Archive for the ‘Budgeting’ Category
August 5th, 2009 | 
Author: Saving Money while travelling
Travelling is a very expensive hobby for any family. So one should look for ways to minimize cost of travelling. by preferring the local areas you can still have a great vacation in your money range. There are always lot of areas that you have never seen, exploring them can bring you a good and economic vacation also it promotes the tourism in your homeland. Travelling local can save the money you have to spend in renting hotel rooms. Among the benefits of travelling local is that you will get enough know how of your area that you have the opportunity to start a tour guide incorporation in some spare time you get.
Although travelling local is feasible and cheap but travelling to your favorite resorts have no alternative as they save ?travelling is our passion?. so travelling can be a little economical if you follow these suggested tips.
Booking early: booking earliest almost every time brought me a travel discount, like even in holidays there are packages like ?first 100 tickets to Toronto will get 50%PRCTG% off?, so you have to keep an eye on the deals offered by the travel agencies. When booking early can bring you this much, why not be the first to book yourself, so let?s keep ourselves a little aware of the deals.
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Save Money through Internet Shopping
Internet shopping has brought revolution to the shopping world, one can find almost anything, available anywhere on the globe while sitting on his desk. A person sitting in America who is fed up of his mobile phone, willing to sell his mobile can market his offer to millions of people, sitting at different locations of the globe. People anywhere on the globe planning to buy themselves a mobile phone can browse all the way through mighty e-market without a penny spent. And if they find a convenient deal in to time they will find the courier person at their doorstep saying here it is.
Online shopping is safe and secure purchases as shown by the tremendous growth of the e shopping industry. Internet shopping is economical because:
Money saving on Electricity
With no exception electricity bills are ever rising. A lot of fortune in our lives is spent on the electricity bills as everyone is well aware of the fact that electricity is the essence of our modern lifestyle. So use of electricity can?t be over looked, instead we have to give some thought to the ways for shrinking our electricity bills. Here are some tips for saving money on electricity.
Low power bulbs usage: Usage of a 100W bulb can be easily replaced with a 60 to 100W bulb, its all up to how we mold our habits. On replacing the bulb with a 60W instead of a 100W you might not notice the difference after a day or two.
Optimize Daylight Usage: Open the curtains and windows to te rooms during daytime, it is also pleasant for our mood. Balance the light coming into the room according to the warm or cool environment you want in your place.
Use Energy Saving Electronics instead of conventional Bulbs: You can easily replace the 60W bulb further with a 20W energy saver. All it comes to the ways of our living again. Although energy savers a little expensive to buy but being a little foresighted you will come to know that you will recover the extra amount you paid in about 1/10th of the energy savers lifetime.
Shrink your medical bills
Are your medical bills increasing every year? When it comes to getting a health facility for ourselves or our family, we always look for the best facility available and the economics are also to take care off because health facilities are getting expensive due to the increase in complexity of diseases. Here are some plans to cut short your medical bills and still getting the best health facility.
Health Savings Account: A high deductible health insurance policy is economically feasible. By increasing the deductible by a thousand dollars or more you can considerably reduce premiums. Instead of saving that extra money and spending it because all the medical expenses you will pay will be tax free whereas the amount you will spend for non medical reasons will not be tax free so getting a larger health savings account can earn you tax savings as well as you can get the medical coverage to larger extent also, hence savings as well as no worries about medical coverage.
Make Kids Save Money! Path to Financial Independence
Kids are probably the quickest class to spend their money. Kids have always have a lot of ideas to spend money as soon as they get money from somewhere. Lot of advertisement by the companies providing Kids stuff get the attention of children to spend as quickly as possible and the motivation they get from their parents when they see them spending at grocery stores, restaurants and on gasoline etc. So why not give our kids a motivation to spend the money in a way which can benefit them in the long run, the path to financial independence.
Naturally kids are not found saving, they naturally have the instinct to spend madly. The reward of saving money does not have that immediate satisfaction and it?s also not so entertaining, also the kids are naturally impatient. All they need is a little motivation and learning from their parents for initial period. Once their savings pile up to a good sum so they can spend this for a good purpose, the satisfaction keeps on motivating them until they get the next good sum. Let?s see how it can be made easy
Save Money on the Fuel
If you spend %30 a week on fuel it will sum up to %1500 an year, so saving money on fuel won?t be a bad idea. Increasing fuel efficiency isn?t that tough as people think of it. First of all you should keep track of your weekly mileage and the amount you paid for it, here are some quick tips at hand for increasing fuel efficiency:
Track of car Momentum: Upcoming road scanning and anticipation of the slow and fast road portions contributes a lot in fuel saving and better performance of your car, frequent slowing down and speeding up reduces the fuel efficiency.
Regular Cleaning of Converters and Filters: Dirty filters increase the engine work to a high extent increasing fuel consumption. Whereas converters and filters are cheap to get and easily replaceable.
Lesser weight easy life: Weight that is unnecessary should be avoided like racks and any other rarely used heavy items, soon you will know that a mere fifty or hundred pounds removal can do a lot to your fuel economy.
Budget Planning
In this era of inflation and recession budget planning is of critical importance for survival. But for budget planning a core and comprehensive plan should be there as a guide to ourselves. Here are some tips to create our own budget plan and stick to it, because even if there is a budget the tough part is to follow it strictly.
Listing: Creating a list of all the income sources is the first step; this includes money from professional jobs, side jobs, interest earnings etc. Against this column make a list of all the expenses you are expecting this should include each and every detail like groceries, mortgage payments, car payments, entertainment, insurance, clothes and tuition etc. Even include your coffee expenses in the list. After including the items put some estimate figures against them.
Necessities Only: Now go through your list and decide which of the items are necessities and which ones are desire. E.g. mortgage payment is essential to keep your house whereas you can live without a daily %3 coffee on your way to office, instead of buying the coffee daily bring coffee ingredients and make coffee at home at a lower price.
Saving Money on Bank Fees
The general impression is that whatever bank you choose you come up with bank fees after fees. These heavy fees cost us a lot whereas our primary purpose is to ?save money ? while we leap to the banks. But it doesn?t mean we can?t save money at banks. Doing good homework is the solution to our problem.
Check out incentive programs: enormous competition in the Banking sector makes banks introduce incentive programs prolong the realtion of bank to the customer. Recent example is keep change program introduced by an American bank. It works with your debit card and checking account. Let?s see how it works, if you spent %4.32 through your debit card, the bank would round off this number up to %5 and the %.68 will be put into to your saving account. The fact to remember is that it happens to cut overdraft fees in your checking account. And they match your earned ?keep change? savings at 100%PRCTG% for first 3 months and thereafter they match it at 5%PRCTG% only. Point of discussion is that you always check incentive programs in detail, because free money is good for sure.
Money Saving at the Grocery store
Can we save money at the grocery store? Idea seems hard to achieve. To optimize your savings at the grocery store all one need to do, is to make a good mixture of the possible ways that naturally come to our minds. Money saving at the grocery store needs you come out of the comforts and trying stores of different kinds and try the shopping ways you have never tried.
1st strategy is to find out whether they deal in coupons or not? Or do they multiply them according to some scheme in customer?s interest? Or do they have a constraint on the number of coupons utilizable per visit? Learning about this is very important because some provider might have doubled the coupon worth and getting larger benefit.
Strategy number two is to get your hands on the sale offers by the nearby stores. After that match the offers with the list you have prepared for your grocery purchase. And you will feel lucky to get a correct match of the grocery items with the sales offered.
Money Saving Made Easy
Money saving is no doubt a difficult task. Usually when people start earning more it get difficult to manage the expenses. It is because as the income rises our lifestyles get lavish, and this lifestyle introduces more and more unforeseen expenses.
It is not much of a surprising fact that good savers always get enough money saved that is usually more than what they will probably need in future. Just because of the planned money spending. Money saving is actually a habit, not harder as it seems to be, e.g. bringing your own lunch instead of buying it every day etc. Saving habit can be best described as ?giving out the money to get something better in return except the immediate pleasure of spending foolishly?. All one needs to realize to become a money saver is that the immediate pleasures of spending money are no comparison in magnitude to the wise savings of future, which can bring future security as well as financial independence.
Difficulties faced by the people who are not already in a habit of saving money can be due to the following reasons: