How I Save Money Montly Update: May 2008
I just realized that it has been a while since I last posted my Monthly Update here. I have been working on the daily summary but I neglected to provide the monthly round up with all the details.
In May I did come out ahead after my salary came in on the last day of the month. Amt Spent/Budget is listed below
Areas over Budget:
Clothes $51.94/$30 I ended up buying a complete outfit for graduation that I had not planned on, going $21.94 over my budget.
How I Save Money At CVS: June 8
Well I was doing well with saving money at CVS the last two times I went and then this time I blew it. I only buy things that I actually use because I do not want to get extra things just to gain the extra bucks.
The best way to save money is to split up the transactions and use the extra care bucks (ECB) from one transaction to pay for the next transaction. I have no idea where my head was but I just put all the items together and rang it up as one big transaction.
How I Save Money visits: June 14
Welcome to How I Save Money visits ! Today we visit:
Birthday Money at Saving For a Home Of My Own . My birthday is coming up next month and I hope I get money too since we all know how much I need it.
Review of Bank Stock Holdings at Dividends 4 Life . I think I will be buying some bank stocks when I get out of debt, along with stocks for WalMart since they get so much of my money anyway!!!
Baz over Budget
Here at How I Save Money I use a budget. I recently read a post that said Why You Do Not Want A Budget . I think this is one of the worst pieces of advice you can ever give someone, especially if they have debt.
This is honestly a rather disturbing article to me because it states that your finances will take care of themselves without any interference on your part . Now while I agree that there comes a point where your finances will be automatic you will still need to check up on things every once in a while to make sure that everything is running smoothly. You will need to do this in cases where you get a bonus or need to make an extra payment on something.
Baz from Life Of Baz actually has a budget and uses it..until the one time it failed him. He got so dependent on technology to track his finances that he never noticed that Money was not alerting him that he was over budget. Since he was not getting the red flags he assumed that he was right on track.
He looked under his budget today and noticed that he was actually over his budget on many items . Now this was not a big deal because he has discretionary income that can cover the excesses and he does not have to dip into savings or go into debt.
If he was in a situation where he did not have this free cash flow or an emergency fund then he would really have a problem. He would have been over his budget and might have to incur debt to cover his daily living expenses. Having a budget keeps you on track to know what you have coming in and what you are spending so that you can manage your money better.
His budget showed him that he was overspending on some areas that he could really cut back on and it also showed him areas where he was saving money so that he could use that savings to get the things he really wanted.
A budget does not mean that you are in a financial straight jacket but it does mean that you can monitor what you are doing so you can see that you spent $250 on dining out in one month….which is bad when you have a humongous amount of loan money to pay back for example.
Tracking My Finances in June: Day 11
Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.
Income for the month to date: $29.33
Expenses for the month to date: $1570.15
Net effect: -$1540.82
This month looks UGLY and I do not know if I will be able to save money at all. I spent $30.64 on gas this week because I had to drive a good bit to go to a job fair. It was a big disappointment because:
- The job was filled by the time I moved up in the line to the recruiter
How I Save Money on Gas with Hypermiling (Wealth, Money & Life Network group project)
I recently wrote How I Save Money on Buying Gas and I mentioned Hypermiling , which caused a reader to ask me what that was. Hypermiling is simply a method of using various techniques to get the best gas mileage you possibly can.
According to Hypermiling.com there are six basic steps that you can use to achieve hypermiling but I do not use all of them, which is why I said I practice a mild form of hypermiling.
One step I do not use is the Cruise Control method…because my car does not have cruise control!!!!!
Tracking My Finances In June: Day 9
Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.
Income for the month to date: $27.79
Expenses for the month to date: $1025.32
Net effect: -$997.53
Income for today was 11 cents that I found outside WalMart . Yippee!!!!! I actually found a penny first and said ‘pick up a penny and have good luck’ and then I spotted the dime.
Carnival Of Credit Report Stories: June 9
Welcome to the June 9, 2008 edition of credit report stories.
KCLau presents When should you rewrite your Will? posted at KCLau’s Money Tips , saying, "On what you should look out for when considering rewriting your will"
imarketing4s presents How To Work Through Debt Consolidation posted at Loans and Finance .
Mag Herrera presents The Quest for Making Money Online posted at Life. Money. Development. , saying, "Personal opinion and views about the rush for making money online"
credit card
FIRE Getters presents Sneaky Credit Card Trick #1 – Over The Credit Limit Fees posted at FIRE Finance .
