Archive for May, 2009
I remember when not so long ago the "frugal" was pretty much a negative term. It was almost an insult to refer to somebody as being frugal. In today's economy I think things have changed. Being frugal is almost being smarter with your money than being a cheapo. I found some tips about living a frugal lifestyle. Most are things that I have talked about but I thought I would share as it makes for good reading.
1. Eating Out – Having gimmicks with friends on a Friday night is fine if you do it once in a while. But this can be expensive if you add them up at the end of the month.
2. Clothing – Naturally, if you are the kind of person who adores signature and designer clothes, do not expect that there will be something left of your take home pay. Instead of being trendy, wear clothes that can easily be matched with your other clothes.
3. Own Home – If you are planning to move out and find a place to settle, do not be overwhelmed by the excitement, instead be practical. As a start, buy a smaller house or try other ways like rent-to-own, do-it-yourself arrangements, and owner financing.
4. Buying Your Own Car – Shy away from sports cars or SUVs. Just stick to your purpose of buying a car which is to transport you anywhere you need to go. Check out also program cars like a new car warranty. Maybe this is not just the best time to replace your car with a new one.
5. Shopping for Groceries – As much as possible do not go with items that are branded. Choose non-brands and try looking for items on the highest or lowest shelves for best prices. Grab the opportunity and shop during sales or use coupons.
6. Family Out – There are inexpensive ways to bond with your family and be entertained like going to libraries, local parks, malling, picnics, visit friends and local church.
7. Buying School Supplies – Stock school supplies at home and do not buy anything fancy.
8. Be contented with what you have and try to live within what you earn.
9. Plan your Child’s College Education – Teach them the ways to be independent and self-supporting by encouraging them to apply for scholarships and “on campus jobs”.
10. Be Aware of your Financial Limitations
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Is your credit card debt out of control? It seems the more and more I read the news I am reading more and more about problem with credit cards. In fact, the Canadian government just enacted some changes to the way credit card companies work just a few weeks ago with the aim of helping credit card holders. This must be indicitive that many have credit card problems. It is easy to concieve that many people may run into a jam and have to use their credit card but many just use them to spend irresponsibly and then can't get out of the hole they dug themselves. Paying off your credit card debt can be hard and requires much discipline but what do you do after you have payed off your debt? Where do you go and what do you do with your money?
The problem many people find themselves with is that they get their credit cards payed off and then find themselves right back in debt again. Here are a few tips to not land yourself back in credit card debt.
Do not overspend. Yielding to the sale offers for something that you don’t really need, is a big mistake that leads to overspending. Like I have said before, take a day or two and think about if you really need that new item. Chances are after sleeping on it you won't need it or can survive without it.
Always remain within 70% of your credit limit. It may sound tough but if you keep falling into debt it's a good rule of thumb to live by.
Make credit card bill payments in time and in full. Don't go over your head with your card. Make sure you have enough at the end of the month to pay off that card and if you can't, put it away and stop spending.
Don’t hold more than two credit card accounts. I have two cards and can't foresee myself needing anymore than that. Having more cards is just going to land you in trouble.
Put a cap on your credit card limit. If you don't have one thousand dollars to spend then don't have a one thousand dollar monthly limit. That is just going to get you into trouble. If they offer you a higher limit, learn to just say no.
This might sound the direct opposite to my last blog post but trust me it is not. It is about having the patience to save money once you have decided to take that route.
Walking is a perfect example. Have the patience and walk to the store or to work instead of driving there. It will save you on gas expenses, parking costs and the maitainence of your car. Walking also improves your health and state of mind which can be a big plus if you are bogged down with money problems.
Have some patience when making your next purchase and compare prices before you end up buying. It doesn't matter what you are buying, get offers from three to five companies, go online and look at a few different prices from various stores. Let the stores you visit know that you are taking the time to search the market and they may just be able to offer you the best savings. The patient consumer is a winner.
Use coupons as much as possible. Be patient in cutting them out and going through them before making any purchase. Pack them together with your grocery bag or in the car so you can use the discount voucher at every opportunity. One can save $20 – $50, just by using the coupons.
Track your expenses. Have the patience to keep your receipts and record all your expenses, no matter how small or frequently they occur. By doing so, you are made aware of where every single penny goes. Furthermore, you will know when you have spent too much on clothing, when in fact you still need to settle your credit card balance, or pay the mortgage. You will have a better hold of your financial health, by patiently tracking your finances.
Hold-off and sleep on it. If you are about to purchase a $100 item, hold off the purchase until you’ve given it much thought, say sleeping on it for 1-2 nights. If after such time, you decide that you absolutely need and can afford the purchase, then go ahead. Nevertheless, you’ll be surprised at how much you can save by just sleeping and thinking things over.
Exude moral excellence by patiently saving for years to come, starting today!
I can't believe how many of my friends try to save money here and there and then blow it away in another place. Saving money means that you have to be all in. It's okay to start out small and begin changing your spending and saving habits but in the process you can't be getting into bad credit card debt, spending foolishly on unneed items and going into overdraw at the bank. If you have come to the realization that you financial situation is in dire need then you need to start saving everywhere and anyway you can without jeopardizing your well being. It doesn't matter if it's credit cards, buying weight loss pills online, spending on vacations or just your plain everyday living expenses. You have to look at everyone of them and try to save money with them. There is no sense of saving money by cutting down your credit card debt and then blowing the savings on a vacation that you could have got cheaper if you had done a little research. If you want to save "go all in" and start looking at everything you do from a frugal standpoint.
My friends were recently talking about saving some money on their house insurance. There are serveral ways that you can save on the amount of money that you pay every year in house insurance.
Invest in a home security system. Call your insurance company and see if they offer rebates for having home slarm systems. You would be suprised. You just have to make sure the the monthly fees aren't great than the savings for the year. If they then you aren't doing yourself much good if you are looking to safe.
Combine your policies. If you have different insurance companies for your different items you can get great savings by putting them all with the same company. It's like bunding your tv and phone services.
Raise your decductable up to $1,000. If you something goes wrong with your house and is under this amount the chances are you aren't calling them anyways. I have read you can save as much as 25% by just raising your deductable from $500 to a $1,000.
Those are just a coule of ways that you can cut down on your home insurance costs. Remember once you save a little on your insurance costs put it towards paying off that credit card or loan.
We recently picked up a PS3 for the house and I was impressed with the fact that they have a few neat power saving features for both the system and the controllers. I blogged once in the past about how much engery a video game system can drain and if you aren't using the power saving setting in your PS3 it might be a good idea to enable them.
First, the controllers have a power saving option. After 10 minutes of inactivity they will shut off. This is a great feature to save you having to charge them all the time. I was playing at a friends house and we were constantly having to charge them. This creates even a larger drain on your electricity bill. In the settings look for the Controller Auto-Off feature and enable it.
Secondly, you can also power off the system itself after 1-5 hours of inactivity. Of course it won't turn off if you are in game play or watching a movie. You can enable it to do so but this is something that you don't want to do. Look for the System Auto-Off feature in the settings and set it to turn off after an hour of non-use.
Using both of these features can help control your electricity use with your PS3 console and save you money on your electricity bill. If you think that this isn't a big deal refer to the attached image. It will show you just how much you can save.
Like a lot of people I have been suffering from not being able to sleep. I have been pulling my hair a bit trying to get to sleep at night. Not being able to sleep is hard because it leaves you dragging all day long. I have been nervous about getting a prescription drug to help me with my sleep problem. It’s just something I don’t want to do.
I have been searching around the internet to find an all natural product and came across a product called Stemulite. It’s an all natural product so this is a big plus when trying to find a sleep aide. When I looked at their website their prices were great. Even finding a natural sleep aide can be quite expensive but I was impressed with their prices. They even have a number of testimonials from tons of athletes and professionals that endorse their product.
I recenlty took my parents computer tower and merged the parts with my old computer. When I got it up and running I had forgot to do the Power Management settings so I thought this woudl be a good time to go over some points on how to save money on your energy bill by fine tuning your computer.
Facts About Computers and Energy Use
1. Screen savers do not save you money on your energy bill. In fact it is probably costing you more to use the screen saver than not. Think about how a fancy screen saver works. It is making you CPU work hard to display those pictures or stars or whatever it is you use.
2. Laptops use about 90% less energy than a desktop computer.
3. Turning off your computer and all of the attachments like printers, speakers, scanners etc will save you money on your energy bill. Try to only turn things on when you need them or are using them.
4. If you are using a desktop switch your old monitor for an LCD monitor, they use much less power than those old ones the weigh about 1,000 pounds.
5. You are not going to destroy you computer by turning it on and off a couple of times a day. Many people think that the wear and tear is going to ruin their computer. This simply isn't true. While your computer does use more energy starting up you are probably going to offset this by not leaving it on all day when you aren't using it.
Power Management Settings for Your Computer
I have my computer and monitor set up to power down after 15 minutes of non-use. This is the best way to save energy with your computer. It's probably the best way to go because then you don't have to worry about it and if you forget to turn it off you are still going to get the energy saving benefits.
- Click "start" at the bottom left side of your screen
- Click on "settings" – "control panel"
- Open "display" and click on "screen saver"
- Click on "power"
- Under "Power Schemes", use the drop down arrow to find "home/office desk"
- Select the times – choose a short duration (e.g. 15 minutes), so that the monitor sleeps when you step away from the computer for short times, or powers down when you are gone for longer times.
- Click on "Apply"
- Click on "OK"
- Select the Apple Menu
- Go to Control Panels
- Click on Energy Saver
- This will also bring up a dialog box for setting sleep times for the entire system, the monitor or the hard disk
I am not much of one to go out the movies. Once in a blue moon and only if it's a blockbuster. The next Terminator movie might drag me out but I prefer to watch my movies at home in blueray and be comfortable.
My wife went to the movies the a few nights ago. We have a Galaxy Cinemas in town. They offer free refills on pop and popcorn. She was beside herself when she saw a few people take their old popcorn bags out of their purses and get a free refill. One guy even brought his bucket from the Golden Compass, which was out in 2007 and got a free refill of popcorn.
There is being cheap and there is being cheap but a night at the movies isn't easy on the pocket books anymore. If you are a movie goer ask them about their policy on free refills. If you can save a couple of bucks on food and beverages then why not.
I was thinking the other day with the way the economy is going there are probably quite a few of us that have been left in the lurch when our favourite store to shop at has disappeared into bankruptcy. Specifically I was thinking about places like Circuit City where you could always find a good deal or two on electronics and goods. I think it's important more now than ever to do some comparitive shopping. Especially if you were one of those that mostly shopped at the same place. There are a wide range of deals to be had out there in the real world and online. If you lost your fav place to find deals don't panic. Just take some time and do your research. It shouldn't be that hard to find a replacement.
