Improving your finances doesn’t always have to be a question of saving money. Taking steps to increase your income is a legitimate option, and can make the books much easier to balance in the end. One of the most important strategies is to ask your boss for a raise: the worst that can usually happen is a “no”, but with proper preparation, you may be able to convince your boss to say yes. Here are some easy ways to improve your odds.
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A recession like the one we’ve been in doesn’t come to an end all at once; the economy gradually moves out of its funk, and the changes might not even be noticeable until one day you realize that things are already better. While this can provide some peace of mind, it is important not to get carried away. With improvements becoming more apparent in the economy, it can be tempting to begin abandoning some of the money practices you adopted out of necessity during the recession.
Don’t. Now is the time to learn from the past, and make sure you are prepared for the future. There will always be another recession at some point down the road. (Isn’t that fun to look forward to?)
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After the post from Thursday on supporting the locals, I read an article in a local publication describing the meat chain that recently setup shop in our neighborhood. The author described the chain as Goliath, and urged us to support David, the local butcher.
Being the inspired soon to be first time home owner, I decided to try my hands on barbecuing steak. I happily strolled down to the shop for the first time, bought a few slices of rib eye, asked a zillion questions just in case they didn’t spot me as a first time cook as I walked in and sang as I went home.
Emma was proud of me, but she pointed out that there was a dark spot on one of them when I pressed on for her opinion of the meat the shop chose for me. She explained that it’s probably been frozen for too long, but she comforted me by saying that it shouldn’t be that bad. We went on to barbecue the steak, and the meat, well… not so great.
Turns out the local business needs more than marketing and should improve their business model instead.
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The price of water is going up. As more and more of this precious natural resource is taken up by large scale farming and manufacturing, the average citizen finds his water bill spiraling out of control. The only effective way to cut costs here is to cut water usage, but reducing your water consumption can be done in a relatively painless fashion, so read on and save yourself some money.
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Sometimes, going against conventional wisdom can work out in your favor.
Emile writes:
I stumble on your website after a Google search and what a pleasure it was. I have a situation and I’d appreciate your honest opinion on it. I am graduating college in about a month with about $30,000 in credit card debt and student loans. I’ll be starting a job in June paying $72k/year. I was thinking of paying off all my debt during my 1st year.
Doing this would mean minimal savings. Do you think it is a good idea? FYI: I have about 20k in student loan and 10k in credit card.
Many people will tell you to build an emergency fund first, but I will tell you otherwise, as soon as you feel comfortable in saying that you are safe at your current position.
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Starting next month, the plan to allocate my income will drastically change.
Trying to land a loan has been an unnecessarily cumbersome process, but now that we are through jumping over all the hurdles, I can concentrate on figuring out how I will continue to allocate my income to build wealth. For a while now, the plan was simple: stick everything other than retirement account contributions in an online savings account in order to save for a down payment. As our short term need for money essentially vanished after buying our first home though, it’s time for an re-evaluation. Here’s what we came up with. Please take a look and give some comments or ask questions.
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