Money Walks

Personal Finance is such a big fuss in our blogosphere, there are so many articles on how we can save more for our retirement, how to reduce debt, how we can live more frugally, how to not spend your money, and the list goes on and on. I love to read about all the different aspects of finance, because the truth is the more you think about finance the better you’re gonna do financially.

But after applying all the neat hacks and tricks on how to be more financially independent, what’s next? How do you determine financial success? How do you gauge your performance? It’s simple. It’s not how much credit card debt you were able to pay off this month, its not how much you were able to save up, it’s not how much you were able to put away for retirement.

What it comes down to is, your net worth.

You can put away $500.00 for retirement one month but in that same month treat yourself to a nice Iphone (which is somewhere around that price range) and not improve your overall net worth. You can pay off $200.00 off your credit card this month but you keep using the same credit card for all your purchases, again, you’re not improving your situation.

The way you can gauge your financial performance and know that you’re doing good is this, ask yourself, “Did my net worth improve from last month”? If you can say yes, then you’re doing wonderful, if not you might want to rethink your strategy.

What you don’t want is for you to have the same net worth month after month. As long as you can say that your net worth has increased by ‘x’ then you’re in good standings because you know that your making progress. As opposed to someone whose net worth is the same each month and not making any improvements, which is the most case. If you spend just as much as you save, then you’re really not making anything. Wouldn’t it be great if you can see that your net worth is getting better and better each month, each year? Instead of being in the same financial scenario for 5 years? This is why keeping track of your net worth is very important because it also allows you to keep track of your financial progress.

The big picture is aside from all the frugal living, putting away for retirement, investments, and all the financial goals one might have, what it comes down to is are you improving your net worth.

The key points is, you should concentrate on improving your net worth month after month. This is the only way to rate your performance. If your net worth is improving, then you know your financial situation is improving.

[Photo Credit]

Welcome to Moneywalks and the 83rd edition of the Festival of Frugality. If this is your first time here, I encourage you to browse the archives after the festival and if you like what you see you can subscribe to my feed.

This week, there was well over 50 submissions and 37 made it to the festival. I had a great time reading these articles, they were awesome, but in order to keep the festival’s theme consistent, I had to omit articles that had no relevance to frugality. But I want to say that I tried my best to fit each article in this edition. First off, I want to share with you the definition of frugality from wiki:

Frugality (also known as thrift or thriftiness), often confused with cheapness or miserliness, is a traditional value, life style, or belief system, in which individuals practice both restraint in the acquiring of and resourceful use of economic goods and services in order to achieve lasting and more fulfilling goals. In a money-based economy, frugality emphasizes economical use of money in meeting long term personal, familial, and communal desires

I think this is a great definition of frugality. That is why I have chosen this definition as a baseline for this festival and have broken down into 7 strategies for frugality. This way, reader can pick what part of frugality they want to read about. But before we start, I want to thank all the contributors for their submissions, I learned so much from reading all the posts. I hope you can get out as much information out of this festival just as I have. Many great tips and suggestions here, also I made an asterisks(*) on the ones that I particularly enjoyed.

Okay, without further delay…

Welcome to the Festival of Frugality #83
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1.) Changing costly habits and/or suppressing instant gratification

Lower Your Cable and Internet Bill Today

Cutting The Cable Cord

Cut your Spending Today

2.) Reduction of wastes and bartering

House obsession

“Found” Money

Save Money by Using Less than Suggested Amounts

The Cost Of Living With Pampered Pets In Luxury And Some Really Weird Pet Products

3.) Seeking efficiency

7 Habits of Highly Effective Money Managers

Present Simplicity

*Ten Commandments of Frugal Living*

Resourceful West Virginians

*Are Poor People More Frugal Than Rich People?*

4.) Defying expensive social norms

Day 435: Riding the Rails

Clean your whole kitchen with baking soda and vinegar

Comfort and Style on a Cheapskate’s Budget

*Trash to Treasure: My Flower Power Pants*

10 Ways to Pay for College with OPM (Other People’s Money)

Save Money and Eat Healthier: Buy Frozen and Canned Produce

5.) Embracing free options

Libraries Are Not As Bad As You Think

*5-reasons-not-to-drink-bottled-water*

Frugal Fridays: The Library is More Than Books

Why MyPoints Is Worth Joining And What I Have Gotten From Them

Free or Low Cost Entertainment Ideas for Families

6.) Staying well informed about local circumstances

Buy American - Frugality Strategy?

For the Frugal Mind: Cheapest days to shop

Staple Rewards - How to Save Money at Staples

10 Ways to Save on Travel Expenses

7.) Market and Products

The Dollar Store

Don’t fear the warranty

Eco-friendly consumerism is still consumerism

Frugality, Morality & Harry Potter

Free Software Roundup: Not All Freeware is Created Equal

Frugal Way to Save Money on Lipstick

Do My Frugal Ways Harm Workers?

A Great Alternative to Buying Expensive Cameras, Lenses and other Photography Equipment

Clean, Safe, NonToxic Cleaners

Cost Effectiveness of Homemade Laundry Detergent-A Reader’s Question

Well that’s it. I hope you had a great read here, take with you as much as you can. If you see any articles here you enjoyed, please share it with your readers. Also, if you do not see your article here and think that it should be, please email me and let me know. I’ve been known to make mistakes every once and a while. Once again, I want to thank all the authors for their fantastic articles and don’t miss out on the next edition over at The Frugal Law Student.

Lately, I’ve been listening to this audio book called the “Automatic Millionaire” by David Bach, and let me tell you that it’s awesome. I recommend this audio book to everyone, it’s a great read/listen, whichever you prefer. So while I was listening to it, I noticed some cool things that I thought I wanted to share with you.

When it comes down to it there are 6 approaches to wealth. Here they are.

1. Win it. For example, the lottery. Did you know that over 500 Billion dollars have gone into the lottery business since the early 70’s when the lottery was first started? Imagine if all that money was put into an investment account, there would be over trillions of dollars right now. This is not a realistic approach but it happens to the very few. Do you know anyone who has won the lottery? Probably not, so I wouldn’t recommend waiting around for this one.
2. Marry it. Wouldn’t it be great to marry your self into wealth? But lets face it, it’s not that easy to marry for money. Not only is it not easy to marry for money but “when you marry for money you pay for it for the rest of your life”. Good luck with this one.
3. Inherit it. Now inheritance is actually a real approach to gaining wealth. Within the next 15 years, we’re going to see over 15 trillion dollars transfer from one generation to the next. But I mean, who wants to rely on their parents to past away so that they can get their money. No one I know, hopefully no one you know either. If you are fortunate enough to have your parents or family members leave you something after they pass, you can be grateful but don’t depend on it. Not a good way to live and you don’t want to rely on this for your retirement.
4. Sue for it. Why work when you live in a country that pulls in 90% of all lawsuits made in the world? Just sue your way into wealth, right? Wrong. Again, you don’t want to rely on something like suing someone to get rich. This is not a real approach to wealth.
5. Save for it. For all the little things we spend our money on like fast food and starbucks, this alone over a long period of time could end up to be a considerable amount. Say you spend on average roughly $10 for lunch and starbucks. Over a year it’s $3,650 and over thirty years it comes to 109,500! Now imagine you put this money away in the stock market in some kind of an index fund, which historically averages about a 10% return. Using this compound interest calculator, you would end up with 660,443.50! Isn’t this amazing? So yes, your daily fast food and starbucks is costing you over half a million dollars. This is also known as the Latte factor.
6. Earn it. Yes, you can earn your way into wealth. Although the automatic millionaire has many great tips on how to accumulate wealth, the main concept of the audio is to pay your self first. What does it mean to pay your self first? It means that when you get your paycheck, before you pay anything or anyone, including the government, you make sure to pay your self first. When you automate this process electronically, it’s very easy to do because you don’t have to do it manually and the great thing is it doesn’t require motivation or work once its all set up. This is why out of all the 6 approaches, this is the most promising. As Bach mentions in the audio, you can start paying yourself as low as 1% of your gross income. Then over time, slowly start to increase your percentage and you won’t even notice it.

Just to let you know, I’m not getting sponsored or getting paid for saying any of this, I just want to share with you how much this program works.

So ever since I started listening to this audio, I made everything automatic and so far it’s doing great. As of now, I am automatically paying myself 20% of my gross income each paycheck. I stated out with 10% but then realized that I can afford to do 20%.

Having this process automated is the main key. Since it’s automated, you don’t have to worry about keeping your self motivated and that’s a huge factor, especially for me. Lets face it, it’s really hard to stay motivated 24/7 and thinking about finance day in and out. Another thing is when you have this process automated, once you have everything setup, you don’t have to work at it. Everything is automatic! It’s working for you while you’re not thinking about it.

The thing is, most of us know the concept of paying yourself first, but no one ever executes them. In his book, he pays down solid principles and honestly tells you that it’s not a get rich scheme. That it takes years for it to work. But its a solid plan that I think is guaranteed to work. What I like about the book is that it’s really simple to understand and easy to follow. If you have the chance, go check the book out for your self. It’s definitely worth the investment.

At the end of every year, do you wonder if you will end up paying too much in tax? The best way to go about tax filing is you want to always try to come out even. This way you’re not letting the government borrow your money interest free and also you can use your money when you want to. Here’s some quick tips to look over.

• If you own two cars, alternate your use of each car from month to month.
• If you have children under the age of 18, you can hire them at fully deductible wages and owe no social security or federal employment taxes if your company is a sole proprietorship or partnership in which both partners are parents of the children. However, don’t cheat, make sure that they perform actual work for your business.
• You may remember that dry cleaning and laundry expenses during a business trips are deductible. Did you know that you can also deduct your first dry-cleaning bill after returning home. However, this only applies for the clothes dirtied while you were traveling.

Life’s full of many hacks, always try to find ways to get around things. Hope these tips help.