Please note: If you are my ex and are reading this, then it is not your jewelry I pawned!

Ever since being engaged (we are E+ two weeks now, as my fiancée likes to keep track of time after the big day), I have had this consuming desire within me to organize, de-clutter and simplify every aspect of our lives. I suppose I can only relate it to the fierce nesting a woman supposedly goes through during her pregnancy when the entire house must be cleaned and organized and perfect for this next big stage in her life.

            Unlike some phases or emotions which can send a person to compulsive shopping, compulsive eating, etc., this one is actually quite lucrative (would you expect any less from me at this point?)!  By cleaning out the recesses of our closets, drawers, hope chests, and jewelry box, I have made a small profit, and have decided that all money earned will be donated to our honeymoon fund.

            It started with our guest room closet, aka the pit for things we don’t have a place for. I took everything out of it and made distinct piles: donations, throw away, sell. I threw away all of my fiancées wire hangers (think Mommy Dearest the movie), organized all of my photos into neat little photo boxes, and ruthlessly sorted through a lot of belongings. Next I focused my attention on our book shelves—Paul and I are both avid readers and each have our own book shelf. Between the two of us, we came up with 15 books we no longer want to sell at a used book store.

            As I was walking back into the bedroom with a handful of old clothes, my jewelry box caught my eye. How about I sell my ex boyfriend’s jewelry and put it towards our honeymoon as well? Quite frankly I thought my idea was brilliant, although I am sure many others have done the same thing in the past. I picked out two necklaces, a bracelet, and two rings and cleaned them using jewelry cleaner. Now, I have never been to a pawn show before, and my imagination conjured up sleazy men with slicked-back hair, little spectacles and smoke-filled rooms. To my surprise, this was not the case, although the pawn shop I went to (The Write Pawn and Jewelry Co.) did have metal bar doors for an entranceway (this is most likely due to its location on Westheimer). In all but twenty minutes, I walked out of the place with a smile on my face, some money in my hand, and a feeling of weight lifted off of my shoulders.  

            Here is a breakdown of what I have been able to sell so far:

• Laptop Case: $10, Paid $15 for it
• Cell phone: $25, Paid $0 for it
• Jewelry: $50, Paid $0 for it
• Books: $15, Paid approximately $75 for them

With the books we sold, we were able to buy a copy of a used “How to Buy a House for Dummies” for $7.00. The rest of the money, as well as any other profits from sales, will be going into our honeymoon account. One hundred dollars is not much money, but this exercise has been more valuable as an intangible cleansing of the past for me, as well as a way to make room for us—and our belongings—to grow together.

Hurrah to simplifying and decluttering!

Originally posted 2009-08-01 13:25:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

There are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck, out of necessity. So how are they supposed to pull themselves up and out of debt, or build up a savings in order to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle? It will take some commitment, planning, and perhaps some psychological warfare, but here are some ideas to get you started:

1. First Off, Make Your Savings Account a Black Hole: Something that I like to do is automatically withdrawal a budgeted amount from my checking account into my savings account before I pay any bills. I almost make it into a game—once that money hits my savings account, I would rather cut off my right pinky finger before transferring it back to my checking to cover bills. The money becomes dead to me. This makes me creative sometimes in finding solutions, or tests my patience as I wait to have things replaced until next month in order to keep that money in my savings account. You may surprise yourself at ingenious ways you come up with to not touch that money. And then…it happens! The next month has all ready arrived, and that money is now safe and sound, earning interest.
2. Deposit Your Two Extra Paychecks: Most people on salary are paid on a bi-weekly basis, receiving a total of 26 paychecks, and some are on a weekly basis, receiving a total of 52 paychecks. That means that for two months out of the year, when there are five weeks in that month, you receive three paychecks instead of two (or five paychecks instead of 4 if you are paid weekly)! Since your budget and bills are set up for two paychecks per month, take advantage of this ‘extra’ money by depositing it directly into your savings account. Without much effort, that equals an entire months’ pay that you will save over the next year. (Please note, if you are paid monthly like I am, or you are paid two times per month (like the 2^nd and 4^th Friday, then this scenario will not occur for you).  
3. Contribute the Max or Desired Amount to Your Roth/Traditional IRA in 10 Months Instead of 12: The current limit for Roth/Traditional IRA contributions is $5,000 per year (for 50+ you can contribute $6,000). Divide this out by ten months, or $500-$600 per month (depending upon your age). Automatically deposit this amount each month, and then turn off your contributions for November and December, as you are unable to contribute more. Instead, turn on your savings account contributions, and reap an extra $1000-1200 to put in there. Even if you are not maxing out a Roth or Traditional IRA, figure out what you would like to contribute, and divide by 10 months instead of 12, and have that amount automatically deposited into your IRA account. For the last two months of the year, deposit it into your savings.
4. Lower Your Fixed Expenses: If you own a home, you can shop around for lower home insurance, as well as fight the appraisal to your home to see if you can get your tax load lowered. If you get these lowered and pay into an escrow, have the company where you keep your escrow account reassess and lower your monthly payments—cash you can now put into a savings account. If you own a car, shop around for lower car insurance. Pit competitive internet and cable companies against one another with sales ads and sign onto a contract for a lower rate with a new or existing company. If you rent an apartment, refer others to the apartment complex and ask for a break on your rent in return. Bank all of your savings as if you were still paying the bill.
5. Give Your Recurring Bills a Summer Break: For summer vacation this year when your kids are home and most hot t.v. shows are on hiatus (like Lost, Desperate Housewives, etc.), get rid of your cable and internet (make sure you will not incur fees for doing this). Instead, trek to the library to enjoy magazines, books, internet use, and free DVDs. Also check out Hulu and purchase a $2-$10 HDMI cord to run from your laptop or computer to your television to see some of your favorite shows for free. During times of good weather, drop your gym membership and run/walk/hop outside instead. You can always sign back onto these services, and in the meantime, you can bank some extra cash (24-hour fitness has a month-to-month contract, do other gyms).
6. Skip Grocery Shopping: If you normally shop each week, skip one week and live off of what is in your cupboards, fridge and freezer all ready. If you shop every other week, try to shop just once for the month! Most of us have stockpiles of food, and we need to cash in on them every now and then to reap the benefits. If you stock up for hurricane season, eat through some of your hurricane supplies at the end of that season (okay…I know Chef Boyardee does not seem that appealing, and is not all that healthy, but tuna fish and such will work! You can donate the rest). Bank the extra $100 or $200 from not shopping. Repeat this every six months.   
7. Deposit Any Tax Returns: Have a tax return coming to you from 2010? Instead of earmarking it for stuff, direct deposit it into your savings account, not your checking. If you are disciplined enough in saving money, work with your HR department to have less money withheld for taxes, leaving you more money each month to put into the bank. If you own a home or have substantial medical bills and you can take an itemized deduction this year instead of the standard, make sure to clean out your closets and make donations. You can use the online free service ItsDeductible in order to keep track of the value of what you donate, and then you can get a bigger tax refund.
8. Displace Some of your Vacation Costs: Is an annual vacation part included in your paycheck-to-paycheck budget? Displace some of your expenses at home while you are away by calling your car insurance company and making your auto policy temporary for the two weeks or week you will be gone. This will save you some money. Also, turn your water heater to “vacation” mode, or off while you are gone. Turn your thermostat up or down depending on what time of year you leave, shut your blinds and curtains to help temperature fluctuations and for security purposes, and find a neighbor or friend who can cat or dog sit for you instead of paying a kennel. You can return the favor on their next vacation.

Since September of 2009, I made a goal to put $2500 into savings to be used for our honeymoon using as little of our own 9-5 paycheck money as possible. I am happy to report, just 22 days away from leaving on our honeymoon, that we have succeeded in doing this. We thought outside of the box, and pulled in extra income through freelance writing, rebates, carpooling, etc. All of the hard work of saving is over for us, we’ve got our passports, the airfare and hotels are all booked, so needless to say, we are ready to splurge and enjoy ourselves! 

               Before we tally everything up, let’s look at how we did with adding money to our savings goal in March:

• $15 Oil of Olay rebate
• $10 eHow earnings
• $100 Freelance income
• $250 Wedding Shower money

This brings the total to $2334.78, with $165.22 still needed and only a little more than half a month to do this in. Unfortunately, I was not able to make up a larger portion since the last post (what I had to sell was not worth as much as I had hoped, but I will be holding onto it for a future use!). Even though we have half a month to go, and will probably make up the $165.22 before then, I would like to do an overall summary now and close out this savings goal.

Below are the final tallies for each category:

• Freelance Writing Income: $760
• Bank Account Opening Bonuses: $421
• Wedding Shower Cash Gifts: $325
• Rebates: $222.49
• Our Paycheck Money: $200
• Sold Stuff Craigslist: $141.29
• Carpooling: $104
• Research Study: $75
• eHow Income: $54
• SendEarnings Surveys: $27
• Miscellaneous: $5

I hope this serves as an example that while it may seem that putting small denominations of money into savings here or there, and getting a few rebates does not add up, if you give all of your miscellaneous money a purpose, then you can save up for something very large, and very tangible in your life. For us, it’s off to Austria!

Our honeymoon is getting awfully close. I set a goal starting last September to raise $2500 for our honeymoon with taking as little money as possible out of paychecks to do so (instead using bank offers, rebates, side income, etc.)…and as of last month we were at $1670. In other words…another $830 still to save! Yikes!

                How did we do in February? The following is what we added to the pot:

• $40 from Carpooling
• $5 from SC Johnson rebate (I paired this rebate with a sale and stocked us up on cleaning supplies!)
• $29 eHow earnings
• $140 freelance income
• $75 from 1 hour Research Study

This brings the total to $1959.78, with $540.22 still needed and only 1.5 months to do this in. With the help of one of my loyal readers, Crystal S. and her husband (she has a new blog called Budgeting in the Fun Stuff), I may be able to make up a portion of this, and will hopefully be giving you the happy news in the next Honeymoon Savings Goal update.

Hello Everyone! We were able to add $301.99 to our honeymoon savings goal this month, bringing the total to $1,670.78 (check out progress bar in right hand column). The breakdown is below:

• $121 from ING Checking Account Opening Bonus
• $120 from Freelance Writing Income
• $11 Hasbro Rebate
• $9.99 Oil of Olay Bodywash Rebate
• $10 Gas Rebate
• $30 Carpooling

How are you doing with your savings goal? Have you started a new one for the New Year?

Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!

If you check out the progress bar for paying cash for our honeymoon, you will see that we are now at 54% of our goal! While that is wonderful…I realized the other day that our honeymoon is just three and a half months away. Needless to say, we need to get moving.

We added $122 to our savings account in December from the following sources:

• $5.00 Dulcolax rebate
• $3.00 rebate from Comcast for overpaying the previous month (not sure how that happened…)
• $85 from freelance writing income
• $15 from eHow income
• $14 from carpooling (was paid more…but this is how much made it towards our goal)

Wish us luck in January!

I am not talking about going into the wilds of Australia for six months until you come out a man. I am talking about literally walking about your home, apartment, car, and life in order to examine the things that allow your life to run smoothly and at the level of affluence you have become accustomed to.

Two weeks ago on the Suze Orman show, Suze offered up what I thought to be great advice. It was a segment called “Get Real”, and she basically said that even if you are doing well financially—you have emergency savings, your cars are paid off, your IRAs are funded—before you think about splurging on a large purchase, do a walkabout in your life and figure out what could go wrong next.

            I took this advice and walked around our own home in the middle of the show. I must admit, after doing this for awhile, all of our appliances and belongings started looking less like fixtures, and more like liabilities. My eyes first rested on our washer and dryer, which were a nice leftover from the previous owners. Granted, the washer and dryer have been working great for the last three months, but they show some serious signs of aging (not least of which is the rust cutting through the paint like metal shards). We don’t know how old these appliances are, but we do know that our current budget has factored in that these appliances will last forever. Wrong answer.

            We have a newly bought used vehicle with 113,000 miles on it, so should definitely start saving specifically for when this vehicle dies, or for car repairs in the next few years.

            Our water heater is over 8 years old. Average life of a water heater? 8-10 years.

            Our mattress was gently used when I traded my desktop computer with my sister for it back in 2005 after graduating college. Granted it is still extremely comfortable, but average life span of a mattress is around 10 years. That is only 4-5 years away!

Laptops only last a few years (my last one was great for 5 years, which I have heard is considered ancient to many people), so we can expect to have to replace ours in the next 2-3 years.

Needless to say, I need to begin thinking about starting a “When Things Go Wrong Fund” outside of our emergency savings account. Why do I want two of these types of accounts? Well, I view our emergency fund account as covering our day-to-day basics and necessities should either of us lose our job, get hurt, etc. This new account would specifically cover large, “unpredictable” expenses that are sure to creep up, such as home maintenance, car repairs and the like.

Another great idea is our home warranty, which has been particularly helpful thus far as our ancient heaters stopped working several weekends ago when the temperature dropped into the 30s, and our dishwasher just died on us Thursday night. Our real estate agent had the great foresight to write into our contract that the previous owners would pay for a serviceplus package at American Home Shield (AHS) home warranty company for the first year in our home. This covers not only the basic things, like water heaters, furnaces, A/C units, etc., but also items that were installed incorrectly, out of code units, and dishwashers (hurrah!). We have all ready called our service twice, and paid $60 each time to have work done on our home. What a relief it was! Granted, there are varying reviews about home warranties, and I think that would make a great article, but thus far we have been satisfied with ours.

Go ahead and do a Walkabout in your own home. How are things measuring up? What could go wrong next?

Hello Everyone!

I am pleased to report that we were able to add $115 to our savings goal of paying cash for our honeymoon in April 2010. This brings us to over 41% towards our goal of $2,500! The $115 was from freelance writing income.

How are you all doing with your savings goal? What are you saving towards, and how do you plan on reaching that goal?

October is here, and it’s time to update my honeymoon savings goal! If you remember, I started off with $779 at the beginning of September. Now we are at $931. Here is the breakdown:

• $10 from a gas rebate
• $30 from another rebate (although I cannot remember what this check was for!
• $75 from our engagement party
• $27 from SendEarnings (finally!)
• $10 from Natural Dentist rebate

All in all we added another $152.00 to our goal. How did you do?

My fiancée and I think big when it comes to travel. In fact, we met one another in Japan while I was traveling abroad as a student to study for a semester, and he was stationed in Yokosuka as a cryptologist in the Navy. This was after I had finished a tour in London, and before he was shipped to Bahrain for two years. Traveling is in our blood.

                What is not in our blood is the amount of money the type of travelling that we wish to do for the next 50+ years is going to entail. It should come as no surprise that traveling can be an expensive hobby. But at heart we are traveling companions, and both yearn to see new places, eat new foods, meet new people, and enjoy one another’s company against a backdrop of the world.

Our next big traveling adventure is going to be our honeymoon, and we have decided to take a trip to Austria! Neither of us has ever been there, and we like the idea of being surrounded by mountains cascading down from the clouds, intricately-detailed European architecture, cozy cafes, and the tantalizing sounds of a foreign language.  Sounds like a dream.

We are hoping for a two week trip (we will have to see if work allows for this), and have decided to set a savings goal of $2500. Granted, we realize the price of this trip will be higher than this, but this is a good chunk of money to help us get there. The wedding is tentatively planned for April of next year, so that gives us approximately eight months to reach this goal. If you pass your mouse over the Honeymoon Savings Chart on the right of this page, you will see that so far we have accumulated $779.79. Here is how that breaks down:

As you can see, only $200 of this money has come out of our checking account and out of our own pockets. True, for rebates, we are initially paying for the item. But I budget this into the amount of money I can spend each month and do not go over this budgeted amount, so when I get the rebate, it feels like found money for us!

Earning interest also adds to a savings goal. Our savings account is with ING DIRECT, and I have had this account since 2005. This is where we have saved for our house down payment, and it has accumulated $1,157.49 for us in interest over the past 3.5 years!

 Our honeymoon money is not in a savings account; instead we have put it in a checking account because of the bonuses we received to open it ($150 per account, and Paul and I opened up two separate accounts. Check out my eHow article how to jumpstart your savings goal to learn more about this. In particular, Chase bank has a $100 offer right now for opening up a new account that can be found in the Sunday papers or the Wednesday Redplum circulars that come out.). That yielded us a 38.5% return on our money, and we only need to keep the money in this checking account for six months before we can put it into our ING Savings account and earn even more money on it!

Open up your own savings account by clicking on the ING Direct Icon on the sidebar to your right. You can then designate this account for your own savings goal, such as a car, home down payment, first and last month’s rent plus deposit, a trip, paying down a credit card, etc. (Just to let you all know, I do make money if you open a savings or checking account on ING DIRECT through my website; however, I also use this service and love it, and that is why I am promoting it!) Leave me a comment to tell me about the savings goal that you have—I would love to hear about it. Are you going to automatically deposit money into your savings account? Or put in extra money as you get it? When do you expect to reach your savings goal?

Follow me as I post once a month between now and our honeymoon to show you how we achieve our goal. You may get your own ideas for things that you can do to reach a particular goal you have. If anything, you can see that it is possible to set a savings goal, work at it, and at the end, reap the rewards from your hard work and ingenuity.

Happy Savings!