Category Archives for Saving Money & Frugal Living
Creating an Automated Zero-Based Budget to Strategically Manage Your Month-to-Month Finances
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $51.95 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2013.
As part of my blogging goals for 2012-2013, one of the ongoing projects I’ve been working on since Thanksgiving has been writing a book called, 31 Days to a Financial Revolution – Automate Your Finances To Achieve Financial Success. As I mentioned several days ago, the book details a series of 31 approachable steps over a one month period that people can take to optimize their finances. Along each step of the way, 2-minute automation action items are implemented to increase the likelihood of the financial planning steps being followed going forward.
At first, my goal was to just write a short 20-30 page eBook on one specific topic. However, when I started looking at all of the material I had already covered on my site (now at 800+ posts total so far), I realized it was complete enough to tie together in to the form of a book. However, out of all the posts on my site, I realized there is one topic that had not been covered in a step-by-step manner (only piecemeal thus far) – creating the type of budget I use each month for my personal finances, a zero based budget.
The purpose of this post will be to correct this annoying little discrepancy and cover an important step that I think should be taken in personal finance – creating a zero-based budget to manage your monthly finances!
Creating an Automated Zero-Based Budget to Strategically Manage Your Month-to-Month Finances
Why a Zero-Based Budget?
As you can tell, this is clearly different than a normal budget, which dictates that you leave money in your primary spending account until the end of the pay period (at which time you then transfer the money to help achieve your financial goals).
While the idea behind a normal budget is sound, I have found that in practice, it simply does not hold up. This is due to the fact that the unforeseen struggles of daily life get in the way, and the money that you have reserved in good faith to meet your financial goals (savings especially) at the end of the month gets spent prematurely.
How to Create Your Zero-Based Budget
Why do I look forward to doing this? Because each time I do it means that I am moving towards strategically managing my money and ultimately, my financial goals.
To create a zero-based budget for yourself, simply follow the steps outlined below:
- For your zero-based budget, I recommend creating a new Google Docs Spreadsheet (www.docs.google.com). I prefer this to traditional spreadsheets because this way, your zero-based budget will be stored in the “cloud” and will be accessible from anywhere in the world and on any computer.
- Next, in the first row of the spreadsheet (starting with the second column), label columns with the dates of each of your pay periods for the next year.
- Then, in the first column of the spreadsheet, label each row according to ALL of your monthly financial commitments. The key here is to be very complete! They don’t call it a zero-based budget for nothing; the goal is to get your leftover money to zero after all! Make sure to include all of your normal monthly spending for energy, water/sewer/trash, TV/Internet, insurance (all types), Netflix, estimated tax savings, partying, homeowner’s association fees, student loans, credit cards, your mortgage, groceries/food, gas, child care, gym memberships, dog food, magazine subscriptions – everything. To make sure you haven’t missed any of your monthly spending, I recommend tracking every bit of your spending for 3 months to determine your patterns. In addition, you’ll also want to include any savings that you have for building an emergency fund, charity contributions, and life values/dreams.
- Lastly, you’ll need to add additional rows for other important financial commitments, such as savings for future vacations and long-term retirement. To complete the budget list, I also like to include something called “comfort buffer” money. This is essentially the minimum amount of money that a person feels comfortable carrying in his or her checking account while still being able to sleep soundly at night. For me, this is around $600, but will vary for each person. For example, my girlfriend is comfortable having only $100 in her account. I would personally recommend keeping a minimum of $100-$200 in your spending account so that you don’t have to monitor it as closely, but to each their own!
- Once you’ve listed all of your budget items, I recommend to “freeze” the 1st row and 1st column of the spreadsheet so that if you scroll down the page, you’ll still be able to see the date of each budget period and all of the budget items.
- Next, at the bottom of each column/budget period, sum the column to calculate the total money needed to meet your financial commitments. This total is important to monitor to make sure that you don’t financially overextend yourself by comparing it with your take-home pay each period. If the total is greater than your income, you will need to cut back. However, if it is less, you can scale up your debt payoff or retirement savings goals in accordance with the priority rules set forth the Account Hierarchy.
Monitoring Your Zero-Based Budget Each Pay Period
In my experience, I’ve found that budget items always fall in to one of two categories – things that are automatically paid/deducted/transferred out of your spending account and ones that you need to manually execute.
To help distinguish between the two, I like to color code the cells accordingly, using yellow for items that are executed automatically and green for items that I have to manually initiate each pay period. After an automatic transfer has been initiated for one of the automated items, I simply change the appropriate cell to yellow to indicate that it has occurred. For the manual items, immediately after I am paid in that period, I initiate a transfer from my checking account to the appropriate strategic location. After that, I mark the appropriate cell green and then insert a comment with the date that the transfer was initiated.
For items such as gas and groceries that you purchase while running errands (i.e. physically when you are out and about), you can just leave the money earmarked for that in your spending account since you will naturally spend money for those things out of necessity.
And just like that, you’ve now set up a great zero-based budgeting tool that will serve as the new cornerstone for managing your finances each month. In order to make sure the process continues without hitches, you’ll want to set up the following automation item.
2-Minute Automation Action Item – Once you have set up your zero-based budget, place an automatic, recurring reminder on your Outlook or Gmail calendar to review and update your zero-based budget directly after you get paid each pay period, taking special care to ensure that you execute the manual items you identified above.
How about you all? Do you use a budget to manage your monthly finances? Have you ever tried a zero-based budget? If so, how did it work out for you!?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/nourishingcook/5676133931/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Top Three Balance Transfer Credit Cards for Winter 2013
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $51.95 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2013.
This article was written by Logan Abbott. Enjoy!
Many people carrying significant credit card debt promised themselves that this would be the year they paid that debt off. If you’re one of these people, you should consider moving that unwieldy credit card balance to another credit card by opening up a 0% Intro APR on balance transfers credit card.
With a 0% balance transfer credit card, you can prevent the large dollar amount currently on your balance from getting any larger, since you will not have to pay interest on that balance anymore until the intro balance transfer period is over, which is typically 12 to 18 months on a great balance transfer credit card.
How about you all? Have you ever used a 0% interest balance transfer to help pay off your debt?
What is your favorite credit card?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/brettlider/214337536/sizes/l/in/photostream/
What’s Your REAL Hourly Wage?
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Click here to enter my free $51.95 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2013.
I bet you didn’t realize that. I also bet you won’t look at spending the same way again once you do.
Here’s why it’s true:
You Have to Spend to Work to Earn the Money You Spend
- Commuting costs – Gas spent to get to and from work, public transit costs, extra wear and tear (which means more repair) on your car, car insurance.
- Childcare costs – Ask any working parent how much it costs to pay someone to keep an eye on their kids while they’re at work. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have very generous in-laws in close proximity to you, this can be a huge budget-suck.
- Food costs – The coffee you grab on the way into work, the lunches you pay to eat out because you didn’t have time to brown-bag it, the snacks you grab from the vending machine to combat your crash.
- Wardrobe costs – Whatever you spend over the course of the year on work clothes, shoes, and accessories (not to mention dry cleaning), divided as we did above in the calculation to turn your salary into an hourly wage.
- “Decompressing” costs – I’m not saying you wouldn’t go to Happy Hour or indulge in weekend shenanigans if you didn’t have a job. But, when the majority of your waking hours are filled with a job that can be taxing and stressful, you tend to be more in need of (and likely to justify) pricey entertainment and relaxation on your time off. I’ve certainly called more than a few Girls Nights Out on an emergency basis to damage control what had been an awful day at work.
These aren’t the only work-related expenses you might have, but they’re some of the biggies. Anything you pay for in order to do your job, to cope with your job, or to keep your job, is something you probably wouldn’t be paying for if you spent your days relaxing at home, living off your lotto winnings (or whatever other dream scenario you like to imagine would let you to not have to work).
Here’s Where It Gets Scary
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/socialeurope/4304126242/
Ramp Up Your Savings in 2013 With These Simple Techniques
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However, there are some simple strategies that are very popular right now that can help you save money painlessly.
1. Save a dollar a week.
That is right. Just one dollar. Then, each additional week, you add a dollar to the amount you are saving. Week one, you save $1. Week two, you save $2. Week three, you save $3. By the last week of 2013, you are saving $52.
2. Save your $5 bills.
This is my favorite savings technique because the savings add up quickly. This strategy is best for someone who pays cash for most of their purchases. Every time you get $5 back, save it and add it to your bank account.
3. Save your age.
If you are bit more comfortable financially and up for a bigger savings challenge, AARP recommends saving your age. To follow this method, simply take your age and add two zeros. That is how much you should save per year for your retirement. So, if you are 33, you should save $3,300 this year. Next year when you are 34, you should save $3,400. Of course, the earlier you start with this savings method, the better.
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/o5com/5126344583/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Lifestyle Becomes Less Important When You Have a Bigger Purpose in Mind
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I’m reminded again of how subjective we are towards our own situations when people think I am sacrificing a lot to achieve a better financial situation. A friend recently commented that, “You’ve done so much that I wouldn’t be able to do. I wouldn’t be willing to give up that much because my lifestyle is comfortable and I really enjoy it.” But, I don’t think that I have done much at all! Sure, I gave up a really cute apartment to move closer to work and rent a room in a house. But, by saving over $700/month, I am freeing up money to pay off debt faster. I will also be carpooling and saving money on transportation. My boyfriend is living apart from me, which is the hardest part, but we promised ourselves we are doing this for the next 6 months so we can enjoy a lifetime together. Getting to see each other every weekend is not nearly as hard as if we lived too far apart for quick visiting.
- Not living in my own place (like renting a room or having roommates)
- Not being near the beach
Even though I joke around that I am “basically a migrant worker now,” my sacrifices still seem minimal. I live in a huge house and have all the same amenities as before. My rent is a tiny fraction of my income for the first time in my life. I’ve always been very lucky and very comfortable. Lifestyle is fun and all, but I don’t need to be comfortable and pampered every step of the way. The majority of people in this world live much, much harder than I do.
In some ways, this is lifestyle design too, because I am excited to change things up and see if I can achieve my goals faster. Life is an adventure, stepping out of the norm can help you discover new possibilities. I don’t mind this stretch of sacrifice. I think it will lead to a bigger reward in the end.
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/56223083@N06/5514150673/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Effective Budgeting Strategies for the Over-40 Crowd
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following article is by MPFJ staff writer, Miss T, from Prairie Eco-Thrifter. If you want to learn how to live your dream life in a sustainable, healthy, and money savvy way, check out her site here.
Achieving financial security without working to a budget is almost impossible, which is why everything you read stresses its importance.
Your budget is vital to your financial security.
Failure to budget would have to be the most common cause of people experiencing financial difficulties, serious debt, and financial disaster. Having a working personal and household budget is a non-negotiable as far as financial security is concerned.
Now, if you’ve reached your 40s without having consistently used a budget, these tips are designed for you. It’s different now; we have less time to set ourselves up for a secure financial future; we have less time to achieve the things we want, once we get to forty.
However, it isn’t all doom and gloom.
Forty year-olds still have a good twenty years of working life ahead of them, during which time they can ramp up their savings and invest more heavily to play catch up. Many people are enjoying a more stable, if hectic, lifestyle; many are in a better position financially, than they were in their twenties.
The main budgeting tip for the over 40s crowd is to make a start.
Delay no longer; set up a working budget today and start creating the life you want to be living, now and in the future.
Purpose of Budgeting
When you first create a budget, your spending habits will be glaringly obvious; they may not be a pretty sight! A budget shows you very clearly where you spend your money and where spending is excessive. It can come as a bit of a shock, so be prepared!
Elements and Characteristics of a Good Budget
Understand the basics of a good budget – it must contain all income and every single expense. It’s easy to forget expenses, so be prepared to have to add things in as you go along. A working budget is always a work in progress. A good budget needs regular tweaking.
A good budget also needs to balance – this may seem a bit obvious, but you’d be amazed at the number of people who continue to work with a budget where spending exceeds earnings. This is a situation doomed from the start – it can only continue for a short time until disaster strikes. So, make your budget balance; look for areas where you are over-spending and cut these back. Reduce or eliminate spending on things that are not important to you, so you have enough money for the things that are.
Regular savings are an important part of a good budget. If you are over 40, your savings figures need to be at least 15% of your total income; 20% is even better. 10% of income is fine for those young 20 year-olds, but at your time of life, you need to sock away much more. If your budget doesn’t allow for this level of saving, find more ways to shave expenses. A little bit from several different areas is easier to do than cutting big chunks from one place. Start with smaller savings, if you must, but at least start.
A good budget is simple and easy to follow. Complicated budgets get ignored and forgotten, and bad habits creep back. You need to check how you are tracking – weekly at first and then at least monthly. Be prepared to make adjustments if bits aren’t working, but try to avoid borrowing from one area of spending to pay for another. Tempting, I know, but it’s way too hard to pay these amounts back to where they belong.
A great strategy for those who have struggled with budgeting in the past is the use the ‘accounts’ system. Basically, you assign an ‘account’ to each area of spending in your budget. So you’ll have a rent or mortgage account; a separate one for food, utilities, clothing, school fees, transport, entertainment, holidays etc. When creating your budget, you’ll have worked out how much you need to assign to each area of spending. These amounts go into each ‘account’ from every pay check.
So, at any given time, you will know that you have enough cash to pay the power bill, buy food and clothe the family. Draw up a simple spread sheet on the computer or keep it all in a notebook if you prefer a more hands-on approach. I know some people who put the correct amount of actual cash into glass jars, until they learn how the system works. Whatever works for you, I say!
When you spend an amount, deduct it from the ‘account’ it applies to. This way, you have a running balance in all your areas of spending ‘accounts,’ and you know your budget balances. You may find that you need to make adjustments from time to time, as things change in your life. You’ll need to re-allocate money from child care to school expenses, for example.
Budgeting for the over 40s crowd must include some form of debt reduction and retirement planning. Start with baby steps if necessary, but do make a start. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll be on the road to a more secure financial future.
How about you all? How do you budget in your middle age?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/68751915@N05/6869762317/sizes/l/in/photostream/
The Art of Meaningful and Inexpensive Gift Giving
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following post is by MPFJ staff writer Travis. Travis is a customer blogger for CareOne Debt Relief Services, and also appears weekly at Enemy of Debt. Travis candidly shares his personal journey to pay off $109,000 of credit card debt and the tips he’s learned along the way. As a father and husband, he provides a unique perspective on balancing debt, finances, and family.
We were having trouble coordinating a date for a small Christmas family gathering with my wife’s immediate family. We didn’t even know if it was even going to happen until some previous commitments changed, and suddenly, the weekend before Christmas was open. It was to be a very small, informal gathering, allowing us to spend time with each other during the Holidays. Because it had come together so quickly, there hadn’t been any mention of exchanging gifts until literally the day before the event. This sparked a frenzy of phone calls between all involved requesting gift ideas. With the limited time remaining, everyone’s answer was the same:
***Photo courtesy of Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The International Smartphone Phenomena
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following is a guest post. Enjoy!
Providers have announced that mobile casino gaming in Sweden is booming and that the boom is being driven by increasing sales of smartphones in the country. Currently 51% of Swedish citizens have a smartphone, and 75% of them use their smartphones for Internet access every day.
The most popular phones in Sweden are the Apple iPhone along with Android phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy. These latest phones have high quality large touch display screens, which makes interacting with websites through the phones’ built in web browsers easy to accomplish; so easy in fact that 84% of mobile Internet users access the web on their phones while engaged in other activities such as watching TV.
The latest smartphones are also very powerful with very fast processors and graphics accelerators, which mean that even graphically sophisticated mobile casino games can be played. While online gaming using fixed desktop computers has been a popular activity for some time, the ability to access an online casino while on the move has many additional benefits. For instance, gamers can play casino games just about wherever they are and at any time, and they can play for as short or as long a time as they wish.
All of the usual online games such as Roulette, Baccarat, Blackjack, Texas Hold’Em Poker, Craps, and Video Slot games are available, and they can be played either for fun in demo mode or for real money using secure money transactions. The standard of mobile casino games along with the numbers that are available are continually growing as mobile casino operators respond to increasing customer numbers. The number of Swedish smartphone owners who use their smartphones for playing at mobile casinos is currently around 7.6%, while around 1.2% use a standard mobile phone.
How about you all? What daily activities do you use your smartphone for?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/aigle_dore/5952271604/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Merry Christmas from My Personal Finance Journey!
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Merry Christmas everyone!
I’m here in Arkansas at my family’s house where I grew up and am enjoying some good relaxation time by the fireplace and catching up on sleep.
Anyhow, I just wanted to do a quick post to say thanks for another super year here at My Personal Finance Journey!
During the past year, we’ve had just around 150,000 new visitors to the My Personal Finance Journey family from 197 countries/territories, and I’m excited to see this keep growing each year!
January 6th will mark our 3rd anniversary of blogging, so I’m looking forward to sharing the journey with you all in the coming year!
Thanks again for a great year!
Jacob
How about you all? Where are you spending Christmas time and New Years? Do you have any travel plans in mind?
Dealing With Christmas Gift Overload
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following post is by MPFJ staff writer, Greg Johnson. Greg brings the awesome sauce to personal finance at his blog Club Thrifty, where he encourages people to “Stop spending. Start living.” He is a proud husband, father, and debt crusader who is in the process of becoming debt free.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!
If you are like me (or my children), you probably just got a bunch of new gifts for Christmas. If you are also like my family, you try to keep the clutter in your house under control. So, what do you do with all of these new items that you just got for Christmas? Where do you put all of this new stuff? Here are a few tips to help you deal with Christmas gift overload.
1) Out With the Old…
One of the best ways to deal with the onslaught of Christmas gifts that many of us receive is to prepare for it ahead of time. If you know that Christmas is coming, or a birthday for that matter, get rid of some of your used items before you bring in the new crop of stuff.
“That’s great,” you’re saying.” But, it is already too late for me to do that this year. Not only do I still have their old toys, but my kid just got 27 new puzzles. Where can I get rid of these things?” I’m glad you asked!
2) Return, Return, Return
Yes, I said it. I am guilty. We return some of our children’s gifts. Don’t worry, though. I’m not that cold-hearted. Although we do bring some of our children’s gifts back to the store, we do not pocket the money ourselves. First of all, we do let them keep many of the gifts that they were given. However, we just can’t deal with a 30 new toys every time a birthday or Christmas rolls around. So, we return them to the store.
Often times, you can get cash for these items provided that you have a receipt. If not, you can almost always get store credit. Either way, you can use the money in a way that you see fit. The fact is that they don’ t need that many toys to begin with. What they do need is a college education.
So, once we have decided what items they are allowed to keep, we look at what things we can take back to the store. If we can get a cash refund, we put that money directly into their college 529 accounts. If we are only allowed to get store credit, then we use that credit to buy things we need – like groceries – and reimburse our kids through their college fund.
If you are unable to find the correct store for the return, you can also try to sell the items on Craigslist. In that instance, we also reimburse our children and usually put the money into their college funds.
3) Donate Items to a Charity
So, you can’t find the store and are unable to sell your items on Craigslist. Or, maybe you just have so many that you think other people would appreciate getting them instead. Not to worry. There are lots of charities out there that are looking for either lightly used or new items. You can donate some of your used items to them.
There are national charities like Toys for Tots and local groups as well. Perhaps a local group is collecting donations for victims of a hurricane or other natural disaster. This is the route that we recently chose. When we were asked if we had any items that we could donate to victims of a tornado near our home town, we were thrilled to be able to help. Before Christmas, we cleared out a bunch of our lightly used items in anticipation of what was to come. Now that we have had an early Christmas with one side of our family, we are going to provide them with some additional items that we do not have room for in our house. As a bonus, you can also use this as a teaching moment for your young children about the importance of giving and helping those in need.
4) Start a Regifting Closet
So, you’ve returned some of the gifts and donated others, but you still have too much stuff. One of the easiest ways to get rid of some these new items is to regift them. The key to the regift is to not open all of the packaging with each gift. Then, you simply store them until the next time you need a gift in a hurry. Did you forget about your nieces birthday? No problem. Simply head on up to the regift closet and find something before you head to the party!
We have a special little tote that we use to put unopened items in so that we can regift those items at a later date. Find a little nook in your home to store these items. Keep them out of sight so that you don’t feel anxious about all of the stuff that you now have.
As you can see, there are a lot of different ways you can clean out your Christmas clutter. Many of these options can be used to help others, while at the same time helping you to stay sane after the holidays. And, really, what feels better than helping other people at Christmas time?
How about you all? What are your tips for dealing with Christmas gift overload?
Please share your tips and tricks in the comments below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/george_eastman_house/3122866103/sizes/o/in/photostream/