Budget Musings » Money Saving Techniques

Get All Your Personal Finance News in One Place

Budget Musings Admin — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:17:40 +0000

Introducing the new Personal Finance blog aggregator – get all your personal finance news in one place:

http://blogs.calendarbudget.com/

If we’re missing an important blog that you follow, let us know and we’ll have it added.

Enjoy!

Eternal Glory – Your Name in Print

Budget Musings Admin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:26:39 +0000

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.

How Learned Behavior Affects Your Finances

Budget Musings Admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:11:27 +0000

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.

Time is Money Mondays: Chopping Time When Cooking

Robin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:09:39 +0000

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?

Budgeting your 2009

Budget Musings Admin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:52:28 +0000

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:

vacation plans
major purchases (think furniture, vehicles, entertainment systems, electronics, housing)
any life changes such as a new baby
plan your regular bills and expenses, birthdays, holiday spending
plan for some miscellaneous expenses every month.
plan to save some money
if possible, plan to pay down some of your outstanding debts more aggressively. Start with the highest interest debt and prepay as much as possible to reduce or eliminate interest on those debts.

Its important to get your whole family on board with the plan so you don’t have to come across as “the heavy” when declining requests for spending. If everyone knows the plan, its much easier to control family spending.

Use some kind of tool. Don’t use a white board or piece of paper (maybe you can start with that). I suggest an online solution that you can have access to from anywher(home/work/friends place/etc.) CalendarBudget is a great option, but of course there are other option. ?Choose one and go for. ?

Best of luck with 2009 financial planning!