Monday, March 26, 2012

Money Saving Thoughts & Ideas


Okay, nose back to the grindstone, with the whole push to the end of the semester and all of that Spring Break is over kind of stuff. J

Since my budget like many others in this world seems to get tighter with each passing day and Yahoo had a bunch of articles on saving money without resorting to the typical clipping of coupons I thought that would make a great blog post for this week.

In the first article I found (the one that started this whole blog post idea) it goes over 4 Discounts You’re Earning But NotUsing. That title made me stop & look, not surprisingly I think I qualify for a couple, and am thinking of making a change or two to take advantage of at least one of the others. The article discusses checking account rewards, and how yes they’re hard to find at your brick and mortar banks, but if you choose internet banking you can cash in. I’m going to look into this since I need to open a new account to accommodate some upcoming changes in my life anyway. The second thing is club membership perks, I am a member of Sam’s Club, so am going to look and see what other ways I can use my membership to save money, other than the obvious. Social media promotions are the third thing, I’m on Facebook far more often than I should be, so I’m going to start using my presence there to save a few dollars every now and then. The last one is credit card reward malls, I probably won’t be taking advantage of this one due to the fact that I don’t have and don’t plan to get any credit cards, but it might be worth it for those who do have them.

The second article I found went over 7 Ways You’reWasting Money Without Realizing It. I’ll hit a few of the high points. Some big ones I noticed were ignoring your credit score, this hurts you anytime  you need to borrow money and can hurt you in your job hunt too since most companies will check a credit score before they offer you a job. Failing to get lower rates follows that one, if you take care of your credit you can refinance loans to take advantage of lower rates when they are available. There have been times in my life I wish I’d been able to do so. Overpaying for car insurance was made obvious to me recently, when I bought my little Prizm I shopped around and figured out I’d been paying far too much for my auto insurance. Those are the ones that stood out to me, you’re more than welcome to check all seven out and see if the others will help you save some money.

The third article fits in too in that it gives you  9 Things You Should Always Buy WithYour Credit Card. It’s food for thought, I might put it in my mental maybe I need a card again someday file and consider it. It points out perks on appliances and electronics you can utilize with a card, also cell phone replacement perks if you pay your bill with your card and that if you use your credit card to purchase things you’re going to write off on your taxes your bill can be your receipt and you don’t have to keep track of as much paper for tax time. All pretty good ideas, plus a few more.

So those are some things I’ve learned about saving money tonight. Hope they help you too!

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