Financial Management for the Newly Independent: Part Two

In part 2, we'll talk about some of the everyday money-saving tactics my partner and I use to make the most of the money we do have. Some of these tips take almost no effort, and others are a bit more labour intensive (but worth it, in our opinion).

 http://www.younghouselove.com

Groupon and Dealfind
One of my favourite tips is not for shopaholics, or people with no self-restraint :) If you think you can control yourself from purchasing things you don't need, I highly recommend you sign up for groupon.com or dealfind.com, or both, if they're both available in your area (in fact, there's at least 5 or 6 companies offering similar programs now, scope out your area and see what's available). I use Groupon the most, so I'll explain that one in more detail. Basically the way it works, is you sign up and select your city (or city closest to you, if you're rural like us), and provide your email address. Then, every day you get an email from them with the 'deal of the day', which is always at LEAST 50% off the regular purchase price of a good or service in your city. If you want that particular deal of the day, you go to the groupon site and purchase the coupon, and then print it out and take it to the business in question in exchange for the item in question. It's called 'group'on because a certain number of people have to purchase the deal before it becomes effective, but in my time using it, I've never seen the minimum cut off not be met. This site can get you huge discounts on meals at restaurants, groceries, services, and so on. The reason I say you need self-restraint to use it, is that you're only actually saving money if you're using it to buy things you would have bought anyway. So for example, if you normally eat out at a restaurant once a month, it's worth it to buy one groupon a month for restaurants if they come up (there's one deal per day, it's not always for restaurants), and you are saving money, but if you don't normally eat out, then you're spending extra money that you wouldn't have otherwise spent.

$5 Jar
Another tip my partner and I recently started using is a $5 jar. Lots of people have change jars, but they take a long time to add up. My partner and I made a jar that we keep on our desk for $5 bills and toonies. At the end of each day, we put any $5 bills or toonies we have in our wallet in the jar (unless it's reserved for something specific, ie. you know you need milk tomorrow, and you're saving the $5 for that). The money adds up quickly, and we use it for any large expenses that aren't in our usual budget (like a trip to Barrie to see my partner's family, or Christmas shopping). We found that the small bills and toonies in our wallets typically went to non-essential expenses, like stuff from the vending machine at work, or picking up a magazine at the store (we've since subscribed to our favourites, much cheaper) - so both our wallets and our waistlines benefit from not having those toonies or bills in our wallet, where they're easily accessible.

Our next few favourite tips are good for both our finances and the environment, a cause that's important to us. Double benefit!

DIY
One of the easiest way to save money around the house is to make your own household cleaners. All those bottles of surface cleaner, glass cleaner, bathroom cleaner, kitchen cleaner, etc, add up, and they don't last particularly long either (at least not if you like a clean house). A 2.5L bottle of white vinegar on the other hand, costs about $3, cleans just about anything, and lasts forever. 1 part water mixed with 1 part vinegar will clean and disinfect just about every hard surface in your house (except marble!), from the kitchen, to the bathroom, to your floors and windows. And most importantly, the 'vinegary' smell vanishes as soon as it dries, and just leaves a natural clean smell. Lemons are also great, especially for polishing metals and cleaning up soap scum or hard water deposits. Baking soda is also a great cleaner for really tough stains. Sprinkle baking soda over the stain (say in a really dirty oven) and let it sit, then scrub it off with steel wool and warm water (obviously don't do this on surfaces that are easily scratched). Our total cleaning arsenal costs us only a few dollars a year, and keeps harsh chemicals out of our house.

Break the Consumption Cycle and Reuse!
From early childhood, we learn the phrase 'reduce, reuse, recycle', but many people forget about the first 2 parts, and focus on the recycling. Recycling's great of course, but reducing and reusing are essential parts of the cycle as well. In a culture that's obsessed with having the latest 'it' thing, it can be hard to break away from consumption and constantly buying new 'things' for your home. One thing we found suprising was how quickly the desire to constantly consume faded when we got rid of television. It wasn't a decision we made specifically to avoid consumption, but that was the side effect. I didn't realize how much being constantly bombarded with 'buy me!' ads was affecting me until they were gone. Now everything in our apartment (except for our bed) is second-hand, the 'reuse' part of reduce, reuse, recycle, and we love it. It's eclectic and it doesn't necessarily match, but it works, and we really enjoy scouring kijiji and antiques markets to find that perfect piece of furniture when we're in need of something, and it's fun to repurpose something old into an entirely new creation.

Learn to Cook
Chris and I love to cook, so that makes this last tip a little easier for us than it would be for someone who doesn't know their way around a kitchen. For many reasons, financial, ethical, environmental, and health-wise, we started making most of our food from scratch. Pre-packaged foods are expensive, as are pre-made sauces, baked goods, pre-seasoned meats, etc. Making food from scratch can save you a lot of money, especially if you learn to eat in season and locally, which is also good for the environment. Making certain things from scratch involves a certain level of commitment to save you money. For example, making bread from scratch saves you a lot of money IF you do it regularly enough to justify buying all the ingredients in bulk. If you don't, homemade likely costs the same or more than buying it at the store (although it tastes much better and has no preservatives, but that's another story).

Since this is a cause Chris and I are committed to, it's worth the labour for us, but it won't work for everybody. If you truly hate to cook and bake, this tip simply won't be practical for you. However it's a great money-saver for the chefs or chefs-in-training out there. We eventually hope to make everything completely from scratch. We're learning how to can and preserve, and are very fortunate to have access to a good sized plot of land for next summer so we can grow a lot of our own produce. We bake our own bread, and are learning how to make other bread products, like tortillas from scratch. We make all of our sauces and marinades from scratch as well, and enjoy having creative control over the flavours. We're learning how to make our own soups and stews, and learned a great tip for making stock economically (and without all the sodium!). Every time you cut up a vegetable, there's often little bits left over that you don't eat (like the end of carrots). Instead of tossing these out, throw them in a container in the freezer. These are perfect for making stock! Once you have enough saved up in the freezer, you can toss them in your slow cooker (or in a heavy pot on the stove if you don't have a slow cooker) and make an extremely economical, low-sodium stock that you can use for soups, stews, gravies, and marinades.

Anyway, there's the (wordy) overview of our favourite financial tips - if you have a favourite tip that wasn't included here, please share it in the comments! I love learning new ways to be frugal :)

Financial Management for the Newly Independent: Part One

We should preface this post by pointing out that Rachel actually wrote this for her independent blog, so it's been published before. That being said, basic financial management is incredibly relevant to living a happy, simple life, so it seems only sensible to share it over here as well. The post is in two parts, part two will follow. Let us begin!

Being frugal or thrifty often gets a bad rap, and is seen as a boring or stifled way to live your life. It doesn't have to be that way. My partner and I live a fairly frugal lifestyle, without sacrificing a rich social life, comfortable home life, great food, or travel. I thought I'd share a few of our favourite tips for living a happy, frugal life. This is a long post, but this information has completely changed our financial situation for the better, and I believe it's worth explaining in detail.

http://www.theconfidentmom.com

Our Situation
First of all, a little about our own financial situation. We are by no means wealthy. One of us makes a couple of dollars above minimum wage, but has benefits, while the other makes a few dollars more, but has no benefits and is in a higher tax bracket, meaning our take home pay at the end of each month is not substantially different. Combined, we have about $35,000 in student debt, and we have no significant consumer debt. I acknowledge that we have certain financial advantages - we have dual income, we live in a rural area, which significantly reduces our housing costs (our lovely home would cost at least double what we pay if it was in an urban area), our driving records are flawless and as a result we have very low insurance rates, but I still think the majority of the following tips are applicable to everyone, regardless of how similar or different your financial situation is to ours.

Understanding Money
First and foremost, a basic understanding of banking and finances is essential to good money management. Do you know your credit score? More importantly, do you know what financial decisions affect your credit score, and which don't? Did you know that opening a new credit card lowers your credit score? Did you know that closing an old credit card lowers your credit score? Did you know that holding a balance of more than 30% of your credit limit on your credit card really, really lowers your credit score?

Of course, you can't simply never open or close a credit card to protect your credit score, but timing is everything. Opening or closing a credit card may cause an immediate hit to your credit score, or, in the case of closing a credit card, it could hurt your credit score further down the line when it drops off your credit history. Always talk to your banker before opening or closing a card to find out how it will impact your score, and when. If your credit score is going to take an immediate hit when you open a new card, it's a poor financial decision to open a credit card immediately before applying for a big loan, as your credit score will be lower than usual when applying for the loan, meaning your interest rate will be higher. A difference of only a couple of points in your credit score can cost you literally hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime on a big loan (like a mortgage) so a basic understanding of credit and credit scores is one of the most important financial steps you can take.

Another key financial concept to understand is compound interest. Compound interest is when interest is added to the principal (meaning the original money you put into a savings account), and then that interest that's been added to the principal ALSO earns interest, and then the interest on the interest earns interest, and so on. This has a ripple effect, meaning the earlier you start investing money in savings, the faster that money increases in value. Here's an example. If you started putting $100 a week into savings when you were 25, and you were getting a 6% return on investment (which is a high interest return in this economy, but that's not really the point here), you would have $868,146 upon retiring at 65 (40 years later). However, if you waited only 10 years to start saving, and started saving the same amount at 35, you'd have $437,604 at 65, or roughly half of what you'd have if you'd started only 10 years earlier. The younger you are when you start saving (no matter how little you're saving) the faster that money will multiply.

Saving vs. Debt Repayment
A word about saving. No matter what your financial situation, you should always have an emergency fund. While you should always make at least the minimum monthly payments on all your debts, any extra money should go into savings until you have at least $1000 for emergencies in the bank. After that, whether you should be investing more of your money into debt repayment, or into savings, depends on your specific situation, and your interest rates. In our case, putting a substantial amount of our monthly income into savings, while only making slightly above the minimum monthly payments on our student debt, makes the most sense for us because the amount of compound interest we'll earn on the savings we invest in our 20s significantly outweighs the amount of interest we'll PAY on our student loans, which have a low interest rate. This is NOT the same for everyone and you need to either calculate it for your own situation, or talk to your banker to figure out which is best for you. For some people, especially people with high levels of consumer debt (which tends to have very high interest rates), you're better off focusing on debt before savings, at least once you've got your emergency fund established. Figure out what's best for you and do your research, rather than copying our model exactly.

Getting Organized
Now, on the topic of saving - a lot of young people in fairly low income brackets often believe they can't afford to put any money in savings. For some people this is true, but for many it's not. The first step in establishing whether or not you actually can afford to save is to get your finances organized. My partner and I honestly believed we had no extra money that could go into savings, until we signed up with www.mint.com, now we save almost 1/3 of our income every month. I know I sound like an infomercial at the moment, but hear me out. Mint.com allows you to link all of your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, etc to one site, so you can see all your finances clearly laid out in front of you (it's safe, and was recommended to me by my bank). It tracks all of your transactions, and allows you to categorize all your spending, and then lays it out in tidy graphs so you can see where most of your money is going. The very first thing my partner and I realized, was that almost 1/4 of our income was going... well, we don't know where. Almost 1/4 of our income fell into the category of 'uncategorized' - meaning we couldn't remember where it was going - likely to things like coffee at work, lunches bought in the cafeteria instead of brought from home, little impulse purchases at the grocery store - basically 'stuff' that hadn't added any value to our lives, but was eating up a lot of our income. We also realized we were spending an obscene amount on groceries.
 
Mint.com helps you set up really effective, straightforward budgets, and by doing this, we realized that once we had budgeted for all of our essential expenses, as well as a bunch of fun expenses like dinners out, shopping, and so on, we still, in theory, had a lot of money left over. This was the money that was getting wasted each month, so we opened a high interest savings account and started putting that amount directly into savings each month, right on pay day, before we could miss it. And frankly? We haven't missed it. At all. We don't even notice it's gone, yet a third of our income is going into savings each month, bringing us rapidly closer to our goals of travel, and eventually buying a house. And all it took, in our case, was organization. I highly recommend everyone at least try it. Worst case scenario, you find out you really don't have any money left over for savings, but best case scenario, you discover you do!

Now that you've got the basics, the post following this one will talk about some everyday money saving tips that we use that have really worked for us.