Money Matters

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by 724Skinsfan

Most banking institutions offer many types of IRA's. I have a roth IRA setup through Bank of America http://http://www.bankofamerica.com/...plate=ira_roth which seems fairly reasonable.

Schneed and ThatGuy are definitely on the money with everything they've said. One huge suggestion I have is to build a spread sheet that lists all of your mandatory expenditures (rent, insurance, bills, etc) and also your voluntary expenditures. Like Schneed said, get a tally of your bank receipts for a particular month to draw information from. Here's a good spreadsheet if you want to get some ideas: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/te...062791033.aspx

Two quick ways to experience a little bit of savings are:

1) setting a specific number of times that you eat out (if any). My wife and I used to eat out anytime we didn't feel like cooking which came to be at least 2-3 times a week. Once we said "OK, we will eat out just once every two weeks" obviously we noticed a significant amount of savings.
2) Set aside a specific amount of gas and grocery money per week. We set aside $35 a week on gas for two cars (Civic & Malibu) and $50 a week on groceries which includes anything we buy at Wal-Mart. Once you can operate within those limits you'll notice that you don't nearly as many trips (gas) to the store or elsewhere.

We cut our expenditures down by about $700/month using a couple of these techniques.

Nice, it's amazing what you can cut out of your budget without even really missing a beat.

Some financial books talk about the "latte factor." So many people hit up Starbucks a couple times a day and buy a $4 cup of coffee each time. Let's say you are someone who buys 2 lattes every workday from Starbucks, and between the two of them you spend $10 each day. Well, each month has about 21 workdays in it. That's $210 a month on lattes.

Maybe you only buy one latte per workday. That's still $110. If you started buying Starbucks beans by the pound, grinding them up at home, making the coffee yourself, and bringing it with you in the morning in a thermal mug, you'd still have Starbucks quality coffee and you'd save boatloads of money.

That's why tracking your expenses is important. Sometimes you need to add up the numbers to realize how much you're spending on certain things. Some single types hit up bars all the time and drop tons of money on drinks. Instead, buy beer by the case (or booze by the bottle) and get a little pregame on before you head out. You'll save quite a bit in drink costs. Little things like that can go a long way.