We all fall for advertising, whether or not we would like to admit it. Of course, many of my friends and family scoff at print ads that make promises like “100 percent satisfaction guaranteed.” However, whenever we make daily purchases, we have a plurality of choice, and sometimes I wonder to what extent advertising pervades my decisions.
In terms of budgeting, I believe it’s very important to analyze how we go about making purchasing decisions when it comes to personal, pedestrian products that we buy at a grocery store or a convenient store. While we do tend to do much research when we are preparing ourselves to make large purchases–for example, a car or television–we may not even think twice about the products we buy monthly, even though when you really think about it, these smaller purchases often amount to a greater portion of our budget, when taken in aggregate, than do luxury, once-in-a-blue-moon items.
The thing about personal products at the grocery store is that while there are hundreds of different brands for essentially one item (think deodorant, toothpaste, cereal, etc.) they all essentially have the same functionality and effectiveness. As someone who is looking to spend and save wisely, the best way to go about picking products is to establish a criteria and stick to it. Here’s a suggested route:
1. What are my actual preferences (not preferences ads say that I must have)?
Everyone has preferences, and I think the best way to disentangle yourself from the pseudo-preferences that brands promote is to stop and think, what is it precisely about any product that I value? Preferences like specific flavors or scents are an example.
2. What is the cheapest product that adheres to my preferences?
This one is kind of tricky simply because sometimes the cheapest product is not necessarily the most cost-effective. What I do is start with the least expensive product that meets the above criteria, and then I determine if the next cheapest has anything of value to me specifically (better tasting or longer-lasting) that the cheapest one doesn’t.
3. What type of labeling draws my attention?
A recent study undertaken by Harvard School researchers found that many are drawn to advertising that perceives its products as the “underdog”. After reading the study, I found that I, too, fall for this sort of labeling. Always ask yourself about the product’s inherent value (which can be determined by trying out the product or reading reviews online) instead of its purported value.
These are just a few things to think about when it comes to advertising, but above all, whenever purchasing seemingly miniscule, everyday products, always be aware of what you are buying and why you are buying it at the moment of purchase. Ask yourself, do I really need this? Thinking deeply about purchases during routine shopping trips can, in the final analysis, help save more money than you would imagine.
About the Author:
This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who writes on the topics of online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com.
Your summer vacation shouldn’t burn a hole to your wallet or drown you in debts – smart budgeting can help you get more for less. Here are some budgeting tips to help you budget for summer vacation:
1. Create a budget way ahead and start saving money
You can regularly save a certain amount of money from your income in preparation for summer vacation – this way you can manage to build up a lump sum of money for you to enjoy your summer – debt free. Remember, the more you save, the more you can spend it vacationing.
2. Find deals from the Internet
The Internet offers you a great opportunity to save lots of money for your vacation. Some offer special rates for booking over the web, while other offer discounts that only can be found online. Just google “vacation deals” or “travel deals” or “find hotel deals” and you’ll see plenty of options to choose.
3. Prepare meals yourself
Some accommodations allow you to opt out all-inclusive breakfasts and meals – use this opportunity to save big time. Some accommodations also allow you to cook your own meals – you should consider taking this route to keep your expense limited.
4. Book well in advance
Book your hotels, airline tickets, cars, etc. well in advance. They usually offer a much lower rate if you book well in advance.
5. Stay with friends or family
Instead of making hotel reservations, consider to stay with your friends or family residing on your summer vacation travel destination. Accommodations are one of the biggest chunk in your vacation budget’s expense column – eliminate most of them can free rooms for more fun.
6. Make use of freebies
Some hotels and bungalows offer free shuttle to main tourist attractions – use it as much as you can. Even if you don’t want to see the attractions, use the free shuttle to get you nearer to your destination. Also, some places of interests are simply open for public – for free – why don’t you consider visiting them?
I hope the tips can help making your summer vacation a more enjoyable experience – have fun!
A new baby will bring joy to your family, as well as headaches in your personal budgeting. Before your new family member arrives in the midst of your family, you need to start updating your family budgeting, especially in the expenses column.
Here are some tips to help you budget for the arrival:
1. Create a list
List the items you will need for your baby. Ask family members or friends who are new parents to help you make and refine your list.
2. Your baby’s first year
Consider your baby’s need for the first year – furniture (crib, changing table, etc.,) gear (car seat, stroller, baby chair, etc.,) bathroom accessories (diapers, wipes, towels, etc.,) feeding (bottles, pumps, etc.,) and other needs, including yours (diaper bag, etc.)
3. Other caring expenses
Also consider these to fit into your budget: child care, insurances, etc. including a decrease in income if a parent stays at home.
4. Compare prices
By now, you should have a good list of your baby’s need. Your next step would be compare prices. A hint: shop online for massive price cuts!
5. Calculate, review, prioritize and adjust
Add the costs to make a total. From this total, you need to review whether you want to spend the amount or not. Chances are, you will find that you need to take some, less important, items off from the list to cut your spending.
6. Stick to your budget and adjust it along the way
Your next step would be sticking to your budget. Record expenses as they occur and try to balance your budget (if you spend more, subtract the same amount from others in your list; if you spend less, consider it as a reserve for other needs.) You will also need to adjust your budget according to your circumstances.
7. Long term planning
From the first year and beyond, you need to consider other costs, as well, such as toys and educational expenses. Save and invest early – this is the best advice I can give as it has been proven time and time again that saving and investing early will make a huge difference later on.
Whenever you wish to fulfill your dream of having your own house, you ask yourself “how much can I borrow for a mortgage“. Whether or not you would qualify for a loan, depends on your gross monthly income, interest rate, debt payments and other monthly liabilities.
Calculate how much u can borrow
You can use a “how much can I borrow for a mortgage” calculator to find out how much loan you can borrow. The calculator requires the following inputs:
• Your total monthly income before tax deduction
• Monthly payment towards your existing debts
• Your monthly credit card payments
• Child support and monthly alimony
• Your desirable rate of interest ,time period of the loan (years) and down payment
• Yearly property taxes and insurances you expect
Factors determining the amount you can borrow
When you apply for a home loan, you often think about “how much can I borrow for a mortgage”. The maximum loan you can get is the amount your lenders think you can manage. The maximum loan amount that you can be offered depends on:
• Your gross monthly income: Your income is used to determine how much monthly payment you can afford.
• Your outstanding debts: Lenders consider your existing debts and how much monthly payment you make towards them.
• Debt to income ratio: The debt to income ratio can be a front-end ratio or a back-end ratio. Your gross monthly income divided by your new home loan payment (including the principal, rate of interest, property insurance and taxes) gives the front-end ratio.
Back-end ratio is your gross monthly income divided by the portion of income that goes towards paying your monthly liabilities (including the new mortgage payment, existing loan payments and credit card payments). “How much can I borrow for a mortgage” largely depends on these two ratios.
• Loan to value ratio: Loan to value ratio is the loan amount (the purchase price of the property minus the down payment) divided by the purchase price. Lenders evaluate this ratio to determine the loan they can offer you.
If you are concerned with “how much can I borrow for a mortgage”, you must work on improving your credit score by eliminating negative listings on your credit report. This is because lenders consider the score to approve you for a mortgage.
Image by lilinhah.
Do you print a lot? I do. I print my own business cards, greeting cards, calendars, to-do lists, organizers, and many more. Do-it-yourself (DIY) does save a lot. Or does it?
I just realized a while ago that one of the biggest misconceptions in your personal finance’s cost-cutting endeavors is DIY. DIY is thought to be less-expensive than buying printed products in stores or buying/hiring someone to print for you. In fact, in some cases, DIY is a bad practice in budgeting for your personal finance.
In printing, you might get things at lower cost by doing DIY, but quite often you forget to consider your time, energy, electricity and other materials for the DIY purposes. Quite often, discount printing service such as PsPrint can offer you a better overall resource-saving that is budget-friendly.
Printing stickers for your kids’ school project doesn’t always come cheaper by DIY. Instead, ‘outsource’ your sticker printing to printing services can save a lot of time, even money, on your side. More examples: If you are going to send greeting cards to your friends and family with your pictures in them, it is probably better for you to get your printing job done with the help of discount printing service provider that can offer you low-quantity printing solutions. For your business needs, you can also ‘outsource’ your Business checks printing with the help of a discount printing service.
Let us consider Pareto’s 80-20 law – DIY can cost you 80% of your time for only 20% result, whereas getting the job done by a discount printing service can get you 80% job done using only 20% of your time – Just think about this and you’ll realize how much time we waste in order to minimize our spending.
All in all, following some common sense can avoid you from unnecessary uses of your limited resources.
To make your budget more effective and work efficient, you must know about the budgeting tools. You can maximize your savings and earnings with the effective means of budgeting tools. Here is how to seek for the right budgeting tools and software for you.
If you are preparing your personal budget, you require a budget tool that would help you to figure out what are your expenses on monthly basis. For example payment of rent, electricity, water, internet, phone bill, groceries, shopping for clothes, fuel for your car, movies and DVDs.
On the other side, the budgeting tool will also give you an account of your earnings in the form of salary, property income, investor income or any other income. So, this tool will help you in making an assessment of your earnings on one side and expenses on the other side. This is a personal budgeting tool.
Another budgeting tool which will help you to manage your finances and this tool would detail your expenses, savings, credit card bills and a complete list and pattern of your spending. With the help of this tool, you can assess where you are spending more and can make suitable changes in that area. Controlling your expenses is also a budgeting tool that that helps you to make an assessment about monthly expenses.
There are plenty of web sites on Internet which will guide you to download budgeting software programs. Once you install the budgeting tool software in your computer, you can work on it by entering your income, expenses and savings. This work sheet will help you to identify where exactly you are spending more money and how you can lower your expenses and stay within your budget limit. One personal budgeting software Money Estate recommends is Money Tree.
Another type of budgeting tool is online budgeting tool. Some of the best budgeting tools available online is free to use. Money Estate’s choice for this online budgeting tool is Mint.com. Mint.com downloads and categorizes your balances and transactions on daily basis – automatic – and present them in graphs and stats for getting a better view on your personal finance.
It will also help you to cut your costs and would give a clear picture of your personal finances. So next time when you are working on budgeting tool search for software that suits your needs and that helps you to maintain your budget.
Financial planning is a very crucial subject for every individual, company and industry. This is to ensure that our funds are managed well and we maintain our income, earnings and profits.
Financial planning is essential, even crucial. Therefore, if you are unsure about what you are doing in financial planning, you might need help from a financial planner instead of doing it yourself.
Financial planning has to be learned from fundamentals. If you are planning to buy a home in a span of five years from now, you need to have your financial planning so that you can have savings in your bank account to help you to buy your own home. In order to make more savings, you need to cut your expenses wherever possible.
Financial planning for your taxes, retirement and business are special and unique in its importance and each category of financial planning requires a specific planning. Some of the needs (often disguise as ‘investment’) can be postponed and those that can purchased now which are required for the present needs, can be purchased. All of those need proper handling, and doing it wrong today can lead you to opportunity losses in the future.
Therefore, again, if you do not have much knowledge about financial planning, you should consult a financial planner who would be able to give you proper advice and suitable guidance on your financial planning.
The job of a financial planner is to give you the best guidance and support to help in your wedding, buying you a perfect home, see that you have sufficient money in your savings account when you retire from your employment. If you are in business, financial planner would help you with various models of financial planning.
Therefore, always hire an efficient financial planner who can give you an excellent financial planning schedule which helps you to increase your finances and also keeps you safe from financial situations. While discussing with your financial planner about your financial planning, be honest and sincere in your presentation and that will help your financial planner to guide you properly with a professional advice and suggestion.
You also need to go by the advice of the financial planner for financial planning, and you can deviate from the plan as it will increase your expenses and may not help you further. Therefore you must know that the financial planning is an effective tool that will help you to stand ahead of your situations.
Image by koyochi.
When we have our income before us every month, we immediately think about our monthly expense. We have to pay our rent, telephone bill, electricity bill and fuel bill.
These are quite common expenses that every one has to pay. Apart from this, if you have to pay your credit card bills for your jewelry shopping or clothes and accessories, or if you have purchased a new car, budgeting is very much necessary to take account of each and every expense that goes out of your savings account.
Whether at corporate level or at personal level, budgeting has a unique identity with strong fundamental concepts of income, expenditure and savings. At personal level, monthly budget plan is very simple and easy to prepare.
First and foremost important thing is to prepare a work sheet either in Microsoft Excel or download budgeting software program. Enter your total money receiving as earnings on one side and your expenses on the other side. Total your earnings and total your expenses.
If your earnings are above expenses, then you are moderate in your spending. But if your expenses are above your earnings, you need to work on budgeting. With easy access to Internet, you can download financial management packages for your use and benefit. These software programs are very effective in budgeting and would also help you to become efficient in your personal budget.
Once you begin to practice your budgeting, you will begin to go by the guidance of the budget and this will help you in becoming a money saver. This is due to the fact that, whatever that you have mentioned in your budgeting sheet, you will practice and may not be willing to spend beyond your earnings.
For example in a span of four years time, you wish to buy a home and if you plan your budgeting in such a way that you make proportionate savings in your account that help you to buy a home, it is a goal for you and you want to achieve as you wish to have your own home. This cost and expense monitoring has to be made both at personal level and at corporate level. Because anywhere expenses send the money out of your savings account, while reduction in your expenses will increase the money figures in your bank account.
Practice budgeting for your own benefit.
Online money management has become an easy task with the assistance services which supervise your accounts along with other monetary details. There are numerous sites amongst which Buxfer, Mint, Geezeo and Kublax are significant rendering necessary information along with the required data that enables you to make more prudent monetary decisions.
Buxfer offers easy tolls for quick management of your money. With Buxfer you can link your bank accounts as well as credit cards to the website. If you have an association with major monetary institutions such as Bank of America, you will be asked whether you are interested in synchronizing your accounts. In yes then you will have to enter the username of the bank along with the password.
What makes Buxfer outshine is its simplicity. In this service the customers are offered tabs that can be easily comprehended as well as step wise instruction on ways to put in accounts, view reports, plus formation of budgets. The whole procedure of forming accounts plus budgets is speedy and easy. It is ideal for the newbie as it is extremely responsive.
If you are sorting out for extra assistance further than keeping a track of your monetary details, then the best option for you is Geezeo. However, it fails to furnish you with wide data that keeps you well informed like Buxfer. Geezeo is user friendly that makes it alluring for the beginners. This service keeps a track of all the amendments taking place in the added accounts. Armed with all the essential details, Geezeo goes a step further by formulating a budget for you along with setting objectives to eye the way you manage money. Along with this by generating regular reports it assists you to chalk out your overall financial condition.
The most hyped feature of Geezeo is its community. Apart from rendering monetary information the company allows you to link with its other users to seek any monetary advice from then. Within the community, groups can also be formed amongst the like minded people to carry out a discussion concerning their monetary objectives. For those questions you find hard to crack, you can seek the advice of experts.
Another service that you can opt for is Mint. Besides the standard features it offers, the core function of Mint is to keep a check on your habits of spending along with making suggestions that will enable you to curtail your expenses. If you possess a credit card having high rate of interest then the advertising network of Mint will propose you to log in for a particular service after conducting a research.
Of all, I recommend Kublax – A comprehensive online money management made easy. It is as easy as buxfer to use, while can help you budget and control your spending pattern as well as Mint. Kublax calendar and alert system are very useful to avoid late fees by paying your bills on time.
Image by lusi.
With the pressure of recession is surmounting in our daily life, smarter budgeting tactics are needed to ace the bad economic weather. The right budgeting methods can help you survive, even prosper today, without the need to live below your mean.
These tips involve nothing related to live below your mean, as it is probably the worst budgeting strategy and financial advice someone can offer you.
Image by _rockinfree.
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