Have you seen the Wal-Mart ads on television that say how much you can save if you buy something at Wal-Mart versus going out to get it like saving so much by making breakfast at home versus going out to buy it? There is truth to that, but you have to remember that many of us don’t end up needing to go out for breakfast and in most multi-child households, cereal is the norm.

We all have to decipher between needs and wants in order to save money at the grocery store. Deciding to buy a box of cereal or going out every morning to buy breakfast is easy to decipher between.

Then there are times when we have to try really hard to decipher between the two. The easiest way to separate the two is to make a list to take to the store. This way you can see what you need and you can sit back and look at the list and get rid of anything that you might not need or that you can tell you simply want.

Sometimes we turn wants into needs at the grocery store and we can’t fall into that budget busting habit. If you go without a grocery list and say you want cookies, then you’ll need milk to go with them (This isn’t the best example, but you can understand what I mean). When you end up turning wants into needs, you will always leave the store paying more than you ever intended.

The only person who can tell you what is a need and what is a want is ultimately up to you. You can’t expect anyone else to tell you what you need, as we all have different needs with the exception of basics like water, food and shelter.

None of this means that you have to give up the things you want to save money, just cut back.

Bank fees are really starting to add up for some people. There are a few things you can do to make sure that the money in your bank account stays yours instead of you forfeiting the money to the bank.

1) Don’t bounce checks and make sure that you’re using checks from your CURRENT account. Of course, many people don’t write checks too much anymore. However, I know that we still pay a few of our bills with checks and (for some reason) we still have old checks from a closed account around the house.

2) Use ATMs sparingly. You are obviously not going to find your bank branch everywhere you go, so just watch out how much those ATMs are charging you per transaction. The most I’ve ever seen is $5 per transaction, the smallest amount I’ve seen is $2.50.

3) Watch your transactions and maintain a positive balance. This one is kind of a “duh” but I have to talk about it if I’m talking about saving money on your bank fees. This tip will make sure that you don’t get those awful fees like insufficient funds or overdraft fees. Overdraft fees can really hurt, particularly because they are somewhere in the $30-$35 range every single time you make a transaction from your overdrawn account.

4) Try to find a checking account that is not only free, but also offers some kind of interest. My bank offers a totally free checking program, but also offers a checking account where, if you meet the monthly requirements, they give you a bit of interest on the account. If you can’t find a bank that does this, a free checking account is a good option, but you just need to make sure that you’re not getting tinged by over drafting or not maintaining a minimum balance.

These are of course only a few of the things that you can do to save yourself a bit of money and keep it out of the hands of greedy bankers.

If you guys have any extra tips leave a comment!

Sometimes we all have to make the decision as to what is more important: Our time or our money. A lot of times these two don’t exactly go hand-in-hand. As a matter of fact, the examples I will give will only talk about choosing one or the other.

Saving money has gotten extremely important to those who have lost their jobs or who have suffered through a reduction in income since the beginning of the recession. One of the best examples I can give as to a trade off between time and money is supper time in most households.

Cooking supper at home will typically save you money in opposition to going out to eat, however going and picking something up will always be more of a time saver. Say you’re on your way home from work and you call your local [insert restaurant name here] and pick it up; you’re going to spend more money than if you would have cooked all the food at home, but you now just get to pick up the food and take it home to your hungry, waiting family. After they finish eating, the garbage gets recycled or thrown away and there isn’t any mess to clean up (or if there is, it is usually minimal if your kids didn’t get into a huge food fight or something during dinner time).

Time and money also come into play when you’re thinking about things such as thrifty shopping. Many shoppers who are out there shopping to save money will visit many different stores and spend a lot of time clipping coupons just to save money. Time conscious shoppers are more willing to shop at the same store for everything, or just venture to a couple of grocery stores.

For anyone the answer will likely be different. Some will feel as though their time is more valuable than the savings they will get from shopping at different stores and spending time clipping coupons while others will feel as though their money is more valuable than the time they spend doing all the things that save them money.

As for me, I find myself in the middle (as I imagine most would). I won’t go out of my way to save $1 on groceries, but I will shop at different stores if it means I can use my favorite coupons. I also try not to go out to eat too often, not for the cost but simply for the nutritional value or lack there of. I really enjoy saving money, but I also value my time.

What do you do? Are you a time saver or a money saver? Or do you fall somewhere in the middle?

When you first start out investing or even in life, you don’t always make the best choices. After all, you usually have to make mistakes to learn from them. However, not learning before hand when it comes to your financials could prove to be costly and damaging to your long term wealth.

Here are a few mistakes that are often made:

1) Procrastination. College is over, and now it’s time to get out there are really make something of yourself…tomorrow. I know this one well. In college, when you procrastinate you may not lose out on anything at all, I often put papers off until the last minute and still did well because I wrote the best papers under pressure. However, when it comes to your finances, again, you can’t procrastinate or you will damage your long term financial goals. Here are some of the consequences:

Fail to start investing soon and you’ll miss out on years of compound interest.
Don’t keep a budget and you could sacrifice control of your spending.
Buy now with the intent to pay off later and you’ll dig a debt hole that’s tough to climb out of.
Pay your bills late and you could damage your credit score.
Put off saving money in a rainy day fund and you could be caught unprepared in a personal
emergency.

2) Not diversifying your portfolio. When people start out, they don’t always know how to diversify out risk from their portfolio. While you can’t completely hedge yourself against something like the current recession, you can help your portfolio out a little. Investing in a wide array of save investments can lead to steady returns. While you may not get the “super returns” that some stocks give, some mutual funds simply track the market and you may earn a fairly steady rate every year.

3) Over paying taxes. A Roth IRA grows tax-free and a 401 (k) is money taken out of your employment check before taxes. Both are ways to avoid and save money on taxes.

The idea of saving on your taxes may seem a tad obscure, but it really can pay off big. Say a 25-year-old contributes $5,000 each year for 40 years to an investment account, making an average annual return of 8%. If she used a taxable account, she’d have more than one-fourth less money than if she’d gone with the Roth. (Use this calculator to see how far your savings can take you. Enter “0″ in the tax-rate boxes to simulate the tax-exempt status of a Roth IRA.)

4) Going into debt is another big problem and mistake. Eventually, with the right investment moves and job, you will be able to have a fancy car and a big house full of “stuff” but right now, you don’t want to start out your life in debt. Any money you put toward interest is money that you won’t have later and you’re basically just throwing it out the window.

Source

The magazine Marie Clarie had an article on its website I bookmarked and wanted to share. It is all about saving money on your daily commute to and from work. I can’t say that I agree with all the tips (such as driving to work with a stranger) but overall the tips are pretty good if you’re willing to try them out.

1. Save money through carpooling. This is the tip where the author suggested a site called erideshare.com where you can find someone to ride to work with. It just seems dangerous to me to ride to work (or anywhere) with someone I don’t know. But carpooling can end up saving you big time on the cost of traveling.

2. Seasonal or monthly bus or train passes can help also. However, you need to make sure you know when you’ll be taking your vacation so you’re not paying for something you won’t use.

3. If you’re job can be done over the phone a.k.a. telecommuting, then it wouldn’t hurt to ask your boss if you could work from home once a week.

4. Keep your heater or air conditioner on long enough to make your car comfortable then turn them off. You can also roll your windows down in the car if it’s nice outside, but you will be wasting money if you’re going over 45 mph.

5. You can talk to Human Resources to see if your company offers any benefits that might help offset your commuting costs. Some companies offer a “car service” if you work past a stated time at night.

6. If you drive over 75 mph and rapidly accelerate or slam on your brakes, you’re reducing your car’s fuel efficiency.

7. Make sure you’re car is properly maintained. This means make sure that your tire pressure is good and that you keep your oil changes up to date.

8. Keep an eye out for gas prices to and from work. If you can, don’t get gas right off the highway because it is usually the most expensive in the area. Use GasBuddy.com to try go find out cheaper prices on your route.

When you first start out investing or even in life, you don’t always make the best choices. After all, you usually have to make mistakes to learn from them. However, not learning before hand when it comes to your financials could prove to be costly and damaging to your long term wealth.

Here are a few mistakes that are often made:

1) Procrastination. College is over, and now it’s time to get out there are really make something of yourself…tomorrow. I know this one well. In college, when you procrastinate you may not lose out on anything at all, I often put papers off until the last minute and still did well because I wrote the best papers under pressure. However, when it comes to your finances, again, you can’t procrastinate or you will damage your long term financial goals. Here are some of the consequences:

Fail to start investing soon and you’ll miss out on years of compound interest.
Don’t keep a budget and you could sacrifice control of your spending.
Buy now with the intent to pay off later and you’ll dig a debt hole that’s tough to climb out of.
Pay your bills late and you could damage your credit score.
Put off saving money in a rainy day fund and you could be caught unprepared in a personal
emergency.

2) Not diversifying your portfolio. When people start out, they don’t always know how to diversify out risk from their portfolio. While you can’t completely hedge yourself against something like the current recession, you can help your portfolio out a little. Investing in a wide array of save investments can lead to steady returns. While you may not get the “super returns” that some stocks give, some mutual funds simply track the market and you may earn a fairly steady rate every year.

3) Over paying taxes. A Roth IRA grows tax-free and a 401 (k) is money taken out of your employment check before taxes. Both are ways to avoid and save money on taxes.

The idea of saving on your taxes may seem a tad obscure, but it really can pay off big. Say a 25-year-old contributes $5,000 each year for 40 years to an investment account, making an average annual return of 8%. If she used a taxable account, she’d have more than one-fourth less money than if she’d gone with the Roth. (Use this calculator to see how far your savings can take you. Enter “0″ in the tax-rate boxes to simulate the tax-exempt status of a Roth IRA.)

4) Going into debt is another big problem and mistake. Eventually, with the right investment moves and job, you will be able to have a fancy car and a big house full of “stuff” but right now, you don’t want to start out your life in debt. Any money you put toward interest is money that you won’t have later and you’re basically just throwing it out the window.

Source

Whenever you look at the overall economy and get discouraged, remember that there are a few upsides to the economy being in the gutter.

First, as a while, we’re borrowing less and putting away more. I suppose that we’ve all been a bit burned by not living within our means. As the credit crunch collapsed the world of the credit markets, people began to actually save more money. Yes, there are still plenty of people out there that are having a hard time getting monthly bills paid due to the high credit card payments they have incurred, but overall savings are up for everyone.

Even with gas prices down, we are actually driving less. When gas prices hit record highs last summer, people took notice and curbed their driving habits. Some of it actually stuck and now that gas prices are just over half what they were a year ago, the roads are still a bit emptier and people are carpooling and finding other ways to get from place to place.

Consumers are actually wasting less when it comes to necessities. Everyone is squeezing the last bit of shampoo out of the bottle and wearing shoes that they would have likely thrown away a long time ago. Consumers are shopping at thrift stores more to save money too; so they’re also using up what someone else didn’t. Thrift stores like Goodwill or the Salvation Army are actually running out of items faster than items are donated.

Out of the new home construction, smaller homes are being built. This goes back to wasting less. With smaller homes, we use less electricity and other resources. We’re saving money with smaller homes and leaving a smaller footprint on the earth. The average size for a new home that was being constructed has decreased for the first time in 10 years by 11 percent or nearly 300 square feet. Smaller houses also means that we’re using less resources to actually build the houses; there is less wood, wiring, and piping.

Finally, people are actually eating healthier. Red meat sales are down while the sales of poultry, fruits, and vegetables are up. Consumers are shopping more at local farmers’ markets, where produce is not only fresher, but is also typically cheaper than stores like Wal-Mart. This is also a great way for local businesses to start picking up. When people purchase more at farmers’ markets, they are putting the money back into the local economy.

Saving money is a wonderful thing. It gives banks money to invest, it gives the average person money to invest, money is thrown into markets that would not have otherwise seen those dollars, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, the economy we live in is driven by consumer spending. Money circulates even further, creating jobs and supporting industry, if spending rises or stays static.

The savings rate, which used to be reflected by negative numbers, has risen all the way to 5.7% in April. (Here’s a hint: If savings rates were once in negative numbers, we were spending more than the money we made.) In a time when what we really need is spending, that is when Americans have decided we are going to save. That is so amazingly backward. Let’s spend when we really need to save and let’s save when we really need to spend.

The economic problems we are currently facing were somewhat created by the large amount of personal and government spending, fiscal irresponsibility, and escalated debt. Unfortunately, personal spending, not government spending, mind you, on a small scale from a vast array of consumers, is actually one of the best repairs for the economic problems we are in right now. The funny thing is that most Americans thought they were already saving. They thought a lot of what they were spending was considered saving: home improvements to raise home value, real estate purchases, and much more, expecting these were all investments, with the hope of a positive return. This was further fueled by even higher home values and a corresponding “wealth effect”. Investors felt the same way about the stock market. Investments in the bank were low, creating falling CD and saving account interest rates. It was logical, however, due to a much less return from banks than alternative investments. “What drove the savings rate down was stock price appreciation and housing appreciation. People spent on those because they thought it was like saving,” said J.P. Morgan Chase economist Bruce Kasman.

The belief that investing is saving was obviously wrong, because it helped lead to the depreciation of banks, helping to cause this disaster. The proper saving is always good for a thriving economy. However, right now, no saving is good for the economy. Nobody had been saving before, so saving now is the right mode of recovery. Spending, which is growing, will actually be one of the most effective economic recovery actions the recession has seen. When the economy has recovered, all the indexes are solid, and joblessness is not so pitiful, feel free to save again… the right way.

I recently read an article about saving money during the summer by not running your air conditioner. While I will probably not even try this one, I wanted to share it with some of you guys to see if any of you are brave enough to try it.

The story from the article is that the author hadn’t used the air conditioner in two summers and it was fairly easy to adjust to the change.

The tips are to turn off the a/c (obviously), when you’re spending time outdoors, you are doing so in the shade, do not even turn on the air conditioner in the car, and avoid places that have air conditioners so that you won’t throw off all the adjusting your body has done. The author says that your body will adjust to a certain level of heat and will do whatever it can to keep you cooled as long as you’re drinking plenty of liquids and doing other things to keep yourself cool.

Stay indoors during the hottest part of the day, but stay outside in the shade is one of the tips I didn’t understand at first, then the article went on to say that there are ways to keep your house cooler in the daytime as long as certain measures are taken at night to help your house out the next day. The author suggests getting up in the morning and closing all the windows and doors and to cover them with a heavy shade or black out drape.

Another tip to keeping the house cool is to use less electricity from inside appliances as possible. I will say, in the summer I try to do laundry at night and use a toaster oven to cook when I can to help keep the house cool. This author goes as far as to say don’t dry your clothes in the dryer at all, cook outside on the grill, and use ceiling fans in a counter clockwise direction.

At the end of the day, open all the windows to let in cooler air. I would have a serious problem doing this. Where I live, there are too many different kinds of bugs that can get into my house from the windows, even the windows with screens on them.

The author of the article claims that they were able to save between $60 and $150 a month on their electric bill. Like I said, that is a big reduction in the cost of electricity, but I don’t personally think I could do it for an entire summer. Good luck to anyone that may want to try though!

So, what we want to know is:

“If you are, what are you doing to cut back”

For example:
I am cutting coupons, a lot of coupons and buying items that are on sale. I only buy beef from the grocery store when it goes on “clearance” (meaning, a day or so before it’s “sell by date”). I also buy a lot of something when it goes on sale (if it can be frozen). One of my favorite stores is the Wonder bread store where I can get 4 loaves of bread for $1.