The BudgeX Blog

By now you are probably well versed in pumping gas, but are you well versed in finding the best valued gas?  Here are some useful resources to help you get the best bang for your buck:

• Use GasBuddy.com to locate the cheapest gas station near you

GasBuddy.com is updated by a community of people like you and me who spot and record the prices of gas at stations around the US.  All you have to do is type in where you live, and GasBuddy will show all the stations and their respective prices, allowing you to compare them instantly against one another.

• Make sure you are getting good quality gasoline

Not all gas is created equal.  The quality of gasoline at some brand stations (e.g. Arco) may differ from the quality at others (e.g. Chevron).  Check out this website for the brands of gasoline that are considered Top Tier.  Though this site shows you the best, it doesn’t mention the worst: stay away from Arco gas.

In the end you just want to maximize the value of your dollar.  By finding the cheapest “good” gas around, your car will get the best mileage for your buck.

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Many people thought that it would take a miracle to get them to create a budget.  Well you’ve performed the miracle: you finally summoned up the courage to make your own budget!  If not, create your budget in less than 15 minutes with BudgeX so the rest of this will have a more personal meaning to you.

Now What?: Keeping Track of your Expenses

The good news is that you’ve already done the “hard” part of creating a budget.  Now all that’s left is to make sure you stick to it.  Some might call that the “bad news,” but all in all it’s not so bad.  Here are a few simple tips to follow to make it easy to keep track what you pay for:

• Ask for a receipt wherever you go

This may seem pretty obvious..  Because it is.  That’s what receipts are for.  Each time you get one, just store it in your wallet or purse until you get a chance to enter it into your budgeting program.

• Enter items into your expense categories regularly

Make it a weekly task to enter in your expenses.  Pick a time– every Sunday night at 9, for instance– and dedicate 5-10 minutes to opening up your wallet and going through the receipts you have accumulated.  If once per week is too long to wait, change it to biweekly, or even daily, depending on your personal thresholds.

By making expense tracking into a regular habit, you’ll be one step closer to complete financial discipline.

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We have all done something in the past that might be viewed as being very frugal.  One blog post on extreme frugality documented several accounts of this, including these interesting few:

• Bring your own cheese when eating hamburgers out so you won’t be charged for a cheeseburger
• Writing on post it notes in pencil so you can reuse them
• Shutting off water when people visit so they will be forced to use the bathroom multiple times and not waste a flush

Crazy, right?  I know if you searched deep down inside yourself, you could come up with a few things that you have done, so let’s hear them! Post your most extreme cutback– temporary or permanent– that you made to save money in the comments section.

I’ll start: I haven’t purchased a T-shirt in over 10 years.  Every T-shirt in my wardrobe was either given to me by my school, earned from an athletic team, won from some contest, or something similar.  We’ll see how long I can keep my streak up.

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The purpose of this blog is to help you save money.  And there are always times when you need to make a decision between doing something and paying money for it, or not doing it and keeping your money.  Obviously if you want to save more, you will choose not to pay.  But every once-in-awhile that decision falls into a gray area; an area whose optimal decision depends on an entirely different measurement of success.  One particular example of this is  money vs. social personality.

Sometimes You Have to Spend to Stay Cool

The truth is this happens all the time, and in many cases it’s just too hard to avoid.  You may be out with friends or co-workers and know that you can get another round of bowling for free with that deal you found yesterday, but you just have to suck it up and pay the fees to avoid looking like a social outcast.  And if you don’t pay, there’s always the personal loss of not being able to partake in the activity.  I am writing to say that you should sacrifice a little in these scenarios to keep you and your friends happy.

But there are exceptions to the exception too. For instance, if you knew you were going to go bowling, you could still get the coupon for the free round and take it with you.  Who knows, if it’s printable you could print one for everyone and surprise them.  Then, instead of looking like a cheapskate, you’d be the night’s hero!

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If performed wisely, “splurging” with your money will help keep you sane, happy, and believe it or not, financially disciplined.  This may seem like somewhat of a paradox, but I will show you a method of spending that allows you to maintain all of the aforementioned qualities, while also keeping your budget in tact.

Splurge, but Splurge with Discipline

Every once in awhile you will get that urge to just go out and spend money; for some it happens more often than for others.  My advice to you is to fight that urge to run wild, and instead be disciplined in your efforts.  If you must splurge, direct your money only to your most meaningful material goods.  This helps you remain passionate about these items and prevents you from, well, truly “splurging.”

Let’s do an exercise to show you what I’m talking about.  Take a couple minutes to think of the top 5 material goods that you value the most.  Write them down if you have to.  When you’re ready, keep reading.

If you had no trouble thinking of 5 things, you definitely need to budget your life.  I bet you spent most of your time deliberating what got that final fifth spot.  Well it doesn’t matter anymore—slash the bottom two off the list, leaving you with only three.  Here’s my list:

1. Electronics
2. Sports Equipment
3. Cars

To be honest I had trouble just coming up with three.  These three goods represent the items that you should spend a little extra money on when you want to splurge.  Ignore the rest of the items that didn’t make the cut.  Keep your list short, simple, and valuable.  By maintaining this discipline, you are not just splurging, but instead spending extra money on the causes that boost your happiness the most.

Keep Your Money Close, and Your Passions Closer

Even the most frugal people will have a couple material goods they place a high value on—these items should not be compromised because of money, because once you lose your passion for them, you lose sight of what makes you happy.

The last issue is where this money will be coming from.  If you already have a budget it should be easy for you to see where your extra funds lie.  If not, GET A BUDGET! And if you have a budget and still can’t see how much you’ll be saving by the end of the year, or don’t know where you are underspending, I highly recommend using BudgeX as your personal finance tool.  Once you have this process locked down, you won’t ever have to second guess yourself when thinking about impulse shopping.  May the force be with you!

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There has never been a more proactive time than now to change your habits and “go green.”  Recently, the green movement has been sweeping across the nation, and it’s not going to stop any time soon.  Fortunately, if you own a home and pay for utility bills, there are a lot of benefits in it for you to “save green while you go green.” Earlier I wrote about a neat trick to get huge savings on your cable or satellite bill.  Today I will show you a few simple methods to shave several dollars per month from those gas and water bills.

Analyze Your Utility Usage and Cut Down on the Big Players

If you’re like me, every time you open up a gas & electric or water bill– or any bill for that matter– you wonder what the heck you did to make it so expensive.  The unfortunate truth is that utility bills are here to stay, and we’re going to have to keep paying them.  So let’s take the next best route to happiness: cutting the cost of these bills down as much as possible.

There are several general residential energy-saving tips that you should implement, and I have included a few links at the end of this post that explain these processes in more detail, but there is one strategy in particular that will help you achieve huge savings per month and give you additional transparency in your utility costs: analyzing your utility’s usage and cutting down on the biggest factors.  These can be broken down into two categories:

• Water
• Lights

For cutting down on water, I highly recommend using this Water Use Calculator to see how your water bill breaks down in your house.  It has been extremely helpful in giving me transparency as to what appliances use the most water, and how much I would potentially be saving by cutting back.  Before I went through this procedure, my roommates and I were incorrectly thinking that it made a big difference to do things like turn off the water while we put soap on our hands.  Turns out that flushing the toilet just once can potentially counter all our faucet-conscious efforts for almost two weeks.  One flush!  In the end I’m saving about $35 per month on my bill just by doing this process once.  That’s $420 per year! Go through the calculator yourself and see where your water is going.

I included lights in the mix because it is important for you to gain transparency into how much your lights are costing you per month.  It turns out that it’s not that much if you’re using CFL or LED bulbs.  If you aren’t using energy-efficient bulbs, check out the resource links below and switch out your bulbs!  It should be the first thing on your list.  Turning off lights when they’re not in use is obviously a good habit, but just like my water story, the lights on your gas & electric bill are the faucets of your water bill.  Attack the big dogs for the bigger rewards.  Happy saving!

Resources:

Residential Energy Saving Tips from FlexYour Power

Winter Gas Saving Tips from Paciic Gas & Electric

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DISCLAIMER: Shopping is something that can be very person-specific, and my suggestions are geared for a more universal saving approach.  If you have additional personal tips that you find helpful while you shop, please leave a comment about them below.

If you live in a house you probably get a weekly shipment of supermarket ads in the mail.  Don’t throw this stuff away! Spending just 5 minutes browsing these ads will save you enough money to make it worth your while, and I’ll show you how.

Just Because an Item is for Sale in the Ad Doesn’t Necessarily Make it a Good Price

If you recall from my earlier article on bargain hunting, Rule #3 states that you should “develop a price index for the items that interest you.”  This also applies to shopping.  As you sharpen these indexes, you will be able to see through the b.s. that some ads try to print.  Here’s a true example: a few weeks ago, Safeway had a big ad for chicken breasts on the front page for $3.97/lb.  “Oh,” you think, “looks like chicken is on sale.  I’d better get some!”  WRONG. Another local supermarket’s ad had the same chicken breasts for $1.99/lb—and it was even  closer than Safeway.

Choose the one supermarket with the better average prices and go there

Even though you are playing these ads against each other, even though one store might have a few items you need for cheaper than another, at the end of the day, you only need to go to one.  Why all of this searching and comparing if we’re just going to one store, you might say?  Think about gas as well.  Only if there’s something that’s really worth it at a different supermarket should you go out of your way and make two grocery trips.  Of course there are exceptions to this rule, so use your best judgment.  If the external factors aren’t an issue for you, by all means cash in on the savings by going to the places with the cheaper prices.  But eventually you’ll just be pocketing pennies.  This blog is about helping you save dollars, and hundreds of them.

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If you haven’t done so, read The Secrets of Bargain Hunting Part 1 and Part 2 first before continuing.

Let’s recap.  In your arsenal of bargain hunting skills, you have learned special techniques in:

• comparison shopping
• basic online search strategies
• developing price indexes
• taking advantage of rebates

All of these will help you greatly in finding the best deals around for the products you want, and regular practice is always a good idea. For the final piece of the puzzle, we will explore advanced online search techniques. This branch is so crucial that it deserves its own post. So without further ado, let’s get started!

Rule #6: Optimizing your Online Searches

I mentioned in Part 1 that searching for your products on Google Products will help you in comparison shopping. This is a good way to start, but wouldn’t it be nice if there were dedicated websites that focused strictly on posting deals? This would be a bargain hunter’s dream come true. Well, it appears as though those prayers were answered.

There are several websites out there that focus on posting deals. Some are more comprehensive than others, but all of them are going to be helpful to you when searching for deals. Here are my two favorites:

• SlickDeals probably has the largest community of deal-seekers on the Internet. Their site is very clean and organized as well.
• FatWallet is another great site. They post a respectable amount of deals every day, but they also give you cash back from online purchases at hundreds of stores.

Websites like these two will likely have some sort of deal listed for the product you are looking for. The deal might be dead, but viewing it will help you develop a more aggressive price index for the product. That reason alone should make spending time on these websites worth your while. Tapping into these deal community sites is the best way at gaining experience in the art of deal hunting.

So there you have it—the secrets of bargain hunting in three chapters. The strategies I have taught you in this blog will help the casual deal-searcher find a really good deal, and will help the dedicated hunter find a great deal. It is a matter of how much time you can contribute to your efforts that will ultimately govern the quality of the deal you find, so my final advice to you is to practice, practice, practice! If you ever have any questions, or would like personal assistance in finding a deal, feel free to email me and I will be glad to help you. Good luck!

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It is common knowledge that when you need to stop an unforeseen incident from getting out of hand, you head to its source.  It would be pointless to attempt to stop a breach in a dam by filling buckets with the water and throwing it back over the other side.  You stop the water from spraying everywhere by plugging the hole it’s coming out of.  Makes sense, right?

Imagine if that water was your money, with the dam as your bank account.  For some of you it might not be too hard to imagine.  We’ve seen how poor financial management can lead to bad decisions, so why don’t we take the time to manage our own finances?  Even President Obama is revising his budget for tough economic times ahead.  If you can control how you spend your money, I promise you will end up better off financially, and creating a budget is the first place to start.

Getting Started with Creating a Budget

The first thing you need to understand is that creating a budget is no longer a cumbersome task.  There are several tools available to help you, and I highly recommend using BudgeX Personal Budgeting Spreadsheets as your all-in-one solution.  It allows you to create a personalized budget from scratch in less than 15 minutes, and has built-in functionality for expense tracking.  After you create a budget by whatever means you choose, it’s just a matter of staying conscious of your spending.  Check out the resources at the end of this post for additional tips for better budgeting.

What Makes Budget Creation Such a Turn-Off?

There are several reasons why someone might not have a budget for themselves: it’s too complicated, it takes too long, they don’t know where to start, they’re too lazy, etc.  I am here to tell you that these excuses no longer apply!  Not having a budget is like driving a car with a broken fuel gauge: you never know when you’re going to run out of gas.  And don’t just take my word / simile for it; look at what other professionals say about budgeting:

• Complete Idiots Guide to Overcoming Procrastination: Having a budget is like having a routine for your regular chores and errands.  It should be liberating, not constricting.
• Financial Planning experts at about.com: Not having a budget is like sailing a boat into the fog without radar.
• Experts at ezinearticles.com: Not having a budget is like trying to drive from Los Angeles to New York without a map.

So take the time to make one of your own.  It literally takes 15 minutes (assuming you use BudgeX), and will help you save hundreds to thousands of dollars by giving you the power to confidently manage your finances.  Here is the link to the BudgeX personal budgeting software one more time.

Resources:

• CNN.com’s 10 tips to maintaining your budget
• MSN.com’s tips for how to build your first budget

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