Money Hacks

It’s more important to track your spending in a broad sense than it is to make sure you’ve tracked every penny precisely. I used to divide my trips to Safeway into various categories within Quicken:

• Food: Groceries
• Food: Junk
• Periodicals: Newsstand
• Sin: Alcohol
• Household: Supplies

I still break my receipt into these categories when I have time. But often I simply lump the entire trip as groceries — that’s what 95% of it is, anyhow. Worrying about niggly little things can be counter-productive to good personal finance. Often it’s more to make the right general choice, and to worry about optimizing things later.

Are you flooded with junk mail? Don’t have time to call each sender to get off the mailing list? A service called GreenDimes will do take care of some this for you. According to the company’s FAQ:

GreenDimes reduces credit offers, insurance offers, sweepstakes offers, coupon mailers, charitable solicitations and retail catalogs that your household receives. We can’t reduce mailings you receive as a result of a relationship you have with a company or organization. These include magazine subscriptions, bank statements, brokerage statements and school alumni mailings. Please contact those organizations directly to manage your mail with them.

Sounds good to me!

Read more about how to stop junk mail in its tracks.

For your own edification, and for the comfort of future buyers, it makes a lot of sense to maintain adequate records of your automobile maintenance.

Designate a specific location where you’ll keep records of scheduled service performed, oil changes, and other important records. These will prove a valuable reference to you as long as you own your vehicle. But they’ll also prove useful when it comes time to sell the car to someone else.

Read more about how to sell a used car.

For the next few days, Money Hacks will be sharing some great ways to save money while celebrating the season.

Planning saves time and money. It’s best to budget for the holidays at the start of the year, and to acquire gifts year-round. Most of us don’t have the discipline to do that. (I’m the world’s greatest last-minute shopper.) But anyone can make a simple list to track a rudimentary budget:

• Determine your total budget.
• List each person with whom you plan to exchange gifts.
• Brainstorm gift ideas for each person.
• Trim the list.
• Stick to the list.

My wife keeps a gift spreadsheet. This allows her to keep an ongoing list of gift ideas for the important people in her life. It can be used year-round — for birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. It’s a convenient way for her to budget her gifts.

Read more frugal Christmas tips.

Take 90 minutes to have a serious conversation about your household financial situation.  Set up an appointment with your significant other to review where you are at financially.  Set goals for debt reduction, setting up an emergency fund, and for saving money to purchase something you both would enjoy.  Be specific in the steps you will take to reach your goals and how you will hold each other accountable.  Be truthful about setbacks and celebrate your sucesses.

Take stock of all your liabilities, so you know exactly how much you owe to the world. Put them in a spreadsheet, with monthly payments, interest amounts, balances, and a running grand total of all your balances. Update it monthly as you pay off debt, and watch the overall amount go down slowly. It’s very motivational.

[This information via Zen Habits.]

Ron at The Wisdom Journal suggests a “sneaky” way to save.

“People give high priority to printed bills,” he writes, “so think of your savings as a bill that simply must be paid. You have no choice in the matter. Period.”

I recently exchanged e-mail with another person who uses a similar approach. She schedules her bills into her calendar as if they are appointments. When it’s time to pay them, a reminder appears on her computer, and she takes care of the bill, just as she would any other obligation.

Obviously, this is overkill for some people. But if you have trouble remembering to pay your bills, these techniques may help.

[This information via The Wisdom Journal, and used with permission.]

Unfortunately disasters can happen at anytime. Earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, and fire can cause havoc to anyone. It is important to keep all of your important financial and personal paperwork in one place for it to be portable (electronically or hard copy) at a moment’s notice. Having some cash on hand might come in handy if you need to leave town quickly or ATM’s or charge cards are not working.

Create a money file to keep your records.  This can be an actual file, or it can be a shoebox. It can even be an encrypted file on your hard drive. You can be organized or as “spontaneous” as you want to be — just keep your records all in one place.

Use the money file to track spending habits, bills, payments, important receipts, and tax documents, and always place them in your money file.

Having a central repository for your financial documents can save a lot of time and headaches!

(You may also be interested to know which financial records to keep and how long to keep them.)