How to save money

Country is suffering with economy. Cost of living is increasing gradually and at the same time unemployment is raising from all the corners. This could be the ideal time to think about our savings and invest the saving money safely. Many people know how to earn money but there are a very few who know how to save money. There is nothing like you have to study some of the articles about how to save your money but you just need to spend money where it is required and keep yourself away where it is not required.

There are several ways to save your money, but keeping everything within the budget and enjoy the activities of life will show you the proper manner of your savings. Your savings with out a proper budget may be not possible and you may not drive your life to a right way. So budget plays a key role in saving money. Discriminate your income and expenses, get high interest tax free savings account, make necessary adjustments when required, figure out how much you require spending for a month and then follow as per the planned budget.

You have to take care of your family requirements apart from the regular spending activities. Open a savings account and keep your extra money in your account. Never keep the extra amount of money with you. You can get some interest on the savings which is an added advantage of your savings. You can easily save money by follow these steps.

Savings money can also be useful for certain unexpected expenses which are not eliminated and common in human life like hospitalization, unemployment and etc.

How online auto insurance quotes can help?

If you are looking for a new auto insurance policy, the first thing you need is car insurance quote. In the past, obtaining auto insurance quotes are time consuming and lengthy. It includes either long conversation on phone or meeting with insurance agents. Today, we can get it easily and quickly using our developed technology.
Different insurance companies charge different premiums for auto insurance, and it differs greatly. You can get a good deal if you've quotes from multiple companies. You can choose the one with suits you better and is more affordable.
And the best thing is that, you don't even need to visit many sites to get multiple quotes. Now it's become easier to get multiple quotes on the same websites. There are few websites offering multiple auto insurance quotes from different companies. All you need to do is type your zip code and a list of the top auto insurance providers in your area will be shown. Then, you need to click on the companies and fill out a short questionnaire, and you will get the quotes.

Since we have so many resources besides us to help, we should use that to save our money and choose the best deal. Obtaining car insurance quotes online is simple and easy and can save 25% or your car insurance premium

Why you need a Free Credit Report?

Your credit report includes information that affect every aspect of your life. It contain the information like where you live, how you make payment of your bills, whether you have any criminal record or sued or have ever filed for bankruptcy.

Now this report is sold to employers, creditors, insurers and other financial service providers who use this report to evaluate your application for insurance, employment, credit, or buying/renting a home.

If your credit report is good, you don't have to worry. Just let the things go on as its going. But if it's mediocre or low, they you might have to pay for it. You will be charged high interest in case of getting a mortgage or other loan. So it's important to get a free credit report and check your credit, so that you work on improving it if it's low.

As per Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the three nationwide consumers reporting companies — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, should provide a free copy of your credit report once in a year, at your request.

How to get your free report?

The three nationwide consumer reporting companies — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, have their contact information on their websites. You can get mailing address and a toll free number through which you can order your free credit report.

What information you need to provide to get your free credit report?

You need to provide you name, address, date of birth and social security number. If you've shifted in last two year, you may also required to provide your previous address.

Stop lying, debunk those myths, and save money

Almost Frugal hosts this week's Carnival of Personal Finance. My top picks from the world of personal finance blogging:

Stop lying, 5 ways to stop overspending. Maybe I should have read this by Adam of Rabbit Funds before I wrote my previous post on how M and I overspend...

12 crazy myths of personal finance. I'd never heard this one before: "Myth 8: I couldn't possibly learn anything about money from a plane crash." But Gary from Total Candor proves that financial lessons are everywhere--even when a plane landed safely on the Hudson River earlier this year.

Grocery Hacks--how to save money on groceries. Matt Jabs at Debt Free Adventure gives a very comprehensive list on how to trim the grocery budget. Plus, as a result of his frugality and health-consciousness, he and his wife lost 60 pounds combined! What more motivation do we need?

Our spending plan is working...I think

“We broke the budget,” my wife M said to me recently with a sigh. “This system isn’t working.”

She gave me a frustrated glance as she scribbled in the checkbook register we use to track our expenses. June and early July are heavy spending months in our household, with birthdays, Father’s Day, and trips to the beach all in the mix. Plus, with all the additional fun-n’-sun activities, the little pile of receipts on our kitchen counter grew relatively big before we got around to logging them. Who wants keep track of your budget when a nice, hot summer day beckons?

As a result, we’d overspent our monthly spending plan to the tune of about $150. And consequently we had less to save toward the down payment we’ve been building to buy a new home.

“Maybe we should try something different.” M said. “This is becoming a habit.”

It’s not broke because it does work

She had me there. It wasn’t the first time we’d “broke the budget.” In truth, our budget is fairly “fluid;” we may overspend one month, and catch up (or almost) in another. August, for example, is a great month for us, with no family birthdays or holidays with gifts we have to wedge into our spending plan.

But our system isn’t broken. In fact, I think it’s working quite well. Here’s why.

• We aren’t overspending with credit cards. Our discretionary spending budget—how much we plan to spend on gas, groceries, gifts, entertainment, etc.—is fairly low, while our goal to save each month for our house down payment is fairly high. So any overspending simply reduces our savings amount that month. If our overspending resulted in racking up credit card debt, I’d be very worried.

(My sister commented to me that it may actually be harder to spend less if you’re saving more, and, ironically, she may be right. I find it easier to agree about to going out to dinner or to the movies when I know we have the money on hand to do so.)

• We know when we’re overspending. Since we’ve been on this tighter discretionary spending budget for several months now, we have a good feel for when we’re exceeding our limit—even before we log in the receipts. And our spending behavior naturally slows down and causes us to question additional purchases when we think we’ve gone over. That’s the whole point of having a budget, to keep our spending under control, and our system is helping us do that.

• We know why we’re overspending. A budget is about making choices, deciding what dollar goes where. In times that we spend more, we save less, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing; neither M nor I want to be so focused on saving that we become misers. Plus, we’re still making steady progress in building up our down payment, so it feels like we have a good balance between the two.

Doubts in the back of my mind

One thing about our overspending does gnaw at me a little; if, for some reason, we had to strictly follow a tight budget, would we have the discipline to do it? I’m not sure. Our record says we wouldn’t, but it doesn’t take into account a big change in mindset. It’s one thing to spend money you have. It's quite another to spend money you don’t.

We could find out soon. Some of the houses we’re seriously considering purchasing will stretch our budget even more and put our discipline to the test. If anything, it could make for some interesting blog posts.

So am I fooling myself that our budget system is working? I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment and let me know.

Score a U.S visa for $500,000

EB-5 visa program which is scheduled to expire by the month of September can be saved with this new policy of investment by immigrants. A bipartisan group of senators is trying to save EB-5 immigrants with this program.

In this program, the foreigners who invest $500,000 in struggling areas will get a temporary visa and if an investment can offer at least 10 jobs for US workers, the temporary visa changes to permanent green card. As per the record, last year, more than $400 million was invested in U.S ventures by EB-5 immigrants.

Though some consider this program unfair as foreign investors can buy a permanent green card, however local officials think the program is a great and effective way to develop the struggling areas.







"It puts us on the map," says Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce."EB-5 gives foreign investors the opportunity to consider a market that they probably wouldn't look at otherwise."

Across the country there are 46 regional centres offering investment in almost everything from ethanol plant to Napa Valley Vineyard.

Ally Bank: The saver's "friend"

If the folks at Ally Bank were looking to catch some attention, they succeeded. Time will tell if it’s truly warranted.

Ally Bank, if you haven’t heard, is the new name of the old GMAC. That’s right, that GMAC, the former financing unit of General Motors. Ally is not owned directly by the troubled car company. Instead, it’s held by parent bank holding company GMAC Financial Services, of which GM still owns a large piece.

Ally caught my eye with its recent marketing campaign. Suddenly, I saw its ads popping up everywhere; on The Wall Street Journal’s website, during The British Open broadcast a few weeks ago. The TV ads were particularly catchy, with a schmarmy salesperson representing the “typical” bank using fine print and broken promises to hoodwink young kids out of a toy truck and a real pony. Ally, in contrast to other banks, “values integrity as much as deposits,” according to its website.

A good story
Sounds pretty good, especially today when consumer trust in financial institutions is pretty low. But make no mistake; Ally does value deposits pretty highly. It’s looking to grow, and grow fast, by offering very attractive interest rates on its products—among the highest around. Its online savings account, for instance, has a 1.75% rate, better even than traditional market leader, ING Direct (1.40% for its Orange Savings Account).

More competition is a good thing, but it’s also good to question just how real higher rates are, or how long they will continue. One thing Ally doesn’t highlight in ads or currently on its website is that parent GMAC Financial was one of the institutions to receive government bailout money for being undercapitalized. The institution is secure now, but that wasn’t necessarily the case at the end of last year.

And in recent weeks, the American Bankers’ Association cried foul to the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) about Ally’s high-growth through high-deposit tactics, which it alluded to as “unsafe and unsound.” Like any bank, Ally loans out depositors’ money and if they depart the bank en masse for higher rates elsewhere, it could conceivably be caught short-handed. An unlikely scenario, but it’s why banks have to have a certain amount of capital on hand in the first place.

The FDIC also required Ally to get written approval to issue debt secured by bank deposits, as well as to keep the regulator informed on just how high above the market average its product rates are. Ally reduced the rates on its savings products from some much higher initial levels it started with in May.

Moral of the story
With savings accounts, like anything, an old rule still applies: If it sounds too good to be true, it often is. Chasing interest rates from one bank to another requires a lot of time and effort for what can often be very little gain. No one’s going to build wealth by getting an extra .25% interest on their emergency cash.

And despite the banking industry’s woes, another old rule also applies: Marketing prevails over common sense. “Valuing integrity” sounds great in a TV commercial. But it’s how actions demonstrate that integrity that really counts.

The true point of living by a budget

In a recent post, Matt at the blog One Million and Beyond describes the fluid budget. I was glad to see it because the "fluid budget" sounds a bit like the one my wife M and I are on.

We've gotten to the cash register at the grocery store and had to take things off the conveyor belt because we exceeded our spending limit for that trip. But at times we've also shifted money from one category because we suddenly decided to spend more in another category. As Matt points out, a "fluid" budget that has some give can work.

Most people think of a budget like a pair of financial handcuffs, very tight and uncomfortable. But the point of a budget is not to determine ahead of time exactly what you are going to spend in every category of your life and then rigidly spend only that amount. A budget is just a tool to help you control your spending so that you are living within--or even better, below--your means.

When your budget is working, it feels good. You know how much you have to spend, you're making conscious decisions about what dollars go where, and most importantly, you're not piling up debt.

Accomplish those things--whether using a rigid or fluid budget--and you'll take a big step toward reaching your financial goals.

More fun at the Carnival of Personal Finance

I saw Matt's post at this week's Carnival, hosted by Christian Personal Finance. Here are couple more of my (and the editor's) picks from the week's selection:

The whole armor of personal finance. At Debt Free Adventure, Matt draws an analogy between the armor of God described in Ephesians 6:10 and the "armor of personal finance." It's a cool and very appropriate parallel (though I prefer the more plain-English version of the verse, instead of ye olde King James version). After all, every financial decision is a spiritual decision.

Buy on the rumor, sell on the news. Dorian from The Personal Financier gives his take on the link between investing and psychology, my favorite aspect of money. One interesting thing he discusses here: How the expectation of getting money, in our own minds, is actually more satisfying than actually getting it. Go figure!