Sunday Saving Tip – Planning Your Spending
May 27th, 2007
This is the first post in a series that I’ve been planning on putting up on the site for a little while now and I’ve finally managed to get around to it. The whole premise is to throw out an idea for a saving tip weekly and give some examples and details as to why I think this is a good idea. Now of course some of the tips I’ve got planned out really won’t apply to everyone and in some cases might be a reflection on how I would have done something a little differently. The goal behind these ideas and tips is to maybe provide some of the readers with ideas how they might be able to save some money and a the very least get their minds going so they come up with their own ideas.
Now onto the first saving tip that I wanted to write about, planning your spending. This is a bit of a no brainer when it comes to anyone who is active with their personal finances and careful with their money but I think it should be reiterated. Also I’m not talking about budgeting, its more specific than that, I’m referring to planning your spending before you’re about to go do it. The classic example for this would be the shopping list when you go to the grocery store.
Planning your spending will reduce the chance you’ll make an impulse buy. I’ve witnessed this personally when we’ve gone grocery shopping both with and without lists. When we get into the store with the list in hand we really just go for the items that we’re looking for. Occasionally a snack food makes it into the cart but the overall effect is we buy what we need and get out of the store quickly. On the times that we’ve gone in without a list all sorts of things make it into the shopping cart that might not be there otherwise. Half formed ideas of what we want to eat during the week translate into over spending.
Planning out your spending also gives you the ability to see where your money is going and to continue using the grocery shopping as an example, you’ll start realizing that you already got 3 types of Caesar salad dressing at home and won’t need to buy another one. Its just a matter of reducing the spending to what you need rather than what you might need.
As a nice side effect planning out shopping lists I found the impulse buys decreased. Now there’s nothing wrong with the odd impulse buy here and there for something like a magazine or a coke but when you’re buying these types of things all the time the costs add up incredibly quickly and the worst part is it might be hard to notice the cost of these items collectively. It’s just a dollar is what you tell your brain, but when you tell yourself the same thing 50 times its no longer just a dollar but its now $50. I guess this is more of a mental exercise that I found helps me reduce the incidental spending during the week and help reduce unnecessary purchases (especially of items we already had).
Technorati Tags: saving tip, spending, shopping lists
Posted in Saving Ideas | No Comments
Goal Update
May 26th, 2007
The last goal that I came up with (#4) was to get a handle on all of the bills and payments that I’m dealing with and to get caught up on them. I’ve been struggling with this recently and it’s about time to stop paying my bills late. I know better than to let this happen and yet I’m still struggling with it. I guess this really goes back to the basics of learning you can have all the specialized and applicable knowledge in the world but if you don’t apply it, it’s pretty much useless. I know better but I haven’t been applying this so this knowledge is useless.
It’s frustrating knowing what you need to know but for some reason or another not actually doing anything about it. Seeing the potential for change and the benefits of it and not doing anything about it just gets under my skin and I know in the back of my mind that I need to do something about it. Yet I do nothing, I believe that it’s a matter of comfort and the status quo. Since I took my pay cut I figured that I’d be tight on money and even though I know I could do better I just floated along. Being frustrated with yourself is a very strange sensation because you’re the one and only person that can actually do something about it.
My latest goal was to get my immediate finances under control and I’m starting to get there. I’ve brought both my Line of Credit and two Visas current. Which are the items that I was most concerned with, the automated payments coming out of my account continue to go which leaves my cell phone and a utility which is a couple days late and one toll company that I’ve neglected for a while. The goal for next week is to take care of the cell phone and the toll company, which will leave just the utility that I’ll have to pay from my next pay. Those are the bills that I know are outstanding and need to be resolved and paid right away.
When I’m in paying for the cell phone I plan to see about changing the plan to a lower one, I don’t use it that much and I could save myself some money by doing this. I’m also planning on setting this up as an automatic payment but instead of getting the vendor to set this up I’ll do it myself in my online banking – to ensure it comes out when I actually have money.
The past couple months have really strained me financially and it’s time to start applying the lessons that I’ve learnt about personal finance. The next step will be to invest in a credit score even though I’m sure it won’t be very pretty though if I don’t have this information I won’t really know where I really stand. Struggling with debt is not a good place to be, it makes life that much more stressful than it really needs to be.
Technorati Tags: personal finance, goals, bills, getting caught up
Posted in Budgeting and Planning, Financial Situation | No Comments
Making Money Blogging
May 16th, 2007
Recently I received a few emails asking me about advertising on this site and to be really honest with you I hadn’t ever thought about it, at least not at any great length. Site monetization for me has always been of the unobtrusive variety where I stick in some google adwords and a couple Amazon links and leave it at that. By that same token I’ve made virtually nothing from this site and although I would love to at least be paying for the hosting I’m not overly concerned that I’m not. But what those couple emails about advertising did accomplish was it got me thinking about making money blogging and specifically off this site.
I realized a few things rather quickly: 1) I really wasn’t making much money off this site, 2) I could probably do a few things to improve my chances of making more, and 3) I really don’t have enough traffic for making a lot of money so my initial expectations should be maintained. I started doing some research on the subject and ran across a few sites and posts that were interesting:
Sites/Articles About Making Money Blogging:
I wanted to get a little perspective before I really made up my mind about any of this monetization stuff. The whole idea of making money off a blog stirs up a lot of controversy or at the very least makes the individual question why they are writing on their blog. Of course we would all love to make more money but are we posting and creating content just to make money? Personally I’m writing about personal finance for myself; and to let anyone interested hear how I’m dealing with it and sharing my stories about my struggles with money. Making money on this site is a perk something that I wasn’t expecting to receive in any great abundance if at all.
Do I think that making money while doing something that you genuinely like is a bad thing? Definitely not nor will I ever; I went back to school because of a banner ad so I would be a hypocrite if I thought that there was no value to online advertising. Though I do believe that there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Sites that overdo it and bombard the reader with advertising take it too far. Also the bloggers out there that get paid to post without disclosing that they are making money off a specific post also make me question the validity of their writing and intentions (unfortunately these are often hard to discover).
The reason the whole idea of paid posting ever crossed my mind was that one of the requests for advertising also included the possibility of writing a paid post. Would I ever take money for writing a post on a specific topic to drop in a companies name and url? Yes I believe that I would as long as a few conditions were met: first off the tilt of the article could not be controlled by the purchaser (though I would give them the veto if they wanted the post to go up or not), as long as I had creative control over what I write then I would consider writing the post. Secondly it would have to be about a topic that is both related to my blog and one that I had something to say about. For example if someone offered to pay me about collecting Beanie Babies and how that could be an investment I would have to decline. A topic like that really has nothing to do with this site and I couldn’t care less about the topic. (My apologies if I just lost a potential advertiser). The final point for me that would have to be met if I were to write a paid post is that I would have to be allowed to disclose that it was a paid post. I’m open to this form of money making on a blog and I think it’s a very valid one as long as its limited and not hidden.
Thinking about monetizing this site really made me question why I post and raised a few questions about things such as traffic, trying to get more traffic and where to draw the line with my efforts to make money off the site. Realistically I don’t have the traffic to generate any substantial revenue off this site, but is this site all about making money? No I would much rather have more traffic because of the posts I write and giving the readers an insight into my struggles with my finances. Maybe by writing these posts I can help some people gain some better control over their finances and maybe help them get to their million dollars. At the very least sharing my thoughts, opinions and experiences might give them some ideas as to what they could do with their own money situations. So does traffic matter? Yes of course , I want to share my thoughts, opinions, and experiences with people. I believe that it helps both them and me, I’ve learnt a lot from other personal finance sites and I think I have something to offer. The generation of traffic is about the content for me.
I am going to be changing a few things around this site as a result of this whole line of thinking in an effort to reduce visual clutter and potentially make myself a little bit more money (it would be nice to cover hosting costs). I really liked what Steve Pavlina had on his site, a donate button, it’s a very unobtrusive way of asking for support from some of the readers that you have out there who are in a position to help out. Maybe some have been in a similar position and can offer some additional support through a donation. Either way I liked this approach rather than trying to help sell books on Amazon and as a result I’ve put up a donate button.
For those of you out there who are also struggling mentally with what do to about monetizing your site I highly recommend reading problogger.net and the great article by Steve Pavlina on the subject. They’re both very informative on the subject and in the case of the Pavlina article they make you question why exactly you’re writing which will change your approach to the matter. Blogging can be a great hobby and a great way to make a little extra money while doing something you love; maybe one day I can write for a living rather than having a day job (I won’t hold my breath just yet)
Posted in Commentary, Extra Income | 3 Comments
My One Luxury: The Boat
May 11th, 2007
Every person has something that they like to indulge in from time to time, for some its going to a fancy restaurant, others buy themselves something nice, it changes from person to person but I believe that everyone has something that they will indulge in when they have the opportunity. For me it’s my boat, she’s a small sailboat that sleeps my fiancé and I.
Now before I get any further into this post, the idea for this topic came out of a couple comments on my April update post. Both LAMoneyguy and Low Quote suggested that I should consider selling my boat to help my get a better grip on my finances. And while I agree with them in principle it became clear to me that my boat is the one luxury that I really partake in and enjoy. Its my stress relief during the summers. Of course the boat costs me money when it comes to maintenance but there’s no loan costs and it doesn’t drag me down in my regular monthly finances. The costs for the boat are one time during the winter to pay for the marina fees and then during the summer while I spend time on her (a cost that would exist regardless).
For my fiancé and I this is our way to get out of the city and not worry about life for a couple days during the weekend. Some people have cottages unfortunately I don’t have this level of luxury, I just go to my little boat and sail around on the lake and just enjoy being out of the city. The boat could very well be considered my hobby and it probably costs me as much as one would (about 1500$ per year), heck it costs about as much as being a smoker does per year so the cost isn’t drastic.
The idea of selling the boat and using that money to pay down my existing debt is a tempting idea but the ability to de-stress also has a value to it and although this is an intangible value its probably more significant than paying down some debt. The ability to de-stress at regular intervals over the span of 5-6 months out of the year is definitely worth it to me. If I were still paying this boat off then this would be a completely different story but I got her essentially for free.
Do you have something that you indulge in that could be considered a luxury? Why do you do it?
Technorati Tags: luxury, cost, stress relief, boat
Posted in Commentary | 3 Comments
Goal # 4 – Back to simplicity
May 4th, 2007
I guess the title of this post is a little deceptive since the goal isn’t to get back to simplicity or a simple life but to simplify the goal that I’m setting a bit more. I’ve set some lofty goals that I’ve failed at and there’s nothing more discouraging than failing at your goals. To this end The Simple Dollar had a great post yesterday about just this topic and provided some tips and overcoming this problem.
The goal that I’m setting for myself will replace the typical monthly goals until I can build myself back up to being able to reach multiple goals at the same time. The 4th goal that I’m setting for myself will be two fold and far simpler than those in the past:
Goal #4
Part 1 – Get caught up on all of my outstanding bills, start with the ones that are overdue and progress to those that are due this month.
Part 2 – Automate as much of this as possible. There is no excuse for a bill going unpaid in our world of automation and bill payment options.
As you can see this is far simpler than trying to hit X$ by a set date. The timeline for this goal will be the month of May which is a good thing since it’s a month that I’m going to receive 3 paychecks. I’ll detail my progress a bit more including outlining the bills and their payments.
Time to succeed rather than watch my goal fail miserably.
Technorati Tags: Goals, goal setting, budgeting, bills, monthly goal, automating finances
Posted in Budgeting and Planning, Monthly Planning | 1 Comment
April Net Worth Update
May 3rd, 2007
One of the things that I’ve been doing on this site is giving a breakdown on my financial situation at the end of each month. The first time I did this I was a little surprised that my net worth was a positive number. To top everything off the number hasn’t had negative movement very often at least not significantly so.
My net worth is an accurate statement of my net worth but for me it’s a bit deceiving since it includes an RPP (registered pension plan), which is virtually inaccessible to me until I retire. Pretty much everything else around my financial situation has been a disaster – especially of late.
I haven’t been happy with my money planning and spending the past couple months and the impact to my net worth is pretty clear:
Net worth
| Assets | |
| Mutual Funds | $0 |
| Cash | $0 |
| Stocks | $750.90 |
| Car(approx value) | $9,000 |
| Boat(approx value) | $3,500 |
| Pension Fund | $39,742.13 |
| Total Assets: | $52,242.13 |
| Liabilities | |
| Credit Card #1 | $6,614.20 |
| Credit Card #2 | $4,976.73 |
| Line of Credit | $15,187.25 |
| Car Loan | $13,342.89 |
| Overdraft | $1,801.64 |
| Total Liabilities | $41,922.71 |
| Net Worth | $10,319.42 |
Now what this doesn’t show is that I’m behind on a couple of my bills and my cash flow situation is very tight. I think its time to buckle down a bit more and be more conscientious about my spending. Its time to get those bills caught up – they’re currently not very late but they are late. It’s frustrating seeing my net worth drop and to struggle with money because I put myself into debt. I think that once the wedding is over I won’t has as much money bleeding out.
Posted in Monthly Planning, Financial Situation | 7 Comments
