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!

• 99BRAB3
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• 67PPLA6
• 96PBCG3
• 56TTDR2

You can use one of these codes on each rental, so conceivably, you could get six movies for free between now and August 26.

Enjoy and please share this with your friends!

• 27TGAF6
• 34BCRD4
• 62BRAB4
• 98ARDQ2
• 92JEAH8
• 29SGJC3
• 65PPLA8

You can use one of these codes on each rental, so conceivably, you could get seven movies for free between now and August 19.

Enjoy and please share this with your friends!

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.

• 28PPLA9
• 98SGJC2
• 25JEAH6

You can use one of these codes on each rental, so conceivably, you could get three movies for free between now and August 15.

Enjoy and please share this with your friends!

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!

Get free movies from Blockbuster using these codes!

Today was kind of a rough day.  The stock market tanked, there wasn’t any good economic news, and everyone’s mood in general seemed to be pretty down.

So, in an attempt to cheer everyone up, here are some free rental codes for Blockbuster Express.  These codes expire August 8, so use all five and have a free movie weekend!

Here are the codes:

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• 88ARDQ5

Take full advantage of these coupon codes and have a great rest of the week and weekend!

Here are some coupon codes for a free one-night rental at any Blockbuster Express kiosk.  You can use each code once, so theoretically you could entertain your family for the week for free.

These codes expire August 5th, so be sure to use them soon!

• 46SVEM9
• 38TGSF7
• 23BRCRD3
• 75JGMM3
• 38BRAB5
• 78HLG5

Enjoy!

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)