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 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 »

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 »

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, when I came across the statement “money blogs are usually boring” again, I felt like it was a thousand time this phrase catches my eye and something should be done about this situation Here are three things that made me laugh this morning: two money stories and one funny poem which proves that work for work, and not for money, does exist. Enjoy your reading!

Two Stock Brokers

Two stock brokers, Jon and James, head out for their usual 18 holes of golf. Jon offers James a $50 bet. James agrees and they’re off. They shoot a great game. After the 8th hole, James is ahead by one stroke, but cuts his ball into the rough on the 9th. “Help me find my ball. Look over there,” he says to Jon. After a few minutes, neither has any luck. Since a lost ball carries a four point penalty, James secretly pulls a ball from his pocket and tosses it to the ground. “I’ve found my ball!” he announces. “After all of the years we’ve been partners and playing together,” Jon says, “you’d cheat me out of a lousy 50 bucks?” “What do you mean, cheat? I found my ball sitting right there!” “And you’re a liar, too!” Jon says. “I’ll have you know I’ve been STANDING on your ball for the last five minutes!”

10 Dollars Story

John and Linda went to the annual state fair. There was a booth in which a pilot gave you a ride in a real plane and did flips for you. A REAL plane. So John told Linda he wanted to go on the ride. But Linda said, “John, it costs 10 dollars for 2 people. 10 dollars is 10 dollars.”
The next year they came back and the ride was still there. John asked Linda hopefully but Linda replied, “10 dollars is still 10 dollars.” Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous post about money facts there were at least 3 facts which proved that money is of top importance for us, no matter whether we are in strong need for them or have even more than enough of them. Obviously, money can really hold the key of our lives; endless thoughts and worries about making, spending and saving money can simply drive us crazy and even result in heart diseases and heart attacks. Here is another weird and shocking fact about money: One out of every four Americans believes their best chance of getting rich is by playing the lottery. The funniest thing about lottery is that odds of winning a jackpot are about 10 million to 1 and despite this fact 74% of us are influenced by how much we can win in a lottery as opposed to the odds of us winning.

It’s well known fact that Sunday newspaper coupon inserts are the second-most read section of the paper, after the front page. Why? People easily become addicted to lottery and obsessed with fixed idea to win jackpot and become lucky rich winner. Read the rest of this entry »

Money value is one of the most popular topics for conversations and meditations. One day I was very much surprised with the fact that more of our fantasies are about money and material benefits than sex. It turned out to be very weird that we hear a lot about money, talk and read a lot about them, they have come to the front of our every day life but still the overwhelming majority of us know practically nothing about them. So I decided to write this post to share some money facts which surprised me much just because I never thought of them. I guess they can be no less surprising to you.

1) More than one third of American women believe that money is more important for happy marriage than good sex.
2) Currency paper is composed of 25% linen and 75% cotton.
3) About 4,000 double folds (first forward and then backwards) are required before a note will tear.
Read the rest of this entry »

Money diseases…do they really exist and can damage our lives? Have you ever thought that this or that illness can be caused by money use, especially if you have to deal with large quantities of money because you work in a bank or shop? Although to date scientist and doctors inclined to deny different hypothesis connected with money diseases, recent Swiss researches proved that flu viruses can be transferred by banknotes as far as flue virus can survive on money approximately seventeen days. Luckily, the general population has very low chances to get into basic risk group, however health of those people who are in a high-risk group has to be the top priority for their employers. Read the rest of this entry »