For the past several years I’ve been knee deep involved in Ukraine and as several people on Tildes know, a lot of my earliest days were spent donating, tens of thousands. All in all I’ve donated enough to nearly bankrupt myself when my situation changed.

As I got more involved (and now I’m an active investor in the sector), I want to share something I’ve learned since that I wish someone had told me when I started:

Every dollar you have that you want to put to work can, on average, be 10x’d by the time you put it in.

That means if you want to donate 10k, you may well be able to end up putting 100k to work towards your goal.

You may have seen this take the form of donation matching — some fame seekers sometimes do it (I’ll donate 10 dollars for every dollar you donate), but this isn’t necessarily what I mean.

Speaking on an investment side: on average, 10% “skin in the game” makes it very easy to get the remaining 90% as long as there is a net positive outcome possible. So by positioning your donation as your skin in the game to a larger fundraise, you set yourself up for multiplying your impact by ten.

What’s more: let’s say you don’t want to donate 10k in bulk but you have a good job that allows you to set aside 1k usd per month. You want to donate half of that (500 usd). This means per year you can donate 6k usd.
Are you able to take a two year engagement? Congratulations, that means you are donating 12k and can now raise for 120k with 10% skin in the game (as long as the money isn’t needed faster than at the rate it can be committed).

I had this discussion with an acquaintance who has been in finance for a long time and got a very good job. She was trying to figure out how to “invest” 40k per year, that would otherwise be lost to taxes. On a 7 year engagement she has now setup a 10M climate fund (around 2% SITG which is standard for funds).

I was floored she didn’t know this. I figured the reason I didn’t was because I didn’t study economics, but it seems so fundamental that I want more people to be aware that this is a thing.

I have held out for years from getting a loyalty/membership card from supermarkets as I hate the tracking that they do. But here in the UK so many prices are now locked behind it in most supermarkets, it feels like I’m just giving them so much extra money it’s getting ridiculous. I end up spending more money to shop where they don’t do this, but most of the major players are now adding these member only prices it’s hard to keep the status quo.
For other privacy minded people, how do you manage this?

I know most here are US-based, but I thought I'd give this a shot.

I've been running a pretty straightforward ETF portfolio through Ergo in Germany for a while now. Here's my current breakdown:

• 25% in iShares MSCI EM IMI ESG Screen UCITS ETF
• 25% in iShares MSCI Europe ESG Enhanced UCITS ETF
• 50% in iShares MSCI World SRI UCITS ETF EUR

I've recently freed up an extra €500 monthly that I'm looking to invest and am wondering if it would make sense to just bump up my monthly contribution from €1,000 to €1,500 while keeping the same allocation percentages, or should I consider doing something different with this extra cash?

For context, I've got my emergency fund covered (one year's expenses) and no debt to worry about.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Tax time again!
I like to get this done as soon as possible to get it out of the way. I have all my tax documents at the ready, but several changes happened in my life last year (moved states, sold home, bought home, etc.) and the tax software I've been using over the last several years apparently "doesn't support" several of the tax forms (or even simply some of the boxes on the forms) I have for this year.

Trying to avoid the "Big Two" if possible.

I'm posting this in good faith, both out of curiosity and self interest. But up front I'll say that I'm not interested in scams, schemes, or get-rich-quick stuff.

I work full time as a teacher, but ever since we had a baby, my wife and I are just barely breaking even financially. Not struggling, but $4k/year would make a massive difference in our lives.

It seems like I'm stuck in this spot where getting a low wage job after school hours isn't even worth the time missed with my family, considering how awful the pay is. Summer work is tough because it has to justify the extra daycare expenses, and again, it's so much missed time with family for such a low reward. Higher paying gigs don't seem as interested in seasonal help from what I've encountered so far.

For the record, I'm not really interested in crypto or casino bonus schemes. I also don't have enough to invest right now to truly put investing over the edge into a meaningful return.

What are some low-risk/low-investment/low-reward side hustles?

With the recent news about Synapse, I am a little on edge with the safety of my money. I am currently living in France for school, and am hoping to immigrate here permanently. All of my savings is in USD, so I need a way to easily and cheaply convert between USD and EUR, and be able to spend EUR locally. After a ton of research, I decided to move almost all of my banking to Wise. They don't offer traditional banking features like in-person branches or checks, but I didn't use those anyway. I can get a local bank number in any of the many countries they support. The savings account APY is insanely high (higher than I have seen from even the best high yield savings accounts. I have a debit card that allows me to spend directly from any one of my bank account currencies, and auto convert to other supported currencies. And the USD account is insured by FDIC passthrough insurance.

In the thread about the Synapse collapse, people were saying that passthrough FDIC insurance doesn't always mean that the customer's money is actually insured. And apparently some fintech services will just lie about what is covered by FDIC insurance. I am not a lawyer, and I have no idea how to validate Wise's claims about passthrough FDIC insurance.

I was recently able to open a France bank account, which was surprisingly difficult. (To open a bank account you need proof of address, like a cell phone or electricity bill. I don't pay for utilities in my school apartment, and to get a cell phone plan I need a bank account. That was fun to try and navigate.) I have these bank accounts currently: my Wise account with US USD, Belgium EUR, and UK GBP, a US Credit Union account, and a French EUR bank account. My US credit union and French banks give a very low or zero APY, so keeping my money in my Wise accounts is preferable for that reason. But I also can't afford to loose all my savings if Wise collapses. My question is this: Is Wise safe enough for general money storage, or should I use it just for converting between currencies and keeping a small amount for spending? If Wise isn't safe, what about another similar product? I have heard of Revolut, but I didn't do much research since Wise seemed better for my use case.

For many years, I’ve been relying on a budgeting system I came up with that leverages the unlimited free savings accounts offered by my credit union, and the scheduled transfer functionality in their online banking. I have a separate account for every recurring bill. I also have accounts for different types of expenses like groceries, car maintenance, clothing, travel, etc. Altogether I have about 50-60 accounts.

I am salaried so I get a predictable paycheck at predictable intervals. After every paycheck arrives, a flurry of scheduled transfers distribute the money among all the accounts. These accounts are my budget — if I go to the movie theater, for example, I’m not allowed to spend more than what’s in my Activites account. I rely heavily on my online banking app and often pull up the balances to see how much I have to work with. Most of my paycheck is allocated but there’s always a little bit left over in my checking account, which is used for discretionary spending and provides a little cushion if I need it.

Most of my bills are on auto-pay. I have scheduled transfers in place to move the money back into checking when it’s due, just in time for the payment to process.

This system works for me. I like how earmarking and separating out funds for specific purposes as soon as I get paid prevents me from spending that money on other things. I have some annual subscription renewals that I don’t even feel because I set aside a couple bucks every pay period and the money’s there when I need it. I like that this system doesn’t require complex paid software or tedious reconciliation processes. It’s admittedly a chore to make adjustments to anything because the online banking system wasn’t designed for this sort of workflow. Once it’s properly configured, everything is automated and it basically runs itself. I’ve added a couple supporting tools over the years: a spreadsheet to plan the whole budget before I create all the scheduled transfers, and a CLI script that projects upcoming balances for n years so I can optimize my biweekly allocation sizes for their corresponding monthly or annual payments.

I don’t know what to call this system. It’s similar to the old envelope method except I’m using actual bank accounts and never handling cash. I’ve heard that YNAB is similar but haven’t looked into that one. I can’t be the only one managing their money this way! Does this have a name? I’d love to hear resource recommendations for this sort of budget, and please share your own systems and tools as well!

So, I'm debating switching to a debit card for daily purchases, since the mental accounting gets confusing with a credit card and it's easier to overspend. The only thing holding me back is the fraud protection that comes with a credit card. Are there any (US) checking accounts/debit cards that match the level of protection you can expect from a credit card? Is such a thing possible?

It's 2024 if I remember correctly and budgeting is a fairly common practice. Companies are obsessed with data. Yet when I got to the store and buy a videogame, dap drywall joint compount, and 3 avocados the transactions is just the store and the amount. It'd be nice if I could track what I've been buying, categories them into entertainment, home improvement, and groceries respectively.

I'm guessing this information actually is tracked but is only used for marketing purposes. But I'm curious, does anyone have more information on why transactions can't at least optionally support extra metadata about what was actually bought?

So we make about $100,000 combined, I make just shy of 70K and she makes about 30K.

Both states have programs for first time homebuyers, but our incomes together prohibit us from qualifying, whereas separately we both qualify.

Would it be considered fraud if I were to apply for one as myself, get the house in my name, but we both pay on it? I can't find anything on either page about it, but obviously we are not legally married.

Ugh. Scammers are everywhere, and I know I'm getting them in my inbox and junkmail, but I need a way to know who I am wasting my time on and who is a real client.

My current client doesn't seem to speak in the usual way (for example saying "you have replied to me perfectly" in response to me asking "Please let me know if this works for you or if you wish to negotiate"). They want to pay me via a cashier's check. I just now told them I only accept PayPal payments (that is what I've always used). Waiting for a response now.

So my question is, which of these would be the most secure method of payment to use over the internet, with strangers, where contact is via email?

PayPal
Wire transfer
Cashier's check
Other (write in comments)

Maybe everyone knows this, but I suspect not. For years, I've been using the points I earn on a Chase Freedom card directly on Amazon. I just found out today that I'm only getting 80% of the value. Redeeming 26,345 points at Amazon yields $210.76. Redeeming 26,345 points on the Chase website (for an Amazon gift card) yields $263.45.

The Chase Amazon Prime Visa does give 100% of value directly on Amazon's site.