A while back, I wrote about how my wife and I spent the better part of a weekend doing a deep clean of our home. We went through every room in the house and ended up donating or trashing old clothes, dishes, cooking utensils, DVDs, useless papers, you name it.

And, as I stated before, it was an amazingly cathartic experience and, when it was all said and done, felt like we had a two-ton boulder lifted off of our shoulders. (I’m a poet and didn’t even know it!)

Since then we’ve aspired to follow a minimalist lifestyle, meaning we try to get by on no more than what we truly need. This, too, has been an awesome experience.

One would think that living in a consumer and materialistic society, the adjustment would be difficult. In fact, the opposite is true, mostly because of how great we now feel.

For example:

Being frugal is a lot easier. The enemy of being frugal is a warped sense of knowing the difference between needs and wants.

In our materialistic society, many people determine their own personal worth by how many things they can acquire, how big of a house they can buy, etc. Ultimately, you’re mostly succumbing to your wants, which, in turn, makes you want even more!

By following a minimalist path, you’re succumbing to just your needs. You’re not out every other weekend at Pottery Barn trying to buy the new trendy lamps for your home. Your basic, solid-color lamps do just fine of filling your house with light. You don’t have 800 decorative pillows on your bed because the only ones you’re not going to chuck aside as you fall asleep are the pillows you lay your head on.

In cutting out the wants, you’re able to save boatloads more money.

You feel happier. When you aspire to own a bunch of stuff and fall short, you’re left with an empty feeling. Or, even worse, when you are able to get everything you want and it’s still not enough, you’re left with an even bigger void.

By being genuinely happy with less that void simply does not exist. If you can have all of the basic stuff you need – food, shelter, companionship – along with a few small indulgences, you’re much more likely to feel whole and fulfilled; you’re not constantly chasing things.

These two points are big, but they’re just the beginning.

Seriously, please consider going the minimalist route. You’ll be incredibly happy you did.

What are your thoughts? Have you tried being a minimalist? Does the idea seem weird to you? Leave your comments below!

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!

First, I know I’m about two years late on this post, so you’ll have to forgive me for just seeing this movie.  On that note, let me state that I’m not entirely proud of what I’m about to say, but at the same time I hope that you’ll learn from what I’m about to say.

Early this morning, when I couldn’t stand to watch ESPN any longer due to the Tiger Woods “news,” I flipped to one of my free movie channels and started watching Confessions of a Shopaholic, staring Isla Fisher, the crazy sister in Wedding Crashers.

There are lots of good financial lessons in the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Anyway, Confessions centers around a woman, Rebecca Bloomwood, who as you’ve probably already guessed, is a shopaholic. She is in massive consumer debt and has a collection agency hounding her, and to make matters worse, she doles out advice consumers while writing for a financial magazine.

Ok, I’ll confess, I thought it was a cute movie and was worth watching purely for entertainment purposes (not to mention Isla Fisher is very nice to look at).

Despite the entertainment factor, I thought there were actually some pretty good financial lessons to be learned from the movie.

1) Know the differences between needs and wants. For those of you who are regular readers of The Personal Finance Program, you know this is something I talk about regularly, and is critically important to getting your finances in order.

In Confessions, Bloomwood is constantly buying new clothes and fashion accessories, despite having closets full of clothes, scarves, purses and shoes. Whenever she sees something she wants, she gets it, even though it’s certainly not something she needs. Over time, these purchases put her tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt.

2) If you’re in consumer debt, you should make paying it down as quickly as possible a high priority. One of the things that gets Bloomwood into such a huge financial hole is doesn’t make paying down her debt a priority. While the movie never talks about what sort of interest rate she’s paying, we can assume that because she’s in deep credit card debt, the interest is at least 18%, if not more.

Over time, the interest continues to accrue, and eventually snowballs into such a giant number that it’s very hard to get out of.

Obviously, the best thing to do is avoid getting into this debt in the first place. If you weren’t able to avoid it, try your best to make more than the monthly minimum payments. This will allow you to pay off your debt much faster, and could ultimately save you thousands of dollars in interest costs.

3) Don’t delude yourself into thinking you don’t have a problem. The final thing that ends up hurting Bloomwood is the fact she refuses to admit that she has a serious problem. Instead of admitting her issues, she continues to avoid the debt collection agency all while continuing to spend money she doesn’t have on things she doesn’t need.

Had Bloomwood admitted her shopping and spending issues and put together a plan to pay off the debt, she would have been in a much better situation.

Just remember, lying to yourself won’t make your debt go away.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a cute movie that actually has some worthwhile advice, by all means, check out Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Can you think of any other movies that have good financial advice? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts, and, as always, please share this post using the social bookmarking buttons below – especially Facebook and Twitter.

Whether you’re a multi-millionaire, living paycheck to paycheck, or somewhere in between, we have all been affected by The Great Recession and the slow economic recovery. One of the few good things to come out of the recent tough times is a newfound love of saving money.

During the run-up to The Great Recession, the average savings rate was negative, meaning a typical person spent more money than they earned. That’s not a good thing at all and will lead to a financial disaster, which it did for many Americans. But, now that things have settled, we’ve learned to love saving and have become pretty creative at finding ways to keep more of our hard-earned cash.

Here’s a great article/slideshow from CNN Money that shows seven ways to save on everyday expenses, ranging from property taxes to car insurance:

7 Ways to Save Money on Everyday Expenses

My favorite tip was from the guy who says he never leaves a store without asking for a discount or something free – demands which are usually met 50% of the time. I never would have guessed it was that high! Here’s what he said:

I am amazed at the frequency with which I can get a discount by simply asking — at least 50% of the time I get some savings.

I went to a big-box retail store and bought a TV. Since it was a pretty big purchase I figured why not ask? The manager came over and agreed to knock off 10% and throw in some cables. Just by asking I saved about $120.

Along the same lines, here’s a YouTube clip reminding us to live within our means, something we weren’t doing a great job of prior to The Great Recession.

Leave a comment and let me know how you save money on everyday expenses!

Related articles

• How To Live Big On A Small Budget (hellobeautiful.com)
• Ten Ways to Use That Tax Refund (turbotax.intuit.com)
• Ways to Save Money at Work (circleoffood.com)

Dry clean only clothes are a double edged sword: you tend to pay more up front when you purchase the clothes and then you have to pay a lot of money over the life of the item in order to keep it clean.

For example, this past Christmas I received a very nice pair of dry clean only black dress pants, which I know cost well over $100.  Now, every time I want to have them cleaned, I have to take the pants down to my local dry cleaner and pay them $4.

Not to sound ungrateful, but I would have much rather received two or three pairs of regular “throw ‘em in the washer and dryer” pants that probably look just as nice, last just as long, but don’t cost me $4 to clean.

So, when you’re shopping for clothes and it comes time to choose between “dry clean only” and “throw ‘em in the washer and dryer” clothes, go with the clothes you can clean yourself.