SAVE MONEY up to $200 per month on your cell phone with these 5 tips

14 November 2009, 11:07 am

The proliferation of cellular phones in recent years is marked and profound, and now most people I know have a cell phone, and sometimes even more than one. I am one of those people… I have a personal cell phone and a business cell phone. As such, I have become a somewhat saavy cell phone consumer myself, and offer these tips for the average cell phone user to save some money on their bill.

  1. If you are on your phone all the time you absolutely need an unlimited talk plan, and such plans are now available with most carriers.

    SAVE $ 200 PER MONTH

  2. If you have close family that also have cell phones, consider transitioning into a combined account to save a ton of money collectively over paying for individual accounts. For example, myself, my wife, my mom, my dad, and my sister are all under the same calling plan. When we all had our own individual plans, were were spending a combined $ 200 per month MORE than we do now on the same plan.
  3. If you don’t talk much except in a crisis situation, then rollover minutes are great for helping see you through those short periods of high call volume. In addition, if you have another cell phone or a landline with unlimited calling, you can minimize cell phone use until you can get to one of those phones and save your rollover minutes for a rainy day.
  4. Text messaging is highly recommended. Sign up for an unlimited texting plan and get texting. Communications brief and to the point via instant emails in short bursts and easy updates to your twitter and facebook account to spend 30 seconds to let all your 500+ friends know what you’re up to, and now retailers all over are sending out special texting-only deals too. It saves your minutes, it saves your time, and it saves your frustrations of not being able to get a hold of someone because most everybody reads their text messages either right when they receive them or shortly thereafter (unless they have misplaced their cell phone).
  5. Drop the extras. All of my phones are voice and text only because even though the phones are getting better, especially with the iphone and its’ 10,000+ apps available for download, I still do not find them useful as internet browsers and such just yet. I will make the jump into a data plan when it makes sense, but for now I’m quite happy not having the added expense for which I would not realize a reasonable value. Check your bill and make sure that all extra charges from texting, web browsing, downloading ringtones, roadside assistance, and all the other add-ons they try to nickel and dime you with, that you don’t really use or appreciate, are removed. Many of them you have to specifically opt out of in order to be protected.

So that’s it! These five easy things are what we have done to save a ton of money on our cell phones. They are still somewhat pricey, but at least we are realizing the value of what we are paying for and not feeling totally gouged every month. I’m looking forward to increased competition to further reduce costs down the road, and better handheld devices to use on the cellular networks. The iphone is really great and ground-breaking, but the near future promises much, much better. Until then, I’ll stick to voice and texting only.

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SAVE MONEY on your electric bill by unscrewing unneeded bulbs from light fixtures

29 October 2009, 7:31 pm

You may have never considered it before, but the truth is that one of the best places to store extra spare bulbs for your lighting fixtures is in the fixtures themselves.

Actually, I digress a bit. My wife got me in the habit of unscrewing light bulbs because she has the eyes of an owl and cannot tolerate much bright light at all. Therefore, whenever we go out to a restaurant where they have lighting directly above the table, it is naturally my job to dismantle that thing by unscrewing the bulb from the socket not all the way, but just until the light goes out, leaving the bulb hanging there.

Carrying this concept into the house, I quickly realized that I had some lights integrated into ceiling fans, some on fixtures, and some in regular lamps, in addition to vanity mirror lights in the bathrooms, that all used like four or five bulbs each! How wasteful! Though I must admit, it did brighten the place up quite a bit.

So off I went to each separate lighting apparatus in the house unscrewing all but one or two bulbs. It turns out the remaining bulbs give off plenty of light, and my wife is happier with the lower light setting as well. The bulbs are still there, mind you, so they look fine when the light is not on, and it only looks a bit wierd when the light is actually turned on.

Now should the one bulb we are using out of a five-bulb fixture happen to burn out, there are four more right there in the fixture ready to go with a simple twist.

WE SAVE $ 20

PER MONTH

For me personally, I am happy with the reduced electric utility bill for sure. I estimate that just by unscrewing extra and unnessecary light bulbs, we are saving about $ 20 a month. However, we don’t normally have a lot of lights on anyways. If you are the type to either purposely or accidentally (or both) leave lots of lights on all the time like my mom is, I would think your savings could be significantly higher.

A simple twist

is all it takes!

So go ahead and unscrew those extra bulbs right now, and you too will start saving money IMMEDIATELY.

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BUILD CREDIT Increase your credit score by using credit cards responsibly

26 October 2009, 1:30 pm

So you have been through a personal financial crisis and seen the evil that credit cards are, and you’re finally understanding better how money works and what happens when you keep charging purchases up to the limit on your card… ultimately swamping yourself in debt. You’ve finally cleared out most or all of that revolving credit card debt and now you can breathe an immense sigh of relief. Congratulate yourself, but also get ready for a shocker.

Just when you’ve sworn off all credit cards for life as being completely evil (and rightly so), now to start improving your credit score again you’re going to need to *GASP* get a credit card again.

USING CREDIT

RESPONSIBLY

IMPROVES

YOUR

CREDIT SCORE

When you start using credit responsibly by keeping the balance paid in full every month not only are you able to avoid interest charges and late payment penalties, but you are also helping to ratchet your overall credit score a few points higher.

I’ll admit that it is indeed a scary proposition, after all, what if you make a purchase and then later cannot pay for it when the bill is due? It is true that what lenders are looking for is a solid history over an extended period of time, and as such your credit score can be marred again significantly from just one missed payment. However, at some point you do have to start showing that you can use credit responsibly if you want your credit score to go up.

One way to manage this effectivley is to, for example, pay your energy bill (or any other purchase) with your credit card, and at the same time put that money into a secondary checking account where it can sit waiting to pay the credit card bill on time. Then when you get the credit card bill, you already have the money to pay it set aside.

For me personally, I have yet to take the plunge back into credit card land. I know I’ll have to go there again someday, but I’m really procrastinating. So if you’re like me, it’s something you’ll do again when you feel ready to get your credit score really moving back into a positive direction again.

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MAKE MONEY by selling things you don’t need or use very much

22 October 2009, 2:53 pm

There are distinct benefits to reduction of clutter of all kinds from our lives, and living smaller, simpler, and within our means. On our path there, we are likely to find that we have a bunch of extra stuff that we need to get rid of.

If you are like my wife and I, you may accumulate more and more stuff over time, never getting rid of any of it, until you are so swamped with so many things that you are completely unorganized and unable to find anything if you even happen to remember what you have in the first place. All that stuff gets lost in the bottom of rubbermaid bins for years on end and moves with you from residence to residence. Now is the time to start digging through all of that and letting go of all those things that were so near and dear to you for so many years that they simply got lost in a huge pile of miscellaneous artifacts and possessions.

CALL

TO ACTION!!

SELL

YOUR STUFF!!

One excellent place to list classifieds for free is Craiglist. You may be surprised who is willing to not only come pick up your old couch which is in decent shape, but also pay you $ 100 cash for it. In my experience, Craigslist has been far and away the best place to dispose of items in good condition but no longer needed. This works well particularly for larger indivdual items that are commonplace in most homes such as furniture, appliances, and so on. Be sure to add photos and mention that the price is what it is so you don’t have to deal with bargaining on the spot. Cash and carry only, you pay for it, you haul it away, price firm. Craigslist is fast paced, first come first served, so be ready to respond to requests as soon as you post your items. And please exercise some caution if you are inviting the buyer who is unknown onto your property for viewing or pickup. http://www.craigslist.org

If your items are collectibles of some kind which are of significant value to the individual collector, you may want to consider selling them on ebay. However, it may be better to do so through a third party seller who has a good rating on ebay so that your buyers will trust the seller enough to make payment. http://www.ebay.com

There is always the ages-old rummage sale, and we have had many successful ones. Our last rummage sale was a one-day blitz of clearing out a bunch of our junk for pennies on the dollar, and at the end of the day not only had other people hauled away a lot of our stuff for us, but we also made $ 500 in cash.

Lately I have seen more people leveraging their online social networks as a means of parting with unwanted items, and that is also a great route to go. Just post to your facebook wall what your are selling and and how much you want for it, and see if any of your friends are interested in buying it. http://www.facebook.com

Whatever is broken should be dumped, and whatever is useful but maybe not worth much should be either thrown away or organized. You have to consider, if you managed to live without it for the past five years, and you totally forgot about it, do you really still need it taking up more of your living space?

Whatever is left once everything is cleaned out and everything you could sell has been sold, should then be donated to your local thrift store.

While you are making the donation, walk in there for a little and check out how much you could be saving by buying second hand clothes instead of new ones. We’ll write that one up in a different blog entry…

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ELIMINATE DEBT by paying off credit cards and other debts one at a time

21 October 2009, 1:46 pm

One often overlooked principle for getting out of credit card debt is the idea that each card should be paid off one at a time. This does not come naturally, as we tend to look at the entirety of all our monthly payments combined as anywhere from somewhat overwhelming to impossibly overwhelming.

However, if we can just focus on just one debt to eliminate first, then we just have to commit to an extra amount above the minimum we are going to pay each month in order to accelerate the elimination of that specific debt. We simply focus on getting rid of just that one (credit card, student loan, car loan, mortgage, etc) debt, before we then move on to the next target for elimination, handling each one of them one at a time. We continue through all of our debts in this manner until they are all eliminated in entirety, and we are completely debt-free.

Don’t expect this to be a quick process – unless you get a windfall lottery settlement, inheritance, lawsuit settlement, and so on, then your ability to accelerate debt payoff will be solely dependent on the sacrafices you are willing to make in order to do it. If we get a tax refund at tax time, we should strongly consider using that to speed up debt elimination as well.

Here’s an real example from my own finances:

I recently decided that my next target for payoff would be my private student loans which I have been carrying for the past ten years. If I had continued making minimum payments, they would have been paid in full by 2012, however, today I am proud to say that I just finished paying them off entirely three years quicker.

The debt consisted of four separate educational loans which were not federal debt at interest rates between 8.5 and 9.25 percent. Every month I made minimum payments on all of them, which was about $ 125 on combined balances of $ 4,500 between all four (Note: The original balances added up to $ 6,000 and only $ 1,500 of prinicpal had been paid off during the past ten years of minimum payments). Then I paid an additional $ 50 towards the loan with the highest interest rate also. In about 18 months, I had eliminated one of the four and reduced my monthly payment to about $ 92 per month, so then I decided to start working on the next one by paying $ 150 per month total, using whatever is above the minimum to pay off the loan with the next highest interest rate sooner.

PAYING IT IN FULL

FREED UP

$ 92 CASH PER MONTH

In another six months, I had reduced my total prinicpal balance to about $ 2,500 and built up almost $ 10,000 in emergency savings as well, so I decided to take a chunk of my emergency savings and pay off the remaining balance in one lump sum, thereby retiring a student loan debt I had been carrying for 14 years, saving thousands of dollars in interest over the remaining life of the loan, improving my credit score, significantly enhancing my debt-to-income ratio, lowering my overall cost of living, and freeing up another $ 92 per month in payments that I can now use to either rebuild emergency savings again or pay off some other debts sooner.

gateloanspaidoff
Shown above: my private student loan balances after paying them off.

My next target for elimination, in case you are wondering, is the tuition and fees we still owe my wife’s college for her last semester of work there. That one is a $ 212 a month payment on what is a $ 4,000 or so balance at the time of writing this entry. I’ll keep you updated on that one in a later blog post.

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SAVE MONEY by avoiding any unneccessary trips in the car

19 October 2009, 5:48 pm

Every time you go somewhere in your car, it costs something. You may or may not think about it, however, when your gas tank is running low, that’s an inescapable point of epiphany from which no vehicle operator can escape. There are other costs associated with driving though, including wear-and-tear on the car, maintenance of the vehicle, the time you spend on the road, and so on. This is precisely why the federal mileage reimbursement rate is $ 0.55 per mile for 2009.

So that is a very quick and easy way to quantify the real cost of driving. You know how far you went, times 55 cents per mile, and you know how long it took you to make the trip.

Therefore, a quick drive to the grocery store five miles away, round trip, is going to cost a total of $ 5.50 in gas and wear and tear on your vehicle and likely use up fifteen minutes or so of your time which could have spent doing something more productive. If you are in the regular habit of running to the store to pick up food for dinner on a nightly basis, for example, that’s going to cost you about $ 165.00 per month in added driving expenses, in addition to using up 7.5 hours of your time over the entire month. Just think of what you could have done with all that extra time and money if you made just two trips to the store per month instead of daily trips.

I SAVE

$ 100

PER MONTH

Since I have started taking notice of where and when I am driving and eliminating unneccesary trips, or compounding trips out to be more productive, I figure I have saved an average of $ 100 per month, or $ 1200 per year, that was otherwise being spent on unneccessary car trips. In addition, over the year, I’ve gained an estimated extra 10 minutes of time per day, which adds up to 60 hours or so for the year, or 2.5 full days total.

A couple of closing notes:

Insurance is an added vehicle expense but premiums are not typically dependent on how much you drive, so it was purposely left out of this analysis. 

You can be more productive while on the road by listening to audio books and such, dictating into a recorder, bringing someone else with you to drive while you work on a laptop, getting to know better the other people in the car with you, and so on. Often while driving in the car is one of the only places my wife and I end up having good conversation.

Be careful if you talk on the phone, however, because the increased productivity may result in much greater costs due to your innattentive driving, and it may even be illegal in some areas.

Finally, consider walking or riding a bike to any nearby places you don’t need to haul a lot of stuff to and from. You get exercise, it’s more environmentally friendly, and you save money all at once, which is absolutely wonderful!

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BUILD CREDIT by making all payments on time consistently

13 October 2009, 11:59 am

Perhaps the most important concept for improving your credit score is to keep all your monthly payments of all kinds current every month. The longer you are able to do this, the higher your credit score will be. This includes your rent or mortgage, utility bill, phone bill, credit cards, medical bills, car payment, insurance payments, and so on – essentially anything and everything you have made a committment to pay on a monthly basis. If you follow through on those committments each and every month, then you will be viewed as handling credit in a responsible manner, thus the increase in your credit score (and yes, a higher credit score is better).

If you are unable to make all your payments on time in any given month, you’ll have to decide which ones to pay and which ones not to pay. Though effect on credit rating is not necessarily the most important factor in that decision, however, it should definitely be a strong consideration.

For example, not paying rent on your residence or home may not be a hit to your credit score immediately, but typically late payment fees are huge and you’ll end up with a five day quit or pay notice within two weeks anyways, so not paying rent has significant enough consequences that the fact it does not immediately impact your credit score is a mute point, and paying rent should always be a highest priority.

Conversely, many medical bills won’t go into a collections status (i.e. be reported to credit bureaus) until they are past due 60 or 90 days, so you may want to consider paying the utility bill or making a credit card payment first, and then catching up on the medical bill in a little while when you are able to do so.

The general idea here is that you are aware of the consequences of not paying certain bills so that if you find yourself in a cash squeeze, you can make well informed and intelligent decisions about who does and doesn’t get paid, since you are unable to pay everything and therefore have to make a decision.

Considerations include maintaining basic life necessities such as shelter, food, utilities, and water, impact on credit score, late fees that will be assessed, keeping debts out of collections, avoiding disconnection notices, and more. Don’t arbitrarily decide what not to pay, and don’t just pay a certain lender because they are bugging you so much it’s driving you crazy.

Know what you are doing, take control, and be straightforward and forthcoming with your lenders. When you can see there is not going to be enough money for everything in the near future, be proactive in your decisions not reactive based on the fallout of consequences.

Finally, if you find yourself in the decision of always deciding what not to pay, and you just can’t seem to get caught up, it may be time to consider some significant changes of lifestyle so that you can once again live within your means.

You can do it!

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MAKE MONEY by blogging for ad revenue 250 USD per month

12 October 2009, 8:49 am

START BUILDING

RESIDUAL INCOME

TODAY! IT’S EASY!

This is my personal favorite money making idea lately, and I have been actively working on implementing it and getting better at it, so I have learned many things in a very short time. I must admit, it is really neat to see ad dollars trickle in with relatively little effort on my part.

There is a prerequisite here that you must be at least a half-decent writer and able to come up with some reasonably compelling content which will grow in popularity over time.

The easiest way to get this going is two-fold. First, you create a free blog at one which allows you to easily attach revenue produsing ads such as blogspot.com, and start writing regular blog entries consistently, daily if possible. The second item is to work on announcing your blog posts by participating in social media such as facebook and twitter, and joining niche forum sites with your web address attached to your profile and comments.

Along the way work on improving your search engine optimization, keyword targeting, and so on. Ask others whom you know to recommend your blog site.

If you’re already making regular contributions to a blog or your myspace or facebook account, you are doing so to THEIR benefit, giving them your proprietary web content for free so they can appreciate the ad revenue from it. Instead, I am encouraging you to keep your own content on your own blog for your own benefit so you can receive the ad revenue. You don’t have to write amazing long and insightful articles, just spend a few minutes each day plugging it and eventually it will become quite routine and effortless.

In addition, if you’re already writing materials for school, for example, why not publish them to a blog and let them make some extra cash for you? Or if you’re writing a book which you want to make available for free, you could publish it as a series of blog entries with ads attached to it so you still make some money off of it.

The way you make money is by placing the ads on your site, and then whenever an ad is shown, you may get paid for the ad to simply be shown, and whenever an ad is clicked on, you get paid much more for clicks. Some clicks on ads can pay you as much as four or five dollars each!!!, but most will pay a few pennies. Also, be sure to follow the rules of the ad networks you choose to work with. I strongly recommend Google AdWords which has been fantastic for me so far.

To see some of the blogging projects I have started, other than this one you are reading of course, check out the following sites:

http://alternative-renewable-energy-stocks-investment-wind-solar-power.com/

http://blog.aurcomputerservice.com/

http://used-laptop-desktop-refurbished-computers-store-sale.com/

http://monthlydividendstocks.blogspot.com/

And there will be more to come too!

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ELIMINATE DEBT Start by believing it is possible

10 October 2009, 11:51 pm

YOU CAN DO IT

The very first step towards effective debt reduction and paying off credit cards, and ultimately becoming completely debt free, is to simply believe you can. If you choose to believe it is impossible, then chances are you are not going to be motivated to do anything about it and either continue to remain in debt, go further into debt, or ultimately be forced into bankruptcy.

Try for a moment to step outside your shoes and consider what you have to work with and the resources you can draw upon. If you are making payments on at least some of your debts, rent, and so on, then there is a good possibility that a little perspective, some financial restructuring, and some significant lifestyle changes could land you in a much better and progressively positive financial position.

The good news is that no matter how much debt you have, as long as you have not done anything illegal, you are not going to jail for it, and life will go on. The bad news is that you could lose some very important things such as your home or car, and in order to make the switch from accumulating more and more debt, you are likely going to have to make some very difficult choices and sacrifices.

You are also going to have to be patient, as it is likely going to take many, many years to finally be completely debt free.

At the time of writing this, I am nowhere near entirely debt free, but my outlook has changed very much to the positive. For me personally, I went through a long series of very significant changes over a period of about five years including moving to a less expensive residence, doing away with expensive bad habits, considering the monetary cost of everything I do and every decision I make, and so on.

I have had some victories, as I no longer have a car payment, I no longer have any credit card debt, I have a nest egg of savings of about three months’ worth of living expenses, and just recently I paid off a trio of private student loans I had been carrying for the past ten years. Still, I have a long way to go to become completely debt free even after working on it for the past five years. I can, however, see the light at the end of the tunnel.

WHAT IS YOUR

DEBT FREE DATE?

Whereas I thought once upon a time that I could not possibly eliminate any debt relative to all my enormous expenses, now I don’t just believe it is possible, but I actually have a realistic plan in black and white and a debt-free date: June 1st, 2015.

If you’re interested in discovering your debt free date, contact me, and I’ll introduce you to someone who will show it to you for free. No kidding.

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SAVE MONEY – Unplug electric appliances when not using them

10 October 2009, 12:38 pm

You’ll be surprised at how much you’ll save on this one!

Every electrical appliance plugged into a wall outlet or into yourelectrical system in general, for the most part, has a constant power drain which costs you money every minute of every day as long as it is plugged in. The list of items this includes is huge, and some people may actually keep dozens of items unneccessarily plugged into wall outlets throughout their homes or businesses. Some examples are as follows:

  • Stereos, radios, televisions, VCRs, DVD players, TV Tuners, DVR’s, etc.
  • Battery chargers, cell phone chargers, other chargers.
  • Most coffee makers, blenders, microwaves, etc.
  • Video game systems including all of them – playstation, xbox, wii, and others.
  • Certain types of fans, lights, etc. that have power transformers.
  • Computers, monitors, printers, computer speakers, external hard drives, etc.

The reason these are always consuming power is because they use a type of electricity called DC, or direct current, and the power coming from the wall outlet is AC, or alternating current. Thus, built into each of these devices is a power transformer to convert AC into DC which is not perfect, in fact, the power conversion causes some electrical energy to be constantly lost as heat whether the device plugged into it is being used or not, and even more so while it is in use. In addition, anything with a clock or lit-up power status indicator on it or which is constantly listening for a signal from a remote control to power up is actively using power all the time.

Now there are obviously some you use all the time and therefore would not unplug such as refrigerators, freezers, live fish tank pumps and heaters, etc. However, even with those items you can save some additional money by reducing the amount of light you use with them, for example, you can physcially remove the light in the fridge if you don’t really need it to see inside there, and you can put the fish tank lights on an automatic timer which both improves the health of the tank and use of energy.

In my home, we use power strips into which we plug everything in, and when things are not in use, we turn off the power on the power strip, which is much more convenient than un-plugging and re-plugging each individual item but still has the same effect. For example, the TV, DVD player, Playstation 2, Powered Speakers, and Digital TV Tuner are all plugged into the same power strip. When we use one of them we turn the switch on the power strip, and when we’re not using any of them, we flip the switch on the power strip off.

I SAVE $ 75

PER MONTH!

Since I have started unplugging electric items when I am not using them, I have been pleased with the results. I have realized a savings in electricity costs of about $ 75 per month, which is a significant chunk of change to me, and well worth the effort. In addition, by consuming less electricity, I am helping a little to reduce my carbon footprint and keep things cleaner and greener for my children and their children.

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