Personal Finance: Financial News, Money Tools and Discussion

Grocery budgeting

Krishna — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:19:20 +0000

When we first got into budgeting, my job was to look at our grocery budget and determine where costs were the greatest. I started by creating a spreadsheet with different grocery categories (e.g., meat/protein, produce, canned goods, cereal, frozen, snack foods, etc.). I categorized all purchases using grocery store receipts and entered total costs (minus [...]

Keeping It Simple

john — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 02:20:57 +0000

We just finished remodeling the bathroom of our 70 year old home. We replaced everything but the tub. All-in-all, we spent about $2300 (+ a lot of sweat) which included hiring a tile guy to replace the subfloor and lay tile over it. One thing that struck me during the project was how it temporarily [...]

Getting Ahead Is Tiring

john — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 11:30:45 +0000

We have debt, and we are whittling it down at a nice pace. I write that and it’s true, all things considered. But sometimes I just want it to go faster. And I am tired of thinking that way. A guy down the street from me just passed away. He was 91 years old. I [...]

401k Match

john — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:51:34 +0000

Does your company have 401k? Do you know if the company matches contributions? If so, do you know what the match is? Or more specifically, what the terms of the match are? Where I work, the majority of the six folks I talked to did not know what our company match was, or what is [...]

Stop Using Your Credit Card

john — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:22:59 +0000

We’ve see this advice before, haven’t we? The first step to getting out of credit card debt: stop using your card(s). About.com offers 7 tricks to stop using credit cards. But I wonder if anyone actually ever took action after reading this article? The thing is, the advice to stop using your credit cards is [...]

$20 Money Makeover (Debit card with > $20 Balance Required)

john — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:10:07 +0000

Let’s assume that you are frustrated with the way you are currently handling your money. have a debit card with > $20 balance. have an inkling that you’d like to change your ways. You might fit assumption (1) if you feel like you: spend too much money on x don’t save enough don’t invest enough [...]

How To Save Money On Food Step 2: Examine What You Buy

john — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:47:05 +0000

When it comes to food, what do you buy? The answer might not be so simple at first. But many of us actually buy the same items over and over. In order to get some quick wins, I suggest listing what you consider the top ten items you buy on a recurring basis. You might [...]

The Secret To Spending Wisely

john — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:03:01 +0000

I’ve recently taken a different approach to writing about my experiences with finance recently. With my recent posts how to payoff your credit card debt and how to save money on food I wrote down what I consider to be the bare bones framework that I used. Although there are a number of comparison sites, [...]

How To Save Money On Food Step 1: Track Your Spending

john — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 10:50:36 +0000

So you want to save money on food? Not a bad idea, especially since you will likely be paying for food for the rest of your life. The first step is to ensure that you have an accurate baseline of what you spend now on food. This is probably the hardest part and the least [...]

How To Pay Off Your Credit Card Debt

john — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 12:25:38 +0000

The idea of paying off your credit card debt might seem like a monstrous undertaking. But like all things financial, it helps to simplify the problem in order to come up with a solution. If you can get through the following questions without feeling discouraged, then you might be ready to begin paying off your [...]