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Susan from Henderson, NV, sent me some great tips that I could share with everyone on how to save some money if you have children in college:
Just returned from our daughter’s college graduation. A hot tip for any parent with a kid entering college in the fall: check out the new dorm during the week the kids leave the dorm. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that was disgarded; televisions, leather jackets, microwaves, furniture etc. My daughter gave everything away to her roommate who was giving it to her little sister. The price of shipping makes it easy to disgard items.
Of course, some of us would be screaming to those students to sell things on eBay! Don’t give it away! But at the same time, I understand how much easier it is to give away things instead of moving them with you when you are a college student. Renting a moving truck can be pretty expensive depending on where you live.
Another suggestion is to shop for textbooks online and to resell the used textbooks on Amazon instead of selling them back to the student store. My daughter would bring me back her textbooks on every break and I sold many of them for way over the amount the student store offered. It really helped to offset the price of future textbooks.
I love this idea! I always sold my books back to the student store and I felt I wasn’t getting as much as I could for the books but I didn’t have any ideas as to other avenues I could try.
Thank you Susan for the tips!
Last month, I reviewed Excuse Me Your Job is Waiting: Attract the Work You Want by Laura George (if you missed it, I also posted a very informative excerpt about How to Dress for a Job Interview).
Anyways, I gave my copy away and Blunt Money was the lucky commenter.
I am happy beyond happy to report that she’s passing the book along to someone else as well!
All you need to do is leave a comment on the post with her review of the book:
Excuse Me Your Job is Waiting Book Review at Blunt Money
You may also want to spend some time looking around too. There’s some good stuff over there 
This is a guest article from Tammara Nelson. She writes over at Phishy-Pedia Guide (Tips to avoid identity theft, fraud, phishing, and work at home scams. Plus financial money tips for insurance, mortgages, loans, debt, & stupid criminal stories just for fun!) and also runs the Link and Blog Challenge site.
Volatile Financial Cocktail
Americans are known for their appetite for shopping and materialism. For some it’s the need for the newest luxury car, latest fashion, or the most technically advanced electronic gadgets. We are bombarded every day with advertisements enticing us to buy more, and to borrow more for major purchases.
Unlike the generations before us, technology pressures us to pay monthly fees for Internet service, cell phones, satellite radios and more. Add that to the already large appetite for more goodies, and you have a volatile financial cocktail for going broke. At the very least it’s a recipe for never getting ahead, and for failing to invest for retirement.
If you’re in your twenties or even thirties you may be saying, “Retirement? Who’s worried about retirement? I have plenty of years before I retire, so I’ll live it up now!” Unfortunately waiting to invest for retirement means you will not have the time value of money on your side later, and you may never be able to save enough if you fail to save now. Having enough for retirement means you need to become disciplined with other expenses, which can be difficult!
For many the current choice is to look cool in the latest luxury car while wearing the hottest designer fashions, yet ignoring how those choices may affect their financial future. Life is filled with difficult decisions, and consequences for the wrong choices.
If you’re ready to reduce your spending and debt, here are some tips to help you live within your means, and shake up the volatile financial cocktail until it fizzles out!
- Avoid impulsive buying decisions. Go home and think about it before you buy
- Thrift stores and consignment shops really do have cool stuff, so look for bargains there first
- Agree to only purchase new items when they have gone on sale
- Purchase a used car rather than new, allowing the prior owner to pay for most of the depreciation
- Learn to live without using credit cards for purchases. Yes, it’s tough at first, but it pays off in the end
- Are you a dual income household? To save more, learn to rely on only one income for all your expenses
- If you use a 90-day, 6 or 12 month same as cash plan, charge only the amount you can pay off before the interest free period ends, otherwise pass up the same as cash plans and don’t make the purchase!
When it’s all said and done you may not be driving the hottest car or wearing the latest fashion, but your chances of accumulating more cash will be far greater. You’ll have the last laugh on the way to the bank, and a hope for a brighter future!
Thank you Tammara for guest posting
I’m still missing one receipt for April and I’ve officially declared it missing. So, I guessed where a receipt went (more on that below). I’m trying to get our income and expense reports posted earlier in the month but what can I say? Keeping tabs on receipts is still something we are working on.
So, here is April’s spending. As always, my comments are below.
Income: The hardest part for me with looking at this income and expense report is the income. It decreased almost $1,500 from March. We were spoiled with March…that’s for sure. Our income will probably hover around this mark for a while. For those curious, the income here includes all income (blog income, employer match for 401(k), even finding money on the street).
Food: Lots of money going out for groceries in April, but it might not be as bad as it seems. The missing receipt I alluded to earlier was a Walmart purchase for $138. When we spend that much, it usually means we bought groceries. Chances are good we purchased something else as well, but since I can’t remember and the receipt is missing, I put it all under groceries.
Overall, our grocery spending will be going up. Since starting on my weight loss journey, I’ve been spending a lot buying fresh fruits and healthier foods. It is dipping into our pocketbook. May should give us a pretty good idea of how much the impact will be.
Holiday: I still love the holidays and Easter is no exception. Everyone in the household received a nice Easter basket. My son’s was filled with goodies like a Magic set and coloring books. He also hunted for eggs and some were filled with money. Of course, there was lots of candy and I splurged and bought some good chocolate bunnies. This is not my proudest category, and I still am dealing with spoiling my husband and son with surprises. It has always been a weak spot for me.
Household: The household category holds many things related to house and home. Here’s this month’s breakdown (I usually link to it, but I decided to include it right here this month since there is significant spending here).
The biggest spending here was for our bathroom. I spent over $30 on a good scale for keeping track of my weight and body fat for Blogging Away Fat. The scale I had was old and the glass was broken. Turns out it was underweighing me by quite a bit. The other spending for bathroom was for doing a little redecorating. I haven’t started it yet, but I bought a medicine cabinet, shower curtain, border and paint.
The other big spending was for stamps! Yikes! Much of that was to ship my husband’s camera under warranty to be repaired. It was so expensive due to insuring the package. The warranty place also required $20 to ship it back. Add in a few packages to relatives and sending our tax forms via certified mail and it all added up.
Interest Expense: This is the cost of interest for our mortgage and school loans.
Medical: The medical insurance here is for two months. I have another bill due at the end of the month. I’ve been paying it a little late to buy more time, but I’m going to try to pay it on time this month.
Recreation: This is for my son to play a sport. So, those types of expenses are starting up now, but the smiles on his face show how much it’s worth it.
School Supplies: This includes school pictures and my son’s lunches.
Taxes: Big huge jump here for our taxes. That’s because we owed money for the Federal and State for our 2006 taxes. I really don’t like underwithholding so I will be increasing my withholding at work shortly once my husband’s side jobs start kicking in.
Utilities: Now that the weather is getting warmer, our electric and gas bills will be shrinking. I am so happy about that! Time for a little relief and hopefully some extra money to pay towards our debt!
FINAL THOUGHTS
April was a rough month. It was the first month since starting this blog that our net worth decreased. By looking at the bottom line of this report, you can see why. We spent more than we made.
Some of it is due to paying our medical insurance that is due every two months. Another chunk was for the money we owed for 2006 taxes. I can’t deny that there is spending that was more of the “want” nature than a “need.” I wanted to have nice Easter baskets for the family. We didn’t need that stuff and I do feel remorse for that spending. It didn’t make the day any more joyous or enjoyable for us. In fact, the previous year we had a really nice Easter that was very inexpensive. I’m not sure why I lost my focus here and ended up making a big dinner this year.
Just goes to show that even after a year I’m still trying to figure myself out.
Well, I decided to go back to my old purple and green look. While the blue look was nice and professional, it wasn’t me. My good ole purple and green felt more like me and it made me feel like paying off some debt! It also made me happy to look at it so I switched back.
I’ve already been notified of one glitch with the comment box not wrapping the text when you type it. I’ll keep working on trying to resolve that problem. If you happen to notice any other “bugs” if you wouldn’t mind leaving a comment detailing the problem and what browser you are using, I would appreciate it.
Thanks for your patience during the remodel
John Leland of the New York Times has written another article about debt (he’s the one who interviewed me in February). This time, he visited the Moellerings from Ypsilani, Michigan.
Couple Learn the High Price of Easy Credit
Christine (40) and her husband Mark (39) currently have over $22,000 in credit card debt, a mortgage of $93,000 and a HELOC of $68,574. Together they make around $66,000/year and their debt is too much for them.
“For the Moellerings, juggling balances and interest rates has enabled them to pay for things they could not otherwise afford, like their 2004 wedding and house renovation, or to eat out occasionally, when “we’ve both had a bad day at work,†Mr. Moellering said.”
Right there is the big problem, and the one I attribute much of our debt to. We used our credit cards to get things we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Instead of saving up the money, we used the credit we had available.
The hard part is trying to turn the situation around and right what you did wrong. The Moellerings are paying over $380 with their credit card finance charges alone, and I can sympathize with how tough it can be to get credit card debt more manageable. For us, it took some work, but reducing our credit card finance charges from $400/month to around $100/month was a huge step.
There one thing that Ms. Moellering said that concerns me:
“It’s been almost two weeks since we’ve had time to sit down and go over the bills,†Ms. Moellering said. “You can’t do it every day because we both work full time. I’ve got two kids; they want all our attention; they haven’t seen us all day. We’re trying to cook dinner. We have to do the dishes, fold the laundry. We’re exhausted. And on the weekends the kids want our attention, and we want to spend time with them; we don’t want to spend time going through the bills.”
I completely understand how she feels with wanting to spend time with their kids and not wanting to spend time going through the bills. I usually do our finances on the weekends or late at night after my son is sleeping. Making sure I take the time to be more “in tune” to our finances has helped to avoid lates fees and overdraft charges. Even one late fee of $35 would mean that we would have $35 less to pay towards our debt.
Taming the debt beast is tough, but taking the time to get a good handle of your finances is a great step.
Weekends are usually quiet around here, so I decided to fiddle around a bit and install a new template. It turns out there are a few bugs that I have to work out, so please excuse the dust.
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About This Site
My Debt
- Original Debt: $97,293.06
- Paid: $1,927.89
- Remaining: $95,365.17
- Emergency Fund: $1100
- Broken Down
- Line of Credit 2: $0.00
- Line of Credit 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 2: $245.00
- Credit Card 3: $405.00
- Credit Card 6: $1,785.00
- Credit Card 7: $2,381.17
- Consolidation Loan: $11,000.00
- Credit Card 10: $14,519.00
- Auto Loan 1: $16,093.00
- Credit Card 11: $23,873.00
- Auto Loan 2: $25,064.00
Finance Blogging Buddies
- Beachgirl’s Budget Blog
- Becoming and Staying Debt Free
- Boston Gals Open Wallet
- Debt Free Hispanic
- Debt Kid
- Debt Reduction 101
- Dual Income No Kids
- Everybody Loves Your Money
- Financial Hack
- Free Money Finance
- From the Brink of Bankruptcy
- Generation X Finance
- GRACEful Retirement
- Grad Money Matters
- It’s Your Money
- Josephsangl.com
- Kick Debt’s Butt
- Lazy Man and Money
- Low Income Life
- Make Love Not Debt
- Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge
- Mighty Bargain Hunter
- Money, Matter and More Musings
- My 1st Million at 33
- No Credit Needed
- One Million and Beyond
- Personal Finance Advice
- pfblogs.org
