Wow, this was a very busy week and I’m glad the weekend is finally here. Lately these past few weeks, I’ve been so busy I’ve fallen behind on calculating this months net worth so hopefully I’ll get that done tomorrow. But anyway, I wanted to leave guys with some general finance tips you can carry over this weekend.

• Save the pennies and the dollars will save themselves. The small amounts really do add up.
• Make the effort to educate yourself about personal finance. Go around and find some financial magazines and books.
• Don’t forget to budget! Operating without a budget is like driving a car without a steering wheel, you have no control.
• Start taking savings out of your paychecks before you even see it. After a while, you will get used to planning your spendings around your lower amount and at the same time your savings will grow.
• Be smart and not cheap. You don’t want to buy cheap items that don’t last.
• Be aware of your debt and don’t let your spending get out of control. If you notice yourself headed for trouble, act quickly before you ruin your credit.

Keep these tips in mind while you start your weekend and remember, millionaires are just average people who practice good habits. You could be one of them.

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Follow these 5 steps to be on your way to being credit card debt free. 

1. First thing, you need to stop the credit card offers. You want to get away from all these tempting offers. You can actually force credit card bureaus to stop selling your information at 1-888-5-OPTOUT. Call the number to get the forms.
2. Reduce your interest rates. The average credit card interest rate goes for about 18%, which is really high. You want to be in the 7%-12% range. You can call your credit card provider and negotiate for a lower interest rate. If you have been a customer for a while, then it should be really easy to negotiate. 
3. Stop using your credit cards. If you’re trying to reduce your debt, the last thing you want to do is to keep adding to it. If you have a hard time not using your cards, then take them out of your wallet or purse and leave them at home. If those methods doesn’t work, you can even cut up your cards.
4. Always pay more than the minimum due amount. Credit card companies love it when you only pay the minimum amount because the balance is calculated based on a system so that they can extend your payment plan as long as possible to make optimal profit.
5. Consolidate your debt. Once you have reduce the interest rates of your cards, you want to combine your credit card debt into the card with the lowest interest rate.

Once you have stopped using your cards, reduced your interest rates, and have consolidated your debt, then you’re heading in the right direction for paying off your credit cards.

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1. Big Awareness. Through budgeting, it keeps me aware of how much I spend on the daily basis.
2. Saves me money. By knowing whats coming ahead and being able to plan, it helps me to spend less and less every month.
3. Smart planning. Knowing how much money I have allocated, daily budgeting keeps me financially aware of my situation.
4. Puts me in the right direction. Helps me to reach my financial goals.
5. Helps me Prioritize. By keeping a nice balanced budget, I don’t have room to always buy things that I want. Instead, I need to make sure that I am able to buy the things that I need first before being able to buy anything else.
6. It just feels good. The satisfaction of spending within my allocated funds is a great feeling and an accomplishment.
7. Helps reduce debt. Financial planning and strict budgeting is a great way to help reduce debt.
8. Keeps me in a positive financial mind set. When I’m consistently around numbers and percentages, I’m always being reminded to keep going.
9. I love numbers. I love to calculate and to see how I’m improving from month to month.
10. Organized. Being able to plan my budget has definitely helped me to be more of an organized person.
11. (Extra)I’m ready for those emergencies. Life is unpredictable and you never know what’s heading your way. Being on a budget prepares me for those emergency times when I need those extra few bucks.

Budgeting is a very nice way to keep track of all your expenses and it also helps you stay organized. The best thing is it only takes about 20 minutes per week. I recomend using this program called pear budget. Its an excel spreadsheet that keeps track of how much you spend on the daily casis. If you want to give it a try, you can download it for free here.

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1. I’m on a full scholarship which pays for tuition and fees, room and board and even as far as all my school supplies including my books. In order to keep this I need to maintain a semester and cumulative G.P.A of 3.6.
2. Aside from the full scholarship, which is provided from the school, I also receive some scholarships and grants from the government. This extra money is then turned into a refund check and I get to pocket all of it, each semester! I usually get somewhere between 1,250 to 1,750.
3. If for some reason I don’t graduate on time, I would have to pay for whatever credits I need in order to graduate because my scholarship only covers for 4 years.

So for the next two weeks (until exams are over), I still may not be able to post as frequently as I like to due to crazy hours spent at the library. Believe me when I say, I’m ready for summer and looking forward to full time blogging.

Good News: last week I was able to pay off a little over a thousand dollars off of my credit card. Woot! Right now it’s at an even three thousand dollars. Looking at my current funds, I may be able to pay off some more next week. I’ll keep try to keep you updated and post my total credit card debt sometime next week.

• Money for Military wrote an article titled, Military Taxes Refund. He makes a very good point, why should we let the government keep our hard earned money and let them invest in it, while we could be using that for our own purposes and own investments. Although huge refunds always results in huge smiles, we need to realize…that’s our own money. Key point: try to pay just enough taxes to come out even!
• PfAdvice explains why she Decided Not to Buy a House. Owning a home is definitely something that is looked upon as a great life accomplishment and a goal for many. However, buying a home is a great way to go but is not for everyone and in some cases, renting more secure and a safe play. “I also might miss out on losing a ton of money by buying at the peak of a market that so many people think is about to crash (or already in the process of crashing, or at least leveling out”
• Digerati Life posted an article today called 5 Money and Currency Facts your History Teacher Never Told You. Fact #5: Do you know how the dollar sign ($) got invented?”Most people think the symbol for the US dollar is derived from the initials U and S superimposed on each other. Well this is false. It’s from the Spanish dollar sign. The US decided in 1782 that its basic unit of currency would be the Spanish dollar or peso. Its symbol was even then written as $, which was supposedly an ancient Phoenician sign indicating strength and sovereignty.” Fun facts are always welcome, thanks Digerati

Have a great week, keep up the reading!

Living well for less money is frugality. Leeching off of people to get by is cheap.

For example, I want to get a book for my brother for his birthday. Say I saw a nice book in new condition at a garage sale and I only spend $1.00 opposed to the $24.99 price at Barnes and Noble. Some people would see this as being cheap, only spending a dollar for a gift, however if this is something that my brother would like, it doesn’t really matter how much I spend. There is no point in spending more for the gift if I could get something the person would like just as much for a lot less. Now this kind of giving is just good money management, it’s not being cheap.

Some more example of frugal vs cheap:

• Frugal - Going to a buffet and eating enough to get full and satisfied.
• Cheap - Getting full and satisfied, then filling your pockets and bags before leaving
• Frugal - In a group, a person with 10 dollars would order at a restaurant taking in consideration of tip and tax.
• Cheap - In a group, a person with 10 dollars would order 10 dollars worth of food and intentionally leave the tip and tax for others to pay.
• Frugal - Satisfied with only spending a dollar on a kids meal for your child.
• Cheap - Ordering an extra kids meal for your self to avoid the regular price.
• Frugal - Deciding not to go out to eat because you don’t have enough for the food + tips, instead you go to buy something to make at home.
• Cheap - Intentionally going out to eat when knowing you don’t have enough to tip.

Important note: frugality is not just for those who are on low income. Take Warren Buffet for example. Big Warren, with a net worth of more than 42 billion dollars still live in the house he bought more than 40 years ago at $31,500. He also prefers a burger and a coke over an expensive lunch at his desk.

1. Chinese food – This one is really stupid considering I have a meal plan on campus which is completely already paid for. I just need to throw out all my carry out menus from my room.
2. Starbucks - Ah, how I love coffee. This one is going to be a little hard to stop but I am going to try to cut down little by little. I go about 5-7 times a week. I love their new Dulce de Leche Latte. Such temptation makes this one quite tricky.
3. Random grocery shopping. Yes, I am truly a college student. I all I do is eat and study. Although I love the infamous Ramen Noodles, I tend to spend a little more on the hot pockets and frozen pizzas.
4. Car gas. Gas price is no joke. Especially since my car only takes premium fuel.
5. Pure junk. Stop carrying my cards and cash everywhere. Simple.

I think that if I am able to cut down on these 5 things I can save so much more. I’m going to set my target date for May 21st. Until then, I plan on keeping a record of how much I would of spent and instead saved.

Good news: Today I finally got my taxes done!  And boy was I disappointed(still good news).

So here’s the verdict. Last year I made about 25k with two jobs and paid a little over 5k in taxes.  Five thousand US dollars! I was thinking, “man…I’m gonna have a really nice refund this year, I can finally take my girlfriend out to a nice dinner”. I was wrong. It came down to me OWING the state 104 dollars and getting a refund of 600 dollars from federal. The bright side is I get something back, but I was expecting that something to be more like 2k or something. I mean I paid 5k so 2k sounds reasonable right? Overall, after subtracting the 100 bucks for the state balance, I’ll be getting about 500 or so. Better then nothing eh?

Bad news: I’m still in debt. And doesn’t looks like I’m gonna be debt free within the next month

With all the recent bills tackled onto my credit card, looks like I’m back where I was in February. My credit card is back up to a little over five thousand dollars again. Here’s the lineup for what’s been slowing me down:

• Six months of auto insurance
• Last 3 months of cell phone bills
• Membership fees
• Grocery/gas
• Car maintenance

So all that has put me back up to a total of $5,404.22. I do have some incoming cash so I think I can knock it back down to about 3-4k. My goal is to get this whole thing paid off before summer starts. I would love to start my summer off being debt free.

I want to remind everyone that the last day to file your taxes are April 17th so if you haven’t done so get them done!

But in the meantime, check out this cool article I found on msn money, America’s Top 50′s Salaires. A lot of interesting jobs on the list.

• Avoid ATM machines that charge fees. Those $2.00 fees will hit you like a ton of bricks when you do your end of the month net worth calculations.
• Avoid eating out all the time. Learn to cook. I can cook ramen noodles and they save me tons of money.
• Go cellular. I don’t even have a house phone, I just use my cell phone for everything. It’s more simple that way and saves me money.
• Write letters or use e-mails instead of calling long distance. On second though, scratch out the letter, 37 cents can go a long way. Just write emails.
• Resist peer pressure. If you have friends who like to go out to the movies or anywhere else, learn to say NO if you can’t afford it.
• Learn to reduce your heating and cooling costs. Make your home more energy-efficient.
• Try to buy things on sale. Don’t buy until you look around other stores and you’ve compared prices.
• Use coupons, cut expenses. They’re everywhere, you just have to look.
• Keep track of your spending. The more you know where you stand with your finances, the better your off.

If you have a tip or two you want to share, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. I would love to hear from ya.