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How to find the cheapest beer

And on the seventh day, God created beer.

Everybody’s budget should have an allocation to buy beer. If it doesn’t then I’m sure there’s an allocation for spirits. Alcohol and humans go together like water and fish.

I came across a site called Boozle that helps you find the cheapest beer in your area. I mean, why pay more than you have to?

I set up a search and bookmarked it in my area. That means every week all I have to do is click the bookmark and sort by specials and bob’s your uncle.

Give it a go!

Credit Card Companies Never Learn

Yesterday, I received in the mail an invitation from my credit card provider to upgrade my card to platinum. The letter read like I should feel privileged to have received such an offer and they could only extend such a generous offer until September 25.

After reading the offer, all they were offering me was this:-

• A concierge service in case I want to call someone to run errands for me
• Membership in their rewards program
• A new $128pa membership fee

Umm…no thanks. I’ll keep the no annual fee and run my own errands thanks.

Fair enough the Global Financial Crisis barely made a mark in Australia, but don’t you think credit providers would have learnt some kind of lesson? I’m still paying off my debt on that credit card after seeing the light with YNAB, but it seems like Credit Card companies are back to their old habits of selling the ‘buy now, pay later, you’re special’ rubbish to people who can’t afford it.

I’ve thrown it in the bin.

YNAB tip - building your buffer

With YNAB one of the things you should try to do is build a cash buffer so that at some point you’ll always be a month ahead, i.e. you can budget next month’s expenses today.

But building that buffer can take a bit of time, and just leaving money sitting unallocated to a certain budget category can get both confusing and tempting.

This is how I get around it:-

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How to making checking all your finances easy

If you’re outside the US there are very few budgeting services that can connect to your bank accounts, loan accounts, credit card accounts and automatically update your budget software.

That doesn’t bother me, because I like to reconcile my budget daily with my accounts; it helps me stay motivated and gives me a sense of control.

I have accounts with 4 different financial services providers and it quickly becomes a pain having to login, go through the security, and get your balances every day just to make sure your budget program is in line with your actual finances.

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Net worth - September 2010

September 2010 will be my baseline month for all future net worth updates. It’ll be base zero. Each month I plan to give you guys an update percentage wise how much I’ve improved on my net worth position on my road to financial recovery.

My current net worth is calculated by YNAB. I can’t use their built in reporting just yet because it really needs a few months data to start being useful.

Keep tabs with me and let’s see how much I can improve by my next net worth update in October. I’ll try and do it as close to the 1st of the month in future as possible.