Do you like shopping? Wait, I don’t mean managing expenditures before purchasing something but having fun and buying things you like. If you say you don’t, I won’t believe you. I guess if you don’t like shopping, all those numerous and mostly useless “best money saving tips” you can find on the Internet won’t be so demanded.

One of my best friends has never been good in managing, though she tries all the time. Of course, we discussed this topic many times and finally agreed that one of the main reasons why we fail to save money is that we like to lie ourselves while spending it. The funniest thing is that we really do and very often don’t even notice that. Here are five “innocent white lies” we like to tell ourselves when making spontaneous purchases.

1) Apart from everything else I need this. This lie is an absolute winner.

2) I’ll buy it because anyway I will able to cancel it, if I don’t like it. This is a great lie and even better trap. This lie can be used practically in all situations and this is why it can cause real mess. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always associated the concept of being green with saving the planet not saving money until I came across the recent employer survey revealing the financial benefits Best Green Companies in UK get from their environmental endeavours. For me the figures are a great proof of any fact. Seriously. The above figures rock.

Video, Web and Teleconferencing

It’s amazing how high-tech works not only for saving funds but also for saving the earth we live on. Skanska UK, well-known construction firm, arranged a video conferencing unit at a remote site in Cumbria, as a result the money saved on traveling covered the ?10,000 cost within six months. Last year employees of building firm Carillion spent 34,144 hours talking to people through video, web and teleconferencing without any the costs, time and stress of traveling.

Paper Towels vs. Hand Dryers

The National Magazine Company saves ?30,000 by replacing paper towels with hand dryers and ?21,500 by the introduction of more efficient boilers. Read the rest of this entry »

I bet it’s really hard to find someone who doesn’t have credit account these days. They say that our society is totally dependent on using credits for making purchases and even making decisions. Well, for me this kid of situation doesn’t seem to be that critical. Undoubtedly, numerous credits can result in numerous debts and even bankruptcy, in case you have no idea about budgeting, money management and financial planning.

What I totally agree with is that we very often forget how important our credit history is and how crucial it is to remember that good credit says a lot about us. In order not to underestimate the value of good credit and never happen to find yourself in such situation when you need good credit and you don’t have it, I recommend that we focus on the major cases when good credit matters much.

1) Mortgage loans. Good credit will work in your favor, if you plan to obtain mortgage loan. First of all you have all chances to search for and find the lowest interest rate because you are not a risky borrower for any mortgage lender.

2) Auto loans. The situation is the same as with mortgage loans, good credit results both in the amount of the loan you can borrow and the interest rate. Read the rest of this entry »

I bet I won’t surprise you, if I say that money is an essential part of our life and we cannot do without it from the day we are born and the day we die. Our life is full of questions and the majority of them are ‘million dollar questions’ tightly connected with nothing else but money issues. In my previous post I wrote about frugal and cheap leaving and things associated with them, though these concepts are entirely different, they are all about money and saving them.

Lots of people associate their present, nearest and distant future with money problems even when they have good amount of money, paid bills and manage to make timely payments on their loans. This happens because of one simple reason - we are prone to money worries which usually cause stresses and even heart attacks. The best way of staying away from money stresses is to plan and manage both your expenditures and savings. Obviously, it’s much easier to set the sum you can afford to spend than to decide on how much to save. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone has different attitude towards frugal living, though very often being frugal is associated with being cheap. Is this correct? I believe it’s not. Frugality has become an essential part of our life and there is no doubt this is a reasonable change. However, is that possible to set the line between frugality and cheap living and not to cross it? I decided to make a kind of research in order to understand the main difference between frugal and cheap individuals, their believes and the things they have in common, if there are some.

Things associated with frugal living:

• concentration on the value of things not just their cost;
• searching for the better deal not the cheapest deal;
• things you buy cost you less in the long run;
• self-sacrifice (ability to do without things that can cost pretty penny in the long run);
• saving money for long-term goals;
• no impulse buys Read the rest of this entry »

Identity theft is not only the thing many people still don’t like to bother about but also the thing which can take your identity, your credits, your finances and ruin them. So if you don’t want to find your life in ruins one day, you are to know your enemy and fight it wisely. Annual reports on identity theft warn everyone that the number of identity theft crimes will increase considerably within the next several years. Undoubtedly, the best way to avoid identity theft is to make purchases only with reputable companies, websites, payment gateways and so on, but still there are lots of things which depend on you and you are to care of them to back up your identity data.

Basic types of identity theft you have to be aware of:

• financial fraud
• credit/debit card fraud
• saving account fraud
• checking account fraud
• identity cloning (someone uses your identity to live a separate life)
• mortgage/loan account fraud
• computer crimes
• drug trafficking
• shoplifting

If the above list rings the bell, you should have a look at the following tips and make sure you know what to do on your side to prevent identity theft. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday my friend asked me if I ever posted about kids and money and if I ever though about this matter. We talk about the role parents play in developing their children’s attitude to money, both in their childhood, when they are financially supported by their parents, and in their adult life when they make money themselves. Though we agreed that it is important to help our children to understand major money concepts and let them discover all money related stuff, age question turned out to be very disputable.

Obviously, I decided to look into this matter. Here is the list of helpful tips I discovered when making my research:

1) Start from teaching your children how to spend and manage money rather than save them. Give your children some money and encourage them to spend them on pleasant and fun things they want but taking into account their own longer-term goals and necessity to donate some.

2) Children like games and competitions. So make some game which will develop money saving and investing skills.

3) Avoid saying “yes” and “now” when shopping. Do your best to explain to your child that if you buy this or that thing today, you will lack money for something more important next day (especially if it concerns something your child is always very excited about). Read the rest of this entry »

Credit cards are all about money and money is the greatest attraction for fraudsters. There are many online shops on the Internet and the overwhelming majority of them accept online payments via credit cards and over the phone. Basically all online business owners use different online payment gateways which process payments before they are transferred to his/her merchant account. Leading payment gateway companies guarantee fraud prevention but still credit card fraud rates increase every day, as well as the number of chargebacks.

Any online business owner knows that chargebacks are one of the main ecommerce risks which result in considerable loss of money (each chargeback includes total cost of original order plus merchant-bank fee of $5 to $35 per transaction). Mainly credit card fraud takes place because merchants fail to use the Address Verification Service which verifies the billing and shipping information provided on checkout page and on your website and credit card owner’s identity. The “funniest” thing is that although leading payment gateway companies provide AVS for free, many merchants don’t bother with it. Read the rest of this entry »

We all know the famous motto “time is money” and repeat it very often to ourselves and to other people. Apparently the majority us uses this phrase figuratively without any idea of how much our time is actually worth. In case you are an employee and have a regular job, you obviously know your salary and know how much your working hour costs. However it’s not this easy for those individuals who are engaged in business. It’s crucial for online business owners, freelancers, bloggers and any other people working on the Internet to know their working time value. Do you know how much your time is worth and how many hours you need to work per day or per week to earn certain amount of money? If you don’t, here is a helpful formula.

Obviously you should start from setting your monetary goal, which is actually the very amount of money you want to make within a fix period of time, for example, within one year. Let’s imagine that you want to make $300,000 working 8 hours every day. For most people this is 264 working days per year but note that you should also subtract at least 14 days of vacation per year. So we multiply 250 working days per year by 8 hours and have 2,000 working hours. $300,000 divided by 2,000 is $150 an hour. Read the rest of this entry »

Today everyone is aware of sudden surge in food prices which continues to cause serious financial problems for many people with tight-budget. For the last year prices on corn, rice and wheat more than doubled and the problem here is not only in price but also in actual storage. The worthiest thing about today’s global food crisis is that it’s exploding and can result in the first increase in poverty and hunger in several generations. In poor third world countries the situation is already critical and the wealthiest countries, in their turn, also feel the pangs. There are many causes of global food crisis but still the main are as follows:

• climate change
• poor harvests
• diversion of cropland to biofuels
• population upsurge
• drastic increase in meat consumption
• high fuel prices

Although it’s obvious that it’s high time to stop growing food to feed cars instead of people, different countries take different measures to prevent further food crisis expansion and everyone is focused on prices control and export barriers. And what about us? What should we focus on and do on our side to save the world from starvation. Read the rest of this entry »