Ask Sherry: What about investing in crowdfunding?

You asked, and I am answering every Friday once I have enough questions!

You can ask any question using the form here.

UPDATE: Favourite Mascara

Someone a while back asked me what my favourite mascara was. I said: Anything in a drugstore that is on sale..

..but that is NO LONGER THE CASE!

This mascara is $5, and it is a Holy Grail item. It makes my already long lashes look longer, thicker, blacker and lusher… seriously phenom.

In Canada you can find it in Shoppers Drug Mart, or any Loblaws store. Any of them are amazing, but the one I bought was the Green Princess False Lash Effect one.

What do you think is a good percentage of money to save each month, in general? How about when you make more money? Should you ramp up your spending, save the same percentage, save a smaller percentage?

People all say 10% is the minimum. I’m leaning towards more 20% in general.

Obviously, the more you make, the more you should just live the way you have lived and shove the rest into savings (EASIER SAID THAN DONE, TRUST ME).

When you make more money, save more money. Then, spend it as you see fit on what you think you might need (don’t deprive yourself for goodness sake).

A nice rule of thumb would be that each time your salary gets bumped up, save 50% of it, and put 50% of it towards things that you care about — traveling, etc.

So if your salary gets bumped up $10,000 gross, and the NET of that let’s say is $7000, then $3500 (half) goes towards savings, and the other $3500 goes towards spending.

That way, you are balancing out your savings with your higher income, with your spending so you don’t feel like you’re eating beans and rice while making a 6-figure income.

Hi Sherry ! What is your opinion on crowd lending as an investment ?

Beautiful. I think it is a brilliant way to bypass banks who don’t want to give you money because they don’t want to take a risk on people, and just want to make money without putting any of it out there.

If you want to make money, you need to risk it.

The higher the risk, the higher the reward.

This is the reason why credit card companies are so wildly successful. They saw a nice of lending money (short term) to people, taking the risk that YES people WILL default and YES there WILL be fraud…. but now it is a HUGE industry, credit cards and loans in general, they make more money than banks.

The problem with banks, as you will hear me rant about as a freelancer, is that you have to have money already in the bank (cash for instance) to prove that you can pay for said loaned capital, but you can’t make money, if you don’t have money loaned to you to get started.

It is a chicken & egg conundrum, much like the one where people lament: I am out of school and want to get this job, but they are asking for experience in said job, but I cannot get said experience unless I get THIS JOB.

UGH.

Why don’t you eat Kraft Dinner or hotdogs?

Because they’re not delicious?

Also, did you know they have cellulose in there, and it comes from pulp which comes from paper, and who knows where that paper comes from?

I hate to break it to you, but we send a lot of our rejected paper and recyclables (for quality or safety purposes) abroad to countries like China to process, and then turn around and buy it back from them to then put in consumer products.

Maybe there are some rules in place for FOOD products not following the same process (rejected here, shipped to China, purchased back from China), but I am still avoiding anything that doesn’t look like a food ingredient.

What kind of printer do you use and what do you recommend? You did a great review on the Fujitsu scanner and I got one a few years back and love it (not the compact one you have).

I still have my beloved Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanner & it is AWESOME…5 years and counting I believe?

Right now I own a HP Laserjet Pro P1102W printer…. It was basically the cheapest one I could find for what I wanted — black & white printing only and compact as possible.

I will say that I found out a few things about printers when I have burned through so many during the years:

• Do not buy all-in-one multifunction printers — I got one for free from blogging a while back from HP and it didn’t do any of the promised functions as perfectly as an actual product designed for it. Want a scanner? BUY A SCANNER. I love this one & still use it.
• Do not buy colour printers — When it prints in black and white only, it still uses the colour cartridges, I think. It was very annoying because then the colour cartridge would be low & it would squeal each time: We can’t print a black and white page! The yellow cartridge is low! W.T.F. I think this The Oatmeal comic explains perfectly the situation.
• Think about the ink — Again.. consider the cost of ink and what you use it for.
• Consider laserjet not bubblejet — I just know laser jet is meant to be crisper and the ink doesn’t bleed into the paper as much as bubblejet

Good luck!

Still have a burning question?

You can ask any question using the form here and all of my previous Ask Sherry posts are here.