The Money Writers

Interest is, well, quite interesting. Instead of your money accumulating in your mattress or shoe box, it can now accumulate plus earn its own money. Money earning money—what a concept.

And there are multiple ways to achieve this: you can open a savings account or purchase certificates of deposits in order to earn interest, or invest in the stock market in order to earn dividends. When the interest paid to you begins to earn its own money, called compound interest, or your stocks earn you dividends purely because you own them, it becomes even more riveting.

It is commonly known that the riskier the vehicles for earning money that you choose, the more potential you have for both reward and loss. But what if you could go with the riskiest option without shouldering any of the risk, and with reaping all of the potential rewards?

Investing in the stock market—whether for short term gains or long term income replacement (IRAs)—offers the greatest amount of potential return, but then it also makes some people’s stomachs turn. Therefore, investing someone else’s money sounds like the solution for the weak-kneed investor because it will eliminate your personal risk all together.

Where to Find Money

So where can you find other people’s money? Most households in America have extra money that trickles in during the year from sources other than their paychecks. Perhaps you receive:

• A Christmas bonus
• Credit card or bank card offers
• Reward points for purchases that can be cashed in
• Monetary gifts from relatives for various occasions
• Online surveys that earn you money
• Bonuses from signing up for bank offers
• A good tax return in April that you weren’t banking on

This money is unaccounted for in your household, so it is generally a pleasant surprise. Why not make this money work for you?

How to Get Started

Open up a savings account where you can deposit all the extra cash that comes into your household throughout the year. Then choose a time frame for investing this money. Perhaps enough extra money will accumulate for you to invest it quarterly, or maybe you will have to wait until the end of the year. Remember, you can start investing at $4.00 on sites such as Sharebuilder where you can split stocks into half shares in order to afford them.  

Budget your bills with the salary that you know you can count on.  This way, you are not risking what you know you are working for, and will always have money to put food on the table. If at the end of this you lose everything (which is not likely if you choose investments with lower risks), you are not any worse for it. You have essentially taken away your investment risk. Any extra money you earn from your investments will be icing on the cake, and you can thank your boss, Uncle Sam, your relatives, or anyone else who has unknowingly contributed to your interest earnings.

This approach may not make you wealthy, or allow you to retire at your desired retirement age, but it will certainly get you in the investing game without feeling vulnerable to risk.

Written by Amanda

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Welcome to the Million Dollar Journey Oct 2009 Net Worth Update – The Halloween Edition
Halloween is here once again, it’s hard to imagine where time goes.  It seems that the more we age, the faster time passes.  
This year, we expect a lot of trick or treaters ringing our doorbell as our street is now fully developed (with [...]

The following guest post was submitted by Kevin, web content writer for Resqdebt.com. For more helpful tips on how to save money and stay out of debt, visit Resqdebt’s website at www.resqdebt.com.
There have been few more controversial credit card practices than the one known as Universal Default. With the arrival of the Credit Card Accountability, [...]

Post by Frugal Dad

A sneak peek at YNAB 3.
There are a lot of great budgeting software products in the market, many of them free. But a lot of the free financial tools are browser based, and while there are certainly a lot of people who are mighty fine with having their information stored and transacted via the [...]

Money Management Software For The Desktop: YNAB 3 Review

In my post over the weekend, I took a quick look at Lending Club’s new statistics page. The improved web page offers potential lenders a range of tools to evaluate the overall performance and risk of lending money through Lending Club. In addition to statistics provided by LC, you can also download raw data from [...]

Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary

Special bonus offers

• Citi Forward Card 11,000 Bonus ThankYou Points
• Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus
• TradeKing $50 New Account Bonus in October
• CollegeAdvantage $50 Bonus

Lending Club Loan Default and Credit Score and Debt-to-Income Ratio

Build Up Your Holiday Gift Budget in Just Two Short Months
Can you believe that Black Friday is just a month away? It’s the biggest shopping day of the year and there will be countless deals to take advantage of to ramp up for the holiday season. After that, you have just under a month [...]

About the Author: Jeremy is a retirement planning specialist and founder of Generation X Finance and the guide to Financial Planning at About.com. To learn more, follow Jeremy on Twitter.

How to Save Money for Christmas in a Short Amount of Time

Build Up Your Holiday Gift Budget in Just Two Short Months
Can you believe that Black Friday is just a month away? It’s the biggest shopping day of the year and there will be countless deals to take advantage of to ramp up for the holiday season. After that, you have just under a month [...]

About the Author: Jeremy is a retirement planning specialist and founder of Generation X Finance and the guide to Financial Planning at About.com. To learn more, follow Jeremy on Twitter.

How to Save Money for Christmas in a Short Amount of Time

Let’s be honest—money has no real value. When you strip away the power, the glamour and glitz, and the intrigue that is associated with owning some, it becomes nothing more than exactly what it is: a piece of green and white cotton paper with some jargon about trust, a photo of a dead president, and a few seals.

Am I in Love with Money?

One of my favorite retorts to the occasional person who feels that I am in love with money is, “I don’t love money. I love what money can do for me.” I say this with confidence because the actual value is not inherent in this piece of paper, but rather is captured in its owner’s ability to trade it for the things that do hold value for them—food, clothes, trips, jewelry, a home—all of which are tangible and gratifying.

There is nothing immediately gratifying about money. Why hang onto a green piece of paper when I can purchase a candy bar to satisfy my chocolate craving? Or a new HD television that is more pleasing to my eyes? Or a sporty car that will make me feel young and prosperous? Money cannot satisfy nor compete with any of these feelings of need and desire.

This is where the dilemma is for so many people, and perhaps one of their biggest obstacles to saving money rather than spending it. If money has no value and does not offer you gratification, whereas purchasing things with money can and has satisfied your needs and desires in the past, then each time an opportunity arises to spend money, you will. It just makes logical sense.

Give Your Money Value

If saving money seems like a futile exercise or perhaps saving money is a priority that you just cannot seem to keep, then you need to give money value. For me, money symbolizes independence and freedom. I value my personal life and my ability to live on my own and to make decisions based off of my needs and wants, not based off of others’ opinions. By saving money I can live by my own standards.

Case in point: I saved throughout college, and the week after graduation I was able to leave home and move into my own apartment. After I was laid off from my first job, I was able to move down to West Palm Beach, Florida and start a new job with the money I had saved. When it came time to move in with my fiancée in Houston, once again I paid to move me, my cat Lyla, and my belongings halfway across the country. These were my choices, and I was able to make them because of the money I had saved.

Find Clarity in Your Purchases

What are your basic values in life? Perhaps you want stability, independence, a new car, to purchase a house of your dreams, to travel the world. Whatever it is that you hold near and dear to you, attach this to your money. By giving your money value, you will find clarity and priority in the day to day purchases that you make because each dollar you spend is being taken from the blueprint of your principles and your dreams.  

Give your money value, and then bank that value. You will be amazed at how much more quickly your savings will grow.

Written by Amanda

Click here to leave a comment on this article.

© My Dollar Plan

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Bond funds probably aren’t the investments that you spend hours investigating and researching when building your portfolio or 401k.  Typically individual stocks or equity mutual funds are the primary investing focus and bond funds are an afterthought if they’re included at all.
However, bond mutual funds and their fixed income can be just as important a [...]

Bond funds probably aren’t the investments that you spend hours investigating and researching when building your portfolio or 401k.  Typically individual stocks or equity mutual funds are the primary investing focus and bond funds are an afterthought if they’re included at all.
However, bond mutual funds and their fixed income can be just as important a [...]

I like getting paid. Who doesn’t? If my employer ran out of money tomorrow, I’d be looking for a new job fast. Yet basic salary isn’t what motivates me to work harder. My regular salary is like getting a C on a report card. It says, “You did your work. It was was we agreed [...]

The following guest post was contributed by Christine Howell who frequently writes about Online Degree Programs and college related topics for Online College Guru, an online college directory and comparison website.
With the holidays quickly approaching, parents are starting to feel the pressure rise. The kids still expect to see a variety [...]

Post by Frugal Dad

Ever heard the phrase “the customer is always right?” That phrase comes from the American founder of the British retail chain Selfridges (coincidentally named Harry Gordon Selfridge). Managing customers or clients can be a challenge for anyone in business, from a freelancer to a manager for a big corporation. I use the word “challenge” because [...]

how to keep a customer happy is an original article from the website brip blap.

Our Halloween will not suck this year.

Are you doing anything special for Halloween? We already visited our local pumpkin patch and got ourselves some nice cheap pumpkins. By checking Yelp, we found a patch that sells pumpkins for half the price its next door neighbors sell them for. Part of our family [...]

Halloween Activities: Pumpkins, A Hay Maze and Family Traditions

My friend, Kosmo at The Casual Observer clued me into a Associated Press article about Norway opening up their country’s tax records. The belief by the Norwegian government is that transparency is the best policy. That transparency comes in the form of releasing a “skatteliste” or “tax list” to the media.
I realize [...]

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This weekend my wife and I did a lot of cleaning in preparation for having The Digerati Life and Stop Buying Crap over for a game of Settlers of Catan. I think we spent 8 hours each day in preparation. I would like to say we split the work 50-50, but my [...]

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Sottrade is a online discount stock broker which offers investors, from big to small, a wide range of products and trading tools at a competitive price.
One of the online discount stock brokers I use very actively is Scottrade. When I first selected Scottrade as my broker 7 years, I didn’t not much about it other [...]

Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary

Special bonus offers

• Citi Forward Card 11,000 Bonus ThankYou Points
• Lending Club $25 Sign Up Bonus
• TradeKing $50 New Account Bonus in October
• CollegeAdvantage $50 Bonus

Scottrade Trading Platform Review

Ah, college. Some say it’s the best time of your life, and while I wouldn’t necessarily agree or disagree with that, there is one drawback about college: you’re usually on a pretty tight budget. As college becomes more and more expensive, and you have to take out more and more loans, there’s not a [...]

About the Author: Jeremy is a retirement planning specialist and founder of Generation X Finance and the guide to Financial Planning at About.com. To learn more, follow Jeremy on Twitter.

7 Easy Ways You Can Save Money in College

Last week, we highlighted Jeff Rose over at Good Financial Cents.  This week, we’re highlighting Bible Money Matters written by Pete.  He doesn’t believe that faith and finances should be separate, and so his blog chronicles his thoughts about how his Christian faith affects his finances.
I like Pete’s site not only because the posts are [...]

One of the money saving tips you’ll read about most often is to eat out less and cook more. But just like you need an overall spending plan to manage your income and expenses, you might need a good grocery shopping plan to make sure that cooking is actually cheaper for you.

Over the last two years, I’ve developed some decent strategies for keeping my grocery costs as low as possible – saving as much as 50% from my first grocery store experiences! Here are some of the tips I’ve used.

How to Save Money on Groceries

1. Shop monthly: The absolute biggest way I cut my grocery bill is by making a maximum of one major grocery trip per month – sometimes I wait as long as 6 weeks! The only thing I buy between major trips is milk and produce. The big trip may take me up to 1.5 hours and cost $100 or more – but it gets both the time and money out of the way for weeks, and cuts down on those “extra” purchases that always manage to creep into my basket. If you shop weekly and add just $10 of unplanned or unnecessary items each time, that’s $520 per year. Shop monthly instead and cut that number down to $120 – a savings of $400!
2. Use coupons: I subscribed to the Sunday paper solely to get the coupons. The key is to cut coupons regularly (at least every week), keep them together, and pay attention to expiration dates. Only cut coupons for items you normally use or that you will substitute for items you normally buy (like one brand of toothpaste for another). Otherwise coupons will encourage you to spend more rather than save.  Many stores double coupons up to a certain amount.
3. Stock up on sale items: Go over your grocery store’s circular, or sign up for their e-mail list. Note the items that you usually buy that are on sale, and plan to purchase them. If anything is a particularly good deal buy as much as you can reasonably store before it goes bad. If you aren’t sure how to use a particular item, visit Supercook, where you can search for recipes by ingredient. Grocery stores put items on sale at least once every 12 weeks if not more often – hold on to your coupons until you can pair them with a sale to save even more.
4. Make a list: Before you shop, open your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer to see what you actually need. An even better way to keep a list is to leave a pad on the fridge and add to it as you run out of a certain item. Making a list and sticking to it will help you get everything you need (thus minimizing repeat trips) and also help you avoid buying extra items.
5. Buy in bulk – strategically: Look for savings on larger packages, but beware – the larger package is not always the best deal. If your store labels do not show unit price, calculate it yourself. Also make sure that you have room to store what you buy and that you can actually eat it before it expires – otherwise you lose your savings when you throw it away.
6. Make the freezer your friend: Buy large packs of meat (often cheaper per-pound) and freeze in meal-sized portions. You can also make a casserole or large batch of soup and freeze the excess in individual portions for an easy lunch or quick dinner. This allows you to eat a home-cooked meal even when you don’t have time to cook, and lets you buy items in larger quantities.
7. Use less meat: If you buy ten pounds of meat, you can make 10 meals with 1 lb of meat each or 11 meals with .9 lb each – you just increased the number of meals by 10%, and probably won’t notice the very small difference. Since meat is the most expensive portion of most meals, that can be a significant savings. You can reduce your portions even more and simply increase your veggies or other (cheaper) side items to make up the volume.
8. Purchase produce wisely: If an item is priced by the number of pieces, buy the largest/heaviest available to maximize your dollar. If an item is priced by weight, buy smaller or lighter pieces. Also remember that just because an item is packaged a certain way doesn’t mean you have to buy it that way – a former roommate taught me that you can indeed buy half a bundle of asparagus or pound of grapes! This is especially good if you live alone like I do. Get the best deals by purchasing in season – and when quality is truly lacking, turn to frozen veggies instead. Finally, recognize that different varieties of an item can vary widely in both size and price per pound. For instance, Honeycrisp apples can be as much as $2.00 per pound and weigh up to one pound each, while you can get 2-3 smaller apples per pound and pay as little as $1.00/lb. If the smaller apple will truly suffice, why pay the premium?
9. Go generic: A grocery store’s own brand is almost always cheaper than the national brand, without noticeable difference in taste or quality. I’ve tried generic items from pasta sauce to canned soup to cheese and more. Give generic items a try – and if you truly don’t like a certain item, then it is ok to switch back. Be practical – if a sale plus coupon combo makes the name brand cheaper, go for it.
10. Avoid convenience items – unless they make sense: If you can do it yourself, the grocery store will probably charge more to do it for you. So cook your own pinto beans instead of buying canned. Steam your own broccoli in a covered pot with an inch or two of boiling water instead of buying a microwavable package. But when it makes sense, go for the convenience: at my grocery store, pre-shredded cheese is the same price per ounce as the big block. So no hand grater for me!
11. Love leftovers: if you are cooking for one or two it can be hard to make the exact amount you will eat for dinner – it seems like recipes always make 4-6 servings! Stretch your grocery dollar further by eating dinner leftovers for lunch – this eliminates the need for sandwich or other lunch items and also stops you from throwing away excess food. If you don’t have a full meal left, repurpose pieces of different meals to create a whole new meal.

More Grocery Saving Tips

There are also a few grocery tips that other people recommend, though I haven’t used them. If you have, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

• Shop at discount grocery stores.
• Grow your own produce.
• Visit multiple grocery stores in one day or week to search out the best deals.
• Find deals using paid websites like The Grocery Game or free ones like A Full Cup.
• Keep a price book.
• Use canning techniques to preserve food.

Written by Jill

Click here to leave a comment on this article.

© My Dollar Plan

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Lately I’ve been taking some of my free time in the evening to catch up on some reading. After finishing The Secret Language of Money, the next book on the list is called Super Trader – Make Consistent Profits in Good and Bad Markets written by Van K. Tharp.
Trading has been a hobby of [...]

I was recently fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview Dale Siegel, author of The New Rules for Mortgages. We exchanged emails in a Q&A format on the subject of mortgages, the housing market, etc. Here are her responses to my questions.
Lending Guidelines
Frugal Dad: Lenders used to operate under a 28/36 mortgage-to-income/debt-to-income ratio [...]

Post by Frugal Dad

The word “leverage” gets some people excited, while it makes others nervous. No surprise since it’s just a word that represents “higher risk, higher reward”. Our contributing writer, Tim Parker from Elementary Finance, talks about leveraged ETFs and how you can use them to spice up your investment portfolio.
What Is Leverage?
I’d like [...]

Leveraged ETF Investing: More Risk With More Reward

In what could ultimately be a game-changer in the credit card industry, it appears credit card companies are considering charging customers a new sort of annual fee – for paying off your balance each month. The information is coming slow, but I did find a good article by USA Today, Latest Bank Fee is for [...]

Post by Frugal Dad

Would you pay someone to make your investment decisions for you?  Sure, most of us have some money invested for us by mutual fund managers but would you outsource your investing choices to someone that simply had a good track record of earning in the stock market?
A company called kaChing that runs a virtual stock trading [...]