Wealth: One Card Budget

Keeping a bunch of envelopes around the house or at arm’s reach can be a pain in the Kim Jong-Un. It’s one of the primary reasons that the envelope system of budgeting is hard for some people. If you don’t have the luxury of carrying around a purse or a man-bag (AKA: a satchel, AKA: Indiana Jones had one), keeping track of the envelopes can really be enough in itself to stop someone from using that way of budgeting. That’s why I offer an alternative to the equal to zero budget. The alternative is what I like to call the One Card Budget. With this budget, one can easily manage their expenses, track their spending, and make money by spending money.

The budget itself revolves around one simple rule: put everything on one credit card. I know; it seems a bit wild to be talking about savings and credit cards in the same sentence but it works. In fact, it works just about as well as any cut scene in a Marvel movie where Stan Lee gets five more seconds of fame. The best part is that it’s one of the easiest out there to keep track of.

Wealth: Equal to Zero Budget

Making more money each month is hard. Saving more money is easier. When one is trying to put together their own dividend scythe or simply just trying to put away money, the easiest way to do so is to learn how to budget effectively.

A budget can come in many forms. I'll be detailing many different budgets on the blog soon but first I wanted to start with one of the most common - the "Equal to Zero" budget. If any of you have ever read anything by Dave Ramsey, you've likely become very familiar already with this type of budget. If you haven't, I'll try my best to walk you through how you could create and use this type of budget for the very first time.

Don't worry if you have never put together a budget before. They aren't as scary as everyone talks them up to be. They simply require a little time and a good bit of control in order to work. The particular budget that I want to talk about today requires only two columns that pretty much anyone could emulate.

Wealth: Happy Hour

Making sure that you have additional income for investing while still having a fun filled life can be tough sometimes. Whether it's batting away friends that want to go out to eat or simply trying to work more to gain more income, making sure that there is money left at the end of the month can be harder than it sounds. That's why there is happy hour.

No, I don't mean happy hour in the bedroom sense. Although, that is definitely a happy hour! What I mean is going out to eat while the local eateries offer discounts during their "slower" hours of the day. Where the restaurant benefits from gaining a customer where there normally wouldn't be one, you benefit from the nice price deduction on the same or somewhat lesser portion sized meal.

Happy hour has many possible origins. Some say that it originated from the United States Navy in early 1913 when a group of stay at home mom's (homemakers?) organized a get together semi-weekly called the Happy Hour Social. Others believe that it was simply made by restaurants as yet another hallmark way to make some more dough!

I'll Start Saving Tomorrow

It's a statement that I feel that a lot of us hear quite often from those in our company. I'll start saving tomorrow. It's easy to say, isn't it? And it sounds good! If only it were true.

What is the difference between us and them though? Why were some of us actually successful when we put our saving ahead of our over indulgences? It's a tough question to answer but I've been thinking about it a lot lately because in the recent past I have been approached by a much larger handful of people than normal that have asked me how I have been doing it.

For me, the answer is simple. Living at a deficit is what creates wealth. It's been proven time and time again by those who stay wealthy. The way that I myself create this deficit for my wife and I is that anytime we are about to buy something, I ask both of us,

"will we actually use this or will this be used once and then forgotten?"

One would think that it would be easy to overcome this statement. After all, you can justify just about anything if given enough time to think about something. The very act however seems to bring out a purpose for not buying. This is the purpose that I am forever grateful for. Where buying gives the purpose of gaining something new, the act of asking whether or not you should seems to give a greater outlook.

I ask myself again then, how am I any different than so many others who have asked for my help but ultimately failed to apply it? Is it a change of mindset brought on by the consumerism that has been bred in them their entire life? Or is it something different that I just can't seem to see? The fact of the matter is that it seems to work for me. Then why should it not work for others? 

I then pose this question to my readers; why is it that others find it so incredibly hard to live at a deficit? Do people internally just not want to retire? Are they running away from their mortality? Can they really not stop themselves from over indulging? Why do you think this is the case? 

Savings Down, Spirits Up!

Some months are better than others. That month is not this month. I've just finalized the budget from June so I could see how much could be transferred to the various accounts that the wife and I hold and let's just say that this month was a little slim on the transfers. That's life though I suppose.

We can't go backwards in time currently so I have to simply accept that we had a bad month and analyze why and how we came to be where we are. Once the analysis is complete, we can attack the problem and hope to change some habits so that moving forward we do not find ourselves in such a position. That being said, there were quite a few problems this last month when it came to saving money.

First off, we were part of a wedding. Normally this doesn't mean too much but my wife was the matron of honor. This means taking the bride to be out on her bachelorette party (funded by us) and of course hosting the bridal shower, and not be forgotten is the task of buying the necessities such as a dress for each occasion and bringing food as well. Couple this fact with the fact that June was my birthday month where I bought an electric guitar (used - that way I could save money and get more for my purchase) and also that I was a groomsman for the very same wedding and you've got some money flowing out of the bank account.

When Discounts Dry Up

Going hand and hand with my last article, I wanted to take a deeper look into what one should be doing when the market isn't showing many deals. In addition to spending that time looking and waiting at new opportunities in the market, one should also bring saving to the forefront of their minds. This ensures that when that deal hits, you'll be prepared for it.