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Savings Plan: Stages of Saving Money

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A penny saved is a penny earned

Earning money is not enough to gain financial stability in life. You need to save money regularly to meet your future needs. Following is a step by step plan on how you can save money.

Step #1: Set your savings goal
Personal financial planning at the right time (young earning age) will help your dreams come true. If you ignore planning for future, you cannot save money. No matter how young or old you are, you need to set goals for savings to ensure financial security in future. Over time, you will realize the importance of saving money by setting goals and achieving them on time.

Step #2: Save for emergency needs
This is an important step in savings plan. You need to have enough emergency surplus in cash to meet unexpected needs.

If you do not have enough to meet unfortunate situations like loss of pay, sickness, house/vehicle repair, etc., it may strain your finances and you cannot save properly. Further, you may end up closing your savings plan abruptly. Hence, you need to have adequate emergency surplus to reach your financial goals.

Step #3: Save for short-term needs
Short-term goals are those that can be achieved within a year or two. For instance, vehicle purchase, home renovation, etc.

For this, you need to save money by using your home budget to see where you can reduce expenses on extra things. Thus, you may consider reducing expenses on eating out, shopping and entertainment. Keep track of your spending regularly to know where your money is going. You can do this by carrying a small book to jot down your expenses, or you can download a personal budget application to keep an eye on your spending.

Step #4: Save for long-term needs
Long-term goals are the ones that you want to reach in around four to five years. This can include arranging money for your kid’s education, buying a house, saving money for retirement, etc. If you don’t consider saving money for long-term goals, you will end up having little or none when you retire.

Saving for long-term goals is a difficult process and you need to be frugal at every stage of your life. You need to control your spending and inculcate good saving habits.

Most people think that saving money is a difficult task. However, if you start saving now with self-motivation, you can reach your savings goals easily. The sooner you act, the sooner you reach your financial goals. Therefore, set your savings goals, create your planned budget to cut unnecessary expenses and see how you can make big savings fast.

Money Chutney provides insightful articles on saving, investing, budgeting and financial planning. These articles are intended to provide knowledge and make people aware of methods and techniques on personal finance India, so they can use it to better their financial situation. These personal finance strategies are targeted towards educated middle class people in India, who typically look for information on how to save money.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Rahul_M_Satish/1269974

5 Effective Ways To Cultivate The Habit Of Saving Money

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Saving money is the art of setting aside some amount of money for future use. The singular reason why so many people don’t always get enough money to do what they want or need is because they don’t have a good saving habit. In this article you will learn 6 effective ways to help you start saving money.

1. Determine what you want:

It is very important that you determine what you want to do with money and the time when you would want to use it. Doing this will help ascertain what you should set aside and over what period of time, for instance, if you desire to save $5,000 within six months, you should be saving about $830 every month. This amount can also be broken down into weeks or days depending on your convenience. What matters most is to ensure that you have a time frame for which to accomplish your goal.

2. Map Out a Plan:

Having established what you want to do with the money you intend to save and over a period of time, your next task will be to come up with a plan of how you intend to go about the saving. Your plan should entail where to save the money, do you need interests, how often you should save etc. Planning will help you reach your goal much easier and it will take care of any unforeseen hitches on the way.

3. Discipline:

One of the major reason why lots of people fail to cultivate the habit of saving money is because, they lack the discipline required to effective pull through with the plan of saving. Discipline helps you stay focused and committed to your plan. Once you have a plan in place to save some money over a period of time, you need discipline to see you through it. Some distractions may come up along the way, but discipline will enable you pull through.

4. Sacrifice:

Saving demands that you forgo some regular spending routine, the truth is that once you have made up your mind to start saving some money, you will have to make some sacrifices in order to provide for your savings. By sacrificing some leisure, it means you are making some money available to save. In this case, you will have to differentiate between your needs and wants. One of the best ways to save money is to avoid spending on things you don’t need. Besides, when you sacrifice, you should also have it at the back of your mind that it is for a temporal basis. That is why it is important that you have a time frame for your saving.

5. Carry Everyone Along:

In the course of saving money there are so many things that will change with you, especially if you have a family or dependent. In this case, you should endeavor to carry your family and any other person who depends on you financially along. You should be able to communicate you goal to them, am sure if you are convincing enough, they will reason with you.

Saving money is the most effective way to become wealthy in life, no wonder only those who cultivate the habit of saving money are able to survive in today’s economy.

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Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Stephen_Enis/495394

Here Are Five Simple Tips to Save Money

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There are 5 simple ways to save lots of money while having fun doing so. During these troubling times where gas and food prices has gone through the roof, you can save hundreds to thousands of dollars each year. In addition, you can make a fund. Who wouldn’t want to save money? In this article there are five fun ways to save money. It is important that you aren’t penny wise and pound foolish when using these techniques. You don’t want to end up spending more money because you fall to temptations; buying items you do not need just to save money. You could end up spending more instead of saving. On the other hand using the five techniques is a great way to try new products and save.

Printable Coupons is a great way to save money. Before you go shopping, spend a little time looking up printable coupons using your favorite search engines. Look for coupons on products that you normally purchase. Print the coupons and use them when you check out. Save even more by catching your items on sale. There are many sites that allow you to print coupons anonymously. Make your search enjoyable. You could even make a game of it with friends and family. Be careful that you do not get carried away. Other wise you may end up spending more because you buy more than you need. Or you may but items you don’t use.

Coupon codes is another fun way to save money. This can easily be done when you are making purchases on the internet. Look for a box that would have you enter a promotional code. Before you checkout, go to your favorite browser and search for coupon codes. Many times you will find a code for the company or the item that you can place into the promotional box. Recalculate the shopping cart and you maybe surprised to find you can instantly save some money. True it maybe take some time to find a code that will work. However, the reward of saving 10%, getting free shipping or saving dollars off is worth the effort.

Discounted offers is a method you may already use from time to time. Many times when grabbing your lunch you will look for a coupon that will save you money. Always be on the lookout for a discount on items you need. For instance, when the time for your oil change is approaching. Drive buy your favorite service center. You may catch a bargain if they are having a middle of the week sale or holiday sale. That is the time to go ahead and get that oil change and save some money. The internet is a great place to search for these bargains.

Discount cards is a great way to save money. Many organizations offer loyalty cards that can save you money. If you are checking out many times they will offer you to save just by signing up. Sign up even if you do not plan on returning there again and take advantage of the savings. In addition, you could also use your printable coupons to save even more. Grocery stores, auto parts stores, restaurants and drug stores just to name a few. Always be on the lookout for these simple saving opportunities. There are cards that you can purchase at a discount. Look for those as well.

Gift Certificates is yet another great way to save. Look for certificates that you can purchase at a discount and use them to save you money. Many companies are will to offer gift certificates at a discount in order for you to be a repeat customer. In some cases you may use the gift certificate and pay using a discounted card. Get creative! One organization offers Groupons. These are certificates that you pay for that can save you on dining and entertainment.

Hopefully, you see the point. Combing these and the many other ways to save money, you can easily save hundreds to thousands of dollars each year. You can have fun saving money. This money can be invested, used for insurance or sending your kids to college. You should never get tired of saving money.

Learning about saving money is enjoyable.
Equally enjoyable is sharing the information with you.
Jack Manns

Visit Jack’s Blog

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Jack_Manns/313147

Money Saving Tips That Really Work – How We Saved $300 a Month

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Would you like to save over $300.00 a month? As a money saving consumer advocate this is a question our family visits regularly as we go over our Monthly Family Budget. We recently met for a brainstorming session to see how we could shave and save more money each month. Our tips can work for your family too. Schedule a time to talk to your spouse about money and divide up the money saving missions.

How were we able to save $300.00 each month?

Saving Money Tip #1: Evaluate Services You Don’t Use

When we reviewed our monthly expenses, the first to go on the chopping block was our AT&T Bundle invoice. Maybe yours is DirecTV, cable or pay television by another name.

We were spending $9.99 each month each for premium channel like Cinemax and HBO. We enjoy watching movies but the reality was that we just weren’t able to watch these movies at the times that they were on and even DVR’ing them didn’t help we couldn’t find the time to sit and watch all we would like. Dropping the premium channels saved us $20.00 per month.

Saving Money Tip # 2: Drop Unused Entertainment Expenses

We feel that we are already frugal in the entertainment area taking advantage of Entertainment book and free events. With coupons, promotions and free event, much of our entertainment ends up being free or low cost. Still we were back to monthly movie costs again. Using Blockbuster Online cost $15.99 a month plus we had to rent at least four movies each month to get free movies in store. Since we hadn’t taken advantage of a free movie in over 6 weeks, we saw that this was an expense that we could easily cut. We weren’t getting the value for our money. Instead we sign up in store for Block Buster movie rewards and now we can get buy one get one free 3 days a week and only pay when we use the service.

This brought our monthly savings up to $35.99.

Saving Money Tip # 3: Look at Your Phone Bills

Next we examined our cell phone bills with Verizon. Since our home phone package includes unlimited long distance, we saw that we were not using our full amount of minutes. We called our cell phone carrier, Verizon, and asked for discount ideas including corporate and school discounts for our son who’s in college. By changing our plan to Friends and Family and lowering the minutes we reduced our communications expenses by about 15% for a savings of $37.00 per month.

Our monthly savings now totaled $72.99.

Remember that these first three money saving tips only took a one-time phone call. We called once but we save money every month.

Saving Money Tip # 4: Brown Bag Lunches

How much do you really spend each month on lunches? A look at our debit card and credit card statements showed us that just one of us was spending about $6.00 a day for lunch which ends up being $120.00 per month. This doesn’t even factor in the gas money for going out to get lunch. With some reusable containers and leftovers, our family is saving money, saving gas and going eco-friendly too, not to mention that the packed lunch is healthier.

By packing 20 work day lunches a month, our family’s cumulative monthly savings is up to $192.99.

Saving Money Tip # 5: Smart Coupon Clipping

Clipping coupons is smart but it’s also an art. Coupons won’t save you money or time unless you follow these coupon clipping rules.

A. Don’t cut it if you don’t use it.

B. Don’t buy anything just because you have a coupon.

C. Make the most of coupons by stocking up when grocery items are on sale.

We recently saved $45.00 off of our grocery bill with coupons. On average we’ve found that we can save around $110.00 per month using coupons. Where do I find the best coupons? In addition to Sunday circular coupons, I use Coupons.com, Smart Source and Red Plum.

By using these money saving tips plus clipping coupons, now our family saves a total of $302.00 per month.

How do we get these money saving tips accomplished? At your budget meeting, divvy up the money saving chores and give each other 24 hours and check back in. Remember that while two of these tips, packing lunches and clipping coupons takes an ongoing commitment, over $70.00 a month was saved with just three phone calls.

What could your family do with an extra $300.00 a month? Pay off debt? Save for college? A vacation? These real money saving tips worked for our family and we hope that you will use will use these money saving tips to help your family start saving money this month too.

Jonathan Kraft is a recognized expert in helping consumers save money, shop safely and be protected from identity theft [http://blog.identitytheftsecrets.com]. Learn more about the money saving strategies and consumer protection at the Identity Theft Secrets blog [http://blog.identitytheftsecrets.com].

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Jonathan_Kraft/5204

13 No Cost Ways to Reduce Your Energy Bills

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When my mother passed away, I was cleaning out some of her stuff and ran across some REALLY old bills and her old checkbook registers. My mother had a habit of thinking she needed to keep everything…just in case. Utility bill receipts from 1978? Please! One thing I will say about this little jaunt down memory lane was I got to see how inexpensive it was to live back then compared to present day. The cost of inflation is absolutely ridiculous! The only thing that seems to be rising are the costs associated with living – not paychecks. It was shocking to see my mother paid $15 a month on the average for her electric bill…isn’t that just crazy? If you make little changes to the way you use the energy around your home the cost of energy can be reduced. Once making these minor adjustments you should see the results of lower bills.

  1. Give your laundry the cold shoulder. If you get in a habit of switching that little temperature dial on your washing machine to cold water instead of hot or warm it will use less energy thus saving you money throughout the year. Does it matter if your clothes are cold when they are being clean? Some clothing instructions state to use hot/warm, etc. If you really think about it cold water not only reduces the amount of energy used BUT it can also save your clothes so they last longer. Hot water can break down the fibers of the fabric quicker (Learned that last little trick from a textile expert).
  2. Load it up. This little tip is one that I know some won’t agree with…our MayDay man says it’s true. When washing laundry and dishes (this applies to both the washing machine and the dishwasher), load up the machine because full loads result in maximum efficiency and helps to avoid wasting water. For further savings, try to get in a habit of air drying your clothes and dishes. I know – I used to think ‘why have a dryer if not to be used, right?’. Now I let my jeans and some shirts and sweaters air dry because it truly does make them last longer.
  3. Ditch the lint.  When using a clothes dryer, it is super important to clean out the lint filter – not just for energy purposes but for safety, as well. Get in a habit of cleaning out the filter after each load and it will become your new routine. I have a little dollar store plastic trash can lined with a grocery bag near my dryer to make it effortless. And, to mention again – it can be dangerous to let the lint build up risking a fire because it blocks the flow of air.
  4. Divide light loads from heavy ones. We know to separate the dark clothes from whites so the darks don’t bleed onto the whites (which doesn’t have anything to do with energy). Let’s take this a step further and separate the heavy loads from the light ones. If you put towels, bedspreads, and other heavy items together and the lighter weighted items together you will see an increase in drying efficiency.
  5. Get wet. Taking a shower saves water and energy versus taking a bath. Think of all the gallons of water that goes into a bath tub – of course it’s implied NOT to take a 30 minute shower or that too would result in gallons of water down the drain. Also, invest in a low flow efficient shower head – there are some on the market that will still have good water pressure.
  6. Nix the drips.  Repair any leaky faucets. Even a little drip can amount to a large water bill over time.
  7.  Bundle up. Heating bills can be reduced up to 10 percent when you insulate your hot water pipes and water heater.  Use approved insulation materials for efficiency.
  8.  Flip it off. Well not that kind of flip off LOL. Turn off any lights, TVs, computers or other electronics when not being used.
  9.  Let there be light.  Conventional incandescent bulbs are quickly becoming a thing of the past. There are longer lasting and energy saving options on the market now. Also, try to open up the drapes and let the sun shine in during the day. Besides, natural light is also a great source of vitamins.
  10.  Filter Savings. Every month you should replace the filter in your air conditioner in the summer and the furnace in the winter for maximum efficiency.
  11.  Hang out. I can remember the days when I was a child we would hang our clothes outside on the clothesline to dry with these little wooden clips. Nothing smelled fresher than outdoor dried clothes. Hang a clothes line outside and give it a try – it will definitely save energy and money.
  12. Glow test. After dark, take a walk around your home with a flashlight and see what is glowing. You will be amazed at just how many things are lit up like power strips, computers, cable boxes, etc. Even though no one may be using these items, they are still ‘on’ and using energy. The only way to save is to unplug them when not in use and plug them back in when needed.
  13. Fill up the freezer. We have had the pleasure of owning appliances that lasted well into 3 decades. Yes, you read correctly-30 years! We were fortunate we had good brands and kept them maintained. Keep your freezer full so it doesn’t have to work as hard and will therefore use less electricity. When a freezer is empty to near empty it has to work double time to keep the space icy cold. If you take a large stone or a bucket filled with water it will help fill up that empty space.

The above no cost suggestions will help you reduce your energy bills and help to save you money.

Till next time. Keep saving.

The above tips were inspired by the book, “Saving Energy” by Reader’s Digest. If you are interested in this awesome book of tips click here

-The Beautiful Nerd ❤

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Debt Relief – Ways to Reduce Debt Faster

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It seems that everyone is looking for ways to reduce debt faster these days as the world uses their lines of credit more and more to get through their daily lives. With the average credit card debt per household in America being around the $8,900 mark, we look at ways to reduce debt faster.

First thing is to work out exactly what you owe! Seriously you need to do this, most people think that they know what this sum is until they finally get around to working out the exact sum they do not realize how deep in debt they actually are. And if you are looking for ways to reduce debt faster you first need to know how much that debt actually is!

The next thing to do is to look at that figure that you worked out and admit that you have a problem and be true to yourself to start clearing the debt starting right now! RIGHT NOW!

Then work out how much money you have coming in each month, this can be salary, benefits, part time work or allowances. You have to list everything or you are not going to find ways to reduce debt faster than you are at the moment.

This is the toughest step, work out how much you have going out each month. This is the part where most people feel they need help and look to get some form of credit counseling the help them find ways to reduce debt faster. You then take the two figures from income and outgoings and see what the difference is. It is important when looking at your outgoings you don’t just put debts but everything from utility bills, gas and everyday things like food on there (either that or you are going to not only end up hungry but also on the wrong side of your payments)

Now you need to budget, work out exactly what you have each month and what your absolute essentials are, if you are serious about finding ways to reduce debt faster then you will be willing to make some sacrafices in order to fo this. Shop in the slightly cheaper supermarket, don’t use your cell phone unless you absolutely need to, walk to the local shop rather than drive, there are many ways you can reduce what you use and what you spend money on each month.

Once you have your own budget in place then you can start to look at reducing the cost of your debt. Many people don’t realize that their debt gets almost worse each month because of the interest and bank charges that are put onto what they owe. Now if you are finding ways to reduce debt faster then a very god way is to call up your credit card company and ask for a cheaper rate of interest. Play them off against each other, if you receive an offer in the post for a balance transfer, call your own credit card company and ask them what they can do in relation to this.

Each of the steps above are ways to reduce debt faster and if you are taking each of these steps seriously then you will be well on your way to reducing your debts.

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Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Steven_Turner/97278