I love when readers shoot me emails with great tips. Some even write articles on topics that they’re passionate about. Like Henry, who lives in Woodbury and works for Northwest Airlines. “I enjoy cooking and finding creative and inexpensive ways to spice up everyday dishes.  And when that fails, I open a bottle of wine and it makes it all good.”
Here is his tip for saving money on preparing meals. I hope you’ll share your own tricks too.

Every day it seems like the stock market is heading in the wrong direction. I even stopped looking at my 401K because it only mockingly informs me that retirement is getting further and further away. And like most families, I too am cutting back on as many expenses as I can, and one way I found is to look within my kitchen cupboard to lower my food bill. 

The previous night I had made an entire ham. Although it was a great meal as well as an economical lunch the next day, I was not sure that I could take having ham one more time without repackaging it into something a little different. But what could I possibly do with it?

I decided to see what the Internet had to offer, so I Googled “leftover ham” and in .24 seconds I had 283,000 results at my finger tips. I scanned through the results taking into consideration what ingredients I had in my kitchen as well as what would be simple to make.

Since then I have used Google several times to piece together a meal with ingredients that I already had in my kitchen. Sometimes I have to venture to the store to pick up a few things. Sometimes the meals are good and sometimes they are not so good, but in either case it saves a little money and gets my culinary juices flowing. By simply searching for ingredients that I had in my cupboard, I have been able to prepare inexpensive dinner alternatives.

No more do I open the cupboard and stare into the abyss of cans, boxes, and jars wondering what I can make for a meal. Now I let Google help me plan mealtime.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I’m going to take the opportunity on this green-themed holiday to share a couple of green-themed surveys. I mean “going green” as in being good stewards of the earth, not “going green” as in drinking green beer.

The first is about how many trees are saved by switching from paper checks to direct deposit.  According to the PayitGreen Alliance:

If you are paid twice a month and used direct deposit instead of paper checks, you would single-handedly:
- Save one pound of paper.
- Eliminate the release of four gallons of wastewater.
- Eliminate the release of one pound of greenhouse gases (equivalent to: not driving four miles and half a square food of forest preserved for 10 years).
- Save a business $176.55.

(more…)

Eliminating a 401(k) match is an easy way for companies to cut expenses without cutting employees. But new research from Fidelity finds that companies offering the equivalent of 3 percent of a participants salary increased worker participation by 9 percentage points. Add in immediate vesting to the 401(k) plan, and that number jumps to 11 percentage points.

When an employer ditches a match,  almost half see a decrease in participation and/or deferral rates. That’s the exact opposite of what needs to happen, as I wrote in this recent column.

Fidelity found that the match had the largest impact on workers in their 30s and 40s. Because of many competing expenses, it’s easy for workers who have their match snatched to say “forget it” and put the cash towards kids or home improvements instead.

How about you? Would you chuck your 401(k) contributions if your employer dumped its share? Or would that prompt you to save even more?

This week’s Dollar Duo highlights America Saves Week, a week devoted to encouraging savings, no matter how big or small the amount.

John and I highlighted some of our favorite tips in the video. After it posted, I received a few tips from readers and loved Cathy G’s suggestion. Please share your own savings strategies too!

From Cathy: When i get home from the grocery store, i check my receipt for the total saved on coupons. i put that amount of cash into my savings account. the only exception is what i save from BOGOs because most of the time, those are items i wouldn’t have purchased except that they were two for the price of one. If i had a coupon for the purchased item, that does go into the account.

Since i am an avid coupon clipper, i usually save about 20% each week, which is $20 - $30/week into savings.
Seems painless.

Yale prof, author of “Irrational Exuberance,” and co-creator of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index Robert Shiller had an opinion piece in the New York Times that I just got around to reading. He thinks the government should spend $15 billion on subsidized financial advice for the masses.

Here’s an exerpt:

SUBSIDIZED financial advisers should be licensed by self-regulatory organizations that verify their qualifications. Licensing will be imperfect, and some incompetent advisers will end up with subsidies. Still, the net effect of getting professional advice to the public is surely positive.

To qualify for a subsidy, the advisers would have to sign a statement promising loyalty to their clients and agreeing to accept only the subsidized hourly fee, and never any commissions or kickbacks. The subsidies might come to $75 an hour, at a very rough estimate, and if 50 million Americans averaged four hours of consultations, the eventual cost might be $15 billion a year — a substantial expenditure, but a worthwhile one.

If personal financial advisers had been subsidized years ago with the best incentives, they still might not have stopped their clients’ bubble thinking during the boom. Many advisers probably thought that housing investments were a good bet. But it’s still likely that advisers who built long-term relationships with their clients, and who pledged to look after their welfare, would have been a helpful influence, suggesting caution to those who were getting over their heads in debt, and warning that adjustable-rate mortgages could be reset upward, just as the fine print said. For these reasons, financial advisers probably would have reduced the severity of the housing bubble.

Professional financial advice is now generally accessible only by the relatively wealthy. Changing this would be an important corrective step. Giving the general public access to trained advisers would be a boon for the nation in this time of doubt and distrust.

Given how much we’re spending on other things these days, what’s $15 billion to educate the public on money matters?  Think it would be $15 billion well spent?