World Drive - Learning to Drive My World
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Photo courtesy of 401KCalculator.
I ran across this concept from a bank some time ago and thought it was great. All you do each Wednesday is leave your wallet at home when you leave. The purpose being if you don’t have any cash or cards on you then you can’t buy anything. This causes you to save money at least one day a week.
Try it out! Brown bag the lunch and make the coffee at home. Let me know what you think of it and how much you saved.
I know it is odd to be talking about Christmas and the holidays in August (or maybe it isn’t if you check your stores). However, the earlier you start and the better you plan the less stressful and budget busting the season can be.
Last year I wrote a review for “100 Days to Christmas 2012” by Jennifer Tankersley which you can find here. Well, the 2013 edition is being released today which you can find here.
The last couple years I have talked about the importance of setting up the Christmas budget and planning ahead. This book allows you to do that a little each day from September 16 until December 25. It takes a lot of the stress and guesswork out of holiday planning and provides you plenty of time to enjoy the season with family without worrying about the odds and ends of what you need to get done
The book is an instant download and along with the book you get 28 interactive lists (3 additional over last year) and 60 days free on ListPlanIt – Jennifer’s main site with all kinds of organizational goodies.
How much do I believe this book can help you? Well, I am giving it away! All you need to do is follow the instructions below and you’ll be entered. You have until Sunday to enter and winners will be contacted by e-mail.
Form removed. Giveaway has ended. Congratulations to Michael D. and Emily C. for receiving a free copy of the book!
I am going to deviate a little from my normal blog and write about a service I ran across a couple of weeks ago. It is call My Job Chart and is a great tool for teaching your kids to spend, save, and give in a technical but easy way. Did I mention it is also free?
My Job Chart was developed to allow the parent to assign various chores and along with that a point value. In their system one point equals one cent towards a reward such as something from the Amazon store (you can set whatever items you want to allow them to save points for), a trip to the movies, eating out, game time and a lot more. You can also choose custom rewards and how many points it takes to receive that reward.
The system also allows the child to select how much money they want to save and can click a button to have you add that amount to their savings account once they earned it.
Lastly, it allows your child to give. You can setup whatever charities you want your child to be able to save their money to be donated to and they choose how much goes the charity. Once they have earned enough points they click a button and you receive an e-mail asking you to donate the amount on behalf of the child.
We use this with our daughter and it is great. She is excited to see her points go up everyday after she does her jobs rather than waiting for the once a week payday that we were doing. She is able to be in control of her points (*cough* money) and learn how to save for a goal, give to those less fortunate, and save for a rainy day.
There is a lot more as far as customization and options you can do. It is 100% free so give it a try. After you do swing by here and let me know what you think!
Congratulations to Emily C. for winning the Deluxe Envelope System and and Leah K. for winning the Starter Envelope System!
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We are giving away two envelope systems this week! These are both from DaveRamsey.com and feature the FPU logo embossed on the front.
All you need to do to enter is follow the directions below. Winners will be contacted no later than Monday, July 15, 2013 and will be announced on this page and our Facebook page.
****Sign up form removed. Giveaway has ended.****
Deluxe Envelope System
Starter Envelope System
Winners
Congratulations to Matt L., Bambi W., and Davi H.! Enjoy your planners and have a less stressful holiday season!
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From November 3-November 9 you can enter to win one of three holiday eplanners from ListPlanIt. These planners can help keep you organized and stress free during the holiday season from Thanksgiving through Christmas. It is 53 pages of tools such as card lists, gift lists, meal and party planning lists, and anything else you might need to get your holiday planning on track.
Giveaway Times
Giveaway will run from 12:01am EST on November 3, 2012 until 12:01am EST on November 9, 2012. Winners will be announced no later than November 10, 2012 on this page.
Delivery
3 winner will be notified via e-mail and a link to download the eplanner will be sent from ListPlanIt directly to download your eplanner.
How to Sign Up
Follow the information below and gain multiple entries!
*Signup Form Removed – Giveaway has ended*
Here is a new service I am going to be testing out over the next few weeks that looks like it can make your life a lot easier called Food on the Table.
You sign up for a free account (the link below has a coupon code for a lifetime premium membership for free this month), choose a store from your local area, choose what your family likes to eat, and it helps build a meal plan that includes sales from the weekly circular.
There is also an iPhone and Android app for the service allowing you to take your grocery list with you. If you do not have a smart phone you can print your list from your account and take it with you.
This really looks like a promising service if it continues to grow and be supported. I look forward to trying it out and seeing what sorts of recipes it puts out for my family. We can be a group of picky eaters sometimes.
Click the link below to read more about it and get your code for free membership. Comment below if you have good or bad things to say. As I said I have yet to try it but wanted to get it out there before the coupon code expired.
Food on the Table Builds Meal Plans and Grocery Lists To Go on Android, iPhone, and Online.
If you have researched paying off debt in any form more than likely you have come across the “Debt Snowball” method of paying off debt. Many people have talked about it but most notably of those is Dave Ramsey.
Ramsey suggests in order to pay of debts quicker and get a psychological advantage in your process you start with your smallest debt and work up to the highest balance debt until you are debt free. I was thinking a few weeks ago, why not try this with my savings accounts? And so I have and thusfar has worked like a charm.
I have several savings accounts which gets money automatically transferred into them on a set interval. These accounts are my budgeted items – you could call them my electronic envelopes. They are named for what they are to be used for such as car maintenance, clothing, birthdays, Christmas, etc. I know how much I want in each of these to consider them “fully funded”.
I make a list of these accounts and how much each one needs in it in order to be maxed out at from the smallest one to the largest one. Now, the money that is budgeted for is put into these accounts with the most going into the smallest one each pay day. Once that one is fully funded I move to the next one on the list and put the budgeted amount into that account plus what was budgeted for the first account. We continue this until all of the accounts are fully funded and then everything that was budgeted for them starts going into my emergency fund.
I find this to be a natural progression if you use the “Baby Steps” as part of your personal finance plan. It easy to keep up with, you already understand the snowball, and it gives you another set of financial goals whose whole purpose is to keep you from getting back into the debt trap again.
Photo courtesy of Ryan Grimm.
It is almost that time of year again! What? It isn’t? Oh, it is just time to start saving for that time of year. That is what I wanted to discuss.
Every year I see first hand hundreds of people waiting until the last minute to purchase presents for Christmas because they do not plan throughout the year. They wait and wait and at the last minute it is like a ghost that was leftover from Halloween screamed “BOO!” and they are rushing to get gifts or get money for the holidays. Want to have a less stressful season in 10 months? Start saving now!
You don’t have to be stressed this year. I promise you, if you will follow a few simple steps you can have the easiest holiday season you have ever had. Everything feels different when you have the money saved, you pay with cash, and you know you won’t have a huge credit card bill come January that may very well stick around until the following Christmas.
All you have to do are a few simple steps:
You must be realistic on what you want to spend on each person. If you make $20,000 a year you need to spend what you can afford. If you feel bad for this, then let the people know now that you can’t afford it and settle on a mutual amount to spend on each other based on what you can spend. Don’t let the people who put everything on credit cards tell you how much you should spend on them.
If you want to go a little further figure out how much it will cost for the supplies to make the people at the side your list their gifts and budget for that as well. Or, better yet, of you aren’t making them a food item figure out how many items you need to make each month to be finished for Christmas and you can save that stress at the end of the year as well.
Have A Merry February Everyone!
More Information:
What Dave Ramsey says about saving for Christmas
Photo courtesy of David DeHetre
Have you ever paid attention to what you are actually paying for toilet paper and want to know when to stock up? Check out this excellent article over at Save The Coupons.
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Coupons are getting a lot more attention now then they used to thanks to television. However, this can still be dangerous territory if you are not careful. It is very easy to get sucked in to “getting a deal” and going out and shopping only to discover the same item on your shelf months later. You never really wanted it but the deal was just “to good to pass up.”
That being said, you can get some really good deals on essentials like toothpaste, toilet papers, and laundry detergent if you pay attention to what you are buying and when you are buying it. I am not going to go into the how-tos here as many sites already do this but I wanted to give you a list of my favorite places to check out:
A lot of these sites repeat information with each other but every now and then they will have exclusive offers or exclusive content. Find your favorite one and have fun.
*Side Note: Remember that some coupons and inserts are regional and not carried in all papers. I have found that sometimes papers at the convenience store are missing one insert that the home delivery people received. This is also true for advertising inserts – the advertiser only wants to pay for guaranteed deliveries. So when you are looking at these sites cross check the information before going out. I have missed a few deals thinking that all the stores carried something when it was a regional special.
Two major ways of getting coupons are buying the Sunday newspaper and printing them online. You can get them online in a lot of places but here are the major players:
World Drive is my place to write about breakthroughs, strategies, and motivation while learning how to drive my own world.
I'll share inspirational and motivational things I find along the way. I will include just day to day thoughts and random posts as well the keep it interesting.
Thank you for taking a little time to read here. I hope in some way it helps you drive your world.
