TessMore Finance Blog

The less you spend, the more you save. It sounds simple in theory, but in practice, it’s much more complicated. Spending is built into our daily habits, from our morning trip to the coffee shop to unwinding at happy hour after work. We treat spending as a pastime when we’re bored, dropping hundreds with a few taps on our phone. Even when we try our best to stick to a budget, it’s easy to get sucked into buying stuff, leaving our savings to suffer. Sometimes the best way to shake up our shopping habits is to go on a spending freeze. A no-spend challenge can help you reset your spending habits and pad your savings. It’s kind of like a crash diet, but in a good way! What Is a No-Spend Challenge? Despite the name, a no-spend challenge doesn’t mean you sit on your hands and spend no money whatsoever. After all, you don’t want to fall behind on your bills, and there are some necessities you simply can’t do without. The basic premise of a no-spend challenge is to cut out non-essential ...

Quick Navigation 7-Step Home Maintenance Plan for 2022 Don’t Ignore Your House’s Cries For Help Keep Up With Home Maintenance Know When To DIY and When To Use a Pro Get Bids for Home Projects Do What You Can to Lower Electric Bills Know What Your Home Insurance Covers Home Buyers: Don’t Skip Home Inspections For many people, having to spend lots of time at home can highlight the flaws in their living situations. Either we need to do a bit of remodeling to bring things up to date or we need some maintenance to keep things running smoothly. Judging by the amount we’re spending on home maintenance and remodeling, we must be noticing a lot of flaws. Through the third quarter of 2021, the U.S. spent $357 billion on home improvement and repairs the way to a projected $368 billion, according to the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The program projects the total will grow to $400 billion by late 2022. 7-Step Home Mainten...

Maybe you have too much downtime. Maybe you don’t have nearly enough. Maybe working from home makes it a little too easy to open emails about sales at your favorite stores and spend a few minutes browsing — and buying. Whatever your particular trigger, it’s easy to indulge in retail therapy. That’s when you use shopping to cheer yourself up or stave off boredom. The euphoria of scoring a sweet deal on a purchase can be short lived, though, when you open next month’s credit card bill. We’re here with some strategies for stopping the credit card creep before it starts. 6 Tips to Stop Yourself from Indulging in Retail Therapy There are healthy, helpful ways to use your downtime. Spending yourself into debt is not one of them. 1. Create a Routine Retail therapy often fills a void when there’s space in your day. So keep yourself too busy to need mindless browsing, advised Todd Christensen, an Accredited Financial Counselor with MoneyFit.org. “Keep your morning routine of breakfast, ...

Whether you’re a skilled home chef or love to eat out, food is something we all need to budget for. This year, we welcomed all the advice for saving money on food as rising inflation made everything more expensive. Here are some of our best articles for saving on food in 2021. 11 Top Tips to Save Money on Food Stress less about food costs with these nuggets of helpful advice. 1. Get Someone to Do Your Grocery Shopping for Free You don’t always have to pay a premium to enjoy the benefits of a personal shopper. Grocery chains across the country offer free grocery pickup . Not only do you save time by not having to do the shopping yourself, but you can avoid impulse purchases, like buying that candy bar at the register when it wasn’t on your shopping list. 2. Shop Wisely for Grocery Delivery Services Choosing grocery delivery is another way to stick to your shopping list and stay within budget. Just be aware of the additional delivery or membership fees. This article on the best...

Fiat Currency Definition Fiat money is a type of currency that’s issued by a government and is not backed by physical commodities, such as gold. The U.S. dollar, the euro, and the pound are examples of fiat money. Could you imagine having to carry gold when buying your groceries for the week? Earlier in history , people used gold in exchange for goods and services, instead of the paper money we’re all used to today. But now, instead of gold, we use currency such as the U.S. dollar, the euro, and even cryptocurrency in exchange for products. Nowadays, there are different types of currencies — some can be backed by a government, such as fiat currencies, and some are decentralized and backed by blockchain technology, such as cryptocurrencies. This article will go over the answer to “What is fiat currency?,” its pros and cons, as well as how it differs from other currencies. What Is Fiat Money? Fiat currency, or fiat money, is a type of currency that’s issued by the government and ...

In 2021, the costs of new and used cars increased due to computer chip shortages, low inventory and increased demand. We also saw gas prices rise and rental car rates soar. You’ve likely felt the financial pinch. Still, we’ve also come away from this year learning how to better navigate these expenses. Here are our top stories from 2021 to help drivers save money on auto expenses. 9 Ways to Save Money on Auto Expenses Take these tips with you into the new year. 1. Learn to Buy a Car Without Haggling For many people, the worst part of the car-buying experience is trying to haggle with the salesperson for a better price. Negotiating is an art not everyone has mastered. However, there are other approaches you can take at the dealership that can still score you sweet savings. A former car sales manager explains how to buy a car without haggling in this article . 2. Decide Whether Buying or Leasing Is Best for You Rising prices didn’t make car buying favorable to consumers in 2021...

A bond is considered a fixed-income debt instrument that provides finance to companies and issuers. In most cases, these instruments come with a fixed interest rate.  However, some may also come with a floating rate. Either way, bonds allow companies to raise finance. In exchange, it provides the investor with the right to receive interest based on the rate. This relationship allows both parties to benefit from the underlying instrument. Bonds include several terms, such as the coupon rate, maturity, face value, etc. These terms are a part of the bond indenture. Usually, these terms play a significant role in the relationship between the bond issuer and the holder.  The issuer drafts these terms in the bond indenture and provides them to a trustee. The trustee acts as an intermediary between both parties in this relationship. The accounting for bonds is also straightforward. These are financial instruments that allow companies to raise capital. In accounting, bonds fall unde...

A company’s capital structure represents the combination of equity and debt finance it uses. Usually, the former includes money collected from shareholders by issuing shares. These shares may consist of both ordinary and preferred stock. On top of that, equity also consists of retained earnings and other reserves. This finance source is long-term compared to debt finance. However, it may cause a dilution of ownership. Debt finance, in contrast, is money collected from third parties. More accurately, it is any financial obligation towards those parties. Those third parties may include suppliers, lenders, and other debt providers.  These parties may provide dedicated finance or credit terms based on their relationship. Furthermore, debt finance usually comes with a specific maturity period. Therefore, it lasts shorter than equity. For most companies, debt finance may be cheaper. The primary reason includes this finance source not diluting ownership. On top of that, debt finance req...

You may have heard of pump-and-dump schemes – when investors take advantage of an asset in a steep price increase (pump) followed by an even faster price fall (dump). These schemes can happen with different types of assets, including cryptocurrency. Pump-and-dump schemes  typically happen when a group of investors enter an asset early and then convince other investors to make purchases and drive prices up further. Then the original investors “dump” most or all of their holdings into the market, precipitating a crash. The investors who were not first in on the trade could realize heavy losses. The process is much the same with a crypto pump-and-dump scheme. Here, we’ll outline how it happens, offer examples, and discuss the risks and legality of cryptocurrency pump-and-dump schemes. How Does a Pump-and-Dump Work in Cryptocurrency? There are two phases to a Crypto pump-and-dump scheme: the pump, in which the price of an asset is driven up, and then the dump when a mass selloff ul...

When you see stocks like Amazon and Google parent Alphabet trading for thousands of dollars, investing can seem out of reach. Those high prices may tempt you to seek out a bargain. Enter penny stocks. Penny stocks seem like an opportunity to buy into an up-and-coming company for dirt cheap. At penny stock prices, you can afford to buy hundreds or even thousands of shares. But watch out: Trading penny stocks could easily leave you broke. Here’s why it’s so easy to lose money buying penny stocks. What Is a Penny Stock? The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission defines a penny stock as one that trades for $5 or less per share. Most investors, though, take a narrower definition. Many define it as one that trades for under $1. The low share price isn’t the only thing that defines a penny stock. You can find stocks trading for under $5 a share on major stock exchanges, like the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). But most investors don’t consider these to be penny stocks. Penny...