1. When in doubt, turn to Get Rich Slowly. J.D. has a list of 11 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers. I like #4: Don’t Trust Your Real Estate Agent. These agents are feeling pressure from the housing market, so be prepared to walk away for better comission offers from other agents.
2. Are you really doing the right thing buying a home? N.Y. Times answers that question with their rent vs. buy calculator. You may be surprised how many circustances suggest renting as the best option.

Have a great week!

1. The Simple Dollar takes free entertainment to the extreme with this list of 100 Things to Do During a Money Free Weekend. I like #2, visit the community library!
2. So you found some free entertainment that involves travel. Try printing out some Printable Car Activities for the Kids.

Have a great week!

1. I learned to trim a lot off my grocery bill following Get Rich Slowely’s Saving at the Supermarket: 15 Great Grocery Shopping Tips. My two favorite tips are discarding brand loyalty and buying generic.
2. Wonder what is a good deal at the local dollar store? The Bargainist shares which Items You Should Be Buying at the Dollar Store.

Have a great week!

1. Input calling patterns into BillShrink to find your optimal phone service plan. The tool will also display the number of service bars in your calling area.
2. Look to reduce cell phone bills by using a VoIP service. VoIP-News shares The 102 Best Free Phone Services on the Web.
3. Want to completely eliminate monthly phone charges? Ooma is a new service that requires a one-time hardware payment to have access to free calls for life!

Have a great week!

I recently arranged a three person carpool for my commute to work. Prior to the carpool, I covered almost 80 miles round trip. With gas prices over $4/gallon, I pushed myself to network with co-workers and managed to find two individuals making the same trip. My car shows that I average 29 miles to the gallon. This arrangement with my co-workers essentially reduces my commute nearly 67%, saving me more than $7 everyday. Maintaining this carpool would save me more than $1900 each year.

Readers that also have long commutes should consider networking around the office to find others negotiating a similar trip. If no one shares the same commute try going to ridesearch.com. The site should help score a sweet carpool!

1. OptOutPrescreen.com allows users to opt-out of all credit card and insurance offers. The service helps uphold the Fair Credit Reporting Act allowing individuals a choice to stop or limit credit solicitation.
2. Avoid annoying solicitation via cell phone by reading How To Block Your Cell Phone Number by HowToDoThings.com. The post offers several ways to stop cell phone solicitation.

Have a great week!

It really only takes a simple, creative idea to be rich!

Welcome to Budgeting 101: Budgeting in Practice

We learned in the last lesson how to find the base amount for your budget: total income minus savings allocation. Now it is time to cover how to create a budget with this budget amount.

The first thing you want to do is find the right budgeting tool. Some individuals like budgeting applications like Microsoft Money and Quicken. The main advantage of such tools is the easy integration across spending accounts, like major credit cards and banks, with the core budget itself. A popular web based application, Mint, basically provides the same functionality, but builds a community around budgeting, allowing users to set goals and share money-saving tips. Other individuals prefer more traditional means to track budgets with paper templates or Microsoft Excel. I prefer to use Microsoft excel.

I chose to use Excel because I did not want to waste my budget on expensive applications like Money and Quicken. And Mint was a bit too social for me; I prefer to keep some anonymity to my finances. I chose to use a template provided my Microsoft which provided a comprehensive spending category breakdown. As you can see below, the template allows individuals to track forecasted to actual spending (if the image is hard to see, feel free to open the template itself by clicking here).

Whichever budgeting tool you use, the process in which to fill the budget out should remain fairly the same. You should first identify the known, unchangeable, expenses (rent, cable, car payment). Then revisit your base budget number (for monthly tools divide this number by twelve) and subtract these known expenses to formulate how much to spend on the variable expenses (entertainment, personal care, gifts). It is pretty much as simple as that. Feel free to change your forecasted spending projections each month, but make sure you stay within your monthly spending allotment!

Good Luck!

I have been pretty busy the last two weeks and have not been able to spend as much time on the blog. Online Gaming activities have been working well for me, so I am going to continue those outlets.

Stay tuned for more updates!