COVID-19 Spending: It’s Time To Re-evaluate Your Budget

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Changes occur in life which require a person to re-evaluate and re-do their budget. Events like a wage increase, life changes such as getting married or having a child, or a global pandemic. With businesses being limited to curbside sales or being completely closed and many states being under a stay at home order a look at the budget is a great idea because your spending habits have changed. Personal Care With barbers and salons closed, people are going without haircuts, hair coloring, manicures, pedicures, massages and many other personal care services. Entertainment Almost all sources of entertainment are also […] Read more »

Stick To Your Holiday Spending Budget By Using A Prepaid Credit Card

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Halloween is over, and we’ve entered the month of November which means the holiday shopping season has officially started. We’ll see countless reminders to avoid overspending and/or going into debt buying gifts. This is great advice, but easier said than done. Prepaid Credit Card Advantages A prepaid credit card loaded with the amount of your holiday budget can help you follow this advice. Here is a list of some of the ways using a prepaid credit card can help keep your holiday spending in check as well as a few advantages it has over other payment methods: No Forgotten Purchases: […] Read more »

What Is A Budget Retrospective And 3 Reasons You NEED It

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    Budgeting is essential to successful money  management. You have to know how much money you have coming in, and what you’re going to do with it. Without doing that, you may forget about expenses, overspend, and accumulate debt. The tracking of income, expenses and spending is what most people think of when they hear the word budget. However, there’s another aspect of budgeting that many people don’t do. It can be called many things, but I like to call it a budget retrospective. A budget has a duration, although the length of a budget cycle may vary by […] Read more »

3 Rules You MUST Follow When Shopping

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I love lists. I mean, I really really love lists. Especially when shopping. To me, going shopping is like a military mission. I have my orders…I mean my list, I get in, fulfill my orders, and get out as quickly as possible. Having a list has several advantages: It keeps me on track. I know what I’m supposed to buy and give me a clear path to success. A list is representative that there has been a discussion regarding what we can afford and that we have properly weighed value against cost. A list, and a plan, is sometimes not […] Read more »

5 Things That Happen When You Spend Only Cash

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In Friday’s roundup post, I mentioned that my wife and I were restarting our methodology of spending cash only for our day to day expenditures.   Here’s a brief look at how it works: Monthly bills are paid online out of our checking account Each Friday, cash for our personal spending is withdrawn from the ATM. Personal spending includes gas, groceries, allowance for the kids, and entertainment funds With this system we had been extremely successful managing our finances and staying within our budget.  As happens in life, we got lazy and began to let our structure slide in favor of […] Read more »

The Expectation of Spending Money

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Every Sunday evening, my wife and I recap our weekend spending, and then do any budget adjustments required  due to higher than expected spending. After the conclusion of this activity recently, I broke the good news that we had stayed well within our allocated weekend funds. As soon as the words left my mouth, they felt wrong. I was confused as to why they felt wrong, after all isn’t that the goal? Isn’t the goal to live within our means by creating a budget, allocating a finite amount of funds for bills and other activities, and then spend less than […] Read more »

Smart Ways To Spend A Third Paycheck

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Happy New Year! This is a magical month for many – not because it’s the beginning of a brand new year but January 2016 has five Fridays in it. What does that mean? That means some of you will get paid three times this month. Those who get paid bi-weekly on Fridays will get three paychecks this month: January 1st, 15th and 29th. If your biweekly pay doesn’t fall on the first Friday in January then your turn will come in April (which, coincidentally, also has three Fridays on the 1st, 15th and 29th). A 3-paycheck month means you get […] Read more »

My Daughter, A Shopping Mall Trip, and A Scary Situation

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I had a scary situation with my teenaged daughter over the weekend with what happened during a shopping trip to the mall with her friends. It was touch and go for a few days, but I’m now confident that everything is going to be just fine. One of her friends asked her to go to the mall shopping on Friday afternoon. Between her allowance and Christmas gifts she had amassed a tidy sum of money.  She thought a shopping trip to get some new clothes would be a fun way to spend time with her friend. When she returned home […] Read more »

I Got Promoted! Now, What Should We Do With My Salary Increase?

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I’ve been very purposeful with my efforts over the last few years in my primary career as a software engineer. I’ve volunteered for roles, and taken advantage of opportunities that I felt would help further my career. Specifically, I’ve been aiming to be promoted to the next level. My efforts have finally come to fruition, as last Wednesday my manager informed me that I have been promoted. As you can imagine, I was extremely excited to hear the news that I have been promoted to Senior Software Engineer. My title promotion comes with a significant salary increase. Whenever our family’s […] Read more »

Sex Sells, But I’m Not Buying

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I had a couple of hours to kill after dropping my son and his friends off at a concert venue, so I headed to a nearby mall to complete a few errands, and then find a place to sit with my laptop. As I explored the mall, I walked by a kiosk a number of times, where several people were engaging passers-by to sample whatever they were selling. The first time I walked by, a man asked if I wanted a free sample. I just shook my head and kept walking. The second time a woman stretched her arm out […] Read more »

How To Get Out of an Underwater Car

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You have probably heard the old joke that a car loses value the second after you drive it off the lot. Guess what? Edmonds did some research and found it’s not a joke. They showed how a new $29,873 Nissan dropped in value by $2,559 – about 9 percent – in a matter of minutes.  The study also showed the new car depreciated by 19 percent in the first year and 42 percent in three years. That’s a loss of $12,467 in thirty-six months – or $346 a month! A driver who puts no money down, or traded their car […] Read more »

Review: Kaiku Visa Prepaid Card

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My wife and I are back on a cash only spending plan, and it’s working out fabulously. It keeps our spending in check and within budget. Some of the comments on my recent posts on this subject have made a valid point, however. Dealing with only cash means there are times when I may be walking around with a significant amount of cash in my wallet, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that makes me a little nervous. One solution to this problem could be a prepaid debit card. Not just any debit card, but a Kaiku Visa […] Read more »

Are You Conscientious or a Slacker?

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Extremely frustrated, I waited in a parking lot for one last person that was running late. They were supposed to arrive at 7:30am and the instructions clearly stated the youth group would leave the church at 8:00am sharp. It was this person’s tardiness that broke my wife’s perfect parent streak. You know what I mean; the mom who waves to her child as they drive away in excitement to a five-day excursion of hiking, singing songs by the bonfire, and getting yelled at by counselors because you’re making everyone in the cabin giggle when you should be sleeping. Here it […] Read more »

Four Ways To Take A Load Off Your Money Management Chores

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Looking back at almost a decade of debt-elimination and investing, I can see that one thing has contributed to our financial success: Automation. Not only has automation made things easier, it has also forced us to be diligent. Here are four ways to automate your finances and take a load off your money management chores: Bill-pay Our bank offers free bill-pay. It allows us to set up regularly occurring bills like cable, cell phone, and city utilities. In the old days we would have to write a check, lick a stamp, and send it off in the mail. Now, when the […] Read more »