personal finance
Make Your Finance System Paperless
7:40AM Gina Trapani | Personal finance blogger J.D. Roth is on the road towards making his money system completely paperless. Direct deposit, automatic savings transfers, Quicken, and auto bill pay gets most paper out of the way. Then Roth scans any paperwork that does come in to PDF with our favourite scanner—the Fujitsu ScanSnap—and then he shreds it. Nice to see how several parts of his paperless system has also evolved into an automated finance system, too. How do you make your money go without too much paper (or intervention)? Let us know in the comments. My Paperless Personal Finance System: A Work in Progress [Get Rich Slowly] More »
How to Turn $450 a Month into $1 Million
2:00PM Adam Pash | If you started investing $448 a month at 30 years old, Yahoo Finance says that a reasonable 8% return would put your savings over the million dollar mark in 35 years. The problem, of course, is finding that extra $450. To help ferret out every quarter in your couch cushions, the article suggests seven different potential expenses that, with slight adjustments, could easily produce the extra cash you need to start down the road to a million. More »
Seven Words on How to Invest Well
6:20AM Gina Trapani | New York Times personal finance columnist Ron Lieber offers a seven-word guide to choosing how you invest your money. Lieber writes: The author Michael Pollan offered an elegant seven-word mantra in his best-selling book “In Defence of Food” that provides clarity amid the bounty of choices on supermarket shelves: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Boiling down investing is a similar exercise: Index (mostly). Save a ton. Reallocate infrequently. More »
Make Your Budget Easier to Grasp with Targeted Accounts
8:00AM Kevin Purdy | Personal Finance blog Funny About Money tweaks the concept of a “freedom account”—a single stash for irregular-but-common expenses like car repair and clothing—and comes up with targeted accounts. That means opening up a money market or similar small account for each kind of expense, based on how often it occurs, rather than track a bunch of expenses from a big fund. For example, I look to the irregular little surprises that can happen at any time (plumbing or car repairs, vet bills, etc.), annual expenses (car and home owner’s insurance, property tax, income tax), and long-term expenses (purchase of a new car, about once every ten years; major repairs or renovations on the house, which I hope don’t happen more often than about once every eight or ten years). That way, the author states, big walloping expenses like car repair don’t throw off your budget and give you a clearer view at what you’re spending. Targeting your emergency savings [Funny About Money] More »
Mint Tracks Your Investment Portfolio
8:20AM Adam Pash | Mint, the web-based financial management application that took us by storm a few months back, is adding investment tracking to their already impressive feature set. Mint’s investments, currently in beta, tracks everything from the performance of your Roth IRA to the value of your 401k, all from its attractive, easy-to-understand interface. As with Mint in general, you’ll need to be comfortable trusting your data in their hands (if you’re curious, you can read more about their security measures here). Mint investments is currently in private beta, but if you follow the link, they’ve set up a page for Lifehacker readers to sign up. You should get access to Mint’s investments sometime next week, and we’ve been assured that there’s no limits on signups. In the meantime, hit the jump for a closer look at Mint’s investments interface. More »
Prepare for Irregular Expenses with a Freedom Account
7:35AM Adam Pash | In addition to your traditional checking, savings, and emergency accounts, financial weblog Get Rich Slowly suggests setting up another money bucket for irregular or unexpected expenses. Sock away money in a “Freedom Account” for expenses like clothes, vacations, and car maintenance. Setting this money apart from your regular monthly bills ensures you keep a tighter rein on what you spend on irregular expenses, and it also helps you set savings goals for larger purchases. Whether or not you’re already doing something along these lines, let’s hear how you track and manage your irregular expenses in the comments. Use a Freedom Account to Prepare for the Unexpected [Get Rich Slowly] More »Make a Master Information Document for Worst Case Scenarios
1:00AM Kevin Purdy | The Simple Dollar financial blog offers up a guide to creating a “Master Information Document”—a single piece of paper that’s locked away securely, explained only to family and very close friends, and which has all the information someone would need to put your finances and will in order if something happened to you. Blogger Trent recommends writing down information on all your open accounts, a list of all your debts and assets, and any estate-related documents, like a will or trust, in a filing cabinet or other secure place. We’ve offered a bigger-picture guide to organising your family’s information in case of emergencies, but Trent’s advice is sound, especially for anyone who hasn’t even glanced at the idea of emergency planning. Making and Maintaining a Master Information Document [The Simple Dollar] More »
Tackle Your Debt with Micropayments
7:00AM Adam Pash | Anyone who’s dealt with significant debt knows how difficult it is to write out a large cheque every month to pay it off. Instead, financial weblog FiveCentNickel suggests paying off debt in micropayments: In short, pay what you can afford, and then scrape together whatever else you can during the month and send in multiple, smaller payments… Believe it or not, [a friend] got to the point where he was sending Citibank an extra $5 each and every day via online billpay. By making a game out of finding an extra $5/day, he managed to stay motivated and slay the debt beast well ahead of schedule. More »
Apply the $100 a day rule to resist impulse buying
11:29AM Sarah Stokely | Impulse buying can affect anyone, but if you’re tech minded, the things we can be tempted to buy can be especially expensive.Here’s a tactic suggested by the No Credit Needed blog: a self-imposed cooling off period on impulse buying decisions, also known as the $100 a day rule. Basically, for every $100 that tempting toy will cost you, wait one day. So, $1000 game console? Wait 10 days, then see if you still want to buy it. The nice thing about this is you don’t have to say “No” right away – you’re saying “Maybe, I’m going to think about it”. In my experience that’s much easier to accept when you’re impulse shopping than a flat out no.
The $100-a-Day Rule Prevents Impulse Buying [No Credit Needed via Get Rich Slowly] More » Tips for spending less and saving more
4:37PM Sarah Stokely | The Consumerist lists 10 ways to really save money, which include one of my tried and true standbys, rolling your credit card debt over to a new provider which offers you a 6 month interest free period. Of course, the aim should be to pay it off before the honeymoon period elapses and you revert to the full interest rate.(Don’t make the mistake I once made of keeping the old card ‘just in case’ – of course I ended up with two credit cards in debt.)Of course, the only real way to save money is to spend less than you earn and start putting money into savings. But the list has a few suggestions for doing that too, including paying your credit card off in full every month to avoid credit charges, and the old standbys – making your own coffee and lunch instead of buying them.Got any other tips for getting the most out of your money? Share in comments please.
10 ways to save real money [The Consumerist] More » 