Sharing insights since 2007 on carefully saving money, investing, frugal living, coupons, promo codes because the little things matter in achieving financial freedom!
Life can be full of unexpected surprises. No matter how much we plan, prepare, and set out to accomplish certain goals in life, life usually has other plans.
It’s in those crisis moments when we feel like we are off our “path”. A layoff, a breakup, a divorce, a move, or a financial emergency can derail your life order and have you feeling out of sorts.
When I was 22, I had a series of events that occurred that threw everything off. Within a period of six months, I dealt with a breakup, a layoff, a car accident, and the passing of my grandmother. On top of that, all the stress was literally making me sick.
At a fairly young age, when I was trying to make it on my own, it felt like everything was working against me. Everything felt hard. [ continue reading… ]
You want to protect your children from all that you can as a parent – kidnapping, bullies, diseases, and even hurt feelings. However, you might not be aware of the risk of child identity theft.
Children are a target for identity theft because they have a clean slate. Plus, it can take years before the fraud is even detected. If a child’s identity is stolen at a young age, they might not even notice the error until they request their first credit report or apply for their first line of credit as a teenager. By then, the paper trail of the thief would be hard to trace down. So what do you do? Here are a few suggestions. [ continue reading… ]
Most people wouldn’t complain if they suddenly became rich. In fact, millions of people play the lottery every week with just this hope even though, statistically, their chances of winning are next to nothing.
If we’re honest, we can admit that if we spent less time complaining about our circumstances and more time studying and following the lifestyle habits and principles that have made people rich, we’d be a lot closer to our financial goals.
The ideology and practices that build wealth can be summed up as hard work, conservatism, ingenuity, and an opportunistic mindset.
If you’re not a natural-born saver, you might believe that the key to becoming a good money manager is willpower and deprivation. The thinking with this is that if you just grit your teeth, force yourself to forgo temptations, and record every penny, then you’ll become more responsible with your money.
The only problem with that theory is that reliance on willpower is doomed to fail. As anyone who has tried an extreme budget (or diet) can tell you, we all have a tendency to rebel against too-strict rules, even when they are self-enforced.
A better plan is to work on improving your willpower since studies have shown that practicing willpower in one part of your life makes it easier to resist temptations in seemingly other unrelated areas of your life.
Here are four non-financial habits you can adopt to become a better self-regulator. [ continue reading… ]
We all know that our credit score is very important when it comes to our financial health. When you’re applying for a loan, your credit score can be the deciding factor in not just getting the funding or not, but the number also dictates how much interest you ultimately have to pay. Yet, many people don’t have a clue how their credit score is affected. Do you?
There are many factors that go into your credit score, including payment history and credit-to-debt ratio. And you might not even realize it but many things you do every day affect these factors. Sometimes, we hurt our credit scores without even knowing it. Here are five things you might be doing that are ruining your credit score: [ continue reading… ]
I will be honest because personal finance must involve an honest conversation. Though some personal finance sites might compare needing a budget to needing air or food, I don’t plan to be that melodramatic.
I will, however, emphasize that I think budgets are essential to maintaining financial order in your life.
A budget can be as simple as you make it: add up your fixed expenses (car payment, rent, utilities, savings, etc.) and subtract that amount from what you make, resulting in how much you have to spend on food, gas, and other expenses. Or, you can make your budget more detailed and try to account for each of these things and give yourself a ceiling amount, which you try to stay under each month. For this budget, if you have money left over at the end of the month, you can choose to spend it or roll it over to the next month’s budget.
Regardless of the way you choose to organize your budget, the point is to make sure to have one because it can make your financial life a lot easier. Even if you mess up and have scratch marks (or lots of “Select All” and “Delete” options chosen in your queue of actions) all over your budget, again, the point is to have a budget and that you are trying to make it work. [ continue reading… ]
Free signup to get a free ebook on How to Save Money on Everything! Constantly expanding, it will be the biggest money saving ebook available, and it's FREE! →
(I hate spam and promise that your information will never be shared.)
