Clean your financial house, so to speak

It is some of the most dreaded jobs around- balancing the checkbook, paying bills, planning for your kids’ college fund and retirement….  it’s so complicated, and stressful and who wants to do it!??  Here’s a tool that can help make it easier for you- 

Mint.com!  This tool is online financial software- it helps not only budget, but to plan for many financial goals, whether those are to pay off debt like credit cards or student loans; save for college for your kids- or yourself!; save for a big purchase, or even retirement; find great ways to save money; and best of all- TRACK YOUR SPENDING!  The really cool thing about this program is you don’t have to do a lot of data entry- it simply links up to your bank account online and allows you to track your spending by category. You can set up alerts for various items; you can compare different credit cards or banks to find the best fees. 

Mint.com can also help you set up graphs and other easy to read graphics that show you exactly how much money you spend and where you spend it.  But the best part is this:  It’s FREE.  That’s right.  According to the website, the company occasionally earns a referral fee for recommending a bank account or credit card, but the site only recommends in order of best price/lowest cost, so the company only earns if it is the lowest one and you decide to switch.  We all dread money management tasks- finally, here’s a tool to make a bit easier………

Optimize your Budget

The Hillbillyhousewife has created a guide for optimizing your grocery budget to meet your needs. By finding the foods in your local area which are consistently low priced you can plan meals and set a realistic price range for the weekly shopping trip. To make it easy she’s even prepared a PDF of consistently low priced foods you can compare with, for example her meat selection:

1 lb “bullets” of ground turkey, frozen

1 lb “bullets” of turkey sausage, frozen

12 to 16 lb Whole Turkeys, frozen

10 lb bags of Chicken Leg Quarters, fresh

1 lb packs of Chicken Hotdogs, fresh

1 lb packs of Chicken Baloney, fresh

Large packages of Turkey Ham, various weights, fresh

12-oz packages of Turkey Bacon, fresh

2 lb packages of whiting, pollack or trout fillets, frozen

3 lb packages of Catfish pieces, frozen

6-oz cans of Tuna

14-oz cans of Salmon

Weight Watchers: Low Budget Impact

I’ve never been successful on prepackaged diet products. It’s not the flavor, the ease of accessibility or the limited options. It’s just that they all seem to cost so much money and well, running or walking (if I have the time!) is free. Then I read this article at BlissfullyDomestic.com on how WeightWatchers was actually easy on the budget:

I’ve been a little surprised at the impact - or lack thereof - of Weight Watchers on our grocery budget. I thought I’d spend more on produce and “special” low calorie foods. But that hasn’t really been the case. I do buy a lot of produce, but not much more than I used to. I buy a few things that I didn’t used to - particularly Laughing Cow Light Cheese and rice cakes - but I’m just using the money that I used to spend on chocolate and cookies. It doesn’t cost more. I do keep some Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen dinners in the freezer for times when I don’t want to eat what I’ve made for the rest of the family (like hot dogs), but again, that cost is mostly canceled out by the food I didn’t eat. (Especially because I buy frozen dinners on sale with coupons.