September 2010
12 posts
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...
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
...
3 tags
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:-
That box above is...
2 tags
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...
3 tags
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...
3 tags
Paying myself some cash
I’ve always been a firm believer that if you’re going to have to live by a strict budget then be sure to allocate some money to yourself to spend on whatever you like. This goes doubly for me because if I can’t treat myself within budget I do it outside of budget which is just idiotic.
So with my new budget I’ve allocated myself $100 per month to spend on anything I see...
3 tags
How to make grocery shopping affordable
I have the worst shopping habits. I find that I visit the supermarket nearly every day to buy that night’s dinner. For some reason every time I go I spend between $25 and $30…this is to feed four people. That’s a lot of money - around $350 a month for the fortnight I buy groceries (my brother buys the other fortnight).
But over the last few months I’ve been using Jamie...
1 tag
The cost of parking
It sure isn’t cheap parking at university. Today I arrived at 4:30pm for a class and managed to land a park that was free from 5pm. I was debating whether or not I’d get caught by a parking inspector if I didn’t pay for that half hour of parking, but it was going to cost me $1.50. A penny saved is a penny earned in my book so I took the risk…I didn’t get caught :P
4 tags
YNAB - Best budgeting software ever
I’m looking after my budget by myself from now on, with help from my brother. By help I mean he’s taking possession of my cards so I don’t fall off the wagon like I have in the past. This might seem drastic, but I’m all for it…anyhow…
I’ve never had much luck with budgeting programs; they were all too complicated for me, and I could never get them to...
3 tags
Working out potential take home pay
Within the next six months I’ll be reentering the workforce on a salary that’s likely to be a lot smaller than I’m currently on. I like to be prepared so I’ve already made a budget to work out how small a salary I can survive on. Here’s how to do it:-
Research salaries
There are plenty of places you can research salaries. A few good choices for research are:-
...
August 2010
0 posts
1 tag
Hello and welcome
I’m Grant and this is me. I’m a 27 year old graphic design student living in Brisbane, Australia. But I haven’t been a student forever; I had a career in commerce for nearly 5 years before deciding that it just wasn’t for me. Unfortunately, keeping up with the Jones’ in that career has left me with a lot of residual debt and poor budgeting skills, so I have to...