We've talked about clothing budgets before, but not about how you PLAN your clothing budget. So let's discuss! Some questions to consider:

• DO you plan your clothing budget, or just try to stop shopping when you feel like you've spent too much?
• have you had a clothing budget for limited times in your life, like maternity clothes or clothes for a big new job?
• do you differentiate clothes, shoes, and makeup in your budget plan?
• do you save your budget in a special place? (you know I love my automated savings!)
• if you purchase clothes for multiple people (e.g., partner, child, parent), does each one have a budget in your mind?
• how do you plan for big sale events like the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale and Amazon Prime Day sales?

{related: not sure what to do first/next in your personal finance journey? here's our money roadmap}

We've talked a lot about clothes and money over the years, including picking the most affordable work clothes, rounding up our favorite low-cost clothing basics, given tips on how to stop shopping and shop your closet, as well as discussing fashion math and thrifting for workwear.

My Clothing Budget Planning

To answer my own questions… I've always been such a creature of sales that I DON'T have a huge plan for clothing budget, and I've found it hard to track since a lot of my kids' clothes and my clothes will come from the same stores, or some stores sell a mixture of clothes with other household items and groceries, like Amazon and other big box stores.

I HAVE kept track over the years of money given to me by the women in my family — the small little birthday checks and so forth that, when added up, can be a big purchase. (This was how I bought my first designer bag!) I've also always loved the idea of going on a shopping vacation such as to New York or Paris and having a budget in mind for that.

Back when I started as a lawyer, I think I did have a budget (and a relatively high one, for me at least) to buy new suits and other workwear — it wasn't my entire summer associate savings, but the money definitely came from there.

{related: financial tips for new lawyers (or other women in their first high-paying jobs!)}

Even for maternity clothes I didn't really have a budget, I just tried to keep costs as low as possible. A girlfriend who was pregnant at the same time as me was buying much nicer maternity clothes, figuring that she wanted multiple children so she would wear them more — but the fashion math is so iffy on those because you don't know how many future children you'll have, or if you'll be the same size in those pregnancies…

I have had a general idea of what is a “good price” for various clothes over the years, though, and tend to stick with it…

In terms of clothing budget planning for others, I suppose I have it easy because I'm buying for my husband and sons, and not one of them truly cares about clothes…

Over to you, readers — I know a number of readers have mentioned over the years that they have explicit clothing budgets. How do you plan your clothing budget, how do you account for other people and for big sales/lucky finds, and how do you keep track and adjust from year to year?

Stock photo via Stencil.

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How are you saving and investing your money right now? And what are you doing with existing investments (such as I-bonds) that are earning less than they were a year or two ago?

As Investopedia notes, the new composite rate is 4.28% isn't bad — but it definitely isn't the 10% from recent months.

For my $.02, we have probably too much in index funds at this point in our lives (85%+, maybe 90%+), and we always have too much in high-yield savings accounts (HYSAs), so I’ve been trying to diversify a bit with CDs and yes, some investments in 30-year treasury bonds. Our HYSAs are earning 4%, which is about what you can find in CDs now – but because HYSAs may change at any point I’m still putting money back into CDs when they come due.

We aren’t moving money out of the 30-year I-bonds because (given our lay of the land) the rates aren’t that bad, and the sums aren’t too huge a percentage… but every 6 months when there’s a new rate announced I’m trying to remember to monitor it, ha.

(We use Ally, Vanguard, and Schwab primarily, but more out of habit than anything. I find it easiest to do CDs in Ally instead of through my other online brokers – that way if they come due and I’m not paying attention, the money isn’t going to a settlement fund earning a low interest rate.)

Readers, how about you? How are you saving and investing your money right now? And what are you doing with existing investments (such as I-bonds) that are earning less than they were a year or two ago?

Stock photo via Stencil.

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Personal finance books are an obvious choice for expanding your knowledge and skills and getting a better handle on your financial situation, but if you'd prefer something faster and more focused, taking an online class is a convenient option. We've rounded up three great online personal finance classes that explain the nuts and bolts of budgeting, home buying, and investing.

We've written a lot about personal finance over the years, including personal finance tasks to do at the beginning of the year (updated for 2024), Kat's “money roadmap” advising what to care about, in what order, reassessing your 401(k), splitting expenses with your partner, calculating an emergency fund, investing in socially responsible ways, automating your savings, preventing lifestyle creep, getting started investing, and much more.

Psst: Speaking of money, we're always looking for more submissions of Personal Money Snapshots from readers! We're featuring a new one on Wednesday, so stay tuned…

{related: 6 awesome online classes for working women}

3 Great Online Personal Finance Classes

Skillshare: Budgeting 101

The quick class “Budgeting 101” can be helpful you're just starting out, or if your money habits are a bit more freewheeling than you'd like and need some more structure.

Taught by CPA and CFA Son Han, this 16-minute course is a supplement to Han's “The Fab Four of Personal Finance,” also on Skillshare. This class teaches six steps for creating a “90% accurate” budget (to be fine-tuned once you start using it) and calculating your net worth, and it also offers a Google Sheets template so that you don't have to create your own budget spreadsheet.

The class is only included with a Skillshare subscription and is not available separately. Skillshare offers a free 30-day trial (cancel anytime), and after that it's $29/month or $99 annually (sale price). As for ratings, this course has 300+ reviews; 42% of users said it exceeded their expectations, while 50% said it met them.

{related: the best online women's management training}

LinkedIn: Managing Your Personal Investments

LinkedIn Learning doesn't just offer strictly career-related courses and continuing education; it also provides personal finance learning opportunities, like this beginner-level investing course.

“Managing Your Personal Investments,” created by Jane Barratt of MX Technologies, gives a basic overview on types of investments, including stocks, bonds, funds, and more; and outlines investing techniques and strategies, such as managing your portfolio and evaluating risk. The course is divided into four main modules — “Why Invest?”, “What Is Investing?”, “How Do I Invest?”, and “Where to Invest” and includes four quizzes. It takes about an hour and a half to complete.

The enrollment fee is $34.99 (which includes a Certificate of Completion) or included in a LinkedIn Learning subscription. After a three-month trial, subscriptions start at $39.99/month. With almost 1,400 ratings from users (with many more having completed it) this course has 4.8 out of 5 stars.

{related: 3 great books about work-life balance for professional women}

Khan Academy: Housing

I can personally vouch for the nonprofit learning platform Khan Academy in general — it was a great resource for helping my kid with math homework and made it a less painful process! In this case, “Housing” isn't the name of a class, but the name of the second unit in a Khan Academy online course called “Finance and Capital Markets,” which comprises 10 units.

This free Google Classroom course consists of 19 videos that provide an overview of the essentials of buying a home, broken up into four sections: “home equity and personal balance sheets,” “renting vs. buying a home,” “mortgages,” and “home buying process.” Home-buying newbies will learn about key topics like renting vs. buying, interest rates, types of mortgages, title insurance, escrow, and more.

Khan Academy courses don't have ratings — but hey, they're free!

Readers, do tell: Have you taken any online personal finance classes? Have you found good options that are more advanced than those above? Other than courses, what are your favorite personal finance resources, online or otherwise? What is your favorite online learning platform?

These are some of our latest favorite financial books for beginners:

The post 3 Great Online Personal Finance Classes appeared first on Corporette.com.

At the beginning of each year, we like to remind readers of several important financial housekeeping tasks — plus new tax rules, and current forecasts for rates and more. Even if your New Year's resolutions have nothing to do with personal finance, these are key things to consider in January and beyond.

Here are a few special notes for 2024 to help you plan:

1. Student loan forgiveness: In 2023, President Biden's plan for student loan forgiveness was ruled too far-reaching by the Supreme Court. While the original plan would have affected 90% of federal student loan borrowers, CNBC reported on Jan. 2 that the new forgiveness plan will only reach a small percentage of them, between 4 million and 10 million. If all goes well, relief would likely to go into affect on July 1, 2025, but the administration may be able to move things more quickly.

For those who need them, CNN rounded up the best private student loans for 2024, based on interest rates, repayment terms, and more, with a top pick of Discover Bank. In 2023, CBS News reviewed the pros and cons of private loans.

2. Mortgage rates: Expect mortgage rates to decrease in 2024 — but not right away. As NerdWallet noted on Jan. 2, the general expectation is that the Fed will cut short-term interest rates in the spring, after several months of (predicted) considerably slowed inflation. At the end of 2023, Money.com reported that experts expect rates to be 6.8% on average for 2024 and 6.5% by the end of the year.

3. The housing market: Money.com also shared that “Realtor.com expects the typical monthly purchase cost for the median priced home listing to drop slightly from this year’s $2,240 to $2,200, amounting to about 35% of the average U.S. household income. Demand will probably remain low, and inventory will still be limited as would-be sellers hold back.” (Meanwhile, rental prices probably won't change much.)

4. CD rates: On Jan. 2, Bankrate forecast that 2024 will be a good one for CD investors. Even if the Fed cuts the key benchmark rate (expected to be 4.6% by the end of 2024, as PBS NewsHour reported at the end of last year), high yields are likely. That said, the NYT [gift link] said on Dec. 29 that these may be the best CD rates we’ll see for a while… so there’s that.

5. Series I savings bonds: The current rate is 5.27%, including a fixed rate of 1.30%, for I bonds issued November 1, 2023, to April 30, 2024. In case you're not familiar, these bonds earn interest monthly, and interest is compounded semiannually; you'll earn both a fixed rate of interest and a rate that changes with inflation.

You can redeem your I bond after 12 months (or keep it in there as it earns interest for up to 30 years). If you cash in the bond in less than 5 years, however, you lose the last 3 months of interest.

6. Miscellaneous: This CNBC story includes details on new rules that cover workplace emergency accounts called pension-linked emergency savings accounts (PLESAs), emergency withdrawals from 401(k)s without a 10% tax penalty (with a special rule for victims of domestic abuse), and more.

Personal Finance Tasks to Do ASAP in a New Year

1. Review 401(k) Limits: The 2024 limit on 401(k), 403(b), and most 457 plans, as well as the federal government's Thrift Savings Plan, is $23,000 — up from $22,500 in 2023. For people aged 50 and over, the catch-up contribution limit stays at $7,500.

If you're making regular contributions from your paycheck, make sure you've adjusted your chosen amount accordingly if you want to max out your 401(k). It's best to do this at the beginning of the year so you only have to do it once — if you do it in the middle of the year, you're either not maxing it out or you'll have to change your contribution again next January.

{related: where to save (when you don't know what you're saving for)}

2. Review IRA Limits: The IRS limit on annual contributions to an IRA increased to $7,000 from $6,500. For people aged 50 and over, the catch-up contribution limit of $1,000 from 2023 will remain the same this year.

{related: not sure what to do first/next in your personal finance journey? here's our money roadmap}

3. Reassess your debt: If your mortgage or (private) student loan payments changed recently, figure out how you can round the required amount UP to an even number, and make the change accordingly (paying the extra toward principal). Do what you can — every little bit helps with principal (this calculator from Bankrate helps you see how much), and knowing that a memorable round number is coming out of your bank account helps you to know if your balance is sufficient.

{related: how to decide when to pay down debt — and when to save}

For example, if your mortgage payment is now $3,218, you could pay

• an extra $282 toward principal each month (total = $3,500 each month)
• an extra $82 toward principal each month (total = $3,300 each month)
• an extra $782 toward principal each month (total = $4,000 each month)
• or an extra $32 toward principal each month (total = $3,250 each month)

4. If you have a 529 plan, reassess your automatic contributions. Each state occasionally changes the amount you can give to get a state income tax deduction; if you want to max it out, then assess.

A new perk for families: You can now roll unused 529 funds into a Roth IRA for your child without tax penalty. CNN has all the fine print; for example, 529 plan contributions and earnings from the last five years can't be transferred to a Roth.

{related: the 411 on using 529s to go back to school}

5. Reassess your subscriptions and other repeating payments to make sure you're not paying money for services you're not using — and review any new prices. The New York Times [gift link] recently listed what you'll pay for the major streaming services in 2024, including the price hikes from Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. *grumble*

6. Automate what you can: Consider setting up automatic investing, or automatic saving to amortize big expenses. Kat has a small amount of money automatically moved from checking to her online savings accounts to help her save for multiple financial goals, like her emergency fund, vacation fund and predictable large bills (term insurance, accounting advice, etc.).

What personal finance tasks would YOU do ASAP in a new year, readers? What have you done already this year; what has this list inspired you to do?

{related: what was the best financial decision you made last year? (2018 discussion)}

Stock photo via 123rf.com/serezniy.

The post What Personal Finance Tasks to Do ASAP at the Beginning of the Year appeared first on Corporette.com.

I know everyone (including me) loves to read those money diaries on sites like Refinery29, and I've been meaning to create a “personal money snapshot” series to feature readers who are willing to share a summary of their financial situation. We now have a Google form (similar to the form we have for the CorporetteMoms Week in the Life of a Working Mom posts), and I would love to a) open it up for participants, b) get your feedback (too long?), and c) note that everything is possible for change. (The nice thing about Google forms is that we can edit questions, which is not always the case with surveys and things.)

Click here if you'd like to see the form and/or submit responses! You can also see a PDF of the questions if you want to review them ahead of time. See others in the Personal Money Snapshot series here.

Notes on the Personal Money Snapshot Form:

1. The reason we ask for your email address: It would be much, much better if we could have your email address so that Kate or I could ask follow-up questions for clarity — sometimes not everything is obvious from an outside perspective. THAT SAID, there are a lot of personal questions on the form, so I understand if you don't want to share your address. I can't quite figure out how to make that question optional, though, so just put something obviously fake and we'll deal. (If you DO trust us with your email address, thank you very much! We will keep your info safe pursuant to the Corporette Privacy Policy — and I promise to never ever hit you up for a loan if you're loaded.)

2. The general nature of the questions (and why it looks longer than it is): I've been observing reader comments and discussions on money for a long time, and I think the usual “what I spend in a week” summary isn't necessarily illuminating or educational. That's why the questions on the form are pretty wide-ranging — and it may seem long when you first look at it, but that's because I'm not expecting EVERYONE to have something to say in EVERY category. (I'm assuming readers will have a lot to say in one or two of the sections and less in others.)

I also believe that people have “quadrants of knowledge” when it comes to personal finance. Maybe you know everything about country club fees, which markets are awesome for second homes, and which ostrich bag is REALLY worth the $10,000. That's awesome, and we want to hear from you! We also want to hear from people who are in six figures of debt, flirting with bankruptcy, and/or living paycheck to paycheck (yes, even if you have a high income and are living paycheck to paycheck). We also want to hear from the FIRE people who are putting away $100K of their $120K income, and people who had their lives wildly shifted (for good or bad) by something like inheritance (hopefully good) or crazy medical bills (probably bad). 

3. Big Picture questions: There are a few questions I want everyone to answer because I think they generally inform the reading of responses. One question asks specifically what your net worth was when you started working since I think there's a huge difference in what your personal finance journey looks like if your net worth at 25 or whatever is -$260,000 (in debt) vs. $5,000 vs. $150,000. Another question asks, “Is there anything else we should know about you from a “Big Picture” perspective up front, for context, as it relates to your net worth, expenses, or debt?” I included that to delve into situations that we wouldn't know to ask about but certainly affect your money situation, e.g., “had to be life-flighted to the hospital and had $100K in medical bills,” or “private schools are not optional for my family because I don't believe my kids will get a fair shake in public school” or “all of our home-related finances are super high because my in-laws live with us and we pay for everything.” 

Like I said, it's pretty wide ranging and hopefully not TOO… asky. If there are specific questions that are offensive to people or otherwise problematic, I'd love to know which ones in particular. If people think there need to be specific questions added to any part of it, we'd love to hear those too.

Here's a quick question for discussion today, though: what are your favorite resources to learn about money? What's your favorite podcast, book, blog, or other resource?

Psst: here's our last discussion on the best personal finance books for beginners, as well as my “money roadmap,” or what my own personal finance journey has looked like. 

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What does your holiday spending for gifts and tips look like this year, readers? Are there special food items you only buy for the holidays (or special wine or liquor)? (And how are you keeping track of it all?) Let's discuss…

Psst… here are all of our tips on holiday business etiquette!

For my $.02…

My 2023 Holiday Spending for Gifts and Tips

For gifts, I don't know why but I roughly have a “$150 minimum” in my mind for parents, siblings, and in-laws. I can go above that if I want to, but in my mind I'm done if I'm somewhere in the $150 range. For the kids it can be tricky, both because we spend willy nilly on them throughout the year, plus both sets of grandparents are extraordinarily generous… so I may be the only mother on the planet who isn't overly concerned with buying gifts for the kids.

(And when I do give them presents, they tend to be kind of abstract — for example, my 12-year-old is getting a budget to redecorate his room as his big present…)

Holiday Spending on Tips

For tips, life is a lot less complicated than it was years ago with a law firm secretary and so forth. I get the major teachers gift cards, and our cleaning professional's gift will be the same amount as one of her regular visits… and a few other people will get a family holiday card with a small gift card inside.

(Here was our last big discussion on holiday tips…)

Special Holiday Food

We don't have a huge outlay on food or drink because, well, my parents are still doing a lot of it, but my mother will often buy filet mignon and lobster for Christmas Eve and a ham for Christmas Day, and they usually have the liquor cabinet well stocked for their guests.

How I Keep Track of Holiday Spending

In terms of how to keep TRACK of it all… well, I'm still perfecting my system. I tend to buy for people starting in October, if not earlier, so keeping track of what I've bought for whom (and where I am in my random $150 scale) can be tricky for me.

This year I started a Word doc that lists each major family member and then (for each member):

General present ideas:

2023 Xmas Gifts:

2023 Stocking Stuffers:

2023 Birthday:

So, hopefully I can keep track of what I've got on tap for this holiday season, as well as keep a running list of what I've gotten them in previous years, both to generate new ideas and make sure I don't buy things I've already given them.

(We'll see, of course… I actually started the Word doc in 2021 and then totally forgot about it…)

Readers, how about you — what does your holiday spending for gifts and tips look like this year?

Stock photo via Stencil.

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