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Vacationing From Home

 Staycation. Thoughts on vacationing from home. 

 Staycation:  a period in which an individual or family stays and relaxes at home, possibly taking day trips to area attractions.

Staycation was added to the  Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 2009.  The word is interchangeable with nearcation. You get the drift.

It’s summer time and vacations are on the mind. Also on your mind is what you can afford. Everyone experiences financial change and this year has been challenging. Expenses have gone up and salaries have remained the same.

There is a certain comfort in controling the pace of your vacation, e.g. departure and arrival times, transportation and supplies. By considering a staycation, the cost of hotels and food can be minimized. First take an inventory of your requirements for a day or overnight trip.

        The number of kids and their ages.

        Pets that must be included.

        The distance that can comfortably be traveled in 2 to 2 ½ hours. 

        Food preparation.

        Lodging if necessary.

Let me reintroduce the old fashioned map. (A good learning opportunity for the kids.) There is nothing like a fresh new map to get excited about planning a trip. Using a compass and a map draw a 200 mile circle around your base. Expand the circle to the distance you are willing to travel in a day. Take a vote on the destination. Now we go back to the electronic world. Pull out the computer and the GPS to do the research on the destination.

Also, explore your community. A few trips to local museums and several day trips will fill the vacation with a lot of unstressful activities and allow enough money to splurge on a fancy restaurant for Mom and Dad. The idea provides time to take advantage of local venues. Visit the new theater or science museum that you’ve been reading about and check out the latest exhibition or free concert at the art museum.

Local hotels are a good source of entertainment. Many of them will offer weekend packages to fill rooms after the business travelers have checked out on Friday afternoon. Call and negoiate a price. If they are having a really slow weekend they may give you a deal.

After the photos are printed and the album completed, reflect on how smart you were to have a week’s entertainment at a very reasonable cost. Travel safely!

Safely using Online Accounts

It happens every day. You decide to reduce the amount of paper coming to your house and sign up for “green” paperless billing. You create an online account with the bank or creditors. Online accounts need a user ID and a password. You think for a moment and then enter the one you use for your email, Facebook and everywhere else.

Wait! Don’t do that!

In order to protect your privacy and account information you should never use the same user ID or password on multiple websites. Why you might ask? If any of the places you do business are ‘hacked’ your account information may be stolen. There have been several high profile ‘hack’ attacks recently. Two of the most recent were with LinkedIn and eHarmony. The user ID and password databases were stolen and posted for other hackers to access. Because many people use the exact same ID and password on multiple websites the hackers now have the skeleton key needed to walk away with your account information from the bank, creditors, or anywhere else you may have used the same ID and password pair.

What can you do to protect yourself? First, if you’ve used either LinkedIn or eHarmony, you should change all of your passwords. Best practices suggest you pick a password that is unique to each site and that it contains no standard dictionary words. One of the most asked questions is “how do I remember this complex password that I’ve created?” The easiest way is to make it mean something to you. As an example this might be your password, MwtGi78! Turn it into a phrase; Mike won the Game in 78! This is a quick memory aid to help you remember what you’ve picked. Second, you should use different IDs and passwords on all of your accounts.

By taking this one small step to create unique user IDs and passwords for all of your sites you will go a long way to protect yourself from shadowy hackers in the digital wilderness. 

Contributed by Mitcheal Veenstra, CCCS MIS Network Administrator

Summer Budget Planning for the Holidays

The time has come to plan our budget for the second half of the year. Gift giving time will be here before you know it and you have to be ready. We have July, August, September, October and November to get ready. Not December. December is set aside for special things.

Let’s take inventory. Prioritize your list:

            Family and special friends.

You plan for this group. You search for the perfect gift. It takes soul-searching and creativity. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it has to be special.

             Friends and co-workers.

Less expensive but creative. It takes a lot of thought and searching.            

             Casual friends and neighbors.        

Inexpensive gifts that say “I thought of you” but doesn’t obligate the friend to return the favor.

Let’s get started. Prepare strawberry or other fruit preserves and freeze it in individual 4oz jars until needed. Use decorative lids and add a card and ribbons. Berries are inexpensive right now and a good time to stock up. If you are talented in needlework, there’s plenty of time to complete a few projects. August is usually the month bedding and linens go on sale so cute pillows or towel sets would be inexpensive. There is time to visit thrift shops, garage sales and church fairs to collect items for theme baskets. The fall is a good time for festivals. Buy one or two gifts per month and store them away.

Now for December, since all your shopping is out of the way, you will have time and money to do those little special things you think of at the last minute. You might even have time for yourself. What a novel thought.

• Keep Up With What’s Happening in the CCCS Community
   
• Vacationing From Home
   
• Safely using Online Accounts
   
• Summer Budget Planning for the Holidays
   

• Budget and Credit Counseling
   
• Housing Counseling
   
• Financial Education
   
• Debt Management
   
• Bankruptcy Counseling and Education