November 2008 Archives - Stumble Forward

Save More Money: 3 Places To Stash Emergency Fund Cash

November 27, 2008 By Christopher 9 Comments

Are you ready to save more money? This is the second post in the series of three about saving more money and building your emergency fund. In the first post 5 Tips To Setting Up A Stellar Emergency Fund I showed you how to set up your emergency fund.

In this post I’m going show 3 places where you can stash your emergency fund cash. I’m also going to go in depth about each option and show you how each place may or may not benefit you.

1. Laddering A Cd

This is probably one of the first places that most people will go. In fact none of these 3 options are the wrong one but they all have there advantages and disadvantages. In fact people will tend to ladder them into a series of reoccurring accounts.

What I mean is if you want to ladder a 6 month CD you would put money in a new 6 month CD every month for the next 6 months. For example if you would put $1000 into a new 6 month CD every month for the next 6 months you would have 6 Cd’s with $1000 in them totaling $6000. This way you would have a CD coming due every month.

A couple of things that makes Cd’s a great emergency fund are:

Harder to get to the money. All Cd’s have time periods for accruing interest. It may be 1 months up to 5 years in most cases.
Interest is guaranteed. All Cd’s will be assigned a specific rate for it’s time period. In most cases the longer the Cd period the higher the interest rate.
The Money is liquid. With Cd’s being liquid they can be accessed if need be. There will be no tax penalties.
Decent interest rates. Cd’s will usually range between 3% and 4%. Though almost all banks rate vary from one bank to the next.

However to every advantage there is a disadvantage:

Most Cd’s need around $1000 to $5000 to fund them. If your living paycheck to paycheck this option is going to look very unattractive to you.
If you pull the money out early you will face an interest penalty. If your trying get some growth on that emergency fund cash but you constantly need to dip into it you will be facing some big interest penalties.

2. Money Market Funds

Some great advantages to having a money market fund as your emergency fund:

Money is liquid. Again just like the Cd’s they have this great benefit of being easily accessible.
Usually has a check writing feature. The great thing here is you don’t have to go to the bank to get the money you can just write a check.

The Disadvantages:

Usually need $1000 up front to start an account. Again if you live paycheck to paycheck this is not an attractive feature. In fact if you want to add money to the account your minimum payment has to be at least $50 a month.
In order to write a check it must be for $500 or more. This can be an issue if you just need a little bit of money. It may also temp you since you had to take the extra money out to spend it instead of putting it back into the fund.
No Guarantee on the interest. With money market funds their are no guaranteed interest rates. In fact most times rates aren’t very attractive usually around the 1% to 3% range at best.

3. High Yield Savings Accounts

This is actually my favorite place to save money for an emergency fund simply because it has the most flexibility. Although it still has a few advantages and disadvantages.

Decent interest rates. With these they typically hover around the 3% range. Not bad for an emergency fund.
Rates are fixed. Unlike the money market funds these rates are fixed and stay they same.
Easy to get to but not to easy. With these types of account they may link to your checking account so you will have to notify the bank to transfer funds.
In some cases no minimum amount to start an account. I can’t say every account is like this but some are. You just have to look for the right one.

The Disadvantages:

These type of accounts are sometimes just Internet based. Some banks just have an online presence and have no brick and mortar buildings. This is really a personally preference here.
May require certain amount a cash upfront to start the account. This isn’t always the case some do require $1000 or so to start the account. You’ll have to shop and compare.

Where Do You Save Your Emergency Fund Cash?

Do you save your money in one of the three areas that I talked about above or do you have another great place to save your money that you would like to share in the comments below. Any good ideas are welcomed.

Filed Under: Saving Money Tagged With: CD, High Yeild Savings Account, Money Market Fund, Saving Money

Save More Money: 5 Tips To Setting Up A Stellar Emergency Fund

November 25, 2008 By Christopher 8 Comments

This weeks starts three part series on emergency funds called Save More Money. In this series I will be talking about every thing from setting it up, where to put it, and how to fill it up fast.

In today’s post I’ll give you some cutting edge tips that will help you set up your emergency fund so it will do everything you want it to and more. I will also be covering some of the pitfalls I’ve seen people fall into and how to stop them.

1. An Emergency Fund Will Give You Your Sanity Back

An emergency fund is your insurance policy against all those unexpected things that come up in life that were not really prepared for. For example if your water softener would suddenly go out.

Ouch! This is an expensive repair. This happened to me a month before Christmas once. A $1000 gone just like that.

If your living life paycheck to paycheck this can put you in a world of hurt fast. It’s also not so fun to go through life like this. So now that we know what one is, how do we use it?

Emergency funds are only used for the times we really need cash at a moments notice when we don’t have enough for an unexpected expense. This isn’t money that is used on a regular basis. Here a few reason I use an emergency fund.

An emergency fund helps you sleep better at night. Losing sleep over financial issues can cause fatigue and effect other areas of your life such as work and family life.
An emergency fund lets you take advantage of other opportunities. Sometimes there are things that you would like to do but you just can’t because one slip up and you’ll have nothing left. With a funded emergency plan you don’t have to pass those opportunities up.
An emergency fund will pump up your net worth. Having cash to spare will go a long way in helping you get a loan. Lenders love when you have extra cash set aside.

2. Liquidity Is The Name Of The Game

Keeping your emergency fund liquid or in cash is very important. To pull it out with no tax penalties is very important. Some also believe in trying to get the highest interest rate around. While I agree extra interest is great but having the money there when you need it is even more important.

In my personal opinion I am willing to sacrifice a little interest on my emergency fund so I can gain quick access to it. This brings me to my next point.

3. Have Easy Access But Not To Easy.

What I mean here is don’t make your emergency fund your savings account, credit cards, or debit card. While these are great tools to take advantage of they don’t qualify as great emergency funds.

Having your fund setup in places that are to easy to access will in most cases aid in taking advantage of it. In these places it’s just to easy to withdrawal money from. I will be going through my favorite places to put emergency fund cash on Wednesdays post.

4. Other Places You Shouldn’t Setup An Emergency Fund.

Here are a few places you should never put an emergency fund.

Mutual Funds. Putting money in mutual funds gives you the risk of losing money from your account even if the account is set up very conservatively don’t do it. Mutual funds don’t guarantee any interest or particular performance.
Annuities. Annuities are meant as retirement vehicles. If you put it in a variable annuity you fall into the same problems as mutual funds and if you put it into a fixed annuity you may get a guaranteed interest rate but you will face another problem that annuities will cause. Annuities are known for having surrender penalties on them. In fact fixed annuities have longer surrender periods on them. What this means if you set your emergency fund up in an annuity you not only have to pay taxes after taking the money out but you have to pay a surrender penalty most times around 8% of your account value to pull out the money.
IRAs/ Roth IRAs. Again these are meant as retirement accounts. Whether an IRA is set up in a mutual fund or an annuity this is not a good idea. Doing this means you will face certain tax issues such as 10% tax on withdrawals before age 59 and a half.

5. Contribute Regularly And Have The Right Amount Set Aside.

Having the right amount of money in your fund is very important. So how much should you have? I recommend a minimum 3 month worth of cash set aside, 6 months would be preferred though. The reason I say this is because the time it takes for the average person to find a new job is a little over 4 months now.

Figuring out how much you need in your fund is very easy. Ask yourself what you make right now? Is it enough? Do you need more? If you are comfortable on what you make right now in a month times that by the number of months you wish to be able to live off of your emergency fund.

For example if you make $3700 a month currently and you would like to have 6 months saved in your emergency fund then you would need roughly $22,000 set aside for emergencies.

Last, you want to pay yourself first. So contribute on a regular monthly basis to your emergency fund. If you don’t have much money there are accounts you can start and fund with as little as $25 a month. Doing this helps grow your fund even when you don’t have much money in it to start with.

Do You Have An Emergency Fund?

Read the next article in the series on Wednesday to see where the best place are to set up your emergency fund and also see if your current emergency fund is in the right place and if not where a better place for it might be.

This post was recently featured on The Carnival Of Personal Finance by Mighty Bargin Hunter.

Filed Under: Saving Money Tagged With: emergency fund, Saving Money

Do You Attract Money?

November 24, 2008 By Christopher Leave a Comment

Like they always say money doesn’t grow on trees. In life you have to work hard to earn that all mighty dollar to get to the top or do you?

Let me put it another way. Why does it always seem that the rich and successful always seem to be rolling in the money and others who work very hard just can’t seem to grasp that success that other have?

Well to put it honestly they do work hard but they also do one other thing as well. The rich and successful also work smart. This is one quality almost all successful people have the willingness to continually keep learning new things. In fact it was Donald Trump who once said:

Learn one new thing everyday.

In my business this has been a daily task for the last couple of years. In fact one of my favorite places to learn new things about personal finance is The Carnival of Personal Finances and this weeks addition which is the 180th addition is being held by Living Almost Large.

Here are a few of my favorites check the rest out HERE.

The Red Stapler Chronicles with The Twelve Days Of Christmas During A Recession.
Fools and Sage with How To Increase Your Airfare.
The Wisdom Journal with 7 Ways To Make A Quick $500 in 30 Days.
Tough Money Love with This Year Give The Gift Of Personal Finance Education.
Saving Advice with My Tipping Philosophy.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Blog Carnivals, Carinval of personal finance, Donald Trump, Living Almost Large

Financial Tradegy: Does Fear Control Your Finances

November 21, 2008 By Christopher Leave a Comment

In the previous post I talked about taking control of you finances. In this post I want dive in a bit further and explore some of the things that control us. This post is about how fear effects the economy and more importantly your finances.

The Effect Fear Has On The Economy

This is a subject I’ve been interested in researching lately. How fear has hurt are economy. In fact I had a hard time writing this post due to the fact that it’s not something you can easily see or write about. No fear is something that is felt.

I’ll give you an example of an economy full of fear. Just a few months ago AIG reported that they were about to go bust and they needed a bailout. The news smacked the headlines of millions of newspaper and news broadcast everywhere.

In fact I had several people ask me if they should pay there next months car insurance payment to AIG. At this point I new it was to late. As I suspected thousands of people got wind of this and began pulling there money out of AIG.

For AIG though they luckily got a bailed out, for now.

This Happened Once Long Ago…

Does this sound familiar to you? Maybe if you lived in another time you may remember this happening once before and if you weren’t around to see it you definitely read about it.

That’s right The Great Depression.

This is the same fear that magnified the great depression. The market had a big lose and people got scared. They pulled there money from banks all across the county. The very blood that was needed for banks to survive was being taken from them at an alarming rate.

So how did the banks respond to this?

That’s right. They forclosed there mortgages. Even if you were current on your mortgage the bank was asking for you to pay up of move out. These were tough times for many people.

Thankfully this wouldn’t be possible today. With lending laws revamped home owners don’t have to fear losing there home like they did in the great depression.

So as you can see fear has a big effect on the economy.

The Effect Fear Has On Your Personal Finances

Let’s break this down a bit further. How does fear effect you with your money?

Here’s a good example. On September 11, 2001 the fuel prices were around a $1.50. That night because of wide spread fear of more terrorist attack people were lined up at gas station everywhere. In fact a few people had called me telling me to fill up. They told me gas prices were going up.

I asked them why they thought it would go up and no one could really give me a specific answer. In the end the gas prices didn’t go up they went down. With all airlines grounded this created an instant supply of fuel and as a result prices dropped.

What Can You Learn From This?

Fear has a weird way of making us do weird things with are money. It’s an emotional control that will make us spend money and do things we necessarily shouldn’t do.

So what should you do to avoid this?

Stay calm. It has been proven that if you are at a peak state of emotion meaning scared, angry, or upset you logical thinking is as a result a lot lower. For example have you ever been really angry and said something you didn’t mean? This what I am talking about your emotional state is in control and your logical state is nowhere to be seen.
Focus on the good things. Instead of focusing on all of the bad things going on in the economy focus on the good things. For example currently gas prices are around $1.73 a gallon. This can go a long way in saving you some money.
Stay away from the media. The media has great way of exploiting things and making them sound worse than they really are. Instead turn off the news and do something that make you happy not upset or angry. I talked about this more in previous post so I won’t go in depth with this one.

How Does Fear Effect You?

Does it make you do things with your money you shouldn’t do? Share your stories about your financial fears here.

Filed Under: Money Managment Tagged With: financial crisis, financial fear, Money Managment, spend money

Can You Control Your Finances Or Do They Control You

November 19, 2008 By Christopher 3 Comments

Do Your Finances Got You Trapped?

I recently read a great article about diversifying your income by earning money though other ways other than your job by a IttyBiz. This particular post interested me because it made a valid point that there are more ways to earn income other than just your JOB. In the past year she was able to earn $176,000 though various income streams.

Not Bad.

Though while I was reading the article it made me realize that she had one thing that not all American have, CONTROL. She decided a long time ago that she controlled her income and that no one else does. In today’s society with layoffs and companies going under I felt this post would be appropriate considering the times.

This post is all about the things you can control and the things you can’t. By the end of this post you may feel like I do and ready and willing to take action.

What Can You Can’t Control?

When deciding to take control of your finances realizing that you don’t have control over everything is the first step. Why you might ask?

One thing almost every person ( including myself) are guilty of is blaming, complaining, and criticizing others for things we have no control over. In fact one of my favorite sayings has always been:

Before you criticize, blame, or complain walk a mile in that persons shoes. This way if you do decide to criticize, blame, or complain you will be a mile away and have that persons shoes.

In all things being fair you can’t control everything. For example you can’t control what the President of the United States will do. You can’t control what others will say or do. You can’t control when your bills are do. You can’t control what the markets will do. There are a million things that you can’t control.

The worst part of this all though is that we worry about these things like the sky is falling. In the end though we can influence people all we want but we can’t make there decisions for them. So why spend all of are time worrying about things we can’t control and look at the things we can control.

What Can You Control?

Obviously IttyBiz didn’t worry about these things and neither should you. In fact this is a tactic the rich will use. While most people are in fear the successful rich are calm and in control. They look at life from a different perspective. What they can control.

So what can you control?

You may not have much control over how much you get paid from your employer but that doesn’t mean they can tell you how to spend it or earn money though other sources. Such as starting a part time business.

You may not have control over the market but that doesn’t mean you could take steps to invest correctly such as investing long term and diversifying your money.

You may not have control over your bills but this doesn’t mean you couldn’t watch your spending and pay them on time.

The point is you have control over a lot of things when it comes to your personal finances. However with as much control that people don’t think they have they tend to play victim to being stuck in debt. Does this sound like you? Leave a comment and tell me about it.

What Can You Do To Take Control?

Except responsibility. Are you blaming others for your financial problems. You are the only person who pays your bills, spends your money, and makes your financial decisions. Except responsibility and you are on the road to success like the great ones.
Put a budget together. Learn where your money goes. Put a monthly budget together and plan out where your money is going then track to see your true results. Knowing where your money is going will help in being more cautious.
Put a debt plan together. A true debt plan will give you the exact way to get debt free and stay that way. With a debt plan designed with your goals in mind it will go a long way in stopping further problems down the road. You can put your personal debt plan together free here.
Start a part time business. Starting a part time business puts you in control of your money not your employer. It also gives you the power to learn how to improve your business while you have a full time job helping diversify your income just in case you lose your job. Here’s a great post on starting a part time business.
Educate yourself. I say this a lot but I feel I can’t say it enough. Learning more about your money and how you can control it better helps you time and time again. Take time now to educate yourself and sign up for my RSS and check out my blogroll of other personal financial bloggers who will help to put you on the right track.

Are You In Control?

Do you have your finances under control? Do you play the blame game? It may be hard to admit this to yourself but it’s the first step to taking control of your financial future.

Filed Under: Money Managment Tagged With: financial control, Money Managment, Part time business

Smile Your Way To Riches

November 18, 2008 By Christopher 2 Comments

With all the recent issues going on in the economy it’s hard to get yourself in a good mood. With this weeks Carnival Of Personal Finance hosted by MoneyNing it was hard not to smile with the wealth of articles and post available.

Here are few of my favorites

The Dividend Guy With 3 Things people do to get in trouble.
The Strump with Cash Forcasting- How to enhance your budget.
Free From Broke with Nevermind a new economic stimulus package-Save Yourself!
Money Beagle with Deflation Not Inflation is the new worry.
Digerati Life with Strong opinions on a second stimulus package.

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Blog Carnivals, Carinval of personal finance

Share Your Best Personal Finance Post

November 17, 2008 By Christopher 2 Comments

Why I’m Doing This

Recently I was thinking about who writes the best content on personal finance? Then I came to realize that not one person writes the best post in the blogosphere. It’s really everyone who contributes to blogging on personal finance. Some post just happen to be better than others. However if we all work together as TEAM Together Everyone Achieves More.

This post is for those bloggers who write personal finance and would like to post there best article on the subject, and for those who would like to learn more about personal finance in general. You could call this the best of personal finance around the web.

Where and How

In this post the comments are the true value here. With bloggers from all different types of backgrounds I’m sure there will be some interesting post in the comments.

To post your article simply leave a link in the comments section along with a brief description of your post. It’s that simple.

For those of you who want to learn more about personal finance you can scroll through the comments at the bottom of this post.

The Rules For Posting Your Article.

The rules are pretty straight forward and simple.

1 Post Per Blog. Multiple post will be deleted. This also allows others to see what else it out there. I will be monitoring this.
Must be related to personal finance. Any off topic post will be deleted.
No spammy post. No paid reviews or a post trying to push a product. These will be deleted.
Post your best article. Don’t just put up any article put your best post that you feel you have written at this point and time.
Post should be based on principles. In other words it should teach something that people will want to come back to time and time again.

My Best Post

My best post is The Real Reason You Can’t Get Out Of Debt. It deals with the mindset you have to have to get debt free and stay that way. It also has had several hundred visits and I personally like this topic the most.

What YOU can do with this post

Finally feel free to link back to this post and share the wealth of knowledge that has been displayed here. When we spread the wealth of knowledge it benefits us all.

Also look for a second post in a few weeks on this again where I will highlight some of my favorite post in this article.

To YOUR Financial Success

Chris Holdheide

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: best post, bloggers, personal finance

How To Hire The Right Financial Planner?

November 14, 2008 By Christopher 1 Comment

Do you have a financial planner?

When I was in financial services a common question I would ask people are, “Do you have a financial planner?”

With most people this would be a resounding NO, some aren’t sure and about 5% of my clients had a financial planner. But what was even more astounding was when I asked them, “When was the last time they had talked to them?” I got the usual blank stare with a guess that they weren’t even sure about.

So in this post I hope to give you some tips on what to look for in a financial planner as well as what questions you should be asking when your looking for one to help you out.

What your financial planner should do for you.

In the previous post in this series I talked about things that you should watch out for when talking to financial planners. Here are things you should be looking for.

Look for a financial planner who does financial plans for FREE. This may be a bit harder than it seems but some financial planners will charge anywhere form $250 to $2500 or more to put a plan together for you. Personally I can’t see why someone should charge that kind of fee to you just to repeat the same information back to you. There are planner who will do it for free you just have to look for them. When I was in financial services I did every one of my plans for free.
Should be a great listener. The point a financial planner is to listen to you and provide solutions based on your financial problems. However I have seen many planner skip right past this and push a product. You will be able to tell who is a good listener and who is not. A good listeners will ask mostly questions and the others will have a bad case of diarrhea of the mouth were they won’t even let you get a word in. If you have a planner like this turn around and run in the other direction NOW. They aren’t interested in helping you in your situation.
Should look professional. You would think this would just be common sense but you wouldn’t believe how many don’t do this. In financial services I mostly wore a suit but in certain cases dressed business casual. If they come in wearing ripped up jeans and cutoffs this may not be someone you can’t trust. A professional look does more than give a good appearance it shows trust that they are professional and knowledgeable.
Does in-person annual reviews. This is a big one. Not one client I ever had had a planner who did annual reviews of there finances. When I was in financial services I not only did annual reviews but I did them in person at the client kitchen table. Talk about service.
Educates you on your finances. Again you would think that this would be part of the package deal. Education on your finances is very important to you in making the right decisions. Financial planners shouldn’t just be pushing a product on you they should be educating you how products work and how they will benefit you.
Have a great attitude. I did this one last because it’s not as common but I have seen it before were they may get a bit unhappy with you for not doing what they want you to do. Usually the planner should be genuinely interested in you and what you have to say.

Have any other great tips to add to this list? Add them below in the comments.

What questions should you ask your financial planner?

When asking these questions take it from the point like you are hiring this person to work for you.

How long have they been in financial services? If they’ve been in financial services for some time this will help because this means they have seen many different financial situations and will be able to come up with a few more ideas.
What licenses do they hold? Your planner should have several licenses so they will be able to design a program for you based on your needs not there licenses. They should have at least a life and health license, Series 6, Series 63, and possible a series 65. They may also have a P&C licenses and a CFP ( Certified Financial Planners) Obviously the more the better.
What do they specialize in? Usually a financial planner will specialize in a certain area. Maybe it’s investments, or insurance, or advisory services. Knowing this will allow you find out what there major objective is as a planner.
Do they do annual reviews? Again you know why this is important. Make sure you don’t forget to ask. One thing I got in the habit of a lot with my clients was to set an annual review the following year this way it was always set and I never had to worry about forgeting to do this.
What product providers do they work with? Knowing what product providers they deal with will allow you to research those companies, see what kind of rating they have, and if they are a good company overall.
What are there fees for there service and cost on product they recommend? Not all planners will charge fees but there will be a cost on the product that you buy. Be careful of high cost products. A good way to check this is to get a second opinion fro another planner.

These are probably some of the bigger questions that I would ask however there may be other you have thought of that I didn’t mention. Please feel free to list it below in the comments.

Filed Under: Money Managment Tagged With: financial planners, financial services

Does Your Financial Planner Have Your Best Interest In Mind?

November 12, 2008 By Christopher 7 Comments

Not All Financial Planners Are Fair And Equal.

Do all financial planners have your best interest at heart? I use to believe this at one time. I thought they all did the same thing. It didn’t matter which one you went to they all did the same thing. Invest your money, set up some insurance policies.

Sound pretty simple right?

From being in financial service for the last 5 years I learned that they all aren’t the same and some don’t have your best interest at heart. So in this post I would like to point out a few things to watch out for when hiring a financial planner.

What a financial planner is suppose to do.

A financial planners position is to listen to and review your goals and financial concerns for you. He should take notes of your financial situation and in most case put a financial plan together for you. His decisions should be based off of your input so he can make the right recommendation for you.

Once he recommends the right product that is specifically suited for your needs he will implement it on your consent. Now most would believe that this would be the end of there financial planner. This should only be the beginning.

From this point on your financial planner should be scheduling an annual review for you. The reason behind this is because no one persons situation ever stays the same. At the very least they should set up an annual review and if you prefer have them give you a call every 3 to 6 months to make sure things stay in order.

What To Watch Out For.

Watch out for those that have the one solution that fixes all. This is hardly ever the case. For example maybe you’ve heard the term “BUY TERM AND INVEST THE DIFFERENCE.” The only thing they can do is set up a term policy and invest your money in a mutual fund. It don’t matter who it is it’s the same thing over and over again. You may also see someone promote just one product all the time and that’s it. One product will not solve everyone’s problems.
Watch out for the fast talkers and the hard sellers. These people have no interest in listening to you. In fact they see a sucker coming a mile away. They aren’t interested in educating you or helping. They will typically just try to talk you into a certain product without letting you get a word in. They will give you every reason to buy the product and no time to think it over. Then once you do buy you’ll usually never see them again.
Watch out for financial planners who make big promises. Financial planner should never make promises bigger than they can keep. In fact if it sounds to good to be true it probably is. If they make any guarantees telling you’ll get 12% on your account or you’ll get that life insurance policy for sure don’t count on it. Also if they tell you they’ll give you a gift for buying an investment or policy don’t count on it. Finally, if they tell you that they will pay for referrals don’t count on it. The reason I say don’t count on it because they are all illegal to do.
Watch out for financial planners with limited licenses. Planners without proper licenses won’t be able to give you what you may really need. Instead you’ll get what ever they can do with there current licenses.
Watch out for financial planners who don’t take care of you. These are usually harder to spot. They may help you out but seem to enter the witness protection program once you sign on the dotted line never to be seen or heard from again.

Does Your Financial Planner Have Your Best Interest?

Has your financial planner done some of the things I’ve pointed out above? Have they done other things to you that I didn’t mention? Feel free to leave me a comment about it. I’m sure there are others so I will probably do another article on some of your comments listed.

Now that I’ve gone through all the things you should watch for check out Friday’s post were I will be discussing which financial planner you should hire and why.

Filed Under: Money Managment Tagged With: Buy term invest the difference, financial planners, Money Managment

Don’t Get Your Financial Education From The News

November 11, 2008 By Christopher 3 Comments

I was watching the news tonight and realized that the news is a terrible place to get a financial education. Here are a few reason why you shouldn’t.

They always seem to show the negative side of things.
The news is always slanted one way or another on a subject that makes you believe it the way they want you to believe it.
They don’t always give you the straight facts on a subject.

So what would be a better way to learn more about personal finance?

The Carnival of Personal Finance will teach you a ton of new things about your finances. This weeks addition was hosted by The Digerati Life who held the Carnival of Personal Finance #178.

In this week addition there were many great post but here a few of my personal favorites.

Sound Money Matters with That Make Me Stabby: Credit Card Debt Forgiveness
Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck with Toilet Paper as an Economic Indicator
The Financial Blogger with Now it’s time to withdraw your money from the market
Budgets are Sexy with My #1 tip for saving money
The Credit ToolBox with The 5th step to repair bad credit

Take some time here to review this list of great post and learn something new about your personal finances. Also leave me a comment and let me know what your favorite post was.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Blog Carnivals, Carinval of personal finance, The Digerati Life

5 Simple Ways To Stop Quick Buying Desicions From Destroying Your Finances?

November 10, 2008 By Christopher Leave a Comment

The Root Of All Your Financial Problems.

Recently a friend of mine came to me talking about how he could save more money on his heating bill with a new type of heater that he said would drop my heating bill by 50%. Now at first I was a bit sceptical but then they told me about a few other people who had one of these heaters and said they had a dramatic drop in there heating bills.

At first the idea seemed great so I decide I would like to check one out. My friend then informed me that there were only a few heaters left at the lower price and that we need to act fast. I then asked how much these heaters were going for and he said for around $375!

I’m glad people are looking out for me but $375 is a lot to put down for something you don’t know that will absolutely work and as interested as I was I decide to hold off and see what others thought about there heaters first.

In the end I did the math on the heater and what it would cost to run it and found it would only save me around $20 a month at best.

In this situation I survived the temptation not to follow all the hype and make a careful buying decision. I just wish I could have done this in a few other buying decisions. So in this post I am going to give you five simple tips to show you how to steer clear of making quick financial decisions.

A Few Tips To Keep You On Track.

Stay away from high pressure sales situations. I hate high pressure sale tactics but worst of all they sucker people into a buying decision without even letting you have a little time to think about it. They usually want you to buy right now and won’t let you out of there site until they have tried everything they have. Timeshare agents are notorious for this.
When people ask you to make a decision tell them you will think about. This has been my best solution for staying out of those quick buying and hard selling situations. Tell them you’ll think about it and walk away.
Research what you want to buy. Knowing a little bit more about the product will help you understand if your really need this product or if it something you could do without.
Don’t go to places that will inspire you to buy quickly. Places like Walmart known for this. You buy it cause its cheap and inexpensive but before you know it you have over a $100 racked up. I’ve also seen where others believe that by buying something on sale will save them that much more money. Simply buying something on sale still means you have to spend money to buy it and in reality doesn’t save you anything.
Ask others to keep you accountable. When you are making buying decisions make sure someone comes with you to keep you accountable and help you in making those buying decision. My wife and I do this all the time when we go grocery shopping.

Do You Make Quick Buying Decisions?

Did you ever buy something and then after you bought it wished you would have taken more time to see if it was really in your best interest? Take time now to share a few of your stories in the comments section below and maybe we can learn to make better buying decisions.

Filed Under: Debt Managment Tagged With: decisions, quick buying desicions, Saving Money