A few weeks back, I wrote about my efforts to try and calculate what my time is worth. Thankfully, I just read an article in Real Simple magazine about quick and easy way to estimate the value of time. To get a ballpark idea of how much your time is worth, cut the last three zeros off your annual salary and then divide the number in half. For example, if you earn $40,000 a year, you would take 40 and divide by 2 to get a time value of $20 per hour. So now, when considering a $40 purchase, you can ask yourself if it is worth 2 hours of your work.

Obviously, there are a number of factors left out of this equation, such as the number of hours you work and the value of benefits. While this little exercise isn’t perfect, it can be a good reminder of how hard your work for your money.

In the past six years, I have answered more than 30,000 individual consumer questions asked to MMI’s Advice Team. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that I have answered the same 10 questions 3,000 times each.

I experienced déjà vu when I opened Advice Team emails this morning. Here are some of the questions people are asking today:

-I got a foreclosure notice—what happens now?
-What do I do with a truck I can’t pay for anymore?
-My husband’s salary has been cut, how can I pay our debts?
-How will bankruptcy affect my career?
-Am I liable for my wife’s credit card debt?
-How much of my paycheck can be garnished by a creditor?
-What is the best way to repair my credit?

While I find it very satisfying to help consumers in trouble, I can’t help but wish that they would have written much sooner with questions like “how can I save for emergencies?” or “what is the proper way to use credit?”

If you have a question (proactive or reactive!) for the Advice Team, please don’t hesitate to ask.
 

 Today’s research lead to a startling conclusion: I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘save.’ The following definitions of the word ‘save’ appear in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Save, sAv, verb.
a. To put aside as a store or reserve: ACCUMULATE (saving money for emergencies)
b. To spend less by (save 25 percent)

I’m on board with the “store or reserve” definition. In fact, until very recently (i.e. this morning), I was convinced that saving money was the opposite of spending money. You know the old saying, “a penny saved is a penny earned”? Well, I believed it.

You can imagine my shock to read the “to spend less by” definition. I thought that advertisers were just being clever when they tell you that you can “save big money” on their products. I’m embarrassed to admit that over the past decade, I have uttered the phrase “you can’t save money at a sale” at least a thousand times.

With all due respect to the dictionary people, I don’t really accept “to spend less” as a meaning for ‘save.’ I mean, let’s be logical, ‘spend’ is the antonym for ‘save’; how did it also manage to weasel its way up to the definition?