Money Saving Talk

It is imperative in this day and age that we all buckle down and look for ways to save money. Even if you currently have a fulltime job it would be prudent to do a once over on your spending habits and check you budget to see if there are a few areas that you can save in. Most people are hesitant about giving up things to save money, not because they don’t want to save money but because they don’t want to give up their lifestyle. Which is understandable, no one likes to feel as though they have to do without.

To help ease that fear here you are going to find three tips that will help you save money, and you will only notice the plus in your checking account and not the minus in your daily life. These are three tips that anyone and everyone should be seeing if they can incorporate into their life.

Tip One: Eliminate Needless Driving to Save on Gas

While gas prices are lower then what they were a year ago, it won’t hurt for you to decrease the amount of driving you are doing. Yes, I said tips on saving money that you won’t notice so ask yourself how many trips you make in a day. If you are doing a lot of back and forth maybe it is time for you to look and see if there is a way that you can combine your trips out into one or two a day. If you have to go to the grocery store, and the movie rental place and the post office and pick up your kids from school see if you can make it a big loop so that you are hitting all of those places on the same drive.

Tip Two: Water Conservation to Save Money and the Environment

Do you realize that if could just cut two minutes out of our shower each day that we would save enough money to keep the Great Lakes filled with water each and every day? Not to mention the money you are going to be saving on your water bill and your heating bill. It may not seem like much but it will make a big difference in the end. Here are the facts, and how these were calculated can be found here at http://www.atsecosolutions.com/saveonshowering.html. Here are the numbers:

* Cost of electricity: $0.0944 per kWh
* Multiplied by the cost to heat one liter $0.1313685
* This gives us a heating cost per liter $0.0130054 (or a little more than one cent).
* Add the cost of water $0.0030274
* Total cost of one liter of shower water $0.0160328

Which means that if you decreased the amount of water you used in the shower you could save an average of 1.19 per shower. Doesn’t seem like much but if you shower every day and there are four people in your family you save 142.80 per month or 1713.60 per year!

Tip Three: Eat at Home More

There is nothing like a night out with your family. I mean that in two ways, the enjoyment of being with your family sharing a good meal laughing and no one has to clean up afterward. The second way I mean that is that it can certainly do a number of the pocket book. Depending on where you live, the average night out to dinner for a family of four can run anywhere from $45 – $80. That is one meal for each of you. Where as if you took that money and went to the store and bought the food and made it yourself, that is enough money to buy almost a week’s worth of groceries. Eating at home more is more cost effective, allows for better quality time for the family and nine times out of ten… offers you better cooked food. Cut out one meal a week that you eat out and you are saving that $45 – $80, remember you have already gone grocery shopping. That can equal $180 a month (on the low side) and $2160 a year!

Taking a look at the three tips, even if you estimate on the low side you can save a little over $4000 a year! I promise you will not even notice that you are making these money saving changes.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

All loans based on 100,000 at 6.50% fixed for 30 yrs. That’s a fairly small mortgage loan in today’s world, so realize, the bigger the loan, the more savings in interest there will be!

1) I’ll start off with the simple method to save money by not spending any extra money of your own and saving $400.00 because it’s the easiest savings plan there is!

Let’s say your monthly mortgage payment is $1000/month for round figures. If you pay the same amount 4 times a month ($250.00 four times) instead of 1000 at the end of the month you’ll save roughly .50/month = 400.00 for the entire mortgage loan. That’s not doing anything at all! Just pay your monthly mortgage weekly instead of monthly, but don’t pay the extra week when there’s a 5 week month or you will be paying an extra $250.00 four times a year. This method simply gets the money to the bank faster which means you don’t pay interest for as long. There’s no reason not to save that money!

2) Take a look at your calendar and you’ll realize if you pay the $250.00 per week instead of $1000.00 per month you will end up making an extra 4 payments of $250.00 by paying weekly. 1000 x 12 = $12,000 vs. 250 x 52 weeks = $13,000. By making those few extra payments per year you will save $40,000.00 on your mortgage! There’s big savings available when dissecting your mortgage payment and I’m going to prove it right now for free!

Now for some ways to come up with that extra cash to pay down that principal:

3) Sell a little bit of junk that you have lying around the house once a month. Even if you manage to scrounge up $20.00 worth, you can put that toward your monthly mortgage and save over 13,000 over the course of the loan!! Even a small amount of $10.00 per month will save you over $7,000.00!!! When all it takes is a simple 10 dollar bill per month to save $7,000.00 you start to really save those pennies!

4) Speaking of pennies, don’t forget the oldest trick in the book to save money – saving your change! Save it in a jar and come up with another $10.00 per month and save ANOTHER $7,000.00 on your mortgage! Keep your eyes open walking through stores, or down the street for change. Come up with an extra dollar per month and save $745.00! How many ways can you think of to save $1.00 per month to put toward your mortgage?

There’s been a lot of numbers given out so far so here’s the easy thing to remember…$10.00/month = $7,000.00 on a $100,000.00 mortgage loan over 30 yrs. However it doesn’t increase that rapidly, meaning every $10.00 isn’t “another” $7,000.00. In fact, 100.00 = $45,000.00, so I’ll keep throwing out these numbers for you to realize how easy it is to save thousands!!

5) Here’s an easy one! Work ONE extra hour per week doing whatever you can. If you’re allowed to at your current job then do that. If not, find something some thing else, such as asking your friend to clean out their basement or garage for an hour or two at 10-15 dollars per hour. If you make $10/hr for 1 hour, once a week minus taxes you will end up with roughly 7/wk – times 4 weeks = $28.00 toward your monthly mortgage per month and it’s a savings of $17,500.00! If you can only manage to work 1 extra hour per month and receive $7.00 it will still save you $5,000.00 on your mortgage!

6) So, get up! Do something! Move around! Skip that coffee every other morning at $1.00 each…Let’s say you can skip 15/month! You know it, that’s a savings of over $10,000.00!! Thinking of any ideas on your own yet? Skip 3 packs of cigarettes per month! There’s another 10,000.00 in savings!

7) This list can go on and on! You just need to think of you money differently. Here’s an example; Every week you buy a gallon of milk at roughly $4.00. Let’s say you come across a coupon for $1.00 off a gallon of milk. Chances are you’ll skip over it or even throw it away. Well what if the coupon said, Save $745.00 on that gallon of milk? It might catch your eye then, right? Here’s the math…$1.00 per month toward your mortgage is $745.00 off of your loan! So find a $1.00 coupon once a month and save $745.00 by putting that extra dollar toward your mortgage! Maybe you’ll start seeing coupons as hundred dollar bills like I do!!

To everyone involved in the bar seen buying a beer for $3.00 each (usually more); that’s $2,300.00 off your mortgage if you paid down $3.00/month! This isn’t meant for you to cancel all the fun out of your life, but simply pick a few things that you can do every month and put a few extra dollars toward your mortgage….You’ll save thousands!! That’s why I haven’t told you to cut ALL of the cigarettes or ALL the coffee out of your life because you might not want to. However, a few little things can add up to a lot when talking about a 30 yr mortgage!

There are a bunch of ways to save money and this one of the best in my eyes. Putting money into your mortgage is like a double savings plan. In a 30 year mortgage there is 360 total payments. Meaning, if you put $1.00 toward your mortgage every month it would be a total of $360.00. But the savings on interest adds in and you end up saving $745.00! No one cares about putting an extra $1.00 bill into their savings account, but when you see it as a bigger picture you start to realize how important every dollar is.

If you come up with any new ideas to add to my list please email them to me and I’ll add them to the list! Help everyone save some money on that monthly mortgage payment!

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

In property insurance there is what is called home insurance. This plan deals with the coverage of private homes and provides liability coverage for home accidents/damages. This policy is based on a claim fixed period of time. It is true that a person can own a house without insuring it. But always remember that all mortgagors can only do business with you if you have an extensive insurance.

There are certain information’s that you are expected to provide when applying for home insurance. These information are the cost of your possessions (approximately), the type of coverage you desire and the kind of house you rent or own. All the info and others determine your rate.

There are 7 major types of insurance policies and they are as follows:

1. Complete risk coverage for both the building and its property
2. Coverage for older houses with historic value. This coverage is limited to cash or repair values of the items involved.
3. Renters’ insurance coverage which covers and protects personal property.
4. Condominium coverage and it covers personal possessions from disasters.
5. Basic homeowners insurance covers the home and property against losses from 11 types of disasters only-vandalism, aircraft, self damaging instances ( part of building falling on itself etc) theft, wind, civil unrest, vehicles, explosion, fire/lightening, volcano eruptions and smoke.
6. These includes coverage for both homeowners plan and damages by falling objects, electricity damage, snow and water.
7. This cover combines the first two plans and protection for extended/specialty item.

To get a deal at a cheap rate, all you need to do is to collect different quotes from trusted companies. Compare them and choose the one that suits your need. The quotes are free, easy and reliable.

Every day we hear more depressing news about the current global economic situation. More and more people are losing their jobs and their homes, and still the experts tell us there is worse to come. However, while governments concentrate on pouring billions, and even trillions, into the economy to save us from financial meltdown, there is much that we can be doing on an individual and much smaller level to put our own finances into order.

There are many simple, practical cost-saving measures that every household can adopt which can make a dramatic difference to the domestic finances without having a real impact on a family’s standard of living. Obvious measures include shopping in the sales, buying own-store products rather than branded goods, taking advantage of discounts and deals and borrowing rather than buying where at all possible. However, we can also take a more creative approach to saving money – for example, by asking for a discount where it has not been offered, or by planning ahead and buying strategically.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get!
In straitened times, many shop keepers would prefer a sale at a slightly lower price than no sale at all. This is a perfect time to hone your negotiation and bartering skills. Even if the price does not seem excessive, swallow your pride and ask for a discount. Always be polite, and never become confrontational or aggressive, even if the manager has to be called. Adopting a pleasant approach will make people want to help you and will increase your chances of success.

Other tactics you could use to secure that discount are:
1. The “Good cop/bad cop” routine. Tell the clerk that you will need to discuss it with your spouse because it is more money than you really wanted to pay. At this stage, the shop keeper will probably reduce the price rather than let you out of the shop without making the purchase.
2. Ask them to match the price you have seen in another store. The manager will usually readily agree to this, and may even add in a further discount as a gesture of goodwill.
3. Keep hold of all out-of-date coupons as these can sometimes be accepted up to 6 months after the have officially expired. It’s worth a chance, and you have nothing to lose!
4. Try to make a deal if a straight-forward discount is rejected. For example, offer a proportion of the money up front instead of paying in monthly installments, or try to negotiate an additional warranty or free batteries (or anything!) for the product if no discount is forthcoming.

A disciplined approach to shopping
The number one rule of saving money is only to buy things that you actually need and can use. It sounds obvious, but is actually very difficult to achieve. Who can say they have never bought an item of clothing simply because it was a ‘steal’, only for it to remain unworn in the back of the wardrobe for ever after? Don’t be a sales victim – make sure you win the shopping game. Buying things purely because they are reduced in price leads to overspending and a cluttered house. Reduce the temptation to impulse buy by setting a firm limit on your spending budget before you leave the house.

One great way to save time, money and last-minute panics, is to buy suitable presents when you see them at a good price and keep them for the appropriate occasion. Make a chart before you begin shopping and buy only what you need for each person. Not only will this help you keep track of what you have bought, but will also help you locate these carefully selected items when the appropriate occasion comes round. Keep the items in a special drawer or closet and enjoy the satisfaction of simply taking them out during the year as required.

The relief of avoiding those last minute panics (when you know you simply cannot leave the shop until you have bought something!), combined with the joy of knowing you have made real savings, makes this a great system to try.

These ideas, combined with more conventional cost-saving measures, can have a real and beneficial effect on the family finances. They also create the feeling of satisfaction that comes from knowing that, by using your brain, you have managed to save money where other people might have paid the full price.