Don’t Feed the Alligators

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts of a guest post by ScrapperMom on Saving on Food.

We continue our discussion about saving money on food by looking at what you can do at home to save money with the food you have already purchased.

Morph one ingredient into multiple meals

To save even more time and money choose your main ingredient for the week out of the items that are on sale. This idea is the main focus of Robin Miller’s Quick Fix Meals show on the Food Network. In her show she makes up kits of food that she can use for the whole week. She also cooks more than she needs on one night to use for multiple dishes throughout the week. This saves both time and money which for me, as a work at home mom, is invaluable. This is where you can buy a big package of chicken, make all of it one night and use it in multiple dishes throughout the week. For example it can be chicken parmesan the first night, chopped and used for quesadillas and chicken salad on other nights. With ground beef it can be morphed into meat sauce, chili and tacos. Read the rest of this entry »

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A reader asks:

What do you think of the recommendations near the end of this article, specifically about 1) not closing old accounts, and 2) what percentage of your credit limit to use?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/02/22/financial.security/index.html

My research on these points seems to concur with the advice given in the article. Bankrate.com has an article on what factors affect your credit score posted here. According to the article and some research I have done on the impacts of credit card arbitrage, it would seem that 35% of your score is based on how you pay your bills, which your oldest credit accounts play a large roll in demonstrating. 30% of you credit score is based on credit utilization. My read is that you generally do not want to exceed 50% of your available credit on any of your accounts. So if you have a lot of outstanding debt, it’s easier on your credit report to spread it around to a number of cards so that no single card is over 50% utilized.  Lastly, there is a 15% factor for length or credit history, which is another opportunity for your oldest cards to help you out quite a bit. You should be able to go ahead and close any shorter term credit lines that you have open and not suffer a credit hit.

One other point that I also made in the comments of Getting Out of Debt Part II is that banks will often let you consolidate lines of credit.  So if you have 2 Chase credit cards, one with a 90% utilization and one with 0%, call Chase and ask them to transfer most or all of the line from the 0% card to the 90% card.  This should, depending on how much credit you have, substantially reduce the utilization on the 90% card and improve your credit score.

General questions to readers: Do you check your credit reports annually? You can do so for free at AnnualCreditReport.com. When was the last time you checked your credit score? Are you looking for ways to improve you score? Are you about to take on a large debt like a mortgage or car loan?

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