Thursday, December 3, 2009
You Need a Budget
YNAB Pro is a great budgeting program that I just downloaded about a week ago and I absolutely love it! I have tried several different ways of budgeting over the last year, but this is the easiest and best yet. You can download your transactions from your online bank directly into this program and allocate the transactions to the categories you want them to go into. The best thing about this budget is that it teaches you to use this month's paycheck to pay next months bills. I desperately need to get to that point because I have a bad habit of going over budget at the end of the month and running into overdraft fees. Click on the above link to download a free 7 day trial. A credit card is NOT required for the trial. It just won't work after the trial period is up.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Cash for Completing Surveys?
A friend introduced a survey site to me. I have tried others in the past without much luck, but since she has been paid by them several times I figured I would give it a try. You earn points for each survey you take and once you accumulate so many points you can cash out for money. She seems to cash out $10 about once a month. You also get points for referrals so feel free to sign up here: mysurvey.com
If you know of any others that pay feel free to share them. I am always looking for more snowflakes!
If you know of any others that pay feel free to share them. I am always looking for more snowflakes!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Impact of Snowflakes
You might be asking yourself right now what snowflakes have to do with getting out of debt. Snowflakes are any money that comes in that you were not expecting throughout the month. This could be from selling things on eBay or Craigslist, having a garage sale, doing surveys, picking up extra jobs, money that was budgeted but not spent, etc. I am about to show my snowflakes for the last few months and I think this will amaze you. All of this extra money should be put towards whatever step you are on in the baby steps. Right now we are on step 0, which is getting caught up on all of your bills. We are almost caught up but with Christmas around the corner they may not be completely caught up until January. Then we can start on step 1 the $1000 baby emergency fund.
September 2009 Snowflakes
$30 from Chase Leisure Rewards
$150 unexpected child support payment
$37 from rolling coins
$5 found doing laundry
$4.69 profit from BeautiControl sale
$5.01 payment from Half.com
$100 fiance won contest at work
$29.98 canceled two monthly subscriptions at $14.99 each
$361.68 Total Snowflakes for the month of September!
October 2009 Snowflakes
$150 from helping my dad with a painting job
$8 Chase Leisure Rewards
$330 fiance cashed in vacation pay
$2179.69 insurance check for fire
$6.26 secondspin.com
$4.20 kgb text answering service
$47.45 eBay sales
$29.98 canceled internet on both cell phones at $14.99 each
$2755.58 Total Snowflakes for the month of October!
November 2009 Snowflakes (So Far)
$380 helping my dad with a painting job
$5 won Wendy's gift card at work
$517.80 refund from Directv
$50 visa gift card for winning employee of the month
$50 fiance received for his birthday
$1002.80 Total Snowflakes So Far for November
As you can see we have found $4120.06 in snowflakes since the beginning of September. I know we had a couple of large snowflakes but as you can see all of this little money adds up. Now I will tell you a little bit about some of these snowflakes.
If you have a Chase checking account, stop in to your local branch and sign up for the leisure rewards card. It costs $25/year, but you earn much more than that back. As you can see I earned $38 so far since September and will be receiving $15 any day now.
As for the $150 unexpected child support payment, my ex-husband agreed to pay for all of the kids medical bills, dental insurance, and any other needs that come up if I agree not to take him back for more money, which I can do. Their dental insurance comes out of my paycheck because he does not have that option where he works and he reimburses me for this. I also add any copays for doctor visits, prescriptions etc. The thing is he pretty much pays me for this whenever. Right now he owes me $155. I never know when I am going to get it so I don't budget for it and when I do get it I count it as a snowflake. If he really starts slacking more in paying me back for these I will ask for more child support and I will get it. But for now I will try not to cause the drama unless it is necessary.
My dad works full time as a truck driver, but also does work for some office buildings when they need painted. He had a huge job and needed the help and I was happy to do it for some extra cash. Now that that job is done I need to find another way to make that kind of extra money.
kgb is a text answering service. You can text them a question at 542542 and they will send you an answer for a fee of course. I occasionally jump online and answer some texts for them although I have not done that in a while because the pay is not great. I did make $50 one month but worked at least 10 hours to get that. But if you are interested you can go here: http://542542.com/agent.
The two biggest snowflakes we had are the insurance check and the Directv refund. We had a small fire in our house and that's what the insurance check was for. We did not have to replace the items lost right away so elected to use it to catch up with our bills instead. The Directv refund is from them charging my debit card last month for the boxes we had until they got them back. We were not expecting this money so soon because they said they were going to send us a check in 6-8 weeks, but I guess we yelled enough about this because they ended up refunding my card.
September 2009 Snowflakes
$30 from Chase Leisure Rewards
$150 unexpected child support payment
$37 from rolling coins
$5 found doing laundry
$4.69 profit from BeautiControl sale
$5.01 payment from Half.com
$100 fiance won contest at work
$29.98 canceled two monthly subscriptions at $14.99 each
$361.68 Total Snowflakes for the month of September!
October 2009 Snowflakes
$150 from helping my dad with a painting job
$8 Chase Leisure Rewards
$330 fiance cashed in vacation pay
$2179.69 insurance check for fire
$6.26 secondspin.com
$4.20 kgb text answering service
$47.45 eBay sales
$29.98 canceled internet on both cell phones at $14.99 each
$2755.58 Total Snowflakes for the month of October!
November 2009 Snowflakes (So Far)
$380 helping my dad with a painting job
$5 won Wendy's gift card at work
$517.80 refund from Directv
$50 visa gift card for winning employee of the month
$50 fiance received for his birthday
$1002.80 Total Snowflakes So Far for November
As you can see we have found $4120.06 in snowflakes since the beginning of September. I know we had a couple of large snowflakes but as you can see all of this little money adds up. Now I will tell you a little bit about some of these snowflakes.
If you have a Chase checking account, stop in to your local branch and sign up for the leisure rewards card. It costs $25/year, but you earn much more than that back. As you can see I earned $38 so far since September and will be receiving $15 any day now.
As for the $150 unexpected child support payment, my ex-husband agreed to pay for all of the kids medical bills, dental insurance, and any other needs that come up if I agree not to take him back for more money, which I can do. Their dental insurance comes out of my paycheck because he does not have that option where he works and he reimburses me for this. I also add any copays for doctor visits, prescriptions etc. The thing is he pretty much pays me for this whenever. Right now he owes me $155. I never know when I am going to get it so I don't budget for it and when I do get it I count it as a snowflake. If he really starts slacking more in paying me back for these I will ask for more child support and I will get it. But for now I will try not to cause the drama unless it is necessary.
My dad works full time as a truck driver, but also does work for some office buildings when they need painted. He had a huge job and needed the help and I was happy to do it for some extra cash. Now that that job is done I need to find another way to make that kind of extra money.
kgb is a text answering service. You can text them a question at 542542 and they will send you an answer for a fee of course. I occasionally jump online and answer some texts for them although I have not done that in a while because the pay is not great. I did make $50 one month but worked at least 10 hours to get that. But if you are interested you can go here: http://542542.com/agent.
The two biggest snowflakes we had are the insurance check and the Directv refund. We had a small fire in our house and that's what the insurance check was for. We did not have to replace the items lost right away so elected to use it to catch up with our bills instead. The Directv refund is from them charging my debit card last month for the boxes we had until they got them back. We were not expecting this money so soon because they said they were going to send us a check in 6-8 weeks, but I guess we yelled enough about this because they ended up refunding my card.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Another Source of Income?
I just finished building a website that I am actually very impressed with. It cost me very little to set up and I am trying to find as many free advertising methods as possible to get it going. You can check it out here.
If you have an expertise in something, you can use that to your advantage by creating your own website with very little money. There are lots of free tools to use out there to help you along. The only thing I paid for was the domain name and the monthly hosting fee.
I plan on taking a percentage of my profits to build other sites for other school districts and making these sites better or more user friendly.
If you have an expertise in something, you can use that to your advantage by creating your own website with very little money. There are lots of free tools to use out there to help you along. The only thing I paid for was the domain name and the monthly hosting fee.
I plan on taking a percentage of my profits to build other sites for other school districts and making these sites better or more user friendly.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Does Debt Control Your Life? Take Your Life Back!
So I have somehow managed to get myself into over $50,000 of debt which includes credit cards, a car loan, and student loans. My fiance also owes $7,000 to the IRS. This is a horrible situation for anyone to be in and unfortunately too many people are and consider it a fact of life. It does not have to be. Can you imagine how much money you will have if you have no car payments, no credit card payments, and no other loan payments? I decided several months ago that I will never get another credit card or loan ever again. Right now we currently rent a very expensive house and are going to try to get out of the lease so that we can move somewhere cheaper where we can concentrate on pursuing our dreams. My fiance and I have a lot of dreams of owning our own business, taking vacations, and owning a nice home. We know we can not achieve this without making some changes.
So here are our current goals:
1. Save up $1000 for a baby emergency fund.
2. Pay off all debt.
3. Save up $10,000 for a fully funded emergency fund. The purpose of this is to cover expenses in case one of us loses a job.
4. Invest 15% of our income into retirement.
5. Save up for kids college funds.
6. Pay off the house.
7. Build wealth like crazy and live like no one else!
These 7 steps are part of the Total Money Makeover Plan. If you are tired of your debt controlling your life the first thing you need to do is read "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey. This is the best book I have ever read. You might not even realize just how much your debt is hurting you until you read this book. Think about this: for each step above and each small debt you pay off, that adds more to your monthly income. Most people don't think this way because they are used to it and think everyone lives like this. Guess what? Rich people aren't just lucky, they are smart. The only monthly payments they have is on their utilities. Instead of paying interest you should be EARNING interest.
Now we are thinking of adding a step after step 3 to save up a sizable down payment on a home that will leave us with a lower mortgage payment. We also know that we are going to add a few thousand dollars to a replacement car fund so that we can pay cash for a car when we might need it. We are also starting a few different sinking funds which means we will put so much money a month into a fund for a particular thing such as Christmas, home repairs, car repairs, etc. That way these things won't sneak up on us leaving us trying to figure out how to pay for them.
Keep checking back for progress on our plan and feel free to e-mail me with any questions you have.
So here are our current goals:
1. Save up $1000 for a baby emergency fund.
2. Pay off all debt.
3. Save up $10,000 for a fully funded emergency fund. The purpose of this is to cover expenses in case one of us loses a job.
4. Invest 15% of our income into retirement.
5. Save up for kids college funds.
6. Pay off the house.
7. Build wealth like crazy and live like no one else!
These 7 steps are part of the Total Money Makeover Plan. If you are tired of your debt controlling your life the first thing you need to do is read "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey. This is the best book I have ever read. You might not even realize just how much your debt is hurting you until you read this book. Think about this: for each step above and each small debt you pay off, that adds more to your monthly income. Most people don't think this way because they are used to it and think everyone lives like this. Guess what? Rich people aren't just lucky, they are smart. The only monthly payments they have is on their utilities. Instead of paying interest you should be EARNING interest.
Now we are thinking of adding a step after step 3 to save up a sizable down payment on a home that will leave us with a lower mortgage payment. We also know that we are going to add a few thousand dollars to a replacement car fund so that we can pay cash for a car when we might need it. We are also starting a few different sinking funds which means we will put so much money a month into a fund for a particular thing such as Christmas, home repairs, car repairs, etc. That way these things won't sneak up on us leaving us trying to figure out how to pay for them.
Keep checking back for progress on our plan and feel free to e-mail me with any questions you have.
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