Search results for savings
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Posted
Sep 27 2007, 11:21 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
You may not need to pay full price when you're shopping on the Internet. A Web site offers thousands of coupon codes for all sorts of items you can buy online. You simply find the code for the item you're purchasing, go to the merchant's site and type in the code. Users of the site can rate the success of each code.
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Posted
Oct 02 2007, 09:45 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
An admirer of America's cheapest family recounts the lessons he's learned from the Economides clan, a married couple and five children who live on $35,000 a year (and paid off their house in nine years) in Arizona. Teamwork, organization and an unwavering commitment to make frugality a lifestyle (these folks don't use credit cards) work, and even the smallest savings add up.
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Posted
Oct 05 2007, 09:18 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
I remember when slow cookers first hit the market, back in 1970. To my cash-strapped family such things were luxuries, culinary toys for the rich. We felt the same way about popcorn poppers and the Fry Daddy.
But I don’t know how I would have made it as a struggling single mother eight years later without the slow cooker. It made most of the meals on which the baby and I subsisted: primarily bean soup, with occasional forays into minestrone and spaghetti.
One or two mornings a week, I’d put a pound of great northern beans in the pot with some grated carrot, chopped onion, pepper, and smoked neck bones or ham hock. When I got home, the smell of soup made me feel like someone had been cooking for me all day. It also took my mind off the sack of dirty diapers that I’d be washing on a scrub board later on.
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Posted
Oct 18 2007, 02:59 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Pinyo at Moolanomy back in August launched the "My One Money Advice" meme , challenging personal-finance bloggers to share their best pearls of wisdom. Pinyo opened with: "Save 10% of your income and make it automatic." More than 50 bloggers have contributed advice since then, ranging from chestnuts like "Spend less than you earn" to the more philosophical " Money is not the problem, you are ." The Dough Roller offered " Live below your means ," only after running around screaming "Get it off! Get it off!" when he saw he'd been tagged with a "MOMA meme." (He calmed down when he looked up meme at Wikipedia .) The latest poster, Growth in Value , a 20-something Canadian, says his favorite "financial cliche" is: Pay yourself first . There's nothing hackneyed about how he does it. A whopping 25% of each paycheck is automatically deposited into savings. "Maybe there'll be one less beer after the game that week, but that sum I ferret away is sacrosanct," he writes.
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Posted
Oct 26 2007, 07:27 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
J.D. Roth writes with authority about getting out from under the dead weight of debt. In an interview at Wise Bread , Roth, the founder of popular personal-finance blog Get Rich Slowly , writes about how he accumulated substantial debt and about the wake-up calls that changed his thinking about money. Why is Get Rich Slowly (one of our partner blogs) so appealing to readers? "First, I'm just an average guy," he says. "... I've been where a lot of my readers are now. People can relate to my journey." He likes to explore personal finance from "a variety of angles" and values readers' contributions to the site. Advice he doesn't think he's emphasized enough: "Entrepreneurship is awesome."
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Posted
Oct 29 2007, 05:40 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
A post by The Baglady about a former boyfriend makes for a lighthearted Monday morning read about how not to save money . He lives with his parents and rationalizes not paying rent because he serves as their ex officio "marriage counselor, system administrator and financial adviser." He eats cheap spaghetti every night (unless he was taking Baglady out to dine for free at a company party). He also is one of those nonflushers . (Don't want to waste any water, do we?) Baglady has no regrets about ending this relationship: "Looking back, I am pretty glad that I broke up with him because if I married him I would have had no wedding, and right now I would probably be living with his parents and eating 50-cent spaghetti." (BL is no bag lady, by the way. Her first job out of college came with a $60,000 salary.)
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Posted
Nov 01 2007, 07:34 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post was written by Philip Brewer at partner blog Wise Bread . When people resist the idea of budgets, the most common reason is that they view a budget as an unwelcome constraint. That's completely wrong. A budget is not a constraint. It's a tool for maximizing pleasure and satisfaction. People do operate under constraints. Everybody has limited resources and time. Everybody operates within a constellation of other constraints: legal, moral and social, as well as old obligations and family expectations. My point is that the constraints don't come from a budget; they come from the real world. A budget is a tool for managing your resource use in the face of those constraints. A budget allows you to plan how to allocate your limited resources so that your expenditures align with your values. If you attempt this without a plan, you easily can slip into a situation in which your spending doesn't match your values: You can't afford dinner out with your friends because you bought a book
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Posted
Nov 08 2007, 07:04 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Matt, an active-duty Marine, is a guest poster at Poorer Than You , and he presents his personal-finance advice in military terms . ("Perhaps the best deal about being in Iraq is that my pay is increased by effectively 33% due to my tax-free status, in addition to my 'special incentive' pay that I receive while over here," he writes.) He urges readers to build a reserve and launch an assault on debt. "Gear up with the weapons of personal-finance war: a budget, a disciplined mind-set, and a strong will to win," he says. Every once in a while you may need to "call in supporting fire" and depend on family members for help, but do so on a very limited basis, he advises. Borrowing money from family could become a financial minefield.
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Posted
Nov 15 2007, 08:16 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Linsey Knerl at partner blog Wise Bread . My family has lived in the same house for two years, but we neither rent it nor own it. It is part of a family farming corporation with an uncertain future. We don’t know if we will be here another 10 years, or if we will need to move next spring. It seems silly to invest too much in it without it being a permanent home, but, at the same time, we really want to make it our own. It seems easy to hold your breath and wait for situations in life to become clear, determined and permanent. But what will you be missing in the meantime? Here are five steps that can help you live life while waiting to see just where it may go. Know that you are not alone. How many other honorable professions and lifestyles are temporary, nomadic , or without careful material plans? Plenty. Just ask any missionary family, military spouse, or theater troupe how it feels never to know what the next move may hold for them. Time spent at a single location
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Posted
Nov 26 2007, 06:00 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly . I had dinner with a friend the other night. Over pasta and clams, we talked about life and money. She told me about her brother. "He's a compulsive spender," she said. "He spends money even when he doesn't have any." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Well," she said, "for one thing, he spends his money before he gets it. For example, when he was still working with Big Computer Company Inc., somebody told him he was going to get a raise. But instead of waiting for the raise, he started spending as if he already had the money. He never got the raise." I nodded. I've done that in the past. I used to be a compulsive spender too. For years, I was addicted to shopping. I got a rush out of buying new stuff. I especially liked buying new books and movies. But, actually, I didn't care what I bought: It was the act of buying that made me feel good. Sometimes on the drive home from work, I'd stop at a department store just so I could buy
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