Budget Musings

Archive for the ‘Money Saving Techniques’ Category

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I am writing a down-to-earth book on Money Management with a friend who is a Certified Financial Planner. For part of the book, we are looking for compelling ideas, stories, etc that you would like to share with the world. To collect these ideas, I have created a survey (only 11 questions). All of your ideas that we end up using will be accredited to you in the book and to compensate you, we’ll give you a voucher to purchase the book at a significant discount.

I’d love to have your input. Click one of the links below to start the survey.

If you don’t have any children: http://calendarbudget.com/survey/index.php?sid=89316
If you have children: http://calendarbudget.com/survey/index.php?sid=66815

Consider this your good deed of the day. Sharing your ideas can help others around the world live better.

Feel free to share these survey links with friends and family. We’d like as many ideas as possible.

While there is no accurate answer, best guesses put about 10% of our behavior as innate while about 90% of our behavior is learned (in adults). This means that 90% of what we do is a direct result of either conscious thought processes or habit. I suggest that nearly 100% of our financial habits are learned behavior. Let me illustrate with an example. (This is a great story – worth taking the time to read it)

In a famous behavior experiment, 4 guinea pigs we put into a cage.
Each guinea pig had an electrode attached to them. There was a small circle on the floor at the center of the cage and when ever a guinea pig ran over the circle, the other 3 guinea pigs we given an electric shock. At the beginning when the guinea pigs were first put into the cage they sought a way out, and inadvertently scurried over the circle, causing the other 3 guinea pigs to receive an electric shock. It didn’t take long for the guinea pigs to learn the cause. After learning what happened, whenever a mouse would go near the circle, the other 3 guinea pigs would beat on the one.
After a while, one of the guinea pigs was removed and a new guinea pig was introduced into the same environment, but without an electrode attached to it. Of course, when first entering the cage, it scurried about seeking a way out and occasionally would run over the circle, causing the other 3 guinea pigs to receive a shock. The other 3 guinea pigs would then beat on the new guinea pig. After a while, the new guinea pig learn that whenever one of the other got near the circle, you beat on them. But that new guinea pig was not receiving any shock, it just learned from the others that that was how things worked.
After another short while a 2nd new guinea pig was introduced – same situation, no electrode. It too learned after a short while not to walk over the circle and to beat on any other who approached it.
In time, all of the original guinea pigs were replaced with new guinea pigs who did not have any electrodes. These guinea pigs had never received any kind of shock or other kind of punishment (other than from the other guinea pigs) for walking over the circle. But the learned behavior continued, and although none knew why, the circle was forbidden territory and you would get beaten up if you went near it. In actual fact, walking on the circle did nothing at this point, but the guinea pigs had learned to enforce this “rule of cage citizenship”.

We should ask ourselves – how similar are we to these guinea pigs? Do we repeat behavior simply because “thats the way its done”? Do any of the following wealth limiters apply to you?

• continue working in a job you hate because you have to pay your bills
• continue spending money they way you used to even though your income is not the same or inflation is growing
• continue living a wealthy lifestyle once you move out from your parents home, even though you can no longer directly benefit from their incomes
• go on expensive vacations even if you clearly can’t afford it
• eat out more often than your budget (and diet) should permit
• etc…

Don’t be a guinea pig. Wake up to the fact that you don’t need to blindly follow habits and patterns of behavior without good reason. More to the point, examine some of the bad financial behavior you do and determine why you do it. If you end up with “thats just the way its done”, seriously consider putting it on the chopping block or at least modify it to suit your actual needs.

The most time consuming and dreaded part I face when cooking is chopping/grating the ingredients like cheese, carrots, peppers, or onions (ingredients I use quite often). With a family of seven it requires much more time to do the chopping/grating because I need to make larger batches of a recipe, usually 2 or 3 times what a recipe calls for. The trick was to make that process go faster and not so dreaded.

I’ve recently RE-discovered one of my kitchen tools, my food processor. At least 4 of my 5 girls don’t like onions or peppers so I need to chop them fine enough to not be seen (what a tedious job), but can still add flavor. My food processor chops it much smaller and much faster than I can do so it’s perfect. Now I can hide any undesired ingredients in whatever I’m making and can still ensure the girls get the needed vitamins. Plus if I’m going to be adding the ingredients at the same time, I can chop them in the food processor at the same time (so long as I need them chopped to the same size). One things I’ve used it for lately is grating carrots and zucchini for a huge pot of chili (wonderfully cuts chopping time in third). Then I like to freeze leftovers for another time saver… a quick dinner when I don’t feel like cooking. I add pasta to bulk it up and make it stretch farther.

I also like to buy a large amount of cheese when I see an awesome sale, grate the cheese in the food processor and freeze it in 1 cup portions. This allows me to save time AND money. I save time in two ways, by grating ahead of time in big portions while I’m already using the food processor and the food processor is much faster than doing it by hand. I use this cheese only in recipes where the cheese will be cooked because it’s not noticible then if the cheese has a fresh taste or not. You want that fresh taste for sandwiches, crackers and cheese platters, or other things like that. Having the cheese frozen in small quanities makes it quickly and easily used because I already know the portion of cheese in the bag.

What are your favorite kitchen tools that help save you time and possibly even actual dollars?

Successful businesses plan spending budgets and income targets for the calendar year. Often this happens in January for the current year after they have been able to collect and digest the previous years financials. You and your family deserve nothing less that success also. Its time to get your finances in order for the year. Yes, plans will change and things will come up, but a plan is priceless in guiding financial decisions and planning needed savings.

Take some time now and map out some of the following: Read the rest of this entry »

I just came across this site today, and thought I’d pass it by you all. This store buys dented, scratched, refurbished or discontinued items (still like new condition) and sell them for a huge discount (often more than 50% off original values). If you are in the market for a major appliance, furniture or something else big and expensive – check these guys out before you buy new. You could save a bundle!

http://www.rosehillauction.ca

Have you ever started a project and realized half way through (or worse, once its “completed”) that a better design would have either saved you time or done a better job?? This has happened to me countless times.? Now, I try to get a second opinion, preferably from an expert, but even from a non-expert person, to validate my plans *before* starting the implementation.? Often, my plans will change with someones opinion – and on occasion I’ll change the entire concept, or even not do the project, due to someone’s opinion.

A single opinion is never superior to that of several.? Now… often I’ll discard others opinions if I’ve already thought through their objections, but often they think in angles I haven’t, which can make the design of my [computer software, woodworking project, gift idea, paper airplane, etc...] idea better because I can adjust for the angles I didn’t consider. If you try to amend a design after implementation, it can be impossible or very difficult to change – often resulting in expensive and time-consuming workarounds, rather than a better design.? Sometimes additional ideas can be easily integrated even after implementation has started – but don’t count on it!? Also – its still a good idea to get more opinions even after starting – because maybe you CAN easily change things for the better, but its always best to get opinions from the start.

Is this pushing regifting to the extreme?

While cleaning out our food storage area tonight, I noticed a (rather large) stash of Hallowe’en candy that we separated from the rest. We always do this at Hallowe’en to ration the amount of candy our kids have at once. This year (like years past) we forgot about the stash since we rarely go to the food storage area. Now that Christmas is upon us, here’s my devious plan….

Use most or all of that candy as part of the kids gifts/stocking stuffers. It will save us between$30-$50 easily. Our kidsnever knew that we kept some of the candy apart from the rest anyway, so its perfect. They are young enough to not know better.

Its perfect I tell you, PERFECT!!! MUAA HA HA ha ha haaaaaaaa.!!!

[dashing off into the night with a black cape and bag full of candy]

CalendarBudget recently started a forum. One of the things we discuss there is what features/benefits you want CalendarBudget to take care of for you. You can make any suggestion regarding something you need.

We also have a list of planned features that you can vote on here –> VOTE. Items with the highest number of votes will get done first. Take a moment and vote now!

First of all – the rule of thumb is NEVER buy a new car unless you have money to burn. Vehicles devalue so quickly, the financing usually leaves you paying for something that is not even worth the remaining balance you owe. In fact, as soon as you drive the car off the dealers lot you can take a few $1000 off the price you just paid. 0% financing may make is look more tempting, but its still a bad deal.

Now, having said that, I just bought a new car But I did so with my eyes wide open. You may recall from a previous blog that my van died. We decided at the time to try living without owning a vehicle. We tried the experiment for 3 weeks. The money savings were great, but here’s what we found. We were spending up to 1 hour/day trying to arrange for borrowing a vehicle to get our family (7 of us) to the places we needed to be at. That time (and to a less degree, the stress of feeling like a burden to those we were constantly asking) was something we didn’t fully consider. The time I would have been working was spent thinking of who to ask, making calls, leaving messages, returning calls, worrying about not getting to meetings I had, etc…

So in the end we decided that although we could live without a vehicle, it was causing more pain (time loss, stress) that it was saving us (financially). In fact this was triggered by a friend who discovered my situation and suggest a vehicle and described some financing I hadn’t heard of before. It seems car companies are desperate to sell vehicles these days. So, in the end we bought a new car – a Kia Rondo 7-seater.

Here’s why I did it: Read the rest of this entry »