Cute Cheap Stuff!

There are moments in life when I really feel like an adult:

• Paying bills
• Grocery shopping, which I kind of enjoy
• Setting up my own doctor and dentist appointments
• Doing taxes (it took me hours and hours and hours the first time)
• Donating blood
• Making the decision to turn off the TV at an appropriate time and go to bed (this is a relatively new thing to me)
• Enrolling in benefits at work.

I’m not a benefits specialist, but I have worked in the area for a few years. I worked for a Long-Term Care (LTC) Insurance broker for a couple years, and I also worked in a benefits communication consulting group for a couple years. I’m no expert, but I feel fairly competent in discussing benefits on a casual level.

I’m going to skip talking about LTC insurance for the moment and instead focus on a benefit that many companies offer: a Flexible Spending Account (FSA).

If your company offers an FSA, I implore you to use it. With an FSA, you are allowed to contribute money to a personal account pre-tax (meaning the money is deducted from your pay before your total pay amount is taxed). The personal account is for paying for items and services that are health-related. I don’t want to get into a long explanation of FSAs, but if you really aren’t familiar with them, here’s a good place to start.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because of an article I found about using up what’s left of your FSA by the end of the year. One annoying part about having an FSA is that at the beginning of the calendar year, you decide how much per month you want to set aside for health-related expenses. Sometimes you may not set enough aside and you wind up paying for expenses with post-tax money, and sometimes you overestimate how much you’ll need and you wind up with money in your account at the end of the year. FSA rules do not allow you to rollover leftover money from the previous year, which means that you need to spend what’s left in your account before it goes away.

If you do need to spend FSA money, this article mentions 10 things that are considered FSA-eligible that the average person might not know. I found the article last month and I meant to post it here but didn’t. I mention the date because many FSA plans run January-December, but not all. My company’s enrollment year runs September-August, and that’s not unusual. That is my defense for posting this in January.

If you do not participate in an FSA and your company has it, please do it. You don’t have to contribute a lot. Even if you consider yourself a healthy person, you can still find things to purchase with FSA money – like eyeglasses and contacts, for example. That stuff isn’t cheap! I’ve set aside extra this year so that I can finally buy new glasses – for the first time in 7 years. I think I’m due for a new pair.

Also, for those of us who aren’t good at saving, an FSA allows you to set aside money before you even have a chance to get your grubby hands on the cash, and then it forces you to only spend that money on health-related things – instead of, say, cute shoes and cupcakes.

Being an adult isn’t always fun, but it’s the right choice.

Check out this article about a young woman who’s taken her fondness for drawing and turned it into a fun, creative way to earn a few bucks. She draws flowers on slips using Sharpies, and they look kind of cool!

I wanted to highlight this story for a few reasons:

• She had a slip with a stain on it, and rather than throw it away, she worked with it and made something even better come from it. That’s a life lesson right there!
• I admire her creativity and boldness. Lots of people doodle, but how many people would put the pen to clothing and just go for out?
• She attended schools that emphasized art and had parents who, in addition to being artists, encouraged her to explore art. She’s rather lucky in that regard. But it’s a testament to the power of parental support in kids’ hobbies and interests.
• Even though she’s young, she’s managed to do something that many people twice her age don’t do: Make some cash doing something you enjoy.
• She uses Sharpies! Sharpies are fun and inexpensive, and slips can be found for fairly cheap. She found a relatively inexpensive hobby and business opportunity.

In order to buy stuff – whether it’s cheap or cute – you need to have a source of money. For most of us, that means we get jobs.

With the economy being, well, craptastic, job searchers (a group I’ve recently joined) are facing quite the obstacle. Jobs aren’t quite as plentiful and competition is stiff.

My question to you is: Where are good places to find jobs? Of course, networking and knowing the right people is huge, but when it comes to online searches, what do you use? There are the big ones: Craigslist, Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, along with specific sites depending on what industry you work in. What else have you come across? What other ways have you found jobs?