The Frugal Free Gal

Are you currently saving money for your future and retirement? Do you have a children? Are you putting money away for their future, too? If not, don’t worry! You still have time to start saving for their future. It’s never too late to get started.

It can be difficult to figure out how much money you’ll need to save to have a comfortable retirement, but it can also be difficult to figure out how to save money and where to invest for your child’s future. If you feel you’d like to start saving for your child, your first step may be to compare bank accounts and figure out which bank you’d like to use to start saving for your child! You’ll want to compare interest rates as well as find banking options that do not charge fees!

My husband and I have had several conversations about saving for our girls. We’ve been putting away money ever since our girls were born to start saving for their future. I know how fast time flies, so I don’t want my oldest turning 16 and we have no money saved up to buy her first car. I also don’t want to have to take out any loans or go into debt to pay for these expenses!

I am hoping that in the future, they will go to college and eventually find the love of their life and get married. With two girls and two possible weddings in the future, saving money now while they are young is very important!

Here are a three ways you can start saving for your child’s future, and teach them how to save, too!

1. Open up banking accounts for each child. Take your child to the bank with you. Show your child how to fill out deposit slips and let them deposit money from their piggy banks or allowance to their bank accounts. Let them watch their money grow over time!

2. Look into 529 college plans. These plans allow parents to save for a child’s education tax-free. If your child receives monetary gifts from family and friends for their birthday or Christmas, use that money to stash away into a 529 college plan!

3. Buy Savings Bonds. You can buy Series EE Bonds or Series I Bonds for your children to help save for college. You can give savings bonds for any occasion such as birthdays, weddings, or graduations.

The goal here is to make sure you are saving in advance before these big events arrive- first car, college, weddings, plus more! Again, it’s never too late to start saving for your child’s future! Start now!

My husband was deployed when I bought my first iPhone. It was in the year 2010. I remember the day I bought it! It was my birthday and I guess I felt I owed myself a nice birthday present! My husband knew all about it and he wanted me to get one. When he returned from his deployment, we actually went to upgrade his phone to an iPhone as well. I didn’t think it was fair that I got an iPhone and he didn’t have one!

We still have those same iPhones that we purchased years ago. We like to keep things until they break (I suppose that’s the “frugal” in me). If we don’t need something new, we won’t buy it. However, we are starting to get that itch where we feel we need to upgrade our phones to keep up with the latest technology out there.

What do you do with your old phones? Do you throw them away? Do you trade them in somewhere? Do you give it away? Do you sell it? I’m currently looking for a place to sell my iphone for cash so that we can use that extra money to replace it with a new cell phone. We feel there’s some value left in our old phones and don’t want to just toss them if they can be used elsewhere!

Leave a comment for me letting me know what you do with your old cell phones. If you sold it, do you feel it that what you received what you expected?

If you’ve gotten yourself in a bit of debt, it can seem an overwhelming task to try and get out of it, but it’s definitely not impossible.  In fact, there are quite a few ways you can dig yourself out of debt successfully as long as you keep to your endeavor and don’t stray from your decision, making sure that you stick with your new behaviors.

The first step to trying to get out of the debt you’ve accumulated is to take control of your current financial situation and figure out how to better use the money you’ve got.  Saving money on things such as food and your monthly bills will go quite a long way to helping you get out of debt.  You can find a lot of useful information at this site about cutting down your monthly utility bills and trying to get better rates on your electricity providers.

After you’ve successfully identified where money can be saved, it’s time to set a reachable budget that you can keep routinely for the duration of your debt relieving endeavor.  By making a budget you’ll be able to better save money and keep to it so that you don’t get yourself even further into debt.  A budget will also help you see how much money you can put toward your debt every month without destroying your financial security in the process.

This is also a good time to see if there’s anything that you don’t need that can be sold to give you a little extra money.  Even if you can only get enough money to cover one payment, that’s still more than you had before and getting out of debt will happen one step at a time.

Once the budget is in place, you’ll need to look at your debt objectively and see which one is the highest priority.  While all of your debt is important in the long run, it’s true that some debt is much more painful than others.  You’ll need to look into the finer details of the debt you have to identify which ones have the highest interest rates.

The debt that you have accumulated that has the highest interest rate will need to be the first one you work on.  The higher the interest rate, the more you’re going to accumulate the longer the debt has been in place, which means you’re essentially throwing away money by not focusing on this chunk.  Dealing with this debt first will help keep your payments down overall, which will free up more money to help you pay off the rest of your debt later.

Don’t work yourself into more debt.  It’s very easy to become focused on one bill or one credit card to the point that you forget about the rest of the debt you’ve accumulated and this is one of the worst things you can do if you’re looking to eradicate your financial burden.  While it might be difficult to balance initially, it’s important that you keep an eye on everything to make sure you’re not getting rid of one problem just to start another.

Almost everyone has debt in some form or another and oftentimes it can seem hopeless, but there are certainly a few ways you can get out of the rut without digging the hole deeper.  With just a few basic tips you’ll be able to get well on your way to getting your debt to a manageable level and you’ll be on your way to financial freedom.

Not having enough to put away is probably the most common excuse for not saving money, explains Carol Young, Kansas State University Research and Extension family financial management specialist, to sheknows.com in an article about money saving tips. But the ability to save money isn’t about how much you bring in; it’s about changing the ways you spend the money you make. By slightly adjusting their daily routine, people of any income can save money at the end of each month. Here are some easy ways to get started:

In the Morning

The more water saved, the more money saved. Begin your morning with a quick shower and turn the faucet off when you brush your teeth. Make a smaller pot of coffee because you end up throwing half of it away anyway.

Get Fit

If you start your day with a workout at the gym, consider switching to an alternate location like a local park. A gym membership isn’t necessary to get or stay fit. Hike, swim, jog or bike in recreational areas in your neighborhood. If you live in an area that gets extremely cold and snowy during the winter, consider a YMCA membership.

Eat In

Even if you grab a sandwich and coffee at McDonalds on weekday mornings, it can cost $10 or more per week. That’s $40 per month and $480 per year! A breakfast at home is less costly and often more healthy. Also, ditch the $5 a day Starbucks habit and brew your own coffee at home. If you’re someone who just has to have your Starbucks, sign up for their rewards program, shop specials for cheaper prices and take note of discounts — like bringing your own mug.

Before You Leave

Before you leave your home for the day, switch off all lights, fans and the a/c or heater. If you work for eight or more hours a day and no one else will be home, why pay for wasted energy? If someone is going to be home, consider using fans instead of air conditioning.

Efficient Commute

A personal finance blog offers some valuable tips to travel more fuel-efficiently. It’s best to carpool, walk, bike or use public transportation as often as possible. Also, simple changes like driving defensively, removing unnecessary weight from your vehicle and taking the shortest route possible are easy ways to cut back on the amount of gas you use. If you’re in the market for a new vehicle, a hybrid car like the Honda Insight or a compact car like a smart car are great options.

Lunch and Dinner

Sheknows.com suggests saving eating out for special occasions. Pack lunches to take to work; going out to eat every day for lunch or dinner adds up quick! Plan meals for the week on Saturday or Sunday and shop with a list. This prevents impulse buys and excessive luxuries you don’t need. Farmers markets often have very low-cost produce. Check ads before you go to the grocery store to see what’s on sale and find a way to incorporate sales into your meal plan.

Lee is a financial advisor who writes for several online and print business publications.

We all dream of a lavish, fairy tale wedding. The only problem is, that picture perfect wedding includes a price tag that can turn that dream into a nightmare. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to cut corners on your wedding day without sacrificing the glitz and glitter of the occasion.

From the invitations to the flowers to the cake, opportunities to save are everywhere. What will you do with all the money you save? I’m sure you’ll find something to do with it on your honeymoon!

How to Save Money on Your Wedding

Slim Down Your Invitations

Wedding invitations can be pretty extravagant, with more pieces and parts than an Ikea bunk bed. To cut costs, eliminate the extra outer envelope (the one that keeps the inner envelope looking clean and pretty). Also skip the reception card and consider adding reception directions to the bottom of the invitation or by adding your own photocopied insert.

Skip the Roses

Flowers are one of the biggest expenses of any wedding and reception. And it’s all for something that will be shriveled and dead in a week. To trim this cost, choose something other than roses, like hydrangeas, tulips or carnations. Another tip for saving on flowers: Recruit some friends to gather up the flowers from your wedding location and set them up at the reception hall before everyone arrives.

Order a Buffet (and No Open Bar)

At a reception, food and drink costs can add up quickly. Two of the easiest ways to trim the fat from this part of your budget are to opt for a buffet versus a sit down meal (buffet’s are usually cheaper) and to do without the open bar. The bar trick will save tons of dough and yields the added benefit of creating fewer tipsy (and embarrassing) friends and relatives.

Cut Corners on the Cake

Wedding cakes are expensive, but they don’t really have to be. One simple cake (instead of a wedding cake, groom cake and dessert bar) will usually satisfy the crowd. Also consider downsizing your wedding cake – or asking for a few fake tiers – and buying a similarly-flavored sheet cake to be carved up in the kitchen for guests.

To manage personal finance is an art and for this, every one of us looks for the effective and efficient ways. One of the most common ways, which many people prefer to adopt, is hiring any reliable professional for taking handy management tips on personal finance. Here they should understand that although hiring such a professional entity will ease their task but will increase their monthly budget, as they have to pay fee to their hired consultants for getting tips on personal finance management. Now the question is what they should do to manage their personal finance without wasting extra money. The answer is simple. They should follow the old saving principles, which our grandparents used to adopt for budgeting and saving. Some of the effective tips, which our grandparents used to follow to manage their personal fiancé, are as follows:

Live Within Means

You must have noticed that our grandparents were more focused towards their monthly cash inflow while making their budgets. They tried to focus their needs instead of following society trends, which is why they made it possible to live within their defined budget by doing some savings as well. Whereas if we consider why we fail to save money then we will come to know that we majorly focus on meeting fashion trends and do extra spending instead of living simple life within budget.

Prefer Commodities for Life Time

It is also an observation that old people preferred to make one time investment for getting long-term benefit. The best example can be of silver and copper utensils. These utensils can be polished and reused whereas we prefer to buy plastic made utensils, which cannot be used once they are damaged or burnt in microwave.

Another example is of vehicles. Have you ever noticed on what frequent basis our grandparents were used to change their vehicles? Rarely, because they believed that they should use the commodity they worth for, which is why they never sold out their cars until they worn out completely. We must also adopt these little things to manage our personal finance successfully.

Cooking at Home

Another best trick with which our grandparents used to save a lot of money was their preference to enjoy meal at home. It was not like that they did not like to go out. It was all about managing limited income for a month. Thus, most of the saving conscious old people liked to go out once in a week and prefer to enjoy organized cooking budget at home.

Free things

Have you observed that sometimes we buy expensive products just to save our time especially in the case of online buying? Our grandparents did not do this. They planned their shopping day and tried to buy products of their need from the affordable places. Besides this, they also preferred to avail discount and buy one get one free facilities to make their budget more economical.

In nutshell, our grandparents knew the tactics to manage personal finance and save money whereas we despite of knowing all this fail to apply, which is very unfortunate.

Author’s Bio:

Jon Emge is a Senior Advisor and Content Manager. He is a published author and has assisted and advised clients on personal finance. In his spare time he enjoys listening to music, going to the odd festival and practicing his poetry skills!