Archive for the ‘Money’ Category

10 Tips on Getting Your Family Involved in Saving Money

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

Saving Money

1. Have your family help you compare prices when shopping. This will teach them to get the best deal as possible. It will help teach them how to save additional money each month.

2. You and your family can gather coupons for the certain products that you all enjoy. You can make a habit of clipping coupons together each Sunday or whenever. This is an excellent way to help them to save greater amounts of money. It is also a good learning experience.

3. Your family can walk places with you on a sunny day instead of drive everywhere. They will enjoy the nice weather and also feel better knowing that they are helping you save money too.

4. You can teach them the importance of eating at home instead of going out to restaurants as often. This will be a good learning experience in teaching them to save money by eating healthy food at home instead of going out all the time.

5. When you and the family go out to eat at restaurants then make sure to go out at lunch time to help them realize how much cheaper the lunch menu is instead paying dinner prices. They will enjoy knowing that they can save a good meal and save money at the same time while having some fun too.

6. You can show your family how much cheaper it is to buy some clothes at a thrift stores or even yard sales instead of paying retail price. They will realize that they can end up paying less money for better clothes than what they would of bought brand new at the retail store.

7. Teach them to go shopping when it is on sale. This is another way to have a great learning experience and have fun saving money doing something fun. They will be amazed at how much money is saved by just changing the way they shop for items.

8. At the grocery store you can show them how to buy meat at a cheaper price along with other additional items. You can usually find meat reduce by a large amount often at 50% off or less. It is another awesome learning experience and they will most likely remember it next time shopping too.

9. They can help you find coupons for favorite restaurants that the whole family loves to go eat at. This is another fun experience for them since they will love to get a good deal.

10. Make it a game or contest to see how much money that the whole family can save each month. You can also get a organizer to put all the coupons in different category’s in order to keep track of it all from grocery coupons, restaurant coupons, and misc. coupons.

Six Personal Finance Tips

Friday, April 4th, 2008

Finance

1. Spend Less Than You Earn

This sounds like a common sense statement; however, millions of people spend more than they earn. What’s more, these persons have the audacity to question how their credit card debt got out-of-hand.

People who spend more than they earn are likely using credit cards to receive instant gratification. The idea of saving for a major purchase is obsolete. Today, many people simply whip out the credit card and buy many high ticketed items such as designer clothes, electronics, vacations, etc.

2. Avoid Financial Scams

Everyone wants to “get rich quick.” Consumers are constantly being warned about different money scams. Unfortunately, many people ignore the warnings and seek ways to earn a quick buck with minimum work. Unless you happen to inherit a fortune, or receive a nice payout from a lawsuit, you probably won’t get rich quick. Certain scams are purposed to rip off unwary participants of several thousands of dollars or ruin a good credit rating.

3. Pays Bills on Time

If you want to keep the creditors off your back and keep a decent credit score, pay your bills on time each month. Setbacks can happen. To avoid problems, make an effort to live within a budget, and stay away from impulsive spending. If financial hardships arise, contact your creditors immediately, and arrange a payment plan or setup new payment terms.

4. Ask for a Raise

If you need more money, ask for a raise. Your boss can either grant the request or deny the request. However, if you have worked for the company for a long period, and you have a history of being productive, your company is more likely to consider the proposition - especially if they can’t afford to lose you. If the request for a raise is approved, use the money wisely. Pay off credit card debts or start a cash savings account.

5. Save at Least $500

According to a recent news report, persons with as little as $2,000 in cash savings can consider themselves rich. Since personal incomes are significantly less than the cost of living, many people have trouble creating a nest egg. Even if you can’t put away $2,000, try and save $500.

6. Stay Away from Payday Loans

Unless you like personal loans with extremely high interest rates and short repayment periods, avoid payday lenders. These loan companies advertise “quick cash” within minutes. Cash advance loans are ideal for persons with bad credit, or individuals who need cash until their next paycheck. On the flip side, these lenders charge up to $30 per $100 borrowed. If you are unable to repay the payday loan within 14 days, the lender extends the loan, and the fees double!

How To Save Money For Young Married Couples

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Young Married Couple

Learning how to save money is one of the first steps toward becoming rich. Every little amount of money saved can add up to a large amount. Saving money is the most important thing that you can do that enables you to have more freedom to do just about anything that you want to do. Please follow these steps below to learn how to save money.

1. Eliminate most of the extra entertainment costs. You can shut off your cable tv or get a reduced cable tv package that is less expensive. You can get rid of the top of line high speed internet at your house for a less expensive one or eliminate the internet completely.

2. Save your coins. You can save your coins that you have leftover each day. Put the coins into a cup or a piggy bank. Your coins could end up paying for a vacation or perhaps buy more Christmas gifts at the end of the year. Your coins can help you have extra money during times of an emergency or some money for going out to the movies.

3. Save gas money. You can walk to walk or walk to a restaurant instead of driving there. You can save quite a bit of money if you don’t drive everywhere. You will have extra money left over at the end of the month.

4. Eliminate Junk Food. Junk food such as soda pop and candy bars are pretty expensive if you buy them on a regular basis. You can save over $700.00 per year for each year that you eliminate junk food. An extra $700.00 per year can earn interest each year. It can also help pay a vacation.

5. Starting a savings account for your family. Did you know that if you can save $60 a month each month for the next 18 years for each of your children that they would have $12960.00 plus interest? It is a large amount of money for your children to use for college.

6. Sell stuff. You can sell stuff through yard sales and also on Ebay. You can save quite a bit of money if you sell stuff that you don’t need or want anymore. Remember, every penny helps. You can also sell other peoples stuff on ebay to be able to save extra money each month. Just take a commission of every piece of item that you sell on ebay for someone else.

7. Have a budget. Creating a budget each month allows you to see what other area’s that you can save money in. Figure out what stuff you can less spend on each month.

8. Reduce your food bill. Try to buy non brand names of food products. You can buy the less expensive canned food since it is almost the same thing as the brand names. You can also buy other non food items at the discount stores to save money.

Hopefully, these steps have help informed you with methods to save money. In a short summary to save money just save your coins, get a savings account, have a budget, and reduce your food bill. Most of all eliminate junk food and sell stuff to save money.

5 Tips To Save Money On Transportation

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Save Money On Transportation

Are the prices for transportation daily or weekly too high? Three dollars per gallon doesn’t go very far. Here is five tips to save money on transportation. This article also includes ideas.

Make sure to have a specific errand day each week of the month.

People can save money on transportation by running all of your errands in one day instead of all throughout the week. It does help to reduce the waste of driving around to places that you don’t really need to go to, but stop by since your in the area.

Use the public transportation system available in your city or town.

The prices for public transportation is generally too good to pass up. Often you can use the bus, subway, and rail system to go downtown cheaper than it would cost to drive there each day. You can check out your city or town website to find out further information regarding the public transportation system.

Remember walking is always an option.

Walking around town or the city will greatly save you money even more on transportation. Walking is of course free plus it is a good for your health. You can always walk to work if you live close enough. You could walk to do your errands instead of driving a vehicle in order to save money on transportation.

You can always carpool with a group weekly or daily.

Carpool with a few friends or co-workers is another great method to save money on transportation. Each person will only have to give out a small amount of money each week or day. It helps the vehicle owner and the people who are in the group to carpool to save money on transportation. Ask yourself if it is really worth it to carpool each week or just to walk. It might save you more time by just walking to the places than it is to carpool depending upon the area.

You can change full coverage on a vehicle to liability only.

Think about it carefully before you decide to change to liability only on vehicle insurance. It can save you a large amount of money, but you have to ask yourself it is worth it. Look at the pros and cons of the decision to change from full coverage to liability. Ask yourself if it is really important to you to have full coverage on your vehicle or not to save money on transportation.

Why You Should Never Keep Money in Your PayPal Account

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

PayPal HomePage

There are no safeguards for your money in a PayPal account, and they will freeze your account at a moment’s notice. This is why you should never leave a balance in PayPal. For the last 3 years, the minute I get paid for something I withdraw it into my bank account then, when it clears there, withdraw it into another bank account - and I’ll tell you why I do that in a minute.

There are many reasons why you should never keep money in your PayPal account, but here are just a few of them.

1. You’re not earning interest. First of all, the common sense reason, when you keep your money in PayPal you are not earning interest. If you have only a small balance, this may not seem to be worth worrying about. However, even with small balances, your yearly interest could be $50 or more. It’s not much, but it’s two or three dinners out for you and a friend.

2. PayPal can freeze your account. PayPal can freeze your account whenever they want to. If you have a buyer that buys something from you, then lies and says he didn’t receive it, PayPal will immediately freeze your account while they ‘investigate’. I had this happen to me once.

For an $8 t shirt that the customer did receive (I had tracking information, but he lied and said he didn’t receive it), PayPal froze my account with more than $400 in it. It took them almost a month to ‘investigate’ then they sided with the scam artist who cheated me, even though I had proof.

I checked his feedback on EBay and he had done the same thing with several other sellers. PayPal did nothing. Now, I withdraw any money in my PayPal account the minute it is put in there.

3. Suspicious activity. If PayPal suddenly decides there is ’suspicious activity’ on your account, they can freeze your funds. A friend of mine had her account frozen when she made several withdrawals on her PayPal debit card in Asia. Regardless that she had been doing this for over two years, PayPal froze her account. It took them two weeks to unfreeze it. She immediately closed her account with PayPal and will never use them again.

4. Illegal activity. PayPal’s security is just not very good. It’s very easy for somebody to get your password if you click on a scam e-mail and enter your PayPal password. Then they can hack into your PayPal account and empty it out. If it’s linked to your bank account and your bank account has money in it, they can empty that out too.

This is why my PayPal account is linked to a bank account that has no money in it and no possibility of getting an overdraft. As it stands at the moment, if somebody hacked into my PayPal account, they’d end up with the grand total of about $5.

Also, if you have a linked bank account that has money in it, PayPal can also go into it and withdraw money from it if they decide you ‘owe them’. There are complaints all over the internet of PayPal illegally withdrawing money from people’s bank accounts. Several law suits have ensued because of it.

So, if you have money in PayPal and especially if you sell online, make sure you do not keep money in your PayPal account. Empty it out every day and empty it into a bank account that is linked to another bank account, so you can withdraw it out of PayPal’s way. Also, don’t open a PayPal money market account - money in it is not FDIC insured so, if PayPal goes bankrupt, you will lose all your money.

PayPal is an easy way to accept money and to pay for things. But they have set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner with your money. Make sure they can’t get it. Protect yourself.