If you’re just starting out on learning how to manage your cashflow, here’s a technique that can work to curb overspending: use envelopes to allocate cash to certain categories. This is often useful when you tend to overspend on things like eating out, groceries, clothing and entertainment.
The technique: [Read more →]
Many people have never taken the time to calculate their net worth. For some, it is because they believe only the rich do that sort of thing. For others, they think that their net worth says something about their personal value as individuals in the world, that it’s some sort of judgment about whether or not they are worthwhile people. Neither of these beliefs is true.
Your net worth is [Read more →]
If you’re involved in any type of long-term committed relationship (married, living-together, whatever), you need to get current with each other about your money. Talk about your past mistakes and successes, your present situation, your future goals, and your individual money habits. Many people come from families that treated money as a taboo subject. If you came from one of them, it’s time to break that destructive family tradition. [Read more →]
If you don’t live an extra busy life, I want to know your secret. Most of us are living life in the fast lane, whether we want to or not. We’ve got work and family and friends and classes and parties and team sports and… and… and… and we still need to make time for ourselves, somehow. It seems like there’s never enough time to do everything we need to, much less those other things that we still want to do.
One way to make handling your monthly finances easier is [Read more →]
Every day, you are exposed to hundreds if not thousands of marketing messages. You see and/or hear them on TV, on the computer, as you drive down the road, as you browse through the newspaper or magazines. They are literally everywhere. Are you even aware that they are there? Maybe not. To you, I say, “Consumer be aware!” which is my version of the latin “Caveat Emptor” you may have heard before. Its translation is “buyer beware” and it is often used as a reminder that the buyer has the responsibility for educating themselves when making purchases. But we are consumers more than just buyers and we have a personal responsibility for noticing when we are being marketed to. [Read more →]
Maintenance is a word usually prefaced by “car” or “auto” for most of us. We maintain our vehicles with regular oil changes because we know that if we don’t, our transportation will be sitting on the side of the road getting us nowhere. The added benefits of regular maintenance is long-term savings: fewer trips to the mechanic, longer vehicle life, higher resale or trade-in value.
What about other areas of maintenance? [Read more →]
As I was running through some headlines for online news articles yesterday, I was pleased to find some that related to topics I’ve talked about here in the past couple of weeks. For instance, on the subject of layaway, which was my November 2 topic, Sears is reinstating its layaway program starting tomorrow. Of course, they’ve got restrictions so you can’t put a computer or refrigerator on layaway, but something’s better than nothing, right? Perhaps they’ll add options for those items if the program turns out to be popular.
I also discovered [Read more →]
Most of us grew up in households and were educated in schools where we didn’t learn about money. We were never taught how to budget, how to balance a checkbook, how to save for the future, how to invest for retirement, or any of the other “money basics” that help us to get along in the world. For the most part, we have stumbled through those lessons ourselves, making our own mistakes and hopefully learning something along the way. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to break that cycle with our children. [Read more →]
Have you noticed that the Sunday paper just doesn’t have the wealth of coupons that it used to? Back in the day, I was a mad coupon clipper. I looked forward to the hour I’d spend on a Sunday looking through the coupon flyers and cutting out the stack of gems buried within. I saved a good bit of money on my weekly grocery trips, especially when I could go on a double-coupon day. My personal best was probably in the neighborhood of $15 on a cartful.
Today, newspapers may have coupons, but they’re few and far between. [Read more →]
Barter, verb: to exchange in trade, as one commodity for another.
When we were kids, we all did it without a second thought. We would trade our marbles or pencils or troll dolls. We’d trade our sandwich for his cookies. We’d offer up those things we didn’t want or value as much for those that we did. But then we grew up, got allowances and then jobs, and we started trading our cash for everything we wanted instead of our devalued stuff. [Read more →]