Tracking My Finances In June: Day 16
Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.
Income for the month to date: $31.24
Expenses for the month to date: $1750.03
Net effect: -$1718.79
According to my Excel spreadsheet I have already paid off all the regular monthly bills except the bill for the LASIK which does not come until the end of the month. I am not paying this bill early because it is at 0% interest for the next three years so there is no incentive to get rid of it while I still have debt that actually carries an interest rate.
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.
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 6
Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.
Income for the month to date: $27.68
Expenses for the month to date: $881.82
Net effect: -$854.14 (happy now Mark? 
)
When I posted Tracking My Finances In June: Day 4 I got a comment from a reader who was wondering why my negative information was so low. Wow, I guess everyone is so used to seeing me with a huge negative cash flow at the beginning of the month that it was a surprise to see such a small figure. The reason for the lower numbers is that I paid the rent and utilities later and they took a longer time to post. I am now back on schedule with my finances so readers will be glad relieved interested to see the negative cash flow again.
Tracking My Finances In May: Day 29
Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.
Income for the month to date: $907.67
Expenses for the month to date: $2703.78
Net effect: -$1796.11
I received $101.47 income from the ads that run on this blog so that money has really helped me. I realize that it is not in the league of ProBlogger or John Chow but to me it is still great. I would like to get more so I just need to keep working on this blog and providing better content so I can get more readers.
How I Save Money Roundup: May 16
Welcome to How I Save Money. This is a roundup of my favorite posts from the Wealth, Money and Life Network members.
Her Every Cent Counts is doing well with her Prosper loans and gives us an update. I have two loans at Prosper and they are both on time so I am happy to see a fellow blogger is also doing well.
Why I Save Money In An Emergency Fund
One of the most important things about having your emergency fund is to decide why you need one. Everyone needs to have some sort of cushion to fall back on when times get rough but you still personalize it even more.
I decided to get my emergency fund after watching an episode of Girlfriends. In this episode,, Joan had lost her job and was talking to Toni about needing money. Toni revealed that she had half a million dollars (or was it one million even?) in her Never Go Back To Fresno fund. Toni worked as a real estate agent and she realized that while her income was great it was not very steady. She decided to save diligently and build up a fund that she could rely on if she was in a down period. This money would ensure that she never had to go back to Fresno, which is where she was born into a poor, dysfunctional family.
I liked the idea so much that I decided to start my own Never Go Back to Fresno fund and I even decided to call mine by the same name, even though I had no idea where Fresno was.
I built up my little emergency fund slowly because at the time I was paying down other large amounts of debt. I had built up the fund to a little over a thousand dollars when I decided to cash it in and completely pay off one debt that had been lingering for quite some time.
I like the idea of having ready access to cash that I can get my hands on that is still earning some kind of interest.
I like the idea of just having a cash base that I can draw from because there are a few situations that I might be in that call for cash.
I like seeing the little graph in Money that shows my little emergency fund is growing.
I like being able to say I have an emergency fund.
Why do you save money in your emergency fund?
Save Money In An Emergency Fund
I am always talking about how to save money so I thought I would talk about my Emergency Fund here for a little bit. You hear personal finance bloggers talking about the Emergency Fund all the time and in some cases it sounds very complicated.
In reality it is really easy to set up and maintain an Emergency Fund and once you get it started it requires very little effort on your part.
