It sounds like a great idea. You give a cash gift to a woman in need through an investment or gifting circle, which you heard about from a friend. In a few short months, you’ll receive your investment back – times eight. That’s right. Your $5,000 investment will turn into $40,000 in just a few short months.
Ok, I’m being facetious. I hope that premise doesn’t sound like a good idea at all to you. In fact, I hope you instantly thought to yourself, “That’s a scam!”
In my last blog post I outlined my attempt to figure out extreme couponing. Armed with a binder full of coupons from about eight hours of searching and trading, I was ready to try shopping. I had the most different coupons for Pampers diapers and wipes, so I spent an hour one Friday morning looking through all the flyers for the lowest price on those specific products, with an eye out for other items I might have coupons for.
Last summer I started seeing online touting 50 – 90% off great stuff in my city – restaurants, manicures, event tickets, etc. I started paying them more attention once friends started sharing on Facebook the deals they had bought.
I’m headed to New Zealand in April (by myself, for two weeks – bliss!), so over the next few weeks I’ll be madly cleaning, organizing, and catching up on things I’ve been putting off forever. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my house will be destroyed when I return, but I’d like it to be a minor disaster as opposed to a complete write off.
My daughter is turning six soon. We’ve been paying her an allowance and she’s been saving it in little jars, but I’m pretty sure she’s been just shuffling the money around whenever the mood arises. She really hasn’t understood the concept until the past few months, when she switched from watching Treehouse to Family, and now sees a lot more commercials. Now she has a little list of items she wants to buy, and has figured out that the one or two items she gets for her birthday and Christmas won’t cover her wants.
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Sarah Deveau’s first memory of saving up to buy something she really, really wanted was at age five, when she saved her allowance and birthday money for six months to buy a mini waterbed for her Cabbage Patch doll. She’s been in love with money every since; making it, spending it, and saving it too.
The author of two personal finance books, Money Smart Mom: Financially Fit Parenting, and Sink or Swim: Get Your Degree Without Drowning in Debt, Sarah’s work has also appeared in Today’s Parent magazine, the Calgary Herald, and other newspapers and magazines across Canada.
Shortly after her first daughter was born, Sarah opened her own business, an award-winning children’s consignment boutique in Airdrie, Alberta. But once daughters two and three came along, she closed her store to invest in a lakeside farmhouse on 40 acres in rural Nova Scotia. Sarah and her high school sweetheart husband plan to move east within the next ten years and semi-retire before the kids hit high school, made possible by the everyday money decisions they’re making now.
Whatever your financial goals, be it a vacation home, college savings for the kids, or getting out of debt and stop cringing at credit card statements, this blog is for you.
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @SarahDeveau
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