frugal underground

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photo credit: mollypop

Just a quick note to mention that this Saturday (May 30) is “Free Ice Cream Day” at Walmart. According to their site, it runs from 11am to 4pm and there are various options (ranging from very small—1.57 ounces—to moderate—4 ounces).

Of course, their “evil plan” is to get you in and buying other stuff, but if you can resist (or need to do a regular shopping trip), this could be a fun “event” for the family.

I have a confession to make:  money management doesn’t come naturally to me.

In fact, I’m one of those people who wants to go get a new book on payday whether I need it or not.  In the past this kind of spending has led to what I guess you could call ‘accidents’ where little transaction fees I had forgotten about added up and bit me on the backside and caused checks to bounce.

It’s no fun when a handful of $2.00 ATM fees cause your rent check to bounce:  No fun at all.

Just to add insult to injury, many banks process transactions from largest to smallest, rather than in the order they were presented.  If you’re smart, this shouldn’t mean anything, because you never spend more than you have available.  If you’re not, it means that instead of one fee, you’re paying eight - putting you $200 behind before you can blink.  This is what we financial professionals call bad.  Don’t do it.

Now that I’m older, and I hope wiser, I tend not to do those sorts of things.  It’s not so much because I have more self-control (although I hope I have) but because I’ve set myself up not to fail.

I don’t pay my rent out of my living expenses anymore.

Here’s how the system works:  I use three bank accounts.

Instead of just the standard checking and savings accounts I have two checking accounts (as well as the savings); I use a check card on one and write checks on the other.  The way it works is simple:

First, you figure out your budget:

Add up all your regular bills, the stuff you pay every month or two months and figure out how much you have to spend from each paycheck to cover those bills. That money, plus a little extra to cover things like your bank charges, goes into your check account.

I’m not going to talk about savings, because that’s assumed.  (How can you be frugal without saving money?  Inquiring minds want to know.)

The money that’s left over goes into your check card account.  This is the money you spend on anything from gas to groceries, to day-to-day living.  It’s not a free pass to overspending by any means; you still should be watching what you spend, how much and where you spend it.  It’s just a way to make sure that if you do miss something - or if your sp0use filled up the car right after gas prices went up (instead of before like you asked them to) it doesn’t cascade through all the checks you have outstanding.

This is particularly important if you have one of those landlords:  you know the ones, they fill your lease agreement with dire threats about what can happen if the rent is three minutes late - but then don’t cash the check for three weeks, leaving the money just sitting there.

If you think about it, the real key to money management; as my co-bloggers and I are all saying in our own fashions is to stay organized and in control of your finances.

If you set your finances up properly you have to work at messing them up; and then you’ve got human laziness working for you instead of against you.

I once had a roommate who refused to shop at discount and second-hand stores because she didn’t want people to think she was poor.

She would rather be seen as rich than smart.

The sad thing is that her attitude is all too common these days:  with teenagers in the house I see it all the time.  They want the newest and most fashionable everything - even if it’s overpriced crap - just because it is in style.

There isn’t much you can do about a teenager’s sense of style,  some of them haven’t figured out how to wear pants yet; but it’s always possible to try and instill good habits when it comes to spending money.

This is even more important when they’re spending my money.

Today’s topic is bargains, discounts, and second-hand stores:  and why the emphasis on having people think she was rich only made my roommate look foolish. Read the rest of this entry »

Kids sure are learning quickly these days. Between the internet and cable TV, youngsters tend to pick up a lot of stuff that in our days, we wouldn’t even begin to know about until later in life. Some of the info they manage to glean can be pretty interesting (for instance, my three-year-old already knows several Spanish words thanks to Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer), if not downright useful.

That said, I’m also amazed at how much kids can teach their parents in turn just by being themselves. I’m a work-at-home mom myself, and I’ve had the pleasure of being able to observe my sons, ages 6 and 3, at close range while they are unaware of it. I must say that the monetary lessons I’ve learned from them are just as valuable as any of the personal finance tips that I’ve come across in blogs and magazines. Let me share with you some of them:

• The best things in life are free. It’s cliché, I know. But the more I think about it, the more I’ve realized that this maxim is nowhere near as evidently practiced than in the lives of innocent kids.

  Whenever it rains, my boys are always asking me to allow them to run around in the rain and while I’m usually hesitant about it, the shrieks of pleasure I hear when I finally cave in overrides whatever concerns I have about their catching colds or slipping on the ground. Not that I still wouldn’t love having a pool in the house, but for the kids at least, a good frolic in the pouring rain will do the trick as well.

• Cheap can also be good. I can’t exactly remember at what stage in my life it was when I started to think that the good stuff always came with a hefty price tag but since then, that has always been my mindset; and this is true for many adults as well. For kids however, what is good is whatever brings them enjoyment.

  I’ve all too often made the mistake of buying toys for my kids which we could barely afford just for the satisfaction of knowing we gave the “best” to them. Well, I’ve also been disappointed many times when my gifts were met with enthusiasm that wasn’t any different from the other “unbranded” toys they received. Now I’m not saying that we should just forgo of the more expensive things in life even if we have the means to afford them and just think cheap, affordable, discounts, sales, etc. But then again, with an economic recession on our hands, it never hurts to adopt the kids’ way of thinking once in a while, and settle for less than best.

• Don’t count out the nickels and dimes. My husband and I often talk to the kids about plans of buying a new car, but we were always careful to emphasize that this would be something that would happen in the future yet as we have not saved enough for it. As soon as the goal of “saving up for the new car” firmed up in their minds however, they became quite enthusiastic about the plan (not even about the car, but more so about the saving part), putting in whatever small bills and change they manage to wangle from their grandparents or earn from doing odd “jobs” in the house, into their coin banks. We’re still nowhere near owning that dream car, but perhaps if we show even half of the zest that the young ones are doing with their nickels and dimes, we could probably get there much faster.
• Money shouldn’t be too complicated. With kids, a simple “we don’t have money for that” is taken as is. Of course, oftentimes a parent’s “no” is met with whines or tantrums or sulking for older kids, but after sometime, young children can readily come to terms with the fact that they can’t get what they want and just move on to other endeavors. Not so with adults. Every so often (or is it too often?), a “we don’t have money for that” is converted to “let’s just charge it to the credit card” – an ill-advised move considering the skyrocketing credit card interest rates these days. Why not simplify things and just let a no be a no, as kids do.

We’ve often heard about letting kid be kids, but why not let adults be kids for a change – that is, when it comes to dealing with personal finance. If only we could somehow acquire a bit of children’s resiliency in money matters, life could be so much simpler and perhaps, less stressful.

Most of us have cell phones, many of us have teenagers:  put the two together and you have a recipe for a never-ending hole in your bank account.

Being frugal is about making smart choices; being a teenager is about making the mistakes you learn from later.  The two don’t go together.  But teens and cell phones do go together, and if you make the wrong choices you’ll be the one paying for their mistakes.

I used to work for a cell phone company, and part of my job was resolving billing problems.  I still remember the time a woman called up with a tiny little problem.

Her bill was several thousand dollars larger than normal.

It seems her son had been downloading pornography to his cell phone with predictable results.  Unfortunately there wasn’t anything we could do for her, but there are a few things I can suggest that might prevent it from happening to you.

So follow me past the cut and we’ll talk about various ways to be frugal with your teen’s cell phone bill.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are new to earning money on the internet, chances are you have already come across the Paid to Click websites, which are mushrooming all over the internet. They seem very attractive at first glance because it requires absolutely no skill whatsoever and can be done as passively as is humanly possible. They provide a great way to create a passive income (though not much, but can still be worth it) with minimum work.

However, the problem is, there is no regulation of this paid to click market and most such sites are outright scams. It is difficult to identify the scams because there are so many of them and also because many turn into a scam only after a decent amount of successful running. However, a few precautions from your side, outlined below, will go a long way in helping you pick the right programs, or at least increase its probability.

• Check the advertising rates. If the advertising rate is below the payment rate, in all probably it is a scam as it is not sustainable. The owner will then have to pay you from his pocket, which is ridiculous. Many scams can be identified by this method.
• If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Any site claiming to pay you a few dollars for a click is a scam without any exception, since no advertiser would ever pay such prohibitive rates. The maximum that a click can ever pay is a cent or two and a little more in certain exceptional cases.
• Very high payouts. This is a problem because it can take a long time to reach the payout in which time, there is every chance the site closes down. As a general rule, the lower the payout, the better.
• Check the payment processors. You don’t want to be paid in an obscure payment method that itself can turn scam anytime. This is true, because historically online payment processors have actually paid such sites to promote their processor. AlterGold is perhaps the most famous recent example of this.
• Prefer automatic payouts. Of late, quite a few sites are introducing automatic payouts wherein you request the payout and you will get paid immediately. This only shows the site is sustainable.
• Try to contact the owner. This can be important because it is becoming increasingly common for a bunch of high school kids to go around buying a script, starting a site, closing it down in a couple of weeks and never paying anyone. If a site has a forum, it is still better.

Finally, remember that it is very difficult to build any sustainable income using the paid to click sites. However, it can provide you with a nice passive income source if you have a good downline. Try to get as many people as possible to join under you. There is a method to get people joining under you by giving them back a percentage of your earnings through their clicks for a site. Consider different marketing and advertising options, and you should do just fine, if not go on to make a fortune.

As the title of the post says, my name is Dave and I’ll be blogging for you today.

I’m a stay-at-home Dad and freelance writer.  My partner works outside the home and I stay home and look after the kids; her two teens and our daughter who will be seven next week.  It’s probably no surprise that no matter how much money comes in, somebody finds a need for it so we always try to make the most of our money.

That’s especially true when one of the teens had to to take his girlfriend to her junior prom last weekend and it’s his senior prom this weekend.

So today I want to talk about some things we did right, and some things we might have done better:

Before I go any further I should mention two factors that are very important to me:  value for money and absolute price.  While getting value for your money is always important, it’s the absolute price that always sets the final boundary.   It’s not very frugal to save money on one thing but then have to spend extra money on something else later because you blew your budget today.

Anyway - after the cut - on to the prom. Read the rest of this entry »

As a generally-overwelmed business owner, the last time I went to plan a vacation I decided to stick to the tried and true because I was overwhelmed with the number of travel websites to search. For my next vacation, I intend to pleasantly surprise my hubby by planning our trip through SideStep.

SideStep is a website that searches over 200 travel websites to find the best travel deals on the web for you. Over six million people use SideStep monthly to find travel savings. That’s because SideStep checks consolidators, agencies, hotels, airlines, rental car companies and vacation package folks to find the best deals around. They also have partnerships with major travel corporations like as Orbitz.com, Continental Airlines, JetBlue Airways, American Airlines, Best Western, Hilton Hotels, Hotels.com, Avis Rent a Car and Budget Rent a Car.

You can register for free at SideStep and you can save your travel search preferences and register your searches. By joining SideStep, you can also share your travel experiences with reviews and communicate with other members.

Using SideStep for vacation planning will save me time and money in the future. Anyone used it or found any good competitors?

Blogging is one of the most trendy ways to make money online these days. The question is, though, is it effective? Meaning, for the time you put into it, are you getting as good of a return as you could somewhere else?

I’m not sure. That’s saying something considering that I’m a blog developer.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe that blogging is a tremendously useful marketing tool, but mostly for someone who already has something to sell. It could be a product, a book, or services, but blogging helps multiply efforts to get a reputation as an expert.

Similarly, I believe that blogging offers many benefits beyond money. One is the reality that blogging about something on a regular basis forces you to learn new things and process information in useful ways, and that’s a skill that can help anyone in any job. You could probably even argue that the benefits would be worth paying for.

It starts to get a little murky, though, when you look at blogging as a direct path to money. There are really only a few ways to make money directly from your blog (”monetize it”). There’s advertising (either working with advertisers or going through a service like AdSense). There’s affiliate programs (where you make a commission by encouraging your visitors to buy something). There’s sponsored posts (where you write about a product, service, or site in exchange for a fee). Or you can write for a network (they take care of monetizing the blog and you provide the content for a fee).

As far as I know, those are your options. So the question is, are they good options? Yes and no. Yes, because some people really do make good money with those options. No, because the vast majority of bloggers make an absolute pittance. When you consider the time put in for the money pulled out, it’s much less than minimum wage.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s worth making less than minimum wage if you get other benefits. Besides the afore-mentioned educational benefits, blogging is flexible and allows you to, say, write while staying home with the kids. Try doing that with a traditional job!

It’s really a question of comparisons: how does the effort required and money returned compare to other alternatives? If you’re single or don’t have kids, it’s probably going to make more sense to spend your time elsewhere. That doesn’t mean blogging isn’t a possibility, just that you should consider creating a full-fledged business and blogging to help promote it.

If you’re looking for a small supplementary income that can be made in short spurts of free time, blogging might be a good choice.

In closing, I’ll tell you that this isn’t just an academic question for me. I’m thinking of starting a new blog on Christian wifehood (but a little edgier than that might sound) and am having a hard time justifying the time it would take for the money it would make. That said, it’s something that I care about for reasons other than money, so I might just do it anyway. Would anyone want to write for such a blog?

In addition to Amazon’s Black Friday sale, I’ve also come across a few more noteworthy online sales. (I’ll update this post as I come across other exceptional deals.)

If you need a new desktop computer, you’ll have a hard time beating this deal from PC Direct; I’m not going to list all the specs here, but in my semi-professional tech opinion, this is the best computer deal I’ve seen in a long time.

Knitters looking to round out their needle collections might want to consider Lion Brand’s great deal on a circular needle set. Less than $20 (plus shipping, I imagine) gets you seven 29″ circular needles from size 10.5 to 35!