Excellent Budgeting spreadsheet

This is a really good spreadsheet, it takes less than 10 minutes to setup and it tracks where your money goes very easily.

https://www.pearbudget.com/spreadsheet

Personal finance thoughts: September 1

So in May I spent less money then any month I could think so in the past 5 years. Without counting debt payments, I lived for $1,330. I ended up paying off a credit card for nearly $2000, and will put this payment into a different card with the highest interest rate.

A few of the ways I was able to do this are as follows...
- I created a budget and stuck to it. This is the most important step in order to have financial freedom. I ended up spending $80 less in gas, $40 less in food, and $30 less in miscellaneous.
- I setup a clear goal of saving at least $1000 this month so I could pay off a credit card. Knowing that I could stop paying interest on one card and placing this into additional debt payments was reason enough to follow this plan.
- I prioritized my expenses in terms of my life goals. In the excellent book, http://www.yourmoneyoryourlife.org, the authors talk about figuring out how much money you make per hour and then relate expenses to how much time you work to get enough money to do so. I find that this is helping me control random purchases that I will not see much use for.


I have continued to set realistic yet difficult goals for the rest of the year and I will save at least $800 a month until 2009.

Doing without in your 20's

Here is a good article on deciding whether to be frugal or splurge away in your 20's

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/2008/08/27/doing-without-in-your-20s-by-choice.aspx

Personal Finance Thoughts: August 16

So I ended up paying off a credit card that was $1,800 this month. This frees up $49 a month which will go into my next credit card. I setup my payments my automatically taking out $500 from my paycheck into my money market account and leaving it there until I have $1,500, then paying off a credit card with the lowest balance, while keeping my other cards at the minimum payment. I decided to do it this way because then I sort of have an additional emergency fund for 3 months besides my regular emergency fund of $1,200. If I put the $500 immediately into the credit card I would save about $3 in interest, but I like having that extra safety just in case something big happens.

I recently bought a food processor for $30, and I love it! So far I have diced onions and garlic for a stir fry, ground beef, and made pizza dough from scratch. It is well worth the investment. I also went back to my classroom this week and noticed some of the random food items I had sitting there. It gave me quite a few good cooking ideas. Not counting eating out, I will spend about $200 this month on food (My plan is to average one night out eating a week; that will give me new cooking ideas and time with friends).

I am on pace to spend $1300 this month on living!

I.O.U.S.A.

This looks like a must see.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/iousa/

Spending More and Enjoying it less

MSN money has a good article on how repeat purchases give less satisfaction as the first time.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/StockInvestingTrading/SpendingMoreAndEnjoyingLess.aspx

Fiscal Fast every month!

I am going to be doing 7 days of fiscal fasting every month. I will not do them all consecutively but randomly throughout the month.

For readers that do not know what a fiscal fast is, it is when you go a certain amount of time where you do not use any money for anything. I have already completed a fiscal fast in July, and I will be fasting for 7 days out of every month until I have no more debt.

I think that this is easily possible to accomplish in my situation. At school I am too far to go somewhere for lunch and Ive been cooking a lot more thanks to the newfound beauty of leftovers. This is all I have to do for 2 days during each week and its equal to a fiscal fast each month!

I challenge you to go 7 days out of the month where you do not spend any money. Its really not as hard as it seems and you will clearly see ways you can cut expenses and budget better.