Without a doubt, the holidays can be one of the most stressful times of the year. It seems you’ve got one family gathering after another, you’re busy trying to get your decorations up, and you’re stressed about getting gifts for everyone without blowing your budget.

While I can’t help with the first two problems – and let’s be honest, having family gatherings is a good problem to have – I can help with helping you get gifts without blowing your budget.

I’ve written The Frugal Christmas Gift Guide: Holiday Shopping Without Busting Your Budget for the Amazon Kindle as a general guide to help you get through the most wonderful and expensive time of the year without having a horrible credit card bill waiting for you in the new year.

In The frugal Christmas Gift Guide, I talk about how to take advantage of awesome holiday sales – not just Black Friday – as well as other ways you can give gifts without spending a ton of money (hint: the gift of time goes a long, long way).

I’d love it if you checked out the book and then let me know what you think.

Happy Thanksgiving and happy kickoff to the holiday shopping season!

Well, apparently the author bug has really bitten me, because I’ve already released another book for the Amazon Kindle!

The book, “Family Money: Easy Ways to Cut Your Family’s Expenses,” is a light-hearted how-to book on ways to drastically slash your monthly expenses without correspondingly affecting your lifestyle. Through years of writing on Saving Without a Budget I’ve found that the single biggest reason people don’t adopt a frugal lifestyle is because they think they’re going to have to live a life of self-deprivation. It’s not because they’re lazy or stupid; it’s because they falsely believe they’re going to have to drastically alter the way they live day-to-day.

The book offers well over 100 simple ways individuals and families can reduce their monthly expenses without ever really noticing a change in their lives. These money saving tips are broken down into different types, like utilities, clothing, and groceries; i.e. the major expenses in people’s lives.

Considering the price of the book is only $3.97, buying Family Money is certainly a worthwhile investment, especially when you consider following just a few of the tips for less than a day will save you much more than $3.97!

Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think!

I know things have been quiet on Saving Without a Budget lately, and I apologize. That being said, I have a legit reason – I’m now a published author!

Over the past month, I’ve been working to get my ebook How to Make a Budget: Simple Budget Techniques and Ways to Save Money up on the Amazon Kindle platform. As of this morning, it is up and running, which I’m super pumped about! In fact, I’ve already made a few sales – that I know of – and have gotten three likes. No reviews yet, but hopefully soon enough.

Anyway, I would be absolutely thrilled if you headed over to Amazon and checked out the book – at the very least, clicking the like button up by the “write a review” link.

Thank you for your patience with Saving Without a Budget. I hope you enjoy How to Make a Budget: Simple Budget Techniques and Ways to Save Money so much that you forget all about the fact Saving Without a Budget has been dormant for the past month!

All too often I hear people complain about how hard it is to begin living frugally because they think they are going to have to live this terrible life in the World of No, meaning any impulse they have to spend money on something they’d like automatically must be shot down with a resounding no.

I’d like to think nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, living a frugal life does require a bit of sacrifice and you are going to have to give up some of your guilty pleasures.  I’m not arguing that.  What I am saying, however, is that by choosing to live a frugal life you aren’t necessarily headed down the path of self deprivation either.  In fact, many people – myself included – feel their quality of life actually increases once they fully commit to living below their means and making a conscious effort to not get caught up in the rat race of “who can buy the most things.”

Frugal = Compromise

If you’re still having trouble with the concept I have a trick that may help.  Going forward, when you hear the word frugal and throw up in your mouth a bit, instead, use the word compromise.

Here is a great article by Meg Favreau of WiseBread, which, as its title suggests, gives you 12 Frugal Compromises you can make that allow you to avoid self deprivation while enjoying a life of living below your means:

When we talk about frugality, it can be easy to get into an “all or nothing” mentality. Our two options are to eat a big meal out or cook at home. To have a lot of stuff or pare down all of our possessions to the very basics. But the reality is that there are a lot of savings compromises that can be made — frugal things you can do that, while they may not save you as much money as other efforts, might also save you time, make you happier, or make your life easier. Here are 12 frugal compromises to consider.

Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the article, which, again, you should read in its entirety.

1. Buy part of your meal already prepared
2. Hire moving helpers
3. Meet somewhere cheap for dinner
4. Buy new accessories
5. Drink cheap beer… or just one nice beverage
6. Hire a cleaner once a month
7. Don’t take the car… sometimes
8. Get take out instead of delivery
9. Rearrange the furniture and buy one new thing
10. Have a coffee treat day
11. Trim your own bangs
12. Use disposables alongside reusables

Obviously, all of these things are little splurges that won’t sound like much if you’re currently living a lavish lifestyle.  That being said, take it from someone who has been practicing frugality for a few years: a lot of these little guilty pleasures can actually help to keep you on the frugal path.

So, what are your thoughts on this?  What are some frugal compromises you allow yourself to have?  Leave a comment below and, as always, please share this post using the social bookmarking buttons below and at the top of the page – especially Facebook and Twitter.

Monthly recurring costs can take up a big chunk of your budget. And sadly, because these costs are expected each month, we end up paying the bill without much thought, especially now that many of our bills can just come directly out of our checking accounts without us having to even really look at the bill.

While this is convenient and easy, it also lends itself to a lot of wasteful spending.

Without ever really thinking about or examining the bills for your monthly recurring costs, chances are pretty good that you’re needlessly spending anywhere from tens to possibly hundreds more per month that you should. Over the course of a year, these things can ultimately cost you thousands of dollar for things you don’t need or even use.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to look beyond things like groceries and utilities, because those can be somewhat variable. However, I’m sure a few articles in the not-so-distant future will be published on this site showing ways to dramatically cut those costs, too.

Gym Membership

This ends up being a very wasteful monthly cost for a lot of people. They sign up for the gym thinking they’ll use it at least a few days per week and deceive themselves into believing that having the cost will help to keep them motivated to stay on track with their workouts.

The problem is, in many cases after the first few weeks of zeal wear off, a lot of people get very minimal, if any use out of their gym. That doesn’t mean the monthly payments stop though.

Since I’m of the belief that most people can get their exercise requirements without a gym – walking, jogging, bodyweight strength training – my suggestion would be to cancel the membership and save yourself the cash. If you’re of the belief that you need a gym in order to work out – maybe you like to do heavy squats and other lifts – make sure you’re actually going to the gym!

Insurance

Most people get insurance policies for their lives, cars, homes, valuable property, etc. by doing a little bit of upfront research and then picking the company that, at the time, is the best value. But, just because the company you went with was the best value then, doesn’t mean they’re the best value now.

Every six months to a year, it makes sense to do some comparison shopping.

Start off by calling your current provider and ask them how they can give you lower premiums; most companies will work with you since it’s cheaper to keep you than it is to find a new customer.

After you have the new price, which will hopefully be made effective once you’ve completed your call with your current insurance company, go and get quotes from other insurance providers. If the cost is less and you’ll be getting the same service – both in terms of what will actually be insured and in terms of customer service – it might be worth it to consider switching companies.

Cable/Internet/Phone

These costs are all being bundled together because it seems more often than not, people are getting these services from the same provider and, usually, as part of the same monthly bill. This also tends to lead to a lot of waste.

Do you have a land line but never use it because you use your cell phone instead? Cancel the line and save money. Are you paying for premium cable channels or things like DVR and never really using them? Cancel them and save money. Are you paying for the highest speed internet but don’t do much streaming or downloading/uploading of data? Go with a lower-tier package and save money.

Cell Phone

As is sort of the recurring theme here, make sure you aren’t paying for services you don’t need: are you paying for a 500 minute plan when a 350 minute plan would more than adequately cover you? Carrying insurance on an old phone you could easily replace for free by renewing your plan? Just take a look at your bill and I’m sure you’ll see places where you can save money.

Also, check to make sure you’re not under-covered on your plan, too. Do you have a 350 minute plan but spend 600 minutes on the phone? Those extra 250 minutes are probably really expensive and cost way more than it would to upgrade your plan.

Finally, if you don’t really use your phone much, consider going to one of those month-to-month pay as you go plans. It might be a good way to save money over a “traditional” provider.

Moral of the story: if you are able to cut a couple bucks off of each of your recurring monthly bills, over the course of a year those savings are really going to add up.

What did you think of this post? Please leave a comment below and, as always, share this post using the social media buttons below.

In a sad sign of the times, a recent survey found that a majority of Americans do not have enough cash in savings to be able to deal with just a $1,000 emergency expense. Considering most of us will face an unforeseen expense this large or larger in our lives, this statistic is very, very troubling.

Looks like a majority of us haven't been taking care of our piggy banks

The survey, which was done by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), found that 64% of Americans would have use something other than money on hand in order to be able to cover an unexpected $1,000 bill.

The largest number of close to 2,700 respondents, 36 percent, said they would tap their savings account to fund the unplanned expense. Utilizing rainy day funds for an emergency is exactly why a person saves, to protect them against the unknown. However, the remaining 64 percent are in a much different situation, living on a slippery financial slope.

The survey revealed that to resolve the problem, 17 percent of respondents indicated they would borrow the money from friends or family. Perhaps even more troubling is that another 17 percent said they would neglect existing obligations in order to satisfy the emergency need. This option can easily snowball out of control and have serious consequences. The next highest number of responses was in the category of selling or pawning assets, with 12 percent choosing this option. The resolution options of taking out a loan or obtaining a cash advance from a credit card were each selected by the least number of respondents, nine percent [each, combining for 18% in total].

Click here to read the entire press release from the NFCC.

These are certainly troubling statistics and underscore the importance of making sure you establish some sort of an emergency fund. After all, it’s not that hard to see how a random $1,000 expense can pop up once or twice per year – your car’s transmission needs to be replaced, your roof springs a leak, your refrigerator stops working, you break an arm and insurance only covers a portion of your out-of-pocket expenses… the list goes on and on.

So, what do you do if you don’t have an emergency fund? Start building one today!

The most straight forward way to do this is to combine slashing your unnecessary expenses – unused gym membership, premium cable channels, dining out, etc. – with living a frugal lifestyle – clipping coupons, finding free entertainment, hitting up the library, etc. – and then taking all that saved money and putting it into a savings account that you absolutely, positively do not touch.

This, of course, assumes that you’re not heavily in debt, in which case you should split the saved money between paying down your debt – high interest consumer debt, in particular – and building your rainy day fund.

After a few months you will hopefully you will have built a sizable enough fund that you could take on an unforeseen $1,000 expense without having to take drastic measures.

What do you think about this survey? Leave your comments below and, as always, please share this post using the social bookmarking buttons below – especially Facebook and Twitter.

It’s no secret that saving money requires some degree of sacrifice and, many times, sacrifice is far from fun. That being said, living a frugal lifestyle doesn’t have to be synonymous with living a dull lifestyle.

If you can spice up the ways you save money and take a different approach to frugality, you can actually make the act of saving money an enjoyable experience – and not just for the money saving aspect of it.

Here are seven simple ways you can make saving money fun:

The cheapest family in America has fun... saving money!

1) Start small. If you start off with the goal of slashing your monthly spending by 75% you’re going to fall short, become frustrated, and quit. Instead, take an incremental approach to saving. Maybe you save an extra $100 the first month. When you do that without a problem, you increase the monthly savings to $150. Before you know it, you’ve dramatically slashed your spending without any of the frustration!

2) Take the glass-half-full approach. Instead of dwelling on what you’re cutting out of your life – the premium cable package, the unlimited data plan on your cell phone, etc. – focus on how great it’s going to feel when you’re able to pay off your credit card bill, rebuild your nest-egg, or retire early. Taking this viewpoint will make you realize you’re gaining something far more important that what you’re getting rid of.

3) Incorporate some low-stakes gambling. Make a bet with your significant other (or a friend if you’re unattached) to see who can save the most money in a week. The loser has to cook the winner’s favorite meal. Having the chance to have turkey tacos waiting for me has definitely given me extra motivation to keep my credit card in my wallet!

4) Make it a family activity. If you’re a parent, involve your kids when you make your budget or clip coupons. It’s a great way to spend family time, and it’ll get your kids thinking about saving money. Plus, they’ll feel proud when they point out a great deal at the grocery store!

5) Keep one-upping yourself. Turn coupon clipping into a game by always trying to save more money from coupons every time you go to the grocery store. Before you know it, you’ll have slashed your grocery bill by 30 to 60 percent! That being said, don’t buy something for the sake of using a coupon, that sort of defeats the purpose!

6) Be  an active saver. Don’t save money simply by sitting on your butt and not doing anything. Go out and take a walk around the park, volunteer somewhere, or grab a book from the library. There are plenty of free or low cost activities you can do, so take advantage of them!

7) Reward yourself! What’s the point of saving all this money if you never spend it. Since you’ve done so well at saving money, indulge yourself with something small. It’ll be a good incentive to keep you going, too.

Do you have any simple ways to make saving money fun? Leave your comment below and, as always, please share this post by using the social bookmarking buttons below – especially Facebook and Twitter!

This morning I read a great post on Get Rich Slowly that posed a very interesting question: why pay for something if we could otherwise do or get it for free?

In the article entitled “Paying for What you Could Get Free,” April Dykman writes why she chooses to pay someone – whether it’s Italian classes, or yoga teacher training – as opposed to going at it on her own and paying nothing:

There are a lot of time[s] when it makes sense to spend money. The best $20 you’ll ever spend is taking a mentor or expert out to lunch. And I’ve found that the best way to reach many of my personal goals, even the ones that are purely for pleasure, is by paying someone to hold me accountable.

Too many times I’ve started working toward a goal and didn’t stick with it. Before I quit my job, I was continually making progress growing my business, only to slack off for a few weeks. When I signed up for one-on-one coaching, however, I had a real, live person who would hold me accountable. I didn’t want to let this person down (even though, in truth, slacking off was letting myself down). Each week we’d set mini-goals, and I now had a task list and a deadline. If I didn’t accomplish my tasks, I would have to explain why to my business coach.

The second reason that it pays to pay for accountability is that a teacher, coach, or mentor can help you look at a situation or problem in a different light. For example, my Italian tutor has devised little tricks to remember the difference between words and phrases that sound similar, but mean two different things. Rather than memorizing words on flashcards, I get a broader view of how the language works. It’s incredible how much more quickly you can advance with a teacher than you can on your own.

Finally, I’m paying for motivation. Sure, I love Italian, but when I’m around other people who love it, their motivation rubs off and I’m excited about silly things like doing my homework and memorizing how to conjugate irregular verbs. When I’ve tried studying Italian on my own, at some point my excitement wanes and I fall out of the habit of making time to learn. Meeting with my tutor once a week recharges my enthusiasm.

What I feel this more or less comes down to is what’s commonly referred to as opportunity cost, which is defined as, “The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.”

In using one of the examples above, April’s opportunity cost for paying her business coach was potentially not making many thousands of dollars from her business because she continued to be unorganized and unmotivated. Seems to me if you have to shell out a few hundred dollars to make a few thousand, that’s pretty much a no-brainer.

Furthermore, I think mastering the above skill – knowing when to spend and when not to spend – can be the difference between being cheap and being frugal. What I mean by that is, being cheap is having an aversion to spending money, no matter what, while being frugal is being smart with your money and being prudent when you need/want to make a purchase. Cheap is bad, frugal is good.

Anyway, I definitely recommend you check out April’s article, which you can read by clicking here.

What are your thoughts on this? Leave a comment below and, as always, please share this article using the social bookmarking buttons below – especially Facebook and Twitter!

I know the title of this post is harsh and many of you are likely to disagree with the use of the word “slavery” but I feel there really is no other word that best describes the situation someone is in when they are severely in debt.

Someone who is massively in debt is, for lack of a better term, owned by the company to which they owe money.

Let me explain:

A debtor no longer work for themselves so that they can stash away money for a rainy day or splurge on something nice for the family.  Nope.  When you’re in debt, you are working to earn money simply so you can pay off the credit card, the car loan, the mortgage, and whatever other debt you may have accumulated.

You are no longer working for your best interests, instead, you are working to pay off all of your interest.  You no longer live life on your terms, rather, you’re living your life by the terms of your loans.

And if you don’t pay back your debt fast enough, making just the minimum monthly payments, you end up in tighter and tighter shackles.

Getting a Total Money Makeover can get you out of your debt-induced slavery.

Now, I know you can do things like declare bankruptcy, but that’s almost always a last resort, and is a painful process that takes plenty of time and still leaves you owing some money.  It’s not as if your slate is wiped clean.

I also know that in many cases this slavery is self imposed, due to poor financial decisions and an unwillingness to tackle the problem before it spiraled out of control.

But, thankfully, there is a way to free yourself from your debt slavery, and that way is you.

By coming up with a simple, yet comprehensive plan to tackle your problem once and for all, you can not only pay off your debt, but set the ground work for a very successful financial future.

What A Debt Freeing Plan Would Look Like

Obviously, each person’s situation is going to be unique to them, however, below are three steps that are likely to be a starting point in any debt reduction plan: 

1) Know the difference between needs and wants.  Having this understanding is absolutely fundamental if you are to live below your means and overcome your debt.  The example I always use is food: you need something nutritional that fills you up, but you want to out and eat a steak at a nice restaurant.

A need fulfills something that either helps to or does sustain you.  A want simply fulfills a desire.

Once you understand this, as part of your debt solving plan you need to look at every single purchase you make under this microscope.

2) Go on a spending fast by cutting out the want spending and reducing the needs spending.  Now that you understand the difference between needs and wants and you’ve become serious about tackling your debt, you should cut out all want spending until your debts have been paid off, or, at the very least, at a much more manageable level.

From there, look at where your money is going for your needs.  Can you find ways to reduce your weekly grocery bill?  What about your utilities?  Anyway, I think you get the point.

Creating a budget and sticking to it is a great way to cut out spending on wants.

Now you’ll really be on the path to slashing your expenses and spending less money.

3) Put the money you’re now saving toward paying down your debt.  Now that you can make more than the minimum payments or can now contribute more towards your bill each month you need to do it!  The more you contribute towards your payment, the faster you’ll be out of debt and able to live your own life.

Let’s look at this example: you have $10,000 in credit card bills, an annual interest rate of 18%, and you make just the minimum monthly payments

If you were to pay just the minimum monthly payments, it would take you nearly 28 and a half years to pay off the loan, and that assumes you don’t add any more debt to your balance.  Plus, at the end of the 28 and a half years, you will have paid $14,500 in interest, meaning you eventually pay $24,500 to borrow $10,000.

That’s not a good deal.

Now, let’s look at the better example: you have the same problem as above, but because you’re saving money, you’re going to pay $500 per month towards your bill (about double what you would be paying at the beginning of the minimum monthly payment scenario)

By paying well above the minimum monthly payment, you are able to pay off your $10,000 debt in just two years, and pay only $1,500 in interest charges.

Two years vs. 28 years.  $1,500 in interest vs. $14,500 in interest.

You tell me which is better?

So, on that note, if you’re in debt, work like hell to get out of it.  If you’re not in debt, work like hell to stay out of it!  Don’t end up being owned by your debt!

What do you think of this post?  Please leave your comments below and share your thoughts.  Also, please share this post using the social bookmarking buttons below – especially Facebook and Twitter!

In continuing with my new obsession – and hopefully yours as well – I thought I would write more about some less-than-extreme couponing tips that I think will help you save hundreds of dollars per week and thousands of dollars per year.

CouponMom.com is one of the best resources to learn about couponing.

Considering the economy is growing at a much slower than expected pace, being able to save every dollar you can is certainly a great idea.  And when you take into account the fact you can cut lots of money per week from your grocery bill by taking just a few minutes to clip coupons and plan your meals around good deals, there’s really no good reason to justify not making the effort.

In an article in U.S.A. Weekend entitled “How You Can Become a Coupon Queen” – which, to be perfectly honest I do take some issue with considering I’m a 30 year old man who clips coupons and most certainly is not a “queen” – Jean Chatzky offers up the following couponing insights and tips:

When it comes to grocery shopping, the New American Pantry study says 48% of us are now willing to wait for a sale. Shoppers have tuned in to the fact that prices change frequently. For them, the sale price has become the only price they’re willing to pay.

Do it right: You have to know how much the items you buy most frequently cost when they are on sale. This may mean keeping a log of the best price you paid for a particular product (sometimes called a “price book”) until you commit those prices to memory. Then you stock up when items are cheapest and shop in your own cupboard until they go on sale again. Take apple juice, for example: Mullen knows if she can get it for $1 a bottle, that’s a good price. Note: The website grocerypricebooks.com can help you get started.

She then goes on to write:

There’s couponing — sitting down with the Sunday newspaper and clipping those offers your family will use — which saves the average family about $1,000 a year, according to NCH Marketing Info, which tracks coupon use.And then there’s organized couponing — spending hours clipping and organizing coupons, buying an extra copy of the Sunday paper because the deals are so good, downloading and printing coupons from the Web and using technology to clue you in on which stores in your area have the best deals each week. That, as Mullen has learned, can save you much, much more. Last year, there were 332 billion coupons and 3.3 billion redeemed, which put $3.7 billion in consumers’ pockets. “The overall face value savings per coupon is $1.46,” NCH vice president Charlie Brown says.

Do it right:Despite advances in digital coupons, the biggest bang for your couponing buck is still the Sunday paper. Those shiny inserts contained 88% of all the coupons issued in the past year.

Clip the ones you’ll use and start a file that will help you keep track of them. Watch expiration dates, Brown says.

Next, hit the Web and spend a little time on couponing sites. Nationals such as couponmom.com and thekrazycouponlady.com, and locals such as ppgazette.com in Los Angeles, can help you keep track of where your coupons match up with the best sales. These websites also will point you to digital coupons — the ones you can download and print at home or load onto your smartphone.

As you know, I’ve raved about CouponMom.com and TheKrazyCouponLady.com before on this site, and believe they are great resources for anyone — again, not just coupon queens — interested in learning how to cut their grocery bills by up to 60%.

As Chatzky points out in her article, extreme couponing is tough and, more or less, is a full-time job in and of itself.  If I had the time to do it, I’m sure I would try, but having a full-time job and wanting to enjoy my remaining free time with my wife and friends, I just can’t do it.  But, I’ve also learned how spending just 30 minutes every Sunday morning clipping coupons and planning our weekend meals can save my family thousands of dollars per year.

If I were you, I would certainly give it a try!

Do you clip coupons?  Do you extreme coupon?  Leave your comments and share your best couponing tips below!  And, as always, please share this post using the social bookmarking buttons – especially Facebook and Twitter!

Related articles

• The Best Sites for Extreme Couponing (savingwithoutabudget.com)
• Extreme Couponing Is the Most Addicting Game I’ve Ever Played (savingwithoutabudget.com)
• Extreme Couponing Tip: Patience Pays (livingrichwithcoupons.com)
• Are Coupons Really Worth It? (couponshoebox.com)