Clark's Big Book of Bargains (26 page)
Read Clark's Big Book of Bargains Online
Authors: Clark Howard
Valentine’s Day can be an expensive occasion for a guy who wants to show how much he loves his sweetheart. Having a bouquet of roses delivered by a florist can cost $100 or more.
But there’s another way that’s more personal and much cheaper: Bring the flowers yourself to your wife or girlfriend’s office. I’ve never understood why anyone considers flowers delivered by a stranger to be a more romantic gesture than flowers delivered by your beloved.
I’ve found the best deals on flowers at supermarkets, the warehouse clubs, and nurseries, for whom February is a terrible time of year. The warehouse clubs, oddly, are not as good a deal on Valentine’s Day as the supermarkets and the nurseries. By buying at a non-traditional outlet, you should be able to buy a beautiful bouquet of long-stemmed roses for $19 to $29 a dozen, and save $70 or more from what a florist would charge.
Chocolates also cost more before Valentine’s Day, but you can save a lot of money by waiting until Valentine’s Day itself, even a couple of days before Valentine’s Day, to buy. Stores get worried that they’re going to get stuck with the merchandise, so they put their chocolates on clearance. It’s one case where waiting until the last minute actually will save you money.
I give flowers to my wife, Lane, all the time, so she doesn’t want them on Valentine’s Day because she knows what a rip-off they are. Women say the most important thing is for their husband or sweetheart to do something thoughtful for them for Valentine’s Day, and it doesn’t have to be the standard stuff. In fact, the more creative the idea, the more it’s appreciated. Try making dinner, cleaning the house, or doing something else she doesn’t like to do. If you really want to get her upset, don’t do anything for her on Valentine’s Day.
Here’s another idea. Give your sweetheart roses the week before Valentine’s Day and the week after. They’re so much cheaper before and after the holiday that you can give her roses twice for less. Then on Feb. 14, maybe you give her chocolates.
For Valentine’s Day decorations, and decorations for any holiday except Christmas (when you have to wait until Jan. 10), you can get some incredible bargains the day after the holiday, because seasonal items are worth nothing to the retailer at that point. They just want to get rid of them. So if you’re a good advance planner, you can buy your decorations for next year at 75 percent off. That’s $40 worth of products for $10, quite a deal. This applies to Christmas decorations and wrapping paper, and decorations for Halloween, Easter, and St. Patrick’s Day, among others.
I wrote about funerals in my previous book,
Get Clark Smart,
and I’m going to do it again here because death is an event we all experience and, while emotionally wrenching, also involves a lot of expense. The average funeral now costs $8,000 to $10,000, including cemetery expenses.
One of the most interesting shifts is the dramatic increase in the acceptability of cremation, which generally is a much less expensive alternative to burial. One of the ironies of the infamous Tri-State Crematorium scandal in Noble, Georgia, near Chattanooga, is that in the middle of America’s Bible Belt, the scandal wasn’t over cremation itself, but about bodies that should have been cremated but weren’t.
You may join the legions of people who are deciding to be cremated instead of buried.
If you’re comfortable with cremation from a religious or personal standpoint, it is a marvelous choice. It’s inexpensive and, strange as this may sound, convenient, because in an era in which people move more frequently from city to city, cremation allows you to take the remains of a loved one with you, or scatter them in a place they loved. My wife, Lane, is going to scatter my ashes at the local Costco.
So many people move away from where a loved one is buried, and never get to visit with them. Mark Meltzer recently flew to New York for a rare visit to the grave of his mother, stayed a half hour, and later flew home. Who knows when he’ll get there again? Mark’s mom died in 1971, and he hasn’t lived in New York since 1977.
The cost of cremation varies greatly, but the cheapest, invariably, will be through the local memorial society, where you can reduce funeral costs to $500 to $1,500. That’s a lot cheaper than a burial. You pay a one-time fee to join and can list your wishes and get negotiated prices for cremation, cremation urns, caskets, burials, or other services. You set the budget and pick what you want, and you spare your family the agony of having to make those choices later, when they are very vulnerable.
When you die, your family goes to the funeral home you designated and they pull the file specifying your arrangements and preset costs. The decisions you make in advance can save a fortune later. The funeral homes are willing to give great prices to the memorial society in exchange for the high volume of business generated by their relationship.
Don’t put this information in your will. Tell the family members who will make these decisions what you want, and put it in writing as well.
Advance planning doesn’t mean buying a funeral plot or prepaying for a funeral, both of which are very bad ideas. You might move to a different city, or the funeral home could go out of business, taking your money with it. Even worse, there have been scandals across the country in which people have prepurchased a plot, and the owner failed to maintain the cemetery. What looked like a beautiful place at the time they arranged to buy a plot later looked like an overgrown weed patch.
There’s such a revolt against funeral home operators in Canada that it’s created a movement called home burial. Your family actually digs your grave and buries you, completely cutting out the cemeteries and funeral homes. Home burial has spread across the border to New England. It’s just wild.
Home burial is legal in the United States in all but five states, according to Lisa Carlson, author of the book
Caring for the Dead.
In addition, a family or church group may handle a death without a funeral director in all but a few states, including Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Louisiana, and Nebraska. And burying cremated remains is legal anywhere, with the land owner’s permission. Home burial is very much in the American tradition, when people buried their dead on a small portion of their land. But it’s best in a rural area. They’re not going to let you plant Aunt Minnie twenty-five feet from a neighbor’s badminton court.
Another option, which costs absolutely nothing, is to donate the body to a medical school for study. After they are done, they’ll return the cremated remains to the family.
People are so uncomfortable talking about death that they don’t plan ahead. Even my co-author hasn’t made arrangements, for himself, his wife, or his 77-year-old father, who after all, isn’t going to live forever. Mark’s wife, Nancy, definitely doesn’t want to be buried, but she isn’t thrilled about cremation either, so Mark jokes that he’s going to have her stuffed and put her in the corner of the bedroom. That’s funny, but eventually they’re going to have to make a decision.
It’s so much better to decide this stuff ahead of time.
• Tips on Funerals •
The average funeral costs $8,000 to $10,000, including cemetery costs, but a funeral prearranged through a memorial society can cost much less.- Cremation is an affordable option that’s growing dramatically in popularity.
- Plan your funeral in advance through a memorial society, but never prepay funeral expenses. You could move to another city, or the funeral home could go out of business.
• Contact •
Funeral Consumers Alliance
(For a directory of memorial societies in your area)
800-765-0107
www.funerals.org
I often hear from my radio listeners that they want to do something to their house—maybe add a deck or install hardwood floors—to improve its value. But in reality, there’s not a single improvement you can do to a house that will increase its value by the amount you spent on the upgrade. Kitchen and bathroom improvements are the best, and they return 50 to 75 percent of the cost of the improvement, according to appraisals done by
Consumer Reports.
For example, if you spend $10,000 to remodel a bathroom, it might increase the value of your house by $5,000 to $7,500. Painting the exterior of your home or putting on a new roof has only a 10 percent return. A new deck has about a 50 percent return. So a new $5,900 deck adds just $2,950 to your home’s value. From a strictly financial point of view, you’re better off keeping the money. So base your decision to improve your house on what you would enjoy, not its investment value.
Most people don’t think much about the money they spend to decorate, improve, and repair their house. The cost is an afterthought. But with some planning, you can save money and make your house more enjoyable to live in. And some things you thought you couldn’t afford to do may seem possible with my strategies.
I don’t want you to feel “house poor,” where your house becomes a sinkhole that draws in every penny you have, keeping you from doing anything else. But I do want you to enjoy living in it.
Some of my ideas might seem kooky to you, like buying used furniture or using high-efficiency light bulbs. I was a guest on a radio show in Las Vegas, and the host and co-host laughed hysterically when I talked about buying used furniture. They both thought I was kidding. But read on, and maybe you’ll see it my way.
If you’re getting a house ready to sell, or just want to freshen it up for your own pleasure, painting a room is one of the most affordable things you can do. If you do it yourself, it could cost as little as $50 to $75 to completely change the look of a room. Of course, it might also take a lot of your time and give you a headache.
Lane and I have painted rooms ourselves and hired people to paint them, and one thing we’ve learned is that you can’t tell from a paint sample how a color is going to look on your walls.
So here’s a suggestion that will save you a lot of heartache and, potentially, a tremendous amount of money. Whether you hire a painter or do it yourself, don’t go out and buy three or four gallons of paint premixed to the color of your choice. Instead, buy one gallon and paint a section of your wall with it. Make it nice and large, at least six feet by six feet, and let it dry. If you love the color, just get some more paint and you’re all set. If you hate the color, you’re free to try again, and all you’ve lost is $15 or $20. That’s so much better than looking at a room that a painter has just completed and being horrified by the color you thought you wanted.
If you’re going to paint a room yourself, pay attention to the prep work. Fill the little holes in your walls, then let the filler material dry, and sand it smooth. Caulk the gaps around windows and baseboards. Good preparation allows paint to last longer and look better. A good-quality paint helps the job look great. Professional painter Mark Kenady likes Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore, Porter, Glidden, and Devoe paints. Expect to pay $15 to $25 a gallon.