For some people, bills control their lives. My friend is in this situation. Any time we talk about finances, which isn’t often, he brings up how he is drowning in bills. He complains about how big his mortgage is, his monthly car payments, and a number of other bills. Every month he has to work very hard just to make ends meet. His wife works a full time job as well. If something were to happen to either of them they would be in serious financial trouble. After one month of missed income they would start to get threatening letters. After a few months the phone would be ringing off the hook with aggressive bill collectors. Within six months they could lose everything. Most people would not be able to go six months without any income, I know I wouldn’t be able to. The difference between my situation and my friend’s situation is I could live on substantially less income without too much sacrifice to my lifestyle. Why is this? We have two approaches when it comes to bills and debt.

If you are familiar with He-Man you’ll remember his character going from a wimpy guy with a funny hair cut to a bulging muscle man with a funny hair cut. The difference comes after he holds his sword over his head and yells some stuff. The last line he screams to the sky is “I HAVE THE POWER!!!”. This, my friend, is key. You have complete control over your bills. When you get your first credit card in college, pay your own rent, or buy your first car, you have complete control over what your bills will be.

All the frugal living tips will be pointless if you bought too much house, drive new cars that are out of your league (most cars are), and live beyond your means via debt. Peeing in the shower to save on your utility bills won’t make any difference once you’ve made major mistakes in creating your bills.

Note: I’m joking about the peeing in the shower thing.

Make the choice today. Let’s face it, we’re all addicted to easy money. Just like any addict we need to make the choice that we have power over our addiction. No one can make this choice for us. We need to decide that we aren’t going to be controlled by money anymore. We are the masters of our destiny!

Get someone else involved. Just like exercise it always helps to have a partner. You can encourage each other and talk about your progress with each other. Ideally this other person would be your wife, girlfriend, or significant other. If you’re the only one in your relationship trying to manage the money it may not work out the way you’d like it to. Sit down and talk through your ideas on a budget.

Have some historical data to go off. If you have used some personal finance software to track spending you’ll be light years ahead of most people. Use what you know you’ve historically spent in major categories and see if you can cut back in some areas.

Keep an Eye on Your Money Like You Are the Mafia. If something is costing you money send the boys over to bust their knee caps. Not really, but you should be very conscious of where you’re loosing money. When you find somewhere you can improve be the mafia boss and take it out.

Key to Starting a Budget

The key to starting a budget is to first plan for the extra curricular items. These items include 1) Eating Out 2) Toys 3) Entertainment 4) Gifts 5) Travel. Once you’ve nailed down these elements of your budget you can start working on gasoline, big ticket items, and long term saving plans. If you do anything, budget how much you spend on eating out. This one step will set you on a path of financial growth.

Avoiding Pitfalls

Keep Like-Minded People Around You. When I started budgeting it became clear that there are some people I needed to avoid. Just like with other addicts you need to avoid areas where the addicts hang out and stay away from some of your money addicted friends. I’m not saying you should shun your entire social circle but you should try to avoid certain risky situations with some people. Everyone has a friend that loves to eat out, go on shopping sprees, and rupture money like they were bleeding. Try to plan things with them where you’re at least 1 mile away from any credit card machines. Sadly, these people don’t understand what budgeting is all about and will probably want to buy you lunch and anything else you want. I’ve never felt comfortable with this option but if you are your budget will stay in tact and you’ll still get to eat out as much as you want.

Budget for the Unexpected. One of the budget killing events are an unexpected disasters like a major car repair. These types of things can really throw off your momentum and be a wrench in the gears. The best budgets are flexible and can adapt to most changes. But the best solution is to plan ahead for the unexpected parking ticket, repair, or doctor’s bill. Make sure part of your budget goes towards this every paycheck.

Keep it Reasonable Don’t make your budget too restrictive. While you can technically live on rice, beans, and water forever you might need to budget in the nice things in life too. The trick to making a budget work is consistency. Just like the tortoise and the hare it’s the slow and steady budget that wins the race.

The Myth of Credit Card Budgeting
The whole point of credit cards is to spend more than you should today and pay for it later. Until you master your budget you should get rid of the credit cards, pay off the debt, and go to an all cash lifestyle.

Vampire Energy

The term ‘vampire energy’ refers to anything that is wasting electricity while you’re not actively using it. Just like vampires these things are active at night and suck your blood… I mean money (to the tune of 3 billion dollars a year in the USA). From this info-graphic the biggest culprits are plasma screen TVs, video game consoles, inactive computers/laptops, and VCRs.
How to Stop It: Make sure buy electronics that turn completely off and use a power strip to turn off everything completely. Graphic Source

Holding on to Old Stuff
How does holding on to old stuff sap your wealth? Well, stuff you aren’t using is tying up valuable cash. This cash could be worth a lot in the future, especially if you consider compound interest. Read more in this post about how much is a $100 in the future… you’ll be surprised. In 50 years a $100 could be worth 28,900 at a 12% ROI. In addition, stuff has a way of multiplying until it fills all available space. Some us have grown up never throw anything away and saving everything, from the mundane to the ridiculous. I’ve never understood storage sheds because they seem like such a rip off. If you don’t use your stuff often enough that it can sit in a storage shed its time to get rid of that junk.
How to Stop It: Break the habit of buying stuff and sell stuff you haven’t used in 12 months.

Interest on Debt
This silent killer works while you’re sleeping, on vacation, sick, and working. It works all the time no matter what. Try to avoid interest at all cost. You may be surprised to see how much interest you pay on different APRs each month.
How to Stop It: Rapidly pay off your credit card debt and switch to an all cash lifestyle.

Buying Brand New
The two things that come to mind here are brand new gadgets (technology) and buying brand new cars. These two things can take wealth from you quicker than you can say ‘iphone price drop’. Stay off the bleeding edge of technology and buy when a product is in its maturity phase, not while it’s in the early adoption phase.

If you’ve done your research you can negotiate on your next car purchase. They say the second you drive off the lot your new car losses 30% of its value. Some cars are more likely to depreciate than others. Typically the more deluxe cars depreciate quicker.

How to Stop It: Buy with cash and do your research. Find deals on craigslist and other classifieds for medium ticket items.

Inflation – The Hidden Tax
If you don’t protect yourself from inflation you will be in trouble when you retire. Inflation eats away at your wealth by deteriorating the value of the cash you hold. Because the government has a printing press they can print out as much money as they want. When they do this it ‘waters down the cool-aid’. When the cool-aid is too watery it’s pretty well worthless to everyone. On average you want to have a return on investment of at least 3% or higher each year just to stay above inflation. Cash in a high interest savings account just won’t cut it anymore.

How to Stop It: Buy stock in companies that are inflation resistant (i.e. they can raise their prices when they need to). Try to own real assets with real value (e.g. land, gold, property, rentals).

If you’re talking about hyperinflation that’s a whole different story.

Staying on the cutting edge of technology is costly. As CPUs become faster balancing cost and performance will help you get the best bang for the buck. If you don’t build your own computer please disregard this post.

The cpu chart on paulisageek.com takes the perfomance data from cpubenchmark and the pricing data from Newegg for the end ratio of performance/price. AMD tops the list for the best value and performance for the money. The ideal CPU costs between $70-100, any more or less then that and you’re not hitting the sweet spot.

Distinguish between wants and needs
Distinguishing between wants and needs depends a great deal on your perspective. The more narrow someone interprets their life, the more likely they are to rationalize some wants as needs. For instance, in high school someone could literally buy status and position by the brand of clothing they wear. In this myopic view teenagers tend to be rather passionate about the brand of jeans they wear (instead of being satisfied with any pair of jeans that covers their behind).

Widening one’s view allows wants to be exposed as wants. Needs hardly need justification to be purchased.

What are needs?
You can’t get through college without seeing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. As you discover what your needs are consider Maslow’s approach. The only things in the diagram that are actual physical (or material) things are on the base of pyramid. The longer someone dwells in the lower level the less likely they are to move to higher levels. From my own life and watching others, the biggest problem comes when we try to fulfill a higher need by ‘purchasing’ it.

When wants become needs.
Consumer debt is a major problem in the United States. This type of debt represents a gluttony of wants justified as needs. One way to curb wants before they become needs is to switch to an all cash lifestyle. As this happens many of the items purchased with consumer debt are never purchased. Saving up to buy big ticket items allows time to make more rational decisions (and give you a chance to shop around).

What do you think?
What have you seen that helps prevent wants becoming needs? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think.

The most common techniques she’s using are:

1) Pairing Coupons with items that are on sale. A $1 coupon for something that went on sale for a dollar equals free!
2) Networking online with other moms that are doing the same thing. She’s part of these groups How to Shop for Free, Big Tent Free Shoppers
3) Stock piling common items. When an item is almost free (or completely free) she’ll buy all she can.
4) Collecting coupons from newspapers, grocery stores, manufacturere’s websites, ebay, and using free printable grocery coupons online.

Source:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/08/16/the_queen_of_coupons/

She was first featured in the Boston Globe

Getting fat is expensive. Weight loss shouldn’t have to be. Why spend a lot of money on equipment, gym memberships, and special diets when there are a lot of great free weight loss tips that work wonders.

This is a lot like the personal finance tip, spend less than you make, in reverse. If only switching the two could be easier.

Routine is the most powerful weight loss tip. The Grand Canyon was carved out of stone by the persistent routine of rivers and streams. The day you make up your mind to lose weight it’s really easy to get excited. In the excitement a lot of goals, equipment, and extreme measures are taken. After about a week or two most people are back in their old routine and all their goals fade into the past. If you make a single weight loss goal forget about how much you want to weigh or anything else. The one goal you should have is to stick with a routine for a very long time.

If you have a broken system, or a system that is doomed to make you fat, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle all the way. What is a system? A system is like routine but it also includes mindsets, friends, and behavior. If you really want to lose weight you have to change the system. In a way it’s much like quitting smoking. There needs to be a system level upgrade for this to work longterm.

Peer pressure and companionship are very powerful forces in our lives. Sharing a goal to lose weight with a friend can be a source of motivation and support. Even better, involve your friends, join a team, or make it interesting with a bet (the more money the better).

If you make a change make it something you can do for a very long time. You shouldn’t dread your diet or workout routine. Try to incorporate changes that will stick. If you make sacrifices, make sacrifices that don’t hurt too bad. An example of this is when I made the goal to run every morning. The first week was no problem. The second week got even harder. There were some mornings I didn’t want to wake up and get ready. Sadly my routine died in the second week. There was one thing that made it die, the challenge was too much for me. The solution to this was easy. Instead of running everyday I made the goal to get out the door everyday. If I felt like running, fine. If I wanted to walk for half an hour that’s fine too. This flexiblity made this much more manageable. I can see myself doing this for a very long time.

A recent study found that it doesn’t matter what kind of fad diet you try. The bottom line is calorie intake. It doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you’re eating less.

For people who are trying to lose weight, it does not matter if they are counting carbohydrates, protein or fat. All that matters is that they are counting something.

While the diets were not named, the eating plans were all loosely based on the principles of popular diets like Atkins, which emphasizes low carbohydrates; Dean Ornish, which is low-fat; or the Mediterranean diet, with less animal protein. After two years, every diet group had lost — and regained — about the same amount of weight regardless of what diet had been assigned.

The lesson, researchers say, is that people lose weight if they lower calories, but it does not matter how. Source New York Times and HarvardScience

It’s been shown that those that follow Atkins diets tend to eat 20-30% less calories. This is a result of shortage of acceptable protein in everyday life and due to boredom with an all meat diet. Most diets limit calories by cutting out major portions of available calorie sources. By cutting out all sugars and carbs you’ve cut out 80% of casual calorie consumption for most people. The same idea works with scheduling or portion control. In addition to cutting out boredom and over eating you might also include some type of routine you need to follow before eating. Here are a list a ways to limit calories in a major way.

Make a commitment to avoid butter on things, deep fried foods, junk food, or potato chips. Because fats are so concentrated with calories you have to eat much more to feel full. You could easily eat three to four times more calories because it tastes better than normal food and it takes the same amount of mass to fill you up. Avoiding fats can cut hundreds of calories out of your diet and leave you feeling healthier too.

Soda pop, juices, and alcohol have a lot of hidden calories. Eliminating calories that you drink will have a major impact on your weight. Try to drink water when possible. The relationship is still unknown between diet soda and obesity but there is a connection. Try to avoid all forms of good tasting drinks and stick to old fashioned water.

Another tip that works is cutting out over processed breads and snacks. Avoiding white bread and eating whole grains is more nutritious and helps you feel full longer.

There have been a few stories lately of Vegans (more strict vegetarians) killing their babies with non-animal product diets. The babies starve to death because the parents won’t provide the nutrition the babies need. These are extreme cases but it can be argued that animal products can provide important nutritional values.

To lose weight you might consider cutting out red meat, pork, or fast food meat. Another possibility is cutting meat out of every meal except dinner.

One easy test for this is counting they number of steps it takes for the food to get to your mouth. If all you need to do is open a wrapper and eat, the food is highly processed. The more steps required to prepare a food the better it probably is for you.

Another aspect of overly processed food is the amount of nutrients the producers remove in order to preserve texture, flavor, and shelf life.

Restaurants have one goal in mind and that’s to make sure you enjoy your food. Part of making your taste buds happy means adding extra sugar, salt, & fat to your meal. You might be surprised to know that a Big Mac has 9 grams of sugar in it. When you make food at home you generally use 50% fat than what restaurants think is normal. Packing your own luck can save you a lot of calories and help you slim down. It will also save you a bundle from a personal finance perspective.

There is a quick way to find out if a site is secure. Look for HTTPS:// instead of HTTP:// in areas of the website where you are entering sensitive financial information. It is common for most websites to switch to their secure pages only when nessicary. You usually won’t see https:// until you’re in the checkout area. If you are entering your credit card information always check before proceeding. If there is no https your information can be easily stolen. When a page is secure it encrypts the data going to and from that page. So even if your data was intercepted it could not be read.

Look for https and the little lock

If you are entering your credit card information make sure the page is secure. If the page is not secure your information can be easily stolen. Secure pages encrypt data going to and from pages.

Comparing prices on websites isn’t as easy at might first appear (especially if your searching for a non-standardized item). The first step is to narrow your search to exactly what you want. Find a part # or a model # and search for it in a comparison shopping engine. I prefer Google Products but there are others as well. They have an incentive to place higher paying vendors near the top of the list and their products seem to be less organized.

Avoid the lowest priced vendor (unless you’ve bought from them before). Most of the time they will require that you buy the warranty, a bunch of accessories, and join some mailing list to get the “lowest price”.

Using RSS feeds and some basic filters you can have deals come to you when they are ripe for the picking. Automatic deal finders using RSS is an easy way to get low cost gifts and surprizes for yourself. You will need to be patient but the wait is usually well worth it. Hot items like the Nintendo Wii won’t likely drop in price but just about everything else goes on sale periodically.

If you don’t mind buying used you can also set up a way to search through Craiglists for misplaced bargins. Many times people will post items you want in strange categories or forget to write a good desciptoin. Other bargin shoppers will miss those deals and you’ll have the item delivered to your feed reader.

Finding a deal website with up to date offers is a good way to browse for things like laptops, HDTVs, cameras, or other everyday electronic items. All of my laptops and computers come from sites like this because they usually offer more power and features for much less.

Keep records of your reciept page, the items ordered, and what credit card you used. If you want to return an item or dispute a charge you’ll need all the information you can. Most merchants make it easy to return or cancel an order. For infrequent purchases it’s best to have a folder in your email labeled ‘shopping receipts’ to stay organized. If you buy from individual stores, through Amazon or Half.com, keeping these reciepts will be cruitial.

Price shopping online is an important step to get the best price on new purchases. Finding the lowest price from a dependable website is critical. How do you find trusted items, ratings, and specs?

If your want to compare prices you need to find the exact product you want. Say your looking for an MP3 player. If you try to compare the prices on the generic term ‘MP3 Player’ you’ll have a hard time pinning down the exact price. Instead, try to find the exact make, model, and brand of MP3 player. You’ll have much more luck knowing you want a 8 GB ipod touch then using a generic search for an MP3 player. This same principle works on all levels, even shopping and negotiating for a new car.

Once you have your exact product name and description it’s time to read some reviews. When comparing reviews it’s best to have a couple products you want to compare. It might also be good to compare a similar product with differing features. There are a few websites I depend on for ratings and specs. Amazon, NewEgg, and the Manufacturer website are all good resources. You’ll soon find that some reviews and ratings are intelligent and others are…not. Some users will give a vacuum a bad rating because it’s not a toaster. It pays off to dig deeper and see why a product has a good or bad rating. As the number of reviews on a product increase the likely hood of poor reviews unduly effecting the rating is unlikely.

Another quick and dirty way to compare ratings is to simply type your products in a search engine. Your search query might read something like “product I v.s. product II”. There are a lot of websites dedicated to answering your questions.

Once you have your specific product type your search into a comparison shopping engine. In some cases you’ll see the prices here are much less then what you could find any where else.

Google Products (that’s what they’re calling it now-a-days) is great resource. They include tax, shipping, and final cost. The products here are listed free and Google doesn’t make any money off how they display the results. Other comparison shopping engines charge for placement and might not have as many stores as you’d like to see.

WARNING! Buying from a store with the lowest price can be extremely risky. As a general rule anything under 20% should be suspected as potential fraud. The exceptions to this is when the product is refurbished or used. When buying a new digital camera I nearly bought from one of these companies. Luckily I talked with my friend (who’s a great photographer) and he convinced me otherwise. Within 30 seconds of research we found tons of people who got scammed. If you’re tempted to go with the lowest price take the time to research. You’ll be happy you did!

In the past I’ve tried Craigslist, eBay, and salvaging old phones from friends and family. While some of these options work some of the time there was something unpleasant about each result. The root of the problem is that everyone is hard on their phones. Buying a used phone will almost always yield poor results. Here are some experiences I’ve had in the following areas.

Craigslist: For some reason on people on Craigslist think they can buy a piece of technology, use it for a year, and try to sell it for a little more than what they bought it for. “Come’on, this custom leopard print battery cover cost like $40 bucks when I bought it new.” Errrr…no thanks.

eBay: Steps to getting a replacement cell phone eBay: Step one, find a decent deal with a nice picture. Step two, work out payment and hope the package comes within the next month. Step three: Get your cell phone in the mail only to discover it is filthy. Step four: Wonder about what kind of homeless person they stole it from and hope you don’t catch something permanent.

Friends & Family: “You have to push the screen in this corner to see what your doing and the number 7 is a little finicky, besides that, it’s good.”

I go through a lot of cell phones and that is why I have such a wide array of experiences. The best way I found gives me the best phone, a new phone, and it’s free. No drama, no headaches.

I found that most prepaid phone planes have a big selection of refurbished cell phones that come with a bunch of free minutes. Once you have the prepaid phone you have two options: Sell the prepaid minutes card and get your phone for free, or activate the phone and make money on the deal (you’ll get the phone free and the minutes are more than what you could buy at regular prices). All cell phone SIM cards are easily interchangeable. A SIM card is the little card in your phone that identifies your number and saves your address book. When your prepaid phone comes, take out the prepaid SIM card and replace it with the card from your broken phone. In a matter of seconds you’ll be talking on a new cell phone for free.

For AT&T Replacement Cell Phones:
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/packages/prepaid-pay-as-you-go-packages.jsp
I like the Nokia 2610 (it comes with $25+$10 airtime + a replacement phone – all for the low price of $29.99). Replace your SIM card and you’re good to go.

For Verison Replacement Cell Phones:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=prepayItem&action=viewPrepayOverview
Pick a plan and go to the next screen.

For T-Mobile Replacement Phones
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/prepaid.aspx
They don’t say how much airtime you’ll get exactly but it’s probably comparable to the other guys.

Most cell phones are ‘locked’ to a certain network (e.g. T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon). This means Verizon phones will work on the Verizon network. You cannot buy a T-Mobile phone and have it work on the Verizon network by switching the SIM card. It is possible to ‘unlock’ cell phones but you need to be willing to spend some time with customer service to do so. Once a cell phone is unlocked it will work no matter what Network you connect to. You connect to a network by the type of SIM card you have and how that SIM card is configured.

If you have any questions or feedback please leave a comment below.