Search Results for “5-steps-to-save/a-moment-of-clarity/top-7-reasons-to-trade-forex-over-other-financial-instruments” — Page 60

Check Your Bills

Today, I discovered our AOL billing information. Turns out we’ve been paying for dial-up via automatic bill paying that we thought we cancelled in 2000. $1,800 later, we called to cancel. Customer service congratulated us on being loyal members for over 13 years. FML -Jay

: Image by roberthuffstutter via Flickr

I am a huge fan of automating my finances. My paycheck is direct-deposited. My savings are automatically transferred from my checking account to my savings account. Almost every bill I receive regularly is set up as an automatic payment in my bank’s bill-pay system. I even have my debt snowball automated.

The only question left is whether it’s possible to automate too far. Can you automate past the point of benefit, straight into detriment? The primary benefit of automation is knowing that you can’t forget a payment. The other benefit is freeing up your attention. You don’t have to give any focus to paying your bills, freeing you to worry about other things.

The problem with the second benefit is the same as the benefit. If you don’t give your bills any attention, how do you know if there is a problem? If something changes–an extra fee or a mis-keyed payment–you won’t notice because you haven’t been giving the bills any focus.

Sometimes, this means you are paying an extra fee without noticing it. Sometimes, if your due date changes, it can mean late fees. Even if nothing goes wrong, you are missing the opportunity to review what you are paying to ensure your needs are being met as efficiently as possible.

What can you do about it? I put a reminder on my Life Calendar to check my bills each month. I pick one bill each month and try to find a way to save money on it. I review the services to make sure they are what I need and if that doesn’t help, I call and ask for a lower price. If it’s a credit card, I ask for a lower interest rate. For the cable company, I ask if they will match whatever deal they have for new customers.

Every company can do something to keep a loyal customer happy. All you have to do is ask.

Do you automate anything? How do you keep track of it all?

Hippy Month – September’s 30 Day Project

Finance, Life

: Image via Wikipedia

My 30 Day Project for August was…forgotten. I didn’t notice August roll in, and when that fact finally registered, I had already blown the project. With that, and our planned vacation, I decided to take the month off. Yes, I am a slacker.

So, now that it is September, I’m getting back on track. This month, we are going used. For the next 30 days, we are buying nothing new.

The Ground Rules

1. We aren’t buying anything new. No retail purchases. If we need to buy something, it will be used.

2. Food is an exception. Used bananas are gross in too many ways.

3. Consumable hygiene products are an exception. We are not recycling shampoo or deodorant. We are also not willing to spend the month smelling like hippies.

4. My wife is not a loophole. Her shopping counts as my shopping, so this is something we have to do together.

4b. Neither is her mother’s credit card. We are doing this for real.

There is a group called The Compact that started this movement. They went for an entire year. They are hippies. Ick.

I am not a hippy! This did, however, make for a good lesson in how to be environmentally friendly.

My main goal for Hippy Month is to break our consumer addiction. We need to get used to “making do” or doing without. We also need to make a habit out of looking for used and cheaper options, first.

Our secondary goals are to save money and stop accumulation so much danged stuff.

It won’t be easy. Goodwill is far less convenient than Target. It’s so simple to run into a store to replace something that’s broken instead of fixing it or finding a used alternative.

These projects wouldn’t be fun if they were easy.

Anyone care to join me?

Make a Budget

Finance

: Image by r.lovewell via Flickr

In the past, I’ve gone through a detailed series of budget lessons demonstrating how to make a budget and showing my personal budget spreadsheet template. If you weren’t here to see them develop, you probably haven’t seen them at all. I’ve never built an actual index for those posts.

This is the master index of my budget planning resources. As I develop more, this will grow.

Budget Lesson #1 – In this lesson, I go over how we handle discretionary income and I explain our modified envelope system. The discretionary budget contains things like our grocery bill, or the clothes we buy. We have near-total discretion over what is purchased, hence the name.

Budget Lesson #2 – Lesson #2 contains the details of our monthly bills. These are the ones that are consistent, predictable, and actually due each month. Most people take these for granted as the bills they have to pay, but it’s not true. You can get almost all of your regular bills reduced just by asking. You would also be surprised what you can do without, when properly motivated.

Budget Lesson #3 – This is where I explain how we deal with the non-monthly bills. That is, the bills that have to be paid, but are not due on a monthly basis. I also share the personal budget spreadsheet template I developed. I am working on a few sample templates to match various imaginary scenarios. If you’d like to be an anonymous case study, and get free help setting up a budget, let me know, please.

Budget Lesson #4 – In this lesson, I describe our “set-aside” funds for things that will need to be paid eventually, but not on a set schedule. Sometimes, they are never actually due. We set aside money for the parties we throw, for car repairs and for a number of other things. A few of these items are outright optional, but they are part of what makes life fun. You can’t make a budget without including some of the extras.

Budget Lesson #5 – This is the companion piece to lesson 2. Learn how I’ve reduced–or attempted to reduce–each of these bills. For the better part of two years, I called Dish Network every few months to ask for a discount. For almost 2 years, it was granted. Then one, day, they told me they were putting a note on our account to keep us from getting any more discounts, so I canceled. 100% discounts help us save more.

Budget Lesson #6 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 3. These bills are harder to reduce. Have you ever successfully gotten your property taxes lowered?

Budget Lesson #7 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 4. Notice a pattern, yet?

Budget Lesson #8 – Here, completely out of order, is the reduction companion to lesson 1. Watch as I magically reduce–or rationalize–our discretionary budget.

So, dear readers, what part of budgeting should I address next?

Saturday Roundup

Misc

: Image via Wikipedia

I wrote this yesterday. According the forecast, when this post goes live, I’ll be moving 5-8 inches of snow off of my driveway.

That, or watching TV and thinking about moving snow.

Maybe I’ll just sleep in and wait for spring to melt the snow.

Don’t forget to enter my drawing for a $100 Amazon gift card! Go here for details. It ends on the 15th, so don’t wait too long.

Best Posts

Crazy-easy ice cream bread. How could this possibly be bad?

Tron comes out in 2 weeks. I’d love to show up on a custom street-legal Troncycle.

Arsenic-based lifeforms are shaking up the way we understand life to work. I’m of the opinion that life will probably exist almost everywhere that isn’t a completely dead dry rock. I say that as an expert in…well, nothing related to astrobiology.

Following Erica’s advice is currently making me a few hundred dollars per month, with every sign of growing as time goes on. I hate to sound like a fanboy, but if she pimps a product, I’m at least going to give it some serious consideration.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

10 Dumb Money Moves was featured in the Carnival of Debt Reduction.

Book Review: The Art of Non-Conformity was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Things You Should Buy Online to Save Money was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

LRN Timewarp

This is a new feature to share the gift that is me with anyone new to LRN. This week, I’m going to share some posts from my first week blogging here.

The $10 College Fund. In the last year, not only have I not changed my mind about the $10 college fund, but I haven’t raised the amount. The point is to just get started. I’ve done that. I’ll raise the amount when my debt is paid off. We are now up to $166.09. The numbers are off because I stuck a little bit extra in one month.

In the last year, our dreams haven’t changed. We haven’t made any direct progress, but indirectly we are doing well. First things first. We need to pay the debt off before we look at a hobby farm.

My second day blogging, I wrote about why we handled money so poorly.

Automatic Everything

Finance

In an effort to simplify my finances, I’ve automated every bill I have. For years, I resisted, fearing a lack of control over my money. A few months ago, I re-examined the bill paying options on my bank’s website and changed my mind. This is one thing that USBank has done right.

The first thing I did was set a budget. Without a budget, it’s not possible to let your money take care of itself. I did this months before I decided to automate.

All of the bills that offer a budget plan–a plan that averages your payments to avoid fluctuation–went on the plan. It means I do overpay some months, but it also means I get to underpay some months. Most important, I always know what will be due. These bills were scheduled in the bank’s online bill paying system as is, along with the rest of the bills that do not fluctuate.

All of the bills that do fluctuate went in to the bill paying system at their highest level. For example, I don’t pay for text messaging on my cell phone. Some months, I send and receive text messages. I pay my cell phone bill assuming that there will be a few messages. This is slowly building a credit on my account. If I don’t use all of the credit, I will get to skip a month of payments sometime next year.

I keep track of all of this using Quicken. Every one of these bill is in the calendar. They are all scheduled to be entered into the register on the first of the month, to post of the actual day of payment. This lets me see, at a glance, my cash flow for the entire month.

But wait! What about the non-monthly payments, you ask? They are also in Quicken, broken into monthly line items. There’s a “Set aside for property taxes” item, a “Set aside for web host” item, and a few other items.

My time to maintain this has been reduced to comparing the bills to the bill-paying system every other week. At the same time, I consolidate all of the “set asides” so I don’t have 10 property tax entries when one will do.

I know this is an inefficient method of saving money, but my goal isn’t to save money, it’s automating money and removing one layer of stress from my life. It has transformed bill-paying from an hour or two per week to 20 minutes, twice per month and very little stress.

Search Results for: 5-steps-to-save/a-moment-of-clarity/top-7-reasons-to-trade-forex-over-other-financial-instruments

The Ground Rules

Best Posts

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

LRN Timewarp