Sharing insights since 2007 on carefully saving money, investing, frugal living, coupons, promo codes because the little things matter in achieving financial freedom!
It’s rarely a good idea to make important decisions when you’re under stress – especially if that stress is emotional in nature. Emotional distress can lead to poor financial decisions, which, in turn, can deepen your money problems.
When you feel distressed, it’s common to try and ease your feelings by engaging in activities that trigger good feelings, or that at least allow you to temporarily escape from the situation. If you’re not careful, making money decisions based on your feelings can lead to ruin.
Distress, Control, and Money
“Distress often comes from feeling out of control,” says Kathy Gruver, Ph.D., a health and wellness expert specializing in stress. When you feel out of control, she points out, you do your best to seize control of the situation. The way you use your money is one of the easiest ways to exert control in your life. [ continue reading… ]
The weather is warming and the virus is receding. This means to me that garage sales, lots of ’em, are going to pop up soon. From visiting neighborhood garage sales to cruising the city in search of signs, garage sales can be a fun and frugal way to stock up on needed items. Hosting a garage sale can also bring in additional cash for items that you no longer need or want.
You don’t want to overspend soon, do you? Here are some tips to make this year’s yard sale experiences profitable. [ continue reading… ]
Have you noticed how everything is so much more expensive lately? Gas prices stick out like a sore thumb, but at least that fluctuates all the time and can go down in the future. The increase that is most scary to me is the restaurant prices in my area. What used to cost $8 or $10 a meal is easily $15 now. We got takeout from a sushi restaurant the other day and the place charged us $28.95 for a sushi combo, which was a 30% increase!
Even video games are trying to raise prices. I don’t have a Playstation 5, the next-generation console that came out last year. But a new game came out for it and they are charging $69.99 for the game when the norm for a new release has been $59.99 for years.
Emma told me that grocery prices have gone way up too. And we aren’t talking about a 1%, 2%, or even 5% here. Some things have gone up by 20% or 30%. Yikes! [ continue reading… ]
Hobbies are part of how we express our individuality. In the daily grind of life, they’re also a way we can unwind, have some fun, and do the things we most enjoy. Without this outlet, life would be a lot more stressful. You could say that having hobbies is good for your health and well-being.
On the other hand, hobbies can be downright expensive and a huge strain when balancing your budget. For some people, their hobby is actually a source of financial stress even if they don’t realize it’s causing that much damage to their financial health.
Here’s a list of some of the most expensive hobbies in the world:
Big game hunting, sailing, flying, mountain climbing, cigarette boat racing, hot air ballooning, collecting art and other expensive antiques or memorabilia, drag racing, flying, horseback riding, playing polo, ballroom dancing, tornado chasing, and sky diving
Believe it or not, some of these hobbies can cost millions of dollars a year. It’s important to keep in mind though that hobbies should be relative to your lifestyle and income level. Someone who is making several million a year can afford to spend more on their hobbies. What would be an expensive hobby for us might only be consuming 1% of another person’s income.
I heard on the radio the other day how two-thirds of Americans spent more time (and money!) on their hobby since the lockdowns. So, how much should YOU be spending on your hobbies? [ continue reading… ]
More often than not, persistence and the will to keep plugging away pays off. This is Travis’s debt story…
After having accumulated $109,000 in credit card debt, our finances finally reached a boiling point a few years ago. No longer able to meet all of our financial commitments, my wife and I enrolled in a debt management plan. This lowered the interest rates on our lines of credit, allowing us to finally make progress on the balances.
But that wasn’t good enough.
We needed to reduce our expenses. Each month, my wife and I examined every expense and cut everything we could to create more breathing room in our budget. But there was one thing that I promised my wife I would fight tooth and nail to keep.
“As a rule of thumb, you probably shouldn’t be taking a nap now since it’s a workday,” my daughter told me the other day. And she’s right. She told me on a Monday too. Plus, I was being lazy all morning. All in all, it’s been a fantastic start to the week. Don’t Rely Too Much on Financial Rules of Thumb If You Care About Your Sanity But what good would it do for me to just sit in front of the computer staring at my computer screen? Wouldn’t it be better for me to take a nap, feel energized afterward and be more productive? “I’ll take a nap now and figure out a way to make money off of this” and off I went. [ continue reading… ]
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