- @ScottATaylor Thanks for following me. in reply to ScottATaylor #
- RT @ChristianPF: 5 Tips For Dealing With Your Medical Debt http://su.pr/2cxS1e #
- Dining Out vs Cooking In: http://su.pr/3JsGoG #
- RT: @BudgetsAreSexy: Be Proud of Your Emergency Fund! http://tinyurl.com/yhjo88l ($1,000 is better than $0.00) #
- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-12
Carnival Roundup
As of today, my mother-in-law’s house is just about ready. We’ve got some stuff in a couple of the bedrooms to clean out, then it’s time to scrub it all down, paint, and clean the floors. It’s been a long, horrible, emotional summer getting this property ready, but we are definitely at the “light at the end of the tunnel” stage.
This weekend, the renters are going to come over and help wipe it all down. That will be nice.
Live Real, Now was included in the following carnivals recently:
Yakezie Carnival: List of Awesome Finance Articles hosted by Learn Financial Education
Carnival of Retirement hosted by Club Thrifty
Yakezie Carnival: The Less than Graceful Edition hosted by Earth and Money
The Wealth Artisan FinCarn hosted by Wealth Artisan
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Master the Art of Savings
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #49 hosted by My University Money
Carnival of Personal Finance #381 hosted by Tie the Money Knot
Yakezie Carnival hosted by I Am 1 Percent
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Young and Thrifty
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #50 hosted by Wealthy Turtle
Yakezie Carnival hosted by I Heart Budgets
The Wealth Artisan FinCarn hosted by Wealth Artisan
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Vanessa’s Money
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #51 hosted by My University Money
Carnival of Retirement #40 hosted by Term Life Insurance, Inc.
Thanks for including my posts.
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 weekend!
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?
Carnivals
I’ve been a bit of a slacker when it comes to posting the carnivals I’ve been included in. This is me playing catch-up.
Live Real, Now was included in five carnivals last week:
- Yakezie Carnival hosted by Steadfast Finances
- Totally Money Carnival #54 hosted by 20’s Finance
- Carnival of Personal Finance #347 hosted by One Cent at a Time
- Canadian Finance Carnival #74 hosted by the Canadian Finance Blog
- Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #19 hosted by Newlyweds on a Budget
Prior to last week, I was included in:
- Yakezie Carnival hosted by The Amateur Financier
- Carnival of Financial Camaraderie hosted by Young Adult Finances
- Carnival of Financial Camaraderie hosted by My University Money
- Totally Money Carnival hosted by Family Money Values
- Yakezie Carnival hosted by Prairie Eco-Thrifter
- Festival of Frugality hosted by Magical Penny
- Totally Money Carnival at Help Me to Save
Thanks to all of the hosts for including my posts and my apologies for not posting the links sooner. If I missed you, please let me know.
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!
May 30 Day Project
Before I discuss May’s 30 day project, I’m going to talk about April’s.
Last month, my goal was to declutter my entire house. Every room, every closet, every drawer.
I missed the goal.
My wife has gotten behind this project wholeheartedly. She’s had friends over helping almost every weekend. She’s kept the kids occupied while I’ve been working on it. It’s been a team effort, which has been nice. One room at a time, we’ve tackled the entire house, except for a couple of spots.
Our son’s closet isn’t finished. He hasn’t had use of his closet since we moved him into the room he’s in. It’s been the filing center for a couple of business opportunities. Most of it has been cleared out, but not all. It will be finished in the next few days.
Our storage room isn’t done. It pains me to have a “storage room”, but I don’t think its purpose will be changing. Now, however, instead of unopened appliances and boxes of clothes, it’s almost down to just seasonal stuff and things we do need occasionally. We have the Christmas decorations, the pet crates, and a few other things that get used rarely, but do get used. This room used to have a 6-foot cabinet of computer parts, leftover from the days when building/supporting computers was my main side-hustle. That has been reduce to just one box, mostly power cords. The gaming pads and old hard drives are gone. All that’s left for this room is one shelf, and the remainder of another old side-hustle that has some emotional attachment for my wife.
The remaining trouble spots will be cleaned out by this weekend. We’re having a garage sale the following weekend, and it will all be there. We’ve been pricing as we’ve been sorting, so we’re almost ready.
Decluttering an entire house that’s been filled by the horrible habits of two accumulators means we literally have thousands of things we’ll be selling in two weeks. We split our garage with our roommmate. Our stall is full. We’ve got some stuff in the driveway. We’ve got a pile of boxes in the basement, ready to go. Our dining room is full.
Let me repeat that last point: Our dining room is full.
My project for May was supposed to have been having dinner at the table at least 3 nights per week. At the moment, I’m not entirely sure we still have a table. I certainly can’t see it and there is no way to use it for dinner. This project has to be moved.
So, what’s the plan for May? I’m going to tackle June’s project.
I will not use the computer while anyone else is awake, except for household necessities. Household necessities on the computer are almost nonexistent, since I’ve automated almost everything. I balance the checkbook on a monthly basis, and may have to pay a quarterly bill later this month. I’m going to take the time to be with my family, and do something that matters more than Google Reader. That means writing happens after everyone goes to bed, or at 5AM, which will be motivation to keep that wake-up time. Internet on the blackberry counts as computer use.
Family first.
Make Extra Money Part 1: Introduction
Today, I’m re-launching a new series on how I make extra money online. This series fell off my radar for a while. I intend to finish it now.
Right now, I have 7 sites promoting specific products, or “niche” sites. When those products are bought through my sites, I get a commission, ranging from 40-75%. Of those sites, 5 make money, 1 is newly finished, and 1 is not quite complete. I’m not going to pretend I’m making retirement-level money on these sites, but I am making enough money to make it worthwhile.
Over the course of the series, I’m going to show you how to take advantage of multi-million dollar market research to choose a niche, at no cost to you. You’ll see how I choose a domain name, where to find products to sell, and how to promote your new site.
As I write the series, you’ll get to see exactly what is working, as it’s happening. I’ll be choosing the niche as I write the post on choosing a niche. As of this writing, I don’t know what niche I’ll be promoting, what product I’ll be using, or what keywords I’ll be targeting. This will be a live, totally transparent case study of how I make extra money.
Before we get started, I need you to understand a few things.
First, this is not overnight money. My first niche site took 6 months before it made me a penny. That was partially because my product selection research was faulty, but also because these things do take time. I’ll show you how to pick a niche and product that won’t take that long, but you can’t expect to quit your job tomorrow.
Second, this is work. Once everything is established and optimized, it won’t be a lot of work, but it will take time to do. There is no such thing as “set it and forget it” internet marketing. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling you something you won’t be satisfied with.
Third, this isn’t free. I’m not going to charge you anything, but some parts of this will cost money to do effectively. I’m not a fan of throwing money away, so I won’t be suggesting anything outrageous. If I do recommend something that costs money, I will try to recommend a free or very cheap alternative, but that won’t always be possible. I started out slow and cheap, but now, when I launch a site, I spend some money to do it quickly and effectively. I am a fan of paying others to do the things I dislike doing.
That’s the plan. I’m going to tell you how I make extra money online, and I’m going to let you look over my shoulder while I set up my next site, start to finish.
Any questions?
Any comments on how you make extra money online?
