Money Management

Shop at Aldi? Read on for ways to save. 

Whether you have a large family to feed or it’s just you and your own appetite to manage, groceries can be a major expense in your budget. And if you’re looking to add to your savings account balance this year, then you may be motivated to shop for food as frugally as possible. That’s where stores like Aldi come in.

You may not be all that familiar with Aldi, and there may not be an Aldi in your neck of the woods. But if there is an Aldi that’s convenient for you, it pays to shop there. More so than that, it pays to shop at Aldi strategically. Here are a few ways you can stock up on groceries at Aldi without racking up too high a credit card tab in the process.

1. Try those brands you’ve never heard of

If you’ve ever shopped at Aldi before, you may have come across different brands whose names aren’t at all familiar to you. Don’t pass those items up. If you buy an off-brand product rather than a name brand, you could end up saving a bundle of money without necessarily compromising on taste or quality.

In fact, Aldi even says on its website that more than 90% of the products it carries in its stores are exclusive brands — ones most consumers have probably never heard of. This allows Aldi to provide customers with products that are high in quality without passing on the hidden costs associated with well-known brands, like advertising.

2. Keep an eye out for clearance items

Just because Aldi’s prices are low to begin with doesn’t mean you can’t score even deeper discounts. Aldi has a clearance section whose inventory can vary from day to day. But it pays to scope it out, because you might manage to check some items off of your list at a fraction of their usual cost.

3. Return your shopping cart like you’re supposed to

Many supermarket chains hire workers to collect stray shopping carts from parking lots and return them to their respective docking areas. Aldi doesn’t. The reason? It wants to save on costs so it can pass more savings along to consumers.

For this reason, you need to put down a $0.25 deposit to use a shopping cart at Aldi. You’ll get that deposit back once you return your shopping cart to its rightful place after you’ve packed your groceries into your car. And while it’s easy to argue that saving $0.25 won’t really do much to improve your financial picture, if you shop at Aldi several times a week and always make it a point to return your carts and get your quarters back, the savings could add up.

Besides, returning your shopping cart, as opposed to leaving it smack in the middle of a parking lot, is just plain the nice thing to do. It makes life easier for other shoppers and helps avoid a scenario where cars get dented by a wind-blown cart on a blustery day.

Shopping at Aldi can be a money-saving experience by itself. But if you employ these tips, you might manage to reap even more savings this year.

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The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Citigroup is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. Maurie Backman has positions in Citigroup. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Ramit Sethi says making a rule to up your investments by 1% annually takes minutes and can leave you hundreds of thousands of dollars richer. Read on to find out if he’s right. 

If you want to end up rich, there are different paths you can take to get there — some of which are easier than others.

Ramit Sethi, finance expert and author of I Will Teach You to be Rich, believes that there’s one simple move you can make that’s going to leave you with a ton more money for very little effort. Here’s what Sethi recommends.

This investment decision could make all the difference

Recently on Twitter, Sethi recommended making one simple decision that takes minutes and that can increase the amount of your investment account balance substantially. Here’s what it is.

“You can spend the next 15 years fighting to cut back on coffee or you can just create a rule to increase your investment rate by 1% every year,” Sethi said. “The second decision would make you hundreds of thousands of dollars more and take 5 minutes per *year.*”

Sethi is making the point here that many people focus on the wrong things when they try to improve their financial situation. Obsessing over every penny that comes out of your bank account can be stressful and leave you without much enjoyment in your life, and the impact that this will have is limited.

But, as he explains, if you simply commit to increasing your investments by 1% per year, this will make a far bigger difference without you having to spend endless hours worrying about little expenditures.

Is Sethi right?

Sethi is absolutely right that increasing the amount you invest by 1% each year is going to make a huge difference in how much money you find yourself with in your brokerage account.

Say, for example, you’re 30 years old, currently making $40,000, and you’re currently contributing 6% of your salary into a brokerage account earning 10% average annual returns. If you got a 1% raise and upped your contribution to just 7% per year instead of 6%, you would end up with $130,492 more in your brokerage account at age 65 just from making that change.

And that’s just a single 1% increase. If you increase your contribution rate every year, the effects will be even greater thanks to compound growth. The more you invest, the more money you earn in returns, and the more returns can be reinvested to help you grow rich.

The good news is, increasing your savings rate by 1% per year shouldn’t be that hard for most people — especially if you get a raise at your job over time. When you make more money, you can divert it directly into your investment account without ever getting used to the extra income so you won’t have to change your lifestyle to invest more. And even if you don’t get a raise, a 1% increase is minor enough that you can usually absorb it without making dramatic changes to your lifestyle anyway.

Taking this advice is going to be a lot easier than penny-pinching throughout your life, as Sethi says, so give it a try and set this rule for yourself starting now.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Christy Bieber has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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YouTube is a great place to find personal finance tips and tricks. Keep reading for a look at some channels you won’t want to miss. 

The wonderful thing about the internet is that we have all kinds of information directly at our fingertips, and this includes advice for money management and personal finance. Video content is particularly popular, and many people turn to FinTok (TikTok’s personal finance advice videos) for advice about investing, saving, and beyond. But I’m an old millennial and can sometimes be set in my ways. Since I already have a YouTube Premium membership, I’m always on the lookout for ad-free financial content over there.

Just like with TikTok, however, it’s important to take all money advice being offered on YouTube with a grain of salt, and beware of seemingly effortless or suspiciously lucrative opportunities being peddled. Thankfully, there are many solid, reputable channels that offer useful and applicable advice for anyone looking to pay off debt, learn to invest, or even improve their career standing.

And what’s really nice about these YouTube channels is the fact that they don’t lean in on shaming viewers for making mistakes with money and daring to spend some of it in the pursuit of happiness. Here are a few of the best I’ve found.

1. The Financial Diet

I’m definitely a fan of Chelsea Fagan and her YouTube channel, The Financial Diet. Fagan is very relatable, and openly discusses her past mistakes with her finances and acknowledges the ways our economy is often stacked against the average American. At The Financial Diet, you’ll find a wide variety of videos and even some podcast content with big-name guests about money in popular culture, career advice, and learning how to prioritize your spending. There’s something for everyone.

2. Your Rich BFF

Vivian Tu is a former Wall Street trader who’s worked for big names like JP Morgan and Buzzfeed. Your Rich BFF offers shorter videos on topics like mortgage loan types, credit cards, and careers, with many of them clocking in under 10 minutes. This is especially nice if you want to learn but don’t have the time (or patience) to glean advice from longer content. Tu also has many YouTube shorts with even smaller chunks of useful information.

3. A Life After Layoff

For a change of pace, you can find excellent career, resume, and interviewing advice if you check out A Life After Layoff. Bryan Creely is a former corporate recruiter who started his channel after being laid off in 2020, like so many Americans were. While you won’t find advice about how to save or invest on this channel, you’ll find tons of information about how to apply and interview for jobs effectively, as well as career advice (including discussions about employer benefits). And since most of us can’t fund our checking accounts without having a job, this is a valuable channel indeed.

4. Debt Free Millennials

Justine Nelson offers thoughtful, realistic, and practical money tips and analysis on her YouTube channel, Debt Free Millennials. As the name of the channel indicates, Nelson focuses on getting (and staying) out of debt, but she also offers videos about budgeting, paying for childcare costs, and learning to spend intentionally.

Plus, the channel has some monthly budget breakdown videos hosted by Nelson and her husband, where they have a beer and talk about how much they spent by reviewing spreadsheet entries. These are especially relatable, as I know I’ve had moments where I looked at my bank statement and said, “I spent HOW MUCH at the grocery store last month?”

There are many resources for money advice on the internet, and YouTube is a great place to find both short- and long-form content on a variety of topics that relate to your finances. In between catching up on news clips and late night comedy shows, take some time to check out these useful channels.

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Credit utilization is a key factor used in calculating your credit score. Learn a strategy you can use to never worry about your credit utilization again. 

When your credit score is calculated, one key number is your credit utilization. Your credit utilization is the balances on your credit cards divided by your credit limits. This is part of a factor called amounts owed, which makes up a whopping 30% of your FICO® Score (the most widely used type of credit score by lenders).

Even though credit utilization is very important, I literally never check mine. I’m able to skip this step for one simple reason, and anybody could follow the same approach.

How to put credit utilization on autopilot

I never worry about my credit utilization because I have a large amount of credit. My combined credit limit across all my cards is around $200,000, far more than I’d use in a month or a year.

For credit utilization, lower is better, but the standard rule is to keep yours below 30% to avoid damaging your credit. If you have $1,000 in credit, that means you’d need to stay below a balance of $300 to follow that rule. But if you have $100,000 in credit, then you’d only need to stay below $30,000.

Once you have enough credit, you probably won’t need to check your credit utilization. In my case, I know that I’m not going to spend anywhere near 30% of my total credit.

There’s also an important habit I follow — I pay my credit cards in full every month. Even with high credit limits on your cards, if you don’t pay them off, the balances could eventually grow large enough to impact your credit utilization. More importantly, if you carry a balance, you get charged credit card interest. Whenever possible, it’s better to pay in full to avoid interest charges.

How to increase your credit limits

The challenge of this method is getting access to more credit. Your income plays a role here, as your income on credit card applications is a factor card issuers use to set your credit limit. However, even people with income below the national average can get plenty of credit.

There are two simple tips you can follow to increase your total credit limit:

Apply for more credit cards. Every time you’re approved for a card, its credit line adds to your total credit limit.Request a credit limit increase. If you regularly pay your credit card bill on time, you could qualify for a higher credit limit. Most card issuers let you request this online or by phone.

There are a couple of things to know before you do this. Increasing your credit can backfire, big time, if it causes you to start overspending. Only follow these tips if you’re confident that more credit won’t change your spending habits, and that you’ll pay your credit cards in full every month.

Also, it’s much easier to get more credit if you have a high credit score. Card issuers will be more likely to approve you for new credit cards and credit limit increases. If you’re working on raising your credit score, focus on that first by paying your credit card bill on time and not spending too much.

When you’re in the process of building credit, monitoring your credit utilization is a good idea. Once you have a good credit score, you may want to consider increasing your overall credit limits. If you do that and always pay your credit cards in full, you won’t need to monitor your credit utilization anymore.

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Dave Ramsey said selling a $300,000 home might come with $45,000 in expenses for a seller. Here’s why home sales are so costly. 

When you sell a home, you definitely want to make enough money to pay off your remaining mortgage loan balance. Ideally, you’ll also want to walk away with some profits that you can put down to purchase a new property.

As you do the math to figure out how much a sale will net you, it’s important to remember that there are fees you’re going to have to pay as part of the transaction. And, as finance expert Dave Ramsey pointed out, these costs can be much higher than you might expect.

Here’s how much selling a home could cost you

According to Dave Ramsey, a home seller can expect to spend about 15% of the sale price of the home in transaction costs. When you break that down, that’s a ton of cash.

“If you sell a home for $300,000, you might pay around $45,000 to cover selling expenses,” Ramsey explained. That $45,000 would include things like a commission for real estate agents, home closing costs, and moving expenses to relocate to a new property after the sale goes through.

Why is selling a home so expensive?

Spending tens of thousands of dollars to sell a home may sound ridiculous, but there’s a simple reason for these huge numbers. There’s one big cost that accounts for the bulk of this amount: commissions to a real estate agent.

Sellers have to pay a commission to their listing agent, if they have one. The industry standard is about 3%, although there are many discount real estate services that allow you to list your house for around 2% or even 1.5%. But, this is still a lot of money. If you are selling a $300,000 house and you pay 3% commission, that’s $9,000.

You also have to pay commission to a buyer’s agent as well, when you are selling a home. This may seem odd, but it’s the way the industry works. In fact, you will likely have to pay this commission even if you are selling your home yourself without having a seller’s agent.

Buyers who come to visit your home are going to have agents that expect to be paid — and if you want to put your house on the Multiple Listing Service, you must offer commission (the MLS is the primary database of homes for sale, used by most buyers and online real estate services).

The customary commission or a buyer’s agent is also 3%. And while you can offer less, this could potentially deter agents from bringing potential buyers to view your property, which you definitely don’t want.

If you end up paying 6% commission on a $300,000 house, this alone accounts for $18,000 of the costs Ramsey said to expect. Closing costs and moving fees can add up as well — although Ramsey suggested sellers may want to pay for an inspection or improvements and that’s not always necessary as buyers should be responsible for their own inspection and you can choose to sell the house as-is.

Ultimately, though, you need to be prepared to pay a lot of costs as a seller and you should take these expenses into account when setting your price and estimating the profit you’ll make.

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Disney Genie+ allows you faster access to rides, photo features, and more. Learn about four big perks of Genie+ service. 

If you haven’t taken a vacation to Disney recently, you may not be aware of all of the new lingo. Specifically, Disney has done away with its free FastPass program that enabled you to sign up and skip the lines for certain rides. Now, it’s been replaced by a paid alternative called Genie+.

Genie+ costs $15 or more per person, depending on the date and crowd levels. This can add a lot to the cost of your vacation, which has probably already done a number on your checking account given the price of Disney tickets.

But, there are some benefits to Genie+ that might make it worth it to break out your credit card to pay for it. Here are four of them.

1. Access to Lightning Lane entrances

Lightning Lanes are the new version of fast-pass lanes. There’s a separate, shorter entrance you go in so you can get on the rides faster than you would if you stood in the standard line.

The ability to reserve Lightning Lane access is the single best reason to sign up for Genie+. You are able to make a reservation for a Lightning Lane entry two hours prior to the time the park opens for the day you’re visiting. The specific reservation time will vary by ride. For example, if you make a reservation for a Lightning Lane pass for a popular ride like Ratatouille, you might get a 2 p.m. time if you sign up at 7 a.m.

As you use each reservation, you can make another one. You also get to make a new reservation two hours after park opening and every two hours after that. So, if you made your Ratatouille reservation for 2 p.m., you could make another reservation for a different ride starting at 11 a.m. And, for a less popular ride, you might be able to make a reservation to get on at, say 11:10 a.m.

Lightning Lane access is the single best reason to buy Genie+ since you can avoid waiting for rides. You can’t get on everything, as there are some rides that only give you Lightning Lane access if you buy individual passes. But, for most rides, it is possible to save a ton of time with the Lightning Lane versus waiting in the standard line.

2. Digital downloads of PhotoPass attractions

You normally must pay for a photo package to get access to the pictures taken on rides around the Disney park. But, if you sign up for Genie+, you can also get free digital downloads of PhotoPass attraction photos. This includes pictures taken on popular rides like Test Track or Space Mountain.

3. Disney-themed lenses for your phone camera

If you’d prefer to take your own photos with some special lenses that add a little Disney magic, you can also get access to that with Genie+ service. You’ll find the lenses in the My Disney Experience app and can choose from a wide variety of themed effects that transform your pictures from ordinary to extraordinary.

4. Access to Audio Tales

Finally, you can enjoy audio clips that provide behind-the-scenes information about Disney parks and attractions as part of your Genie+ services. These are inspired by Imagineering Field Guides and are great for frequent park visitors who want to see the park in a new way.

These four features are a great addition to your Disney day, and may just make paying the $15 (or more) for Genie+ services worthwhile.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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