How to Throw a Holiday Party For Less

Christmas is my favorite time of year and, although my husband and I aren t regular party-givers or goers, our recent move has given us more room and me the idea of hosting a Christmas party. As I found out, you don t have to spend a small fortune in order to have a fabulous Christmas party. Elegance and atmosphere can be accomplished quite simply in a few easy steps.

Here s how to throw a holiday party for less.

Send E-vites

Save the cost of paper and postage by inviting friends and family to your event through evite.com. They have some wonderful free holiday designs to choose from and you simply fill in the blanks and send. You ll be able to see right away who s coming and who isn t.

Of course, this won t work for those of your acquaintance (possibly older relatives?) who don t even own a computer, but it will help to cut down on the overall cost of sending invitations.

Host an Afternoon Get-Together

If you have your gathering in the afternoon, you ll be able to eliminate alcoholic drinks and save a bundle. Plus, you can aim for a more casual atmosphere. If you want to have alcohol at the party, you can add bring your own bottle (BYOB), to the invitation.

Another possibility is to limit drinks to wine and a non-alcoholic punch. You could also have an electric coffee urn full of hot water so that kids and adults can make hot chocolate and apple cider with drink mix pouches.

Host With a Friend or Make it Potluck

As my Mom was fond of saying, many hands make light work and, after all, you want to be able to enjoy your own party, so ask for help. You can split the expenses, as well as the workload if you host with a friend but a potluck get-together can be fun too, especially if it s for an evening meal. You can assign one dish to each person who s coming.

If someone doesn t cook, they can bring wine, beer, ice or dinner rolls.

Keep the Menu Simple

For a cocktail party, substitute cheese and smoked meats with a whole roasted ham or turkey platter with biscuits or rolls. If it s a drop-in gathering, serving only dessert, fruit and toasted nuts is acceptable and will help to keep your budget in line. I like the traditional idea of fruit and vegetable trays, along with holiday sweets like shortbread cookies, fruitcake, chocolate and mixed nuts.

Don t feel like you have to make everything from scratch unless you really like baking.

Find Cheap Party Supplies

Shopping at a discount store doesn t necessarily mean you re getting poor quality. A paper napkin is a paper napkin, no matter where you find it. Check your local Dollarama store for pretty holiday napkins, melamine and silver-look trays, extra glassware, candles and candle holders, as well as loads of attractive Christmas trimmings for your home.

You can also find brand name baking supplies like Duncan Hines brownie or Betty Crocker cake mixes that consistently sell for less than at a grocery store.

Less is More Decor

More on Holiday Savings

• Host a Holiday Happy Hour at Home with These Stylish Winter Cocktails


• Save Money on Holiday Decorating

Besides the Christmas tree, here are a few simple ideas for decorating a room for a party.

Placed strategically around a room, candles are an inexpensive way to provide soft lighting and the appropriate ambiance for an evening party.

A bowl of clementine oranges or pears makes an attractive display on a side table. Some suggest spray painting fruit in gold but I d rather leave fruit in its natural state so it can be eaten after it has served its purpose as a decoration.

Harvest decorations from your own backyard. Evergreen clippings can be used to make garlands and wreaths. Use a Styrofoam cone and evergreen clippings to make a centerpiece tree. A wooden bowl filled with pine cones and a few sprigs of evergreen is also an attractive and inexpensive way to decorate.

If you don t have a backyard, ask friends to let you forage in their yards or find what you need at a local park.

You can throw a Christmas party for less. It s easier than you might think.

The post How to Throw a Holiday Party For Less appeared first on Financial Highway.

To get the best credit card, first determine which card works best for your lifestyle. Do you revolve balances or spend in full? Are you establishing or re-establishing credit? Do you want to earn benefits? Using the best credit card will cut costs on fees and interest. Our Ask Bankrate calculator will ask pertinent questions about your spending and billing habits to help you find the most useful card More info: super fast reply

Stopping Retirement Contributions to Get Out Debt

There is a general consensus that when it comes to retirement contributions you should start early and never stop. But there may also be times when contributing is either undesirable or even impossible, and you ll need to take a retirement contributions time out . One of those situations is when you are in debt. It s hard to generalize advice on this topic; much depends on the type of debt that you have, how large the debt is, and what other resources you have to deal with it. Keeping that in mind, let s consider a situation where the debt level is impairing your life, and there are few options apart from your retirement plan to deal with it.

Photo by alancleaver 2000 via FlickrDebt Makes Wealth Building Harder

When it comes to making retirement contributions, debt is a form of competition. The most obvious is that debt payments reduce the amount of money you have available to contribute your retirement plan. While it s true that the earlier you invest the better, the amount of money that you contribute early on is also a major factor in your long-term success.

Reducing or eliminating your debt will increase the chance that you ll be able to make the largest contributions possible.

Debt has another influence that s not entirely financial. If you re trying to juggle both debt repayment and retirement contributions, life can get a bit unpleasant. You d be attempting to payoff past financial obligations (debt) and to fund future living expenses (retirement). All of that will compete with your efforts to live in the present. The potential is real that you will be living a life of high stress, which can also take a toll on your health. You will not be able to sustain that type of financial arrangement for very long without some sort of consequences.

In this case you might have to make a choice between either funding your retirement plan or paying off your debts.Dealing with DebtDelaying Your Retirement Plan

If you re just starting out in life and you have a lot of debt it may be in your long-term best interest to first concentrate on paying off your debts. You may not be able to do that with a large debt, like a student loan, but your retirement contribution effort will be both easier and more effective if you can eliminate any other debts that you re carrying.

It may be worth delaying contributing to your retirement plan for two or three years until you can at least eliminate your car loan and any credit card balances you have. Once you do, you ll have more money to contribute, as well as more money for whatever else you want to do in life.Taking a Break from Retirement Contributions

Sometimes debt occurs later in life. Though you may have been relatively debt-free in your 20s, having a house and a family may have caused you to rack up an uncomfortable level of debt. A retirement contributions time out for as long as it takes to payoff your debts can help you to turn the situation around.

If you ve already accumulated a large retirement portfolio at that point, halting your contributions for a time may not do as much damage as you might think. This is because you already have a large capital base that s earning investment income. If you are earning an average of 10% per year on your retirement portfolio, then your portfolio will continue to grow while you re busy paying your debts.

Though it s unfortunate that you might have to stop making contributions in order to payoff debt, it is better than letting your debts pile up or being force into liquidating your retirement funds to pay down debt. Once your debts are paid off, you can resume your retirement contributions, except that now you ll have more money to contribute.What You Should Not Do

A lot of people with debt liquidate their retirement plans, either partially or entirely, in order to get rid of debts. While this can feel right from an emotional standpoint, it s a complete disaster from the financial one.

Not only will the withdrawal of retirement assets be added to your income, and subject to income tax, but you ll also incur an early withdrawal penalty equal to 10% of the distribution. For many taxpayers, taxes and penalty can add up to 30% or more of the amount withdrawn from the account.

The better approach is to suspend retirement contributions, concentrate on paying off the debt, then resume contributions later under better financial circumstances. It s important to begin this process before your debt gets out of control. By taking a break from your retirement contributions you may avoid being forced into a position of needing to liquidate your plan at an unacceptably high cost.

Have you ever thought about the alternative to the liquidating retirement assets to payoff debt?

Credit card fraud is a wide-ranging term for larceny and fraud committed making use of a credit card or any similar payment mechanism as a deceptive source of funds in a transaction intention might be to obtain goods without paying is also an adjunct to id theft. According to the Federal Trade Commission, while identity theft had been holding steady for the previous few years, it saw a 21 % increase in 2008. However, credit card fraud, that crime which many people connect with ID theft, decreased as a percentage of all ID theft complaints for the sixth year in a row More info: official source

Are Bonds and Bond Funds a Safe Investment?

When we build an investment portfolio it should include a mix of higher risk securities as well as safer investments. This usually divides the portfolio neatly between stocks and bonds. And with mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETF s) being so popular, that usually means stock funds and bond funds. But are bond funds really that safe?

This question is more important than it seems at first glance.

Photo by thinkpanama via FlickrPerception of Safety vs. Reality

We might think of bond funds as being safe investments because they include bonds, and bonds are considered safe. But a bond fund is not always safe and, for that matter, neither are bonds in all instances more on that later.

If you have a portfolio that includes 70% equity funds, and 30% bond funds, you might think that the portion invested in bond funds has you covered in the event of a decline in the equity portion. But don t bet on it!4 Things to Know about Bonds and Bond FundsBond funds can rise in value, but they can fall as well

A bond is an investment in a single security. If you buy a 30 year US treasury bond paying 3%, you ll know exactly what you have. If you invest in a bond fund you ll have a mix of bond investments of varying maturities, interest rates, and even risk levels.

While the fund may consist entirely of bonds assembled in a portfolio designed to maximize return and minimize risk, the funds rarely provide complete safety of your investment value. Bond funds can rise in value, which makes us happy, but they can fall as well. When we re looking for a fixed income allocation in our portfolios, that isn t necessarily what we have in mind.

When markets are rising we may not pay much attention to this factor. When markets are falling, and safety of principal becomes a priority, bond funds may not fill the role that we expect.Stocks and bonds often rise and fall together

One of the problems with bond funds as a counterweight to stock funds is that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact they may not be mutually exclusive at all.

Bonds often rise and fall along with stocks. There are different reasons why this happens.

• One can be the state of the economy. As the economy improves stocks rise because of higher sales and profits. Bonds will generally rise as well, because improving economic conditions improve bond quality. The onset of a recession can cause both stocks and bonds to decline in concert.
• Interest rates are another major factor that affects both stocks and bonds about equally. The prices of both stocks and bonds tend to rise when interest rates fall. Conversely, prices of either security also tend to fall when interest rates rise. In this scenario, bonds and bond funds provide little real diversification to stocks.

Bond funds often take on more risk to increase yield

Many funds chase yield, and that includes bond funds. Investors are always looking for a higher rate of return on their investments. Even on their safe investments they will try to maximize yield. Bond fund managers are aware of this and often work to maximize the yield of the fund.

The problem with this approach when it comes to fixed income investments, is that by increasing yield the fund also takes on greater risk. Since most investors expect their bond holdings to provide safety of principal, exchanging higher risk for higher yield defeats the purpose.

At the extreme of bond funds are those that hold junk bonds. These are low grade securities that provide above average returns. You might invest in a bond fund that invests primarily in these securities, which is not a problem if you recognize the additional risk you are taking. But if a bond fund manager adds a small percentage of junk bonds to the fund in order to increase yield, he s also increasing the risk that some of the securities may default. Worse, those defaults tend to accelerate during declines in the stock market.Bonds are great when interest rates are falling

Earlier we touched on the inverse relationship between bonds and interest rates. Bonds rise in price when interest rates fall, and fall when interest rates rise. This makes bonds less of a play on safety and more of a play on interest rate swings.

Bonds can be an excellent investment if interest rates are high and looking likely to fall. In such a market bonds can function in much the same way as a dividend paying stocks rising steadily in value while providing immediate return (interest) on your investment. That s a best of all worlds investment.

If however, we re in a very low interest rate environment, and a rise in rates seems likely, bonds can be expected to fall in value AND you can also be stuck holding low interest rate securities at a time when higher rate ones are available. That s a worst of all worlds investment! That s also closer to the environment that we re in right now on the interest rate front.

The bond/interest rate relationship actually has very little to do with safety at all.Safer Investments

To offset the risk from your stock holdings, it will be best to look beyond bonds and bond funds, and instead to add short-term, interest-bearing investments to your portfolio mix.

This will include money market funds, and US treasury bills and bank certificates of deposit (CD s) with maturities of one year or less. These securities will offer the lowest interest rates available, and have a slight negative real return, however they will provide the greatest safety of principal possible. In addition, in a rising interest rate environment the securities will keep their value and mature quickly, enabling you to take advantage of higher yields as they develop.

This is the kind of investment that most people are looking for when they invest in what are loosely called bonds . Risk-less investments are what are really needed to offset volatility in a portfolio. Money market funds, T-bills, and CDs provide that kind of protection. Bonds and bond funds don t.

We might properly think of bond funds as being an intermediate investment, floating somewhere between truly safe assets and equities. But safe? Not really!

Do you have a different view of bond funds?

To get the best credit card, first decide which card works best for your lifestyle. Do you revolve balances or pay in full? Are you creating or re-establishing credit? Do you need to earn rewards Using the right credit card will cut costs on fees and interest. Our Ask Bankrate calculator will ask pertinent questions about your spending and billing habits to assist you discover the finest card