Wonderling

Back on the bike!

Today was my second day without the boot and, being sick of riding the bus (it takes forever!), I rode my bike to work. It's really a great feeling. I am absolutely drained though! Not riding for 2+ weeks has brought me back to square one. 

Today was also a challenge budget-wise. I rode, unexpectedly, from work to my brother's house to go look at a Rhodes that he's thinking of buying. By the time we were back at his house I was starving. I decided to order a pizza and watch the debate at his house, then ride home. Not the best choice...but he owed me 20.00 (that I had not put in my budget), so it was sort of ok. 

I really should have gone down the block to the market for something cheap, instead of spending so much on a pizza.

4 steps to financial freedom!

With the state of the economy it's no surprise that people are looking to cut costs any way they can. I've posted before about living frugally and living with less, which now seems more neccessary than optional. The pressure that debt can apply to your life is tremendous. I find myself fantasizing about the day that my loans are paid off. It seems like that day will never come, but after reading this post and several others like it I feel that, even with this economy of financial despair, my dream day will come! So from all my reading this is the plan I came up with:

1.cut up my credit cards. There's no reason this should scare me so much, I got my very first credit card less than a year ago, but the thought of having some kind of financial emergency (which is why I got them in the first place) and not having them there is scary. 

2. Track my spending. What exactly am I spending my money on? I already know that “dining out” depletes a huge portion of my paycheck each month, so I know I can save money there by eating at home.

3. Make a budget. There are several ways to do this and it really depends on what works for you. Mint and Pearbudget are two good online budget programs, but I need something a little less involved, like this. Once I know how much my static expenses are (rent, phone, car payment, etc) I can see how much extra I have for variable expenses (food, gas, etc).

4. Debt Snowball Calculator. The ultimate goal here is to pay off my debt. A debt snowball calculator like this one will tell me a couple of things; how quickly I can pay off my debt and how much total interest I’m going to pay on it.    This is probably one of the most important steps because it shows you just how quickly you really can become debt free….it’s great motivation to stick to my budget!

I think one of the hardest things for me is going to be cutting my “dining out” spending. There are days when I only have an hour at home before I go to bed and it’s virtually impossible not to eat out, so I am going to have to make sure my “food” budget has some room for that . However, there are ways around this, they’re just a bit more time consuming (hey if it was easy I would be doing it already right??).

If you are looking to lose your debt like I am then I can’t stress enough the importance of opening an emergency savings account. I opened one with ingdirect.com back in 2004 (it got 4.5% interest then!) and couldn't be happier with it. Transferring money from the ING account to my checking account takes a couple of days, so I can't just dip into it when I get the urge to take a quick trip to Phoenix to visit family or buy a new camera. I also have a "fun money" savings account and my non-work retirement fund. All of these accounts are on a recurring automatic transfer with my checking account, so that as soon as my paycheck comes in, the money goes out. That way I don't even miss it!

How to get free stuff (and other money saving ideas)

It seems that free stuff is always too good to be true. That there's a catch. You have to sign up for something and call in 30 days to cancel or they charge your credit card, you have to visit 12 sponsor sites, your email inbox turns into spam central, etc. Well, I've spent the morning checking out some websites that are all about free stuff and here's what I found.

The good:

gogoshopper.com: freebies listed by category. The links usually take you right to the free sample page and none of the sites required you to enter credit card info. The only downside is that a lot of the offers had expired.

justfreestuff.com: a lot of the same deals as gogoshopper, but with occasional commentary about the link. Also broken down by category and also a lot of expired offers.

Walmart: yes, we are supposed to dispise walmart, but I think we can suspend our hatred just long enough to get some free samples every so often. These offers are current and ever changing. They are also extremely easy to get. All you have to do is enter your mailing info into the walmart site (not into all the different vendors sites)to get your samples.

mygrocerydeals.com: this was my favorite of all the sites I checked out today. I'm putting myself on a strict food budget and this will help immensely. You enter your email address and zip code, then pick your favorite grocery stores. When you log in the site displays all of the sale items from your "preferred" store with sale end dates and even the option to add items to a printable grocery list! It will also tell you if a coupon is needed to get the sale price.

gutenberg.org: project gutenberg is a website devoted to online books, as in whole, complete books. Not just snippits or sections, but the whole thing. There aren't a lot of new books in the database, but there are plenty of great not-new books to read. There are also audio books and even sheet music!

opensourcefood.com: if you haven't been to this site, you are missing out. It's full of amazing recipes that all have photos! I have a hard time wanting to try recipes that I can't see first (I'm a visual person!). You can browse other user submitted recipes or submit your own. Not only that but the website is really user-friendly and the recipes are fantastic!

The not-so-good:

startsampling.com: there were a few coupons. not anything I would have wanted to buy anyway and only one actual free sample of powdered lemon juice.

myfree.com: a lot of links to free stuff that you could find for free on your own very easily (recipes, "ideas", jokes, health and fitness tips). also sweepstakes notices....I'm really not a fan of online sweepstakes.

freebiesgalaxy.com: the freebies that I would have liked were all linked to "try 2 of these silver offers" websites.

There are endless "freebie" websites online. These are just the few that I took the time to try this morning. I have a "junk mail" email address that I used to register with the sites and I highly reccommend having one if you're going to delve into the world of online free stuff.

Hidden Price Hikes

Get Rich Slowly shows the ugly side of the grocery store. These two yogurt containers cost the same, but there's a two oz. difference. Something that most people wouldn't notice, but when you're paying .50 for 8 oz. and they suddenly reduce their product by 2oz, you are now paying .66 for 8oz. Not really a big deal to most people, but if you buy 2 weeks worth of yogurt you will be shorted by 28oz! amazing. I would have been one of those people who just didn't notice. 

frugality

During my apprenticeship at Bumble and bumble in NY I was required to go to lectures every so often. These lectures always began with a word (or many words) from Bumble founder Michael Gordon. Of all his mostly under appreciated advice there was one that has always stuck with me:

"If you're broke when you make 25,000 a year you'll be broke when you make 100,000".

He couldn't have been more right. If you can't budget your money, you can't budget your money, period. I now make, oh goodness, more than double what I was making at Bb at the time, but I don't seem to ever have much extra once I pay my bills. A friend posted on her very budget-wise blog that most people expand their spending as their wallets expand. No one does this on purpose, but I look at where my money goes...I pay less now in rent than I did in NY, but I have a car and am now paying student loans back. That's really it. All the extra money goes to...?? stuff.

I'm determined NOT to be a poor at 100,000 a year person, so in addition to my regular monthly budget I set up a  PearBudget.(thank you Sage and Get Rich Slowly) You just enter in all your receipts and it shows you where your money goes. A great way to weed out unnecessary spending. I tried doing this on paper and, honestly it was too much of a pain to lug around a ledger and write everything in...and, gasp, do the math myself. ha!