- Up at 5 two days in a row. Sleepy. #
- May your…year be filled w/ magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you…kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful. @neilhimself #
- Woo! First all-cash grocery trip ever. Felt neat. #
- I accidentally took a 3 hour nap yesterday, so I had a hard time sleeping. 5am is difficult. #
- Wee! Got included in the Carnival of Personal Finance, again. http://su.pr/2AKnDB #
- Son’s wrestling season starts in two days. My next 3 months just got hectic. #
- RT @Moneymonk: A real emergency is something that threatens your survival, not just your desire to be comfortable -David Bach # [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-09
Money Problems – Day 4: Making a Budget
Today, I continuing the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances. It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear. Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.
I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days. That’s not my schedule. Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us. Instead, it will run roughly once a week. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.
This is day 4 and today, you are going to make a budget.
Now that you’ve got your list of expenses and you’ve figured out your income, it’s time to put them together and do the dreaded deed. Your going to make a budget today. Don’t be scared. I’ll hold your hand.
Here are the tools you need:
- Your list of expenses from Day Two.
- Your list of income from Day Three.
- A spreadsheet. I recommend the spreadsheet included in Google Docs, but Excel or the Open Office alternative, CALC, are acceptable substitutes.
Setting up the spreadsheet is dead simple.
Create a column for the label, telling you what each line item is. Create a column to hold the monthly payment amount. At the bottom of column 2, create a formula that totals your expenses. If you are including a bill that isn’t due monthly, use a formula similar to the day 3 income formula to figure out what you need to set aside each month. To figure a quarterly bill, multiply the amount by 4, then divide by 12. To figure a weekly bill, multiply by 52 and divide by 12.
Scoot over a few columns and do the same thing for your income.
Scoot over a couple more columns and set up a total. This is easy. It’s just a matter of subtracting your expenses from you income. Hopefully, this gives you a positive number.
To make this even easier, I’ve shared a blank budget spreadsheet. No excuses. If that simple spreadsheet doesn’t meet your needs, I’ve got a much more detailed version that includes categories. I use the detailed version.
Making a budget may be the most intimidating financial step you take, but everything else is built on the assumption that you understand where you money came from and where it is going. Without,it, your navigating a major maze based on a coin flip instead of a map.
3 Ways to Keep Your Finances Organized
I have 16 personal savings accounts, 3 personal checking accounts, 2 business checking accounts, and 2 business savings accounts. That’s 23 traditional bank accounts, spread across 3 banks. Just talking about that gives my wife a headache.
Every account has a reason. Three of the savings accounts exist just to make the matching checking accounts free. One of the checking accounts handles all of my regular spending that isn’t put on my rewards card. 14 of the savings accounts are CapitalOne 360 accounts that have specific goals attached. A couple of the accounts were opened to boost the sales numbers for a friend who is a banker. Really, it’s almost too much to keep track of. One credit card, 5 checking accounts, 18 savings account, all on 4 websites.
Sometimes, when you extend your bank accounts this far, it gets easy to let it all slip away and lose track of where your money is going. How do I keep track of it all?
1. Simplify
Whoa, you say? Simplify? I don’t simplify the number of accounts I have, I simplify the tracking, or specifically, the need to track.
Twice a month, I have an automated transfer that moves a chunk of money from my main checking account to C1360. I have a series of transfers set up there that move that money around to each of my savings goals. I move $100 to the vacation account, $75 to the braces account, and $10 to the college fund, among all of the other transfers. Doing that eliminates any need to keep track of the transfers, since it is all automated.
Using the same rules, I make every possible payment happen automatically, so I don’t have to worry about paying the gas bill or sending a check to the insurance company.
Simple.
2. Complicate
As you saw in the opening sentence of this post, I also complicate the hell out of my accounts. On the surface, it would seem like that would make it harder to keep track, but in reality, the opposite is true. I have 14 savings accounts at C1360, each for a specific savings goal, like paying my property taxes or going to the to Financial Blogger Conference in October. I can log in to my account and tell at a glance exactly how much money I have for each of my goals. In the account nickname, I include how much each goal is for, so I can easily see if I am on track.
3. Quicken
Everything I do gets set up in Quicken. This makes it easy to track how much actual money I have available. Since I’ve moved my daily expenses to a credit card, I only have about a dozen entries to worry about when I balance my checkbook at the end of the month. At that time, any excess funds get dropped into my debt snowball.
This may all leave me with a needlessly complicated system, but it’s a system that grew slowly to meet my needs and it is working well for me. I spend about 2 hours a month tracking my finances, and can–at any time–tell at a glance exactly how my finances look.
How do you keep your finance organized? Have you tried any unique savings strategies?
Sunday Roundup: It’s Push-Up Time
It’s the end of a month, so it’s time to announce my new 30 Day Project. Last February, in 22 days, I went from having my abs cramp after doing 15 push-ups to doing a set of 100. Yes, really.
The problem is that the push-ups weren’t perfect. Funny things happen to your body when you are doing 100 push-ups. It’s hard to tell what your body is doing. I had good form for the first 80, but after that, my body wasn’t perfectly straight. I looked like a typical second grader in gym class. But I did it. They were push-ups.
I haven’t done a push-up since.
In March, I am going to get myself back up to 100 push-ups, only this time, I will only be doing perfect push-ups.
Here’s the plan, based on what worked last year:
This weekend, I established my baseline. I did as many push-ups as I could, until the point of failure. Failure for this purpose is defined as either my form faltering or me collapsing. I went until I couldn’t hold my body straight.
Starting on the first, I will be doing 5 sets of push-ups, twice a day.
Set 1: One half of my baseline. Starting from 24 push-ups, this set will be 12 push-ups. As I progress, this set will never be more than 20 push-ups. It is the warm-up set, after all.
Sets 2-4: ¾ of my baseline, so 18 to start.
Set 5: Go to failure. Once again, failure is defined as faulty from. This will establish my baseline for the next session.
If I don’t progress for 3 days, I will take a day off to recover and–given previous experience–come back with some serious improvement.
This is a self-correcting progression. If I can’t meet the previous day’s baseline, my last set will be lower, which will lower the baseline for the following session.
An interesting question I have is how it will affect my diet. I haven’t been exercising at all, to see how well the slow carb diet does on it’s own. Now, I’m going to be adding an aggressive exercise plan on top of it. A plan that involves a bit of muscle bulking. I’m guessing that my weight loss will slow down a lot, but I will shed inches like mad. I will be tracking my progression, and my weight and measurements. The graphs should be fun.
30 Day Project Update
I am on the Slow Carb Diet. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.
I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.
Weight: I have lost 33 pounds since January 2nd! That’s 3 pounds since last week. Only 9 more to meet my goal for February. Oh wait. I won’t be hitting it this month.
Total Inches: I have lost 17 inches in the same time frame, down half an inch since last week.
Giveaway
I’ve got some codes for H&R Block Premium Online. It’s federal only and the state return costs an extra $35, but that’s still a screaming deal. Premium handles small business and investment tax issues. If you want to get it, leave a comment saying so. First come, first serve, until I’m out of codes.
Best Posts
Yes, I Am Cheap has a post about growing up poor.
Public Service Announcement: Liquidation sales are rarely good deals. When one store in a chain closes, the profitable merchandise always gets shipped to another store. The rest of it will often get marked up, in anticipation of people shutting off their critical thinking skills in the face of big “On Sale” signs.
I’ve found a new life goal: underground glowworm cave tubing. Wow.
OpenLibrary is offering up 80,000 ebooks to borrow, for free. 10,000 of them are still in copyright. I need a kindle.
LRN Timewarp
This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?
A few years ago, I sold a truck(on payments) to a friend, who promptly quit paying me and disappeared. I ended up playing repossessing the truck.
There was also a story about how I convinced two big companies that collecting on me for a bill of more than $800 wasn’t worth the effort. It was good, because I didn’t make the call.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled
Slow Carb Diet: How to Avoid Going Bat-**** Crazy was included in the Festival of Frugality.
Three Alternatives to a Budget was included in the Totally Money Carnival.
Protect your home was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Budgets Are Sexy ran my post, Side Hustle Series: I’m a Gun Permit Instructor. I forgot to link back to this, last week.
Prairie EcoThrifter ran my post, The Luxury of Vacation for the Yakezie Blog Swap.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.
Yakezie Blog Swap
Eric hosted the Yakezie Blog Swap, which is a bunch of bloggers writing on the same topic and sharing the posts with each other. Here is his list of the participants this round.
I wrote about my journey to become a DJ at Beating Broke.
Beating Broke wrote about shoe shopping at Narrow Bridge.
Barbara Friedberg got a really nice couch and shared the experience at Wealth Informatics.
Suba doesn’t think the rent is too damn high, in fact, Suba thinks it is worth it and shares at Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance.
Mr. and Mrs. BP spent a lot when they got a dog. Read about it at 101 Centavos.
101 Centavos went nuts on an anniversary, but you know what that can get you… Read about it at Broke Professionals.
Latisha Styles’ post at Bucksome Boomer is I Spent How Much?! My Birthday Trip to the Bahamas.
Kay Lynn spent her heart out on a new car with all the bells and whistles and you can read about it at Financial Success for Young Adults.
Derek got a sweet new digital camera and tells us about it at My Personal Finance Journey.
Jacob has splurged a couple of times on travel and outdoor gear and has no regrets and shares the experiences at My Life and Finances.
Miss T. likes to splurge on travel. We have something in common. The difference? She wrote about it at Live Real Now.
Jason is a fan of the luxury of vacation. You can read about it at the Prairie EcoThrifter.
Squirrelers went to Europe for three weeks. Totally worth it! Read about it at Money Sanity.
Money Sanity likes good champagne. I can’t judge, I like good Scotch. Read about why at Squirrelers.
Melissa took 10 days and took the trip of a lifetime to visit a friend in China. Read about it at The Saved Quarter.
The Saved Quarter bought a Blendtec blender. Yes, the blender from “will it blend.” The story is at Mom’s Plan. (In case you were wondering, this blender can blend anything. Well, anything but Chuck Norris.)
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.
You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.
You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.
You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.
You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.
You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.
Have a great week!
Sunday Roundup: Spent weekend
The problem with running a training class for a side hustle is that it sucks up half of my weekend, whenever I hold a class. I like my weekends. Unfortunately for downtime, I like extra money more.
30 Day Project Update
This month, I am trying to do 100 perfect push-ups in a single set. I’m recording each session in a spreadsheet. I am currently up to 50 in a set and 175 in a session, spread across 5 sets. This week, my elbow started hurting, so I took 2 and a half days off.
Weight Loss Update
I am on the Slow Carb Diet. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.
I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.
Weight: I have lost 38 pounds since January 2nd. That’s 2 pound since last week.
Total Inches: I have lost 22.5 inches in the same time frame, down 1.5 inches since last week. My biceps, which are part of this measurement, have grown half an inch each since I started doing push-ups twice a day.
Best Posts
My mother-in-law hates dandelions, with a passion that just isn’t sane. I want to make her a meal that consists of nothing but dandelions.
When I got my first RSA SecureID card, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. If you’ve never had one, it gives you a rotating password that changes every 30 seconds, so nobody can guess you password for long. It was neat, and, apparently, not that secure.
The idea of a tortoise on wheels makes me smile.
I’d like to try to make yogurt. I can try whatever flavors I like. Poptart-and-broccoli yogurt just sounds….
I work really hard to save money on vacations, and this post is full of good ideas to help me do that.
eBay is making changes to their fee structure that will make it a lot cheaper to sell things. I’m guessing the back-the-customer-no-matter-what-at-the-expense-of-the-seller’s-getting-scammed policy was costing them some money.
The big box stores are pushing for Amazon to collect sales tax on all sales, in opposition to a Supreme Court ruling on the topic. It won’t make a difference in sales. Amazon will still be cheaper. And I’ll get a Canadian mail drop.
LRN Timewarp
This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?
I talked about teaching my kids the joy of delayed gratification. Interestingly, my son has since decided he doesn’t want an XBox 360, because the buy-in is too high, with having to buy games and controllers to match the console. We’ve also changed his allowance to savings ratio. Now, 25% of everything he makes hits his bank account. The rest is his to do with as he sees fit.
Last year at this time, it was scam week here. I wrote a post on debt scams and another on disaster scams.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled
Money Problems: Boosting Your Income was included in the Totally Money Carnival.
Living in Debt: How I Sacrificed My Future was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
My post on spendthrift whiners was hosted on Faith and Finance. In return, I hosted his post on paper statement fees.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.
Yakezie Blog Swap
Jacob hosted the Yakezie Blog Swap, which is a bunch of bloggers writing on the same topic and sharing the posts with each other. Here is his list of the participants this round.
He wrote about 3 of my financial pet peeves (spending too much money on drinks, financing expensive furniture, and active investing strategies) on Narrow Bridge Finance.
Robert from The College Investor wrote about how people making mistakes with their 401k accounts is a big “no-no” at Thousandaire.Narrow Bridge Finance posted about how people not taking responsibility for their financial actions infuriates him on My Personal Finance Journey.Prairie Eco-Thrifter posted about how sales tax is her biggest financial pet peeve at 101 Centavos.101 Centavos posted about how wasting food makes his blood pressure rise at Prairie Eco-Thrifter.
LaTisha D Styles writes about how greedy banks upset her at Retire by 40.Retire by 40 wrote about how bigger is not necessarily better at FSYA Online.
Bucksome Boomer writes about how advertisers that hide the real price of a product is maddening at The Single Saver.
The Single Saver wrote about parents who do not teach their children financial responsibility at Bucksome Boomer.
Kevin from Thousandaire writes about people having misconceptions about Roth IRA’s at The College Investor.
Time from Faith and Finance vents about financial institutions charging to send paper account statements, but still send out a plethora of paper junk mail at Live Real Now.
Jason from Live Real Now politely rants about how aggravating it is to see people whine about their less-than-ideal financial situations, yet do nothing about it, at Faith and Finance.
Money Sanity vents about people complaining about paying overdraft and bank fees, while at the same time, having no idea how much credit card debt they have or their checking account balance at The Saved Quarter
The Saved Quarter writes about people who are financially irresponsible and want to complain about how broke they are while showing off the new things they bought at Money Sanity
Barb Friedberg talks about how investment advisors that get paid to sell products (more salesman than investment advisors in my book) upset her at Happy Simple Living
Happy Simple Living writes about how companies and people that exploit others aggravate her at Barb Friedberg Personal Finance.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.
You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.
You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.
You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.
You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.
You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.
Have a great week!
Black Friday
- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Today being the biggest shopping day of the year, I thought I’d get in the game.
First, instead of helping you spend money, I’m going to help you save it. As I’ve mentioned before, I am a big fan of INGDirect. They make it easy to create savings accounts for specific savings goals and they have a decent interest rate. I’ve never had a problem with any of my accounts.
For Black Friday(through Sunday!), they are offering the following:
- Earn $103. Open Electric Orange November 26th – 28th, and make a total of 7 purchases using your Electric Orange Card or Person2Person Payments (or any combination of the two) within 45 days.
- Open a Kids Savings Account November 26th – 28th and we’ll(ING) put a $25 bonus into your new account.
- Use your Electric Orange Debit MasterCard® at least one time from 8:00 AM ET, November 26th – 7:59 PM ET, November 26th, and you’ll be automatically entered into the 100% Cash Back Giveaway.
- Open a 36-month IRA CD with ING DIRECT November 26th – November 28th and get 2.00% Annual Percentage Yield (APY). Ask them about work at home moms and dads spousal IRA.
- Apply online November 26th – 28th for Easy Orange or the Orange Mortgage or call a Mortgage Specialist at 1-866-327-4599 and get up to $2,000 off closing costs. If your costs are less than $2,000, you pay nothing.
- 25% rebate on Sharebuilder trades that execute today or Monday.
Click here to open an account with the best bank to ever hold my money.
Now, to help you spend some money.
All of my websites are hosted by HostGator. I’ve never had noticeable downtime or any technical problems. The one issue I had that couldn’t be controlled by their interface was fixed by technical support in minutes. Not hours, minutes. They are having an amazing deal today. From 5AM to 9AM CST, all of their products are 80% off. The rest of the day, it’s all 50% off. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to existing customers, but if you are looking for a website host, paying $35 for 3 years of hosting can’t be beat.
