A week of budgets: how to manage expenditure
Here in the UK we are still agitated by Wednesday’s budget; well at least the press is. Last night I told you how writing about the Government’s budget made us realise that we have been underpaid on our child benefit for a very long time. Now, this may sound like good news – after all we are going to get a nice payment – but in fact it also made me think that although I ‘knew my numbers’ I did approach these wrongly. In this case, I approached wrongly a number referring to a very small income; we can do our finances considerable damage were we to act inappropriately with expenditure.
This made me think about how to manage expenditure and the different types of expenditure every household has. I find it helpful to think of three groups of expenditure: constant expenditure, negotiable (changeable) expenditure and variable expenditure. In fact, The Money Principle Budgeting Tool is build around these. But what do they mean for the way in which we manage our money? Continue reading
Savings calculator: check out this nifty PF tool
There was a time when I couldn’t be bothered to play with personal finance tools: I bought what I wanted, slapped it on my credit card and thought about how to pay for it later. As could be expected, this got me in a ‘spot of bother’. Now that I am a changed woman, and a self confessed nerd at that, I think about paying first and love playing with different tools that help me plan and organise my financial life.
This is why I jumped at the opportunity to play around with this savings calculator: it is simple to use but nifty. It doesn’t matter what you are saving for, it gives you the answer immediately; and I found it so satisfying to know that I can do this motorbike ride across the USA I was telling you about in two and a half years if I save £200 every month, or if I want to do it in the summer of 2013 I’ll have to rev this up and put aside £400 per month. Makes it more real and achievable somehow!
If you have a blog or website and decide to add another useful tool to the personal finance arsenal you already provide to your readers, just click the link on the bottom of the calculator and follow the instructions; the widget will appear on your site. And the code’s available FREE!
If you are a reader, you can use the savings calculator now. As for future use, I am putting the calculator under ‘tools’; feel free to use it any time you wish. It doesn’t cost you anything!
Types of Credit Cards: Positives and Negatives
This is a Guest Post
Using a credit card to make purchases provides us with convenience, allows us to defer payment until a later date, and can help us better handle cash flow. The benefits can sometimes be outweighed by negatives that include the risk of falling into high interest debt. Credit cards can offer benefits like free airline travel miles, or hotel stays. Users can accumulate points for charges which can later be redeemed for things such as iPods, and Amazon gift cards.
Credit cards can be a temptation for some and issuers make the majority of their money when their users fall into debt. The fact that credit cards allow us to buy now and pay later can lead to impulse purchases and overspending. When a user carries a balance, they are essentially borrowing money at very high interest rates. Most “balance holders” don’t look at it in that way, but since the average rate for an unsecured card is 15%, even a small balance can balloon in a very short period of time. Continue reading
How much do you waste on food?
According to a study in the UK, not wasting any food will place you in a minority: apparently households waste on average £650 ($1,021) worth of food per year. I will be very surprised if the waste in the US is less although finding comparable data was not possible. Reading this I felt, I believe, rightful indignation; for three reasons.
My first thought (and reason) was that we live in a strange world where 80% of the population doesn’t have enough to eat and 20% consistently over eat. In the light of this distribution, wasting so much food sounds really morally wrong and irresponsible.
Secondly, I started thinking about all the things this money wasted on food could be used to buy. For my family, this is a very generous trip to Bulgaria to see family. There are so many good uses and causes this money could be put to but instead it is wasted on food.
And thirdly, about 19% of the waste in landfills is food which can’t be good for the environment. Biodegradable, true; but food rotting in landfills contributes to global warming. Continue reading
