. I plan to continue to try to sell a couple of carts a month to supplement my income. The demand will decrease when most of the “Snowbirds” have arrived for the winter here in Arizona from all over the United States and Canada.

I am sure there are other businesses that you can explore by buying things on Craigslist and reselling them using free ads.

Budgeting For Your Family In The Event of Unexpected Effects of the Current Economy

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The news has not covered extensively what China is doing with their currency. As I understand it the China Monetary system is based on exchange rates to the dollar. As recent as last week they closed the banks for a few days or maybe longer to change their currency. The “Yuan” which is China’s currency has had the value against the dollar declining for several months. China has closed over 1200 branch banks because so many people in China bank on line. After the most recent interest hike by the United States the Yuan has continued to decline. Many banks that are still operating in China closed temporarily last week but have not reopened resulting in riots throughout China because of the closings. It is hard to determine if this will have a significant affect on the U.S. dollar, but it is possible that it will. Some banking people have expressed fear at some point the U.S. monetary system will have to change how the dollar is backed or even possibly establish a new currency. If something this drastic occurred, is your family ready to not have a bank for a few days or weeks, not have use of your credit card for a few days or weeks, or possibly have to replace all your credit with a new system which could hurt families monetarily.

Some of our friends have shared the idea that they are stashing cash at home that they would normally put in their bank account so they have a cash supply in event the U.S. banks were to close for a period of teme. . Another rule many people follow,with the gasoline situation questionable, is to never let your vehicle’s fuel level get below half a tank. What if stations were so jammed you could not get to a pump or the stations were running out of fuel at the pump?

With all the nuclear talk by Russia and uncertainty around the world, families need to prepare for the worst. What if the water supply to your home is interrupted for days, do you have drinking water for the family. It is a good idea to buy a number of cases of water or water in gallon of larger containers to make it easier for cooking. Stock up on your favorite canned foods and have a rotation system in your pantry so you are using the oldest items first. Purchase energy bars and nutrition bars that can keep a person alive for several days if they have nothing else but water. The food is expensive but there are companies on line that you can access and order dried pre-prepared food in protective containers for emergency use. The survival food companies have charts that show how long a person would have adequate food with their various options.

Does your family have a supply of dependable flashlights and batteries in the event of extended power outages? If your family was to lose their heat or air conditioning what would your family do. If it is cold weather a family would need warm clothing and possible a place to build a fire outside. That would require a wood or pellet supply. If you live in Arizona and it is 118 degrees where could your family go to escape the heat in the event there was no electricity?

Your family should have several AM FM battery operated radios so they could get warning messages on local station. Several sets of walkie talkies would enable your family to communicate with each other for several miles if you were separated. Arm identification like they have in the hospital is used a lot in crisis situations so people know who they are particularly children.

Set up a family meeting and discuss a lot of these scenarios and set up a plans for your family

How To Save Money On Your Family Budget for Television

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First of all the cost of smart TV’s has declined a lot in recent years. I would recommend a smart TV if you do not already have one. As an example at Walmart they have several different brands to choose from. For example if you wanted a 55 inch Toshiba it is currently selling for $358, an RCA 55 inch is $298, a Visio sells for about $378. An Ensign TV sells for less than the name brands but the sound is not nearly as quality as the name brands, so I would recommend getting a name brand TV. I have a Toshiba smart TV and love it.

If you have Dish Satellite TV or Direct TV, you are probably paying about $140 a month for the 80 channel package and more than that if you have their largest package. We cancelled dish and went with a different set up and are saving a lot monthly.

The smart TV’s have a Roku built in so you do not need to buy one. If you do not have a smart TV and your TV has an extra HDMI input, then you can buy a Roku for about $30 at Amazon or Ebay. We subscribe to Sling which offers two packages having about 40 channels each. If you watch Fox News one package has that along with the other thirty plus channels. If you like the ESPN channels the other package has that. Each package costs $30 a month or if you have both of them it costs $50 a month. We have Netflix for movies. Also we have Amazon Prime so that entitles you to their Amazon Prime TV package which has lots of free movies and recent movies that can be rented on line. I have MLB TV which allows me to watch any MLB baseball game for the pre-season and regular season , plus the post season, for $129 a year.

We have an outside antenna that cost about $100 which provides us with the local channels at no cost. I just disconnected the Dish from the satellite dish and hooked the antenna to that coaxial cable. There were two TV’s connected to Dish and I now get the local channels on both TV’s. The only cost for those channels is the antenna. We get about 42 channels on the antenna among them, NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox local.

On the smart TV you have a choice of a number of AP’s that provide even more channels many of them free. For example there are over 100 free channels on Pluto TV. There are movies, and networks that only appear on Pluto TV. For example “The First” is a great network that Bill O’Reilly originated, he is on each week day on that network. I watch “I’m Right” that follows O’Reilly with Jessie Kelly, it is great. Following that is Buck Sexton that has conservative views, he also is the person that fills the time spot on the radio that Rush Limbaugh was on. All this is free on Pluto TV. You just need to go to the Ap’s on your smart TV and add it to the selection that will appear on you main screen.

If we add the cost of doing your family TV in this manner let’s see how much you can save. Let’s say you just choose the Orange Sling Package, that would be $30, Netflix is $12.95, Prime is about $12 a month(it costs about $139 paid annually). Allocating the cost of antenna over a year , it would cost less than $10 a month. So your monthly cost is now only less than $65 a month.

Let’s say you have both Sling packages the Orange and the Blue at a cost of $50 a month, MLB baseball at a cost of less than $12 a month(paid annually $129) Netflix $13, Prime $12, and the antenna $10, the total monthly cost would be $97 a month. Quite a savings from $140 a month I used to pay.

Give it a try and save lots of money and have even more flexibility than you have with Dish or Direct TV.