Budgeting/Saving Tips
Time for some more budgeting/saving tips:
- Coupons.com has a lot of great coupons that you can print out
- MyCoupons.com has a lot of great information on deals that are being found at various stores
- Buy off-brand items. Yes, some will taste like sawdust, but others are identical to the name brand. If you have an ALDI grocery store in your area, it is worth the drive to purchase groceries there. We save at least $50 a month by buying our essentials there – milk, bread, canned foods, eggs … As a side note, their eggs can be somewhat non-uniform – I get double-yolk eggs, oblong eggs … It is really interesting.
- Try to go a week without going to the grocery store. Put together meals from stuff that is in the cupboards! You will enjoy some concoctions that you have not had in awhile (or never), AND you will be able to save a week's worth of grocery money to put toward your emergency fund!
- Have the kids mow the lawn and do the landscaping instead of paying someone else to do it. Pay your kids and teach them how to save/give/spend out of that money! Can you spell, "LEARNING OPPORTUNITY"?
- Cut all of your kids hair. It will save many families $20 – $40 per month!
- CONSIGNMENT stores/Goodwill/Salvation Army. You can find some great deals on clothing there!
- Shop your insurance for quotes. Get at least three quotes and obtain one of them from an independent insurance agent. You may be able to save $100 – $500/year on your insurance!
- Take a low-budget vacation instead of that $3,000 one. You will find that you will have just as much fun, and you may be able to save $2,000 – $2,500 toward debt reduction, emergency fund, or retirement fund!
- Sleep on major purchase decisions. This will really help you to avoid "impulse" purchases like a new car, a pricey vacation, a new plasma TV, etc.
- Get rid of the home telephone. Many people have so many cell phones that the home phone is becoming obsolete. For basic home telephone service you will pay $25/month, and it will not come with the basic features that a cell phone has – free long distance, caller-id, call waiting, voice mail, camera, text messaging, games, etc.
- Get rid of the movie channels on cable. It is loaded with a bunch of trash movies anyhow, and it leads to a loads of wasted time.
I would love to hear more ideas on how you can save money. You leave a comment or contact me HERE.
Compound Interest Calculator – Investing
For those of you wanting to calculate your own investment future value, you can go HERE!
Have you looked at your credit report?
By law, you are allowed to view your credit report once per year. You can obtain your FREE credit report at www.annualcreditreport.com.
It is FREE once per year! At the end, they will ask if you want to see your FICO score for somewhere around $6. You are NOT obligated to do that! Just decline it and you will obtain your credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies – Experian, TransUnion, and Equifa.
You will be able to print it out as well. You NEED to do this at least one time per year. Statistics show that over 50% of credit reports have errors on them. Go get a copy of yours and ensure that it is accurate!
Want to send me an e-mail? Click HERE.
Ideas for Saving Money
- Cash a $5 bill every time you go to the vending machines at work. Save the change. If you go to the vending machines three times in one day, cash a $5 bill every time. Save the change. I have a friend who become debt-free using this very technique!
- Use cash envelopes for any budget item that is subject to impulsive spending. For me, my impulsive spending list includes groceries, restaurants, clothing, entertainment, and blow money. By pulling out the budgeted amount and placing it into the envelope, I will not spend more than I budgeted. Period! This is a key reason that Jenn and I became debt-free. By the way, we saved over $200 PER MONTH by putting our grocery money into an envelope.
- Have your insurance rates quoted every two years. Get at least one quote from an independent insurance agency. Many people can save $200 – $500 per year! Consider raising your deductible and driving more carefully!
- Make it automatic! If you begin investing $50/month and need to write a check every single month to make that investment happen, there is a big chance that you will not invest $50/month. It will be too easy to say, "I'll make two deposits next month, I need the $50 for something else this month." By making it an automatic draft, it will happen without a question and without any action taken by you. You will be amazed at how fast this can add up!
- Get rid of the huge, honking car payments! Sell the expensive car with the big payment! Drive a beater! I know that this is not "cool" and it is not "your style". My question is this, do you want to be stylish and broke with a bad case of stuff-itis or do you want to be wierd and actually have money to pay cash for things. Listen, I love a nice car, but something is out of line when it is robbing you of your ability to give and save money!
- Don't go to Aruba for vacation. Go to the local campground! Again, I love to travel to nice places, but something is out of line when you have not saved a dime for retirement and are taking really expensive trips.
- Share items. If you need a drill, borrow one! If you need a saw for a small, two-day job, borrow one! If you are going to cook a whole pig, don't go buy the pig cooker – borrow/rent one! If you want to go fishing/skiing, rent a boat! It is so much cheaper to rent a boat for the 5 times you actually go fishing/skiing than it is to pay for the payments, insurance, storage fee, winterization, summerization, breakdowns, frustrations, etc.
- Refuse to buy anything unless you have the cash on hand to do the deal. By making this commitment, it will prevent you from making a bunch of dumb decisions! I can tell you this, when Jenn and I established this rule, it really helped us out when we experienced bad cases of stuff-itis!
Other Items
- I am including this MORTGAGE CALCULATOR for the person who requested it last night.
- You can do this! I believe in you!
Why I am such a big fan of cash envelopes
I am a HUGE fan of cash envelopes because they are a key reason that Jenn and I started winning with our finances.
Here is how we use cash envelopes:
Every month BEFORE the money comes in, Jenn and I work together to spend all of our money on paper. We FORCE our money to behave by making it follow the INCOME – OUTGO = EXACTLY ZERO formula. This usually takes less than 20 minutes per month!!! After we have completed the budget, we figure out how much needs pulled out for the cash envelopes.
How do we decide how much to put in cash envelopes? Well, it is something that has been developed over time. We have learned that there are certain categories that we are more likely to impulse on. These categories are where we are quite likely to overspend if we use the debit card. As a result, we pull out the amount of cash that we budgeted and put it into a labeled envelope.
Here are some categories that Jenn and I use cash envelopes for (because these are categories we could overspend otherwise):
GROCERIES
DINING OUT
CLOTHING
BLOW MONEY
ENTERTAINMENT
Think about these categories for a minute. It is pretty easy to go crazy and overspend these categories isn't it?! By using cash envelopes, we KNOW FOR SURE that we will NOT overspend. We will only spend the amount we budgeted!
Guess what? I have never overspent a cash envelope in 4 years!!! If I were using a debit card, I can guarantee you that I would have overspent at least 24 of the past 48 months!!! Why? The debit card doesn't allow me to keep a running amount of how much I have left to spend for each category. The cash envelopes? – Yeah, I can just open it up and count. Presto! I immediately know how much I have left for the month!
Try it! If you are nervous, try just one envelope – GROCERIES!!! It can quite possibly change your life!