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Posted
Aug 06 2008, 06:23 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
This guest post comes from Silicon Valley Blogger at The Digerati Life. We live with them all the time -- those money leaks that burn holes in our pockets ever so slowly. Often, we find ourselves spending a little bit here and there, and before we know it, we're scratching our heads wondering where our money went. But it could be worse: Our credit card bills can grow to the point when they can be unmanageable, a situation we should all try to avoid before debt becomes too overwhelming to handle. At my household, we're trying much harder to be economical as we face financial uncertainties over the next few years. Both my husband and I are now self-employed and facing a short-term income shortfall until we get our business ventures off the ground. This has prompted us to work on optimizing our family budget much more carefully and to keep a closer eye on those extra costs that add up. In doing so, I've realized something -- that money leaks don't just lead to growing debt. It has dawned on me that even if we can seemingly afford these small outlays -- what's an extra $2 for a pack of gum and a bottle of Calistoga? -- the money we spend actually has an opportunity cost, which in itself can be quite huge.
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Posted
Jul 24 2008, 11:21 AM
by
Karen Datko
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Every little bit helps if you're trying to stretch your money, and it's even better if you can accomplish savings with little effort. For instance: How long will it take you to put a dry towel in the dryer with a load of wet wash? Jeffrey Strain at Saving Advice says you can reduce your drying time by 10% by implementing this little trick. It's from his excellent post called "25 ways to improve your financial situation in under 10 minutes."
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Posted
Jul 23 2008, 11:08 PM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Linsey Knerl at partner blog Wise Bread. The sudden aggravation of my son's allergies became the last straw for this frugal family. While we had suffered through a summer or two in our old farm home with little to no air conditioning in most rooms, this year was going to be different. Credit card in hand (we enjoy collecting those rewards points), my husband headed to our local Pamida for the 12,000-Btu beauty. Soon after he arrived, he called me from his cell phone -- a bit more than aggravated. "Lins, it's showing $50 more than what you said it was going to cost." I reached for my sale ad and realized that the great price on the very last one in stock had ended -- yesterday.
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Posted
Jul 14 2008, 07:00 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This guest post comes from Silicon Valley Blogger at The Digerati Life. Our family has experienced a few changes over the last couple of years, which has required us to become much more watchful over our finances. My spouse left his job a couple of years ago to start his own company, while I worked at a stable job to assure ourselves a reliable income stream. I stayed with my job for quite a while despite a killer commute. But things got even tighter when I resigned this year due to the commute, for health reasons and in order to seek a better work/life balance. At first, it seemed like a frightening decision that would impact our finances significantly. But it turns out, we've been able to roll with the punches. Savings we built up through the years (particularly during the dot-com boom) plus changes we've made to our spending habits have helped us adjust to a life with less income.
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Posted
Jul 01 2008, 04:54 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Here's a clever budgeting aid from Chris at Cheaperversion: Create a do-not-buy list. "The purpose of a do-not-buy list is to banish the idea of purchasing unneeded items from your monthly budget," Chris writes. Although Chris doesn't spell them out, there seem to be some unwritten rules here: Your list has to contain stuff you really want, but you're also allowed to buy cheaper or better-for-you alternatives, or the same product in smaller amounts. For instance, the top two items on Chris' list are 24-packs of beer (a 12-pack is on his weekend to-buy list) and "high-calorie" cookies (we're assuming cookies "lite" are OK).
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Posted
Jun 16 2008, 12:47 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Would you order a six-course meal if you planned to eat only the salad and dessert? No. You'd order a la carte. Apply the same concept to the subscriptions you pay for, suggests Ramit Sethi at I Will Teach You To Be Rich. That includes services like cable, TiVo, cell phones and that underused gym membership. Ramit writes: "In fact, in one remarkable study of three health clubs, two researchers from Stanford and Berkeley showed that gym members overestimate how much they'll use their gym membership by over 70%."
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Posted
Jun 13 2008, 03:41 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Former super-spendthrift Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar once made a credit card sleeve out of a photo of his infant son. Each time he thought about using that card, he had an instant reminder of why he needed to knock off the spending. "Mr. Imperfect" of Perfectly Imperfect Family and Finances is decidedly high-tech in his approach. He uses the start-up message on his cell phone -- and photos on his cell and desktop -- to keep him focused on his goals (although Bettsi McComb suggests you change the photos every so often so they don't become part of the background noise).
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Posted
Jun 13 2008, 06:26 AM
by
Karen Datko
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Last month, I was sorely tempted to pick up Mario Kart Wii. Mario Kart has been my favorite video game series. I played it for hours and hours with my friends in high school on the Super Nintendo, then burned countless hours in the college dorms playing it on an N64. Even as recently as last Christmas, I stayed up most of the night playing Mario Kart DS wirelessly against my wife's family at their Christmas celebration (one person had a cartridge and several of us had DS units.)
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Posted
May 28 2008, 07:08 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Pinyo at Moolanomy has a friend who wants to improve her financial well-being, but she continues to shoot herself in the foot. "Somehow, she always comes up with some lame excuses when it comes to money," Pinyo writes. He calls them the "words of the financially challenged." Just as the popular post by "Frugal Dad" explored the rants of people he calls "the perpetual poor," Pinyo recounts the rationalizations his friend uses to never save any money. We'll start with "It's only $10 a month."
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Posted
May 22 2008, 07:40 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Products have five stages of life: good as new, in working order, wait and see, obsolescence, and end of life, says Nick at Punny Money. "For a few years now, I've used a system of assigning ratings to expensive items I own in order to track where they are in their useful life span and make budgetary plans for items I may soon need to replace," Nick writes. Here's a summary of how to use his system so that you don't trash perfectly usable things and waste money. (Since it is Punny Money, some of this is a tad tongue-in-cheek.)
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