Don't Discount Dollar Stores

Tip #277 - Don't Discount Dollar Stores. Dollar stores often get a bad rap. "It's cheap stuff." "It's all junk made in China." "The things from there won't last." And most of those comments have a lot of truth to them. However, sometimes the cheap things are what we need to buy. Or we'd be buying them anyway for more money in stores such as Target, a party store, or an office supply store. And in reality, most of the stuff from these stores come from the exact same place as the Dollar Store. While I am not a big fan of disposable things and junk that piles up in our landfills, there are sometimes we have to buy throw-away items. And the Dollar Store is as good a place as any for buying this kind of stuff.

What the Dollar Store is Useful For:

--Birthday Parties - Goody bags and party supplies such as plates, cups, and napkins are the perfect items to buy in Dollar Stores. They are much cheaper than party stores, although the selection is not as good.

--Incentives - Stickers, pencils, and tattoos to be used for potty training, chores well-done, or when your children master some school-work are cheap enough at Dollar Stores and are often much less than at mass-merchandise stores.

--School Supplies - Glue sticks, staplers, tape, notebooks, folders, etc are typical Dollar Store items. There are usually great sales at the start of the school year for school supplies. But when you run out of things you need mid-year, the Dollar Store is a good place to stock up, and much cheaper than office supply stores.

--Travel - If you are taking a long car trip or plane ride and want to keep your little ones occupied, small toys that are new to them will occupy a child's attention and excite him more than his same old toys. For a few dollars, you can buy puzzles, activity books, and card games that you can dole out throughout your trip to make for some peaceful traveling.

--Costumes - If you need a cheap pirate's eyepatch or a pretty crown for a princess dress that just needs to last for Halloween night, then don't pay more than one dollar. Head to the Dollar Store first before looking to more expensive party stores.

There is a time and place to buy high-quality items that we want to last. But there are times when we need the cheapest thing possible. Cheap items may fulfill your need as well as an expensive one for a lot less money. That is when we can look to the Dollar Store.

In Real Life (IRL) - My daughter had her 9th birthday party last week. I am not one to usually buy a bunch of little, junky party favors to hand out. But we were having a game night party - bingo, charades, and trivia. And I promised prizes to the winners throughout the night. There were 10 girls total, and I estimated the girls would each win 4 to 5 games each, which meant 40 to 50 prizes. First I hunted through my party stash at home, which included goody bag items from left-over parties - mini-staplers, lip balm, and some card games. Then I headed over to our local dollar store and scoured the shelves. I found a 20-pack of decorative pencils for $1. Then I found a 3-pack of 4-color pens, as well as a 3-pack of mini-globe pencil sharpeners. I picked up a 4-pack of jack games, and a 6-pack of scented highlighters. For $5 I picked up all of the remaining prizes I needed for our game-night party.

Sure there were junky items at the store, but I tried to buy things that the kids would use, and things that would hopefully last past the night. And I think I succeeded. While I was at the store, I browsed through the whole store. And I found things there that would be helpful for other needs besides birthday parties.

At the beginning of the school year, we get a list of school supplies that we need to buy. Some of these items usually include zippered storage bags and a couple dozen glue sticks. The storage bags are used to send home simple projects and usually store pieces of paper. (I volunteer in my daughters' school once per week, and I have had fill these storage bags with small pieces of paper. Some of the bags the teacher gave me that parents had bought were high-priced, thick freezer bags that were being wasted holding pieces of paper. Thin, cheap, no-name storage bags would accomplish the same task. Those freezer bags are expensive!) Our dollar stores carries the cheap bags, which aren't good for freezing meals for the winter, but are perfect for children to bring home schoolwork. I also saw 3 large glue sticks per pack for $1. Our school generally asks that we buy the large glue sticks rather than the small ones that are always very cheap during back-to-school sales. At Wal-Mart, we paid $3 for a 3-pack of large glue sticks. They were the cheapest I could find. But I forgot to look at the dollar store. Next time I will remember.

There were other great supplies there like small staplers and rolls of tape that my kids borrow from me for craft projects all the time. For $1 a pop, it's worth it for them to have their own. I don't care if the tape is cheap when it's just used for kids' projects. There were other items there that were worth a look for future emergencies. I saw an 8-pack of cheap shower caps. Not something I'd normally use, but this past summer when we were blessed with lice, they would have been very handy to have.

So while I am not generally a fan of cheaply-made plastic junk, there are times when I have to buy these types of items. And why not spend only a dollar for them rather than more at other stores?

Sell At A Kids' Consignment Sales

Tip #276 - Sell At Kids' Consignment Sales. A while back, I wrote a post series about where to sell your used things. At the time, I listed consignment sales as an option for selling your children's toys and old clothes. While I knew about this venue, and had shopped at them many times, I had never tried my hand at selling at one of them. As of last week that has changed, so I am going to go more in-depth on this topic.

In most major cities and in some smaller towns, there is a relatively new (I don't remember these when I was growing up) phenomenon of holding kids' consignment sales either once or twice per year in spring and fall. They are often held by preschools, churches, or even private companies. In small towns, there may be one big one per year, while in larger cities, there may be a half-dozen of such sales each weekend in March/April and September/October.

You might have to be a member of the particular church or preschool to sell at these sales, but many of them let outsiders sell there, too. If you have a large lot of kids' clothes, a bunch of old toys, or outgrown baby things, this is the perfect venue for getting rid of a large amount of stuff at once, while still making money.

Why sell your things at a kids' consignment sale versus other venues? As a seller on eBay, I love eBay for selling items when the item is worth at least $10. Is it worth my time and effort to list a bunch of $2 and $3 items on eBay? No way. How about Craigslist? That's another selling venue that I love for items that have wide appeal, are worth at least $10, and are too big to ship on eBay. But most buyers won't come out to a person's house for a $2 or $3 item. Yardsales? This is a great place to sell odds and ends but the chances of getting only shoppers who are looking for kids' items are pretty small. Consignment stores? Another great venue for selling some better name clothes but not so good for a bag of boys' socks.

So basically, for a large amount of items that are worth between $1 and $8 each, the kids' consignment sale becomes the perfect venue. It is a place to get rid of a lot of stuff at once. If you are interested in selling at one of these sales, check out some local moms' sites in your area or check out Kids Consignment Sales. The list isn't inclusive, but is a good place to start. Look for a sale that allows outside sellers, and contact them about how to consign at their next sale. Most consignment sales take 50 percent of the proceeds for their church, preschool, or business, but you may get as much as 70 percent at some sales if you volunteer a few hours at the sale. As a bonus, volunteers often get to attend a preview sale before the public.

Once you decide on a particular sale to sell at, you need to follow their guidelines for selling. Most only let you sell in-season clothes, some take all seasons. Some take clothes up to size 14; others do only younger kids' clothes. Some take baby gear; others do not. For most sales, you need to tag your items with an index card of some sort with the name of the item, the price, and your initials or other identifier. You also need a tagging gun or safety pins, and some tape. At the end of the sale, you usually have the option of picking up your unsold items or leaving them there to be donated to charity. After a few weeks you get a check in the mail for 50 percent (or 60-70%) of what you sold.

In order to prepare for these sales, keep two boxes in the garage, basement or out-of-the-way place. One box should be for the upcoming sale, such as the March spring/summer sales. The other can be for the sale that just passed (fall/winter). As you pull clothes from your children's drawers and closets that no longer fit, put them in the right box. Toys and other non-seasonal items should go in the upcoming sale's box. About a few weeks before the sale, start tagging your items. Price them at prices you would be willing to pay at such a sale. A non-designer pair of jeans tagged at $8 will be unlikely to sell and will end up getting donated. Instead price them competitively at $3 or $4, so they do sell. A few days before the sale, bring over your items to the church or school and then just sit back and wait for your check to arrive in the mail!

In Real Life (IRL) - I love kids' consignment sales! While prices are higher than yardsales, I don't have to drive all over town to find a sale that is selling what I want. Going to a big church multipurpose room filled with kids' clothes is the perfect shopping venue for me. And this past fall, I decided to see if it was the perfect selling venue for me, too. Since I am an experienced eBay and Craigslist seller and an avid consignment sale buyer, I have a good feel for what sells well and at what prices I can expect.

About a month before the spring sales started, I looked at all of the different sales in my area on my favorite local DC site, called Our-Kids. I had probably been to about 10 of the consignment sales in the past and knew which ones were bigger, which sold better brand clothes, and which were well-attended. Based on my experience, I picked a sale where I thought my things would do well (I actually picked a smaller sale that isn't overloaded with clothing and didn't have a consignor fee to participate).

About a week before the sale, a friend came over who was also going to sell at the same sale, and we tagged our items together. We had a fun afternoon, while our kids played, and we got most of the tagging done in just a couple of hours. Afterwards, I double-checked a few items on eBay to make sure they weren't high sellers, and I actually pulled a few things out of my box which I thought I could make more money on on eBay. I also added a few things during the week as I scoured through my children's rooms. The day before the sale, I dropped off my bags of items (about 40-50 things total) at the preschool.

The sale was last weekend. I attended during the last hour and saw that most of my items were sold. I'm not sure yet how much I earned, but I'm guessing it will be about $50 for a bunch of smaller items that I had nowhere else to sell. Not bad for a couple hours of "work" with my friend.

Find Out What Your Savings Bonds Are Worth

Tip # 275 - Find Out What Your Savings Bonds Are Worth. Did your grandparents give you savings bonds for birthdays? Christmas? Special Occasions? Remember those birthday envelopes that you opened and you hated? It wasn't a present. It wasn't even cash. It was bonds to become cash one day in the future. The value on the bond would say '$25' or '$50' or maybe even '$100.' And at first you thought, "Cool, I just got a $100 birthday gift." But then your mom or dad would remind you that it's not worth $100 today. It would be worth $100 at some point in the future. "Aww, shucks," what a bummer gift, you thought.

Well, if you are now in your twenties, thirties, or older, you may be changing your tune a bit about those "bummer gifts," if you haven't yet cashed in those bonds, that is. A typical bond that was given as gifts was often the "EE" bond or "Double E" bond as they are known. While the bond may have taken 5, 7, or 10 years to be worth the face value written on the bond, they continue to earn interest for a total of 30 years. And if you got them as gifts back in the 1980's that interest may have been 6%. In the early 90's it was also earning about 4% interest. In the early 2000's, a little over 3%. Find me a place today where I can get a relatively risk-free, tax-deferred interest of 6%, and I'd be a happy woman. Problem is you can't. Which is why if you are still holding on to these bonds, and they are still earning interest, then they are the gift that is still giving (unlike that plastic toy Cousin Myrna gave you that you thought was cool that has long since broken).

So, think back to your younger years, give your mom or dad or grandparents a call, look in the lockbox and find out if you are still holding on to these savings bonds. If you find out that you still have some, then go to Treasury Direct to find out what they are worth. Key in the Series (such as 'EE'), the Denomination, the Serial Number, and the Issue Date and it will calculate the current value of the bond. Even if you do not know the serial number, it will still calculate the current value. If the bond is no longer earning interest, then the result will show a blank under "Interest Rate." If it is still earning interest, then it will show the rate that the bond is earning and will give the final maturity date of the bond (after which it will no longer earn interest).

If you find out that your bond is no longer earning interest, then head over to your local bank with your bonds and talk to a staff person there about cashing them in. If the bond it still earning interest, take note of the maturity dates of each of your bonds, so you can cash them in when they mature. You can cash them in before maturity date, but chances are you won't be able to make as good of an interest rate in other risk-free investments today, so consider carefully if you really need to cash them in.

In Real Life (IRL) - For the last several years, I have been keeping a net worth statement. At first, the amount I had written down on the staement for my EE bonds was just an estimate. I estimated the worth of the bonds based on the amount of interest I remembered that they were earning. Then about a year ago, I was curious if my estimates were really that accurate. So I pulled my bonds out of our safe-deposit box and found the Treasury Direct website, and calculated their worth. My estimates actually had been a bit low because I had forgotten about some bonds that I had gotten as gifts. More importantly than the worth, I took note of the maturity dates on the bonds and made a list of when I needed to cash them in.

Flash back to September 1980 - I celebrated my bat-mitzvah and was given a few bonds as gifts. My parents saved them for me and gave them to me when I graduated college. Fast forward to September 2010 and the bonds are now 30 years old! Not only that, they have stopped earning interest - they were earning 6% annually all of these years. Yesterday, I pulled them out of the safe deposit box again, and I am going to head over to local branch of my bank this week to cash them in. The four bonds that I have from 1980 have denominations of $100, $100, $75, and $50. Today they are worth $1088! Woohoo! The nice thing about government bonds is that you don't have to pay taxes on the interest that they are earning until they are cashed in. (Boo! That means I have to pay taxes on my cashed-in bonds this year.) I still have a bunch of bonds left that I bought in the early 1990's that are currently earning 4% interest (tax-deferred), so I am going to leave them earning interest for now.

So for all of you who think you may have bonds buried deep inside the desk drawers in your house or have them stashed away in a vault at the bank, take note of what you have. Make a list of the issue dates and maturity dates so you can cash them in as soon as they stop earning interest for you. The Treasury Direct site is a neat one, and you can play around with other features on there after you have calculated the worth of your bonds. Now go thank Great-Aunt Sophie for those bonds!

Do A Third-Quarter Review

Saving Money Tip #274 - Do A Third-Quarter Review. It's hard to believe that I just ripped out the September calendar page. In some ways it seems like winter just ended. Three-quarters of the year gone by. It's true that time seems to go faster as we get older. Anyway, enough philosophizing. Today is the day I suggest looking back on the past year to see how well you are doing meeting your goals. Enough of the year has gone by to get a good take on what you have been successful with and what need more work. And there is still a bit of time to make things right again and get closer to your goals before year-end.

So look into your checking accounts, check your balances online for your mutual funds, look at your balances on your credit card loans and car loans or other loans you might have. And come up with net worth. While looking at how much your savings balances have gone up and how much your debt balances have gone down, a net worth calculation gives you a good snapshot of your overall picture.

Today is also the day that you can begin to look forward to next year's goals and plan for the year ahead. Back to school season has slowed down a bit and holiday season hasn't yet kicked in. So there is time to start thinking about next year. Specifics do not need to be written down just yet. But thinking about general goals and vision of what you want in the next year financially can be a good start to making formal financial goals and a written budget at year end. It's soon to be open season for health insurance and other benefits at your place of employment, which is another big factor in your budget and finances.

So tak ean overview of how you are doing so far with your finances, work hard to meet any goals before year-end, and make some general plans for next year.

In Real Life (IRL) - I calculated a net worth statement a few days ago. I had some free time, so I did it a bit early. I pretty much did nothing with our finances over the summer, so this was the first time I got to look at how we are doing. As is par for the course for us, we are behind on our IRA contributions. We have $8000 left to deposit before year-end according to our goals. We have about half of that saved up and need to come up with the remaining $4000. We get an extra paycheck in December so it should work out okay in the end.

Other than that, our mutual funds and stock balances seem to have improved since we last looked in June. It was nice not to worry about the drops that took place over the summer (I didn't look once at our balances), and then to look a couple of days ago and to see that they were fine. That's why I don't like to get hung up on the day-to-day price fluctuations. It saves me time and anxiety.

We're still waiting for our open enrollment information. We've heard that premiums are going up quite a bit this year, so we will have to see what my husband's company presents to us. We are also still on a wait-and-see mode with my husband's job. We haven't heard any more about his office closing, but we know it's imminent. I think we'll hear more at the end of this year/beginning of next year. In the meantime, the longer we stay here, the harder it's going to be to leave. Our kids like their schools. Our mortgage is getting chipped away each month (we celebrate 10 years in our house next month!), and we have a lot of friends.

So that's where we are as we head into the last quarter of the year. We will work on our specific 2011 financial goals closer to the end of the year, but we don't expect them to change much from this year.

Make Money In An Hour

Tip #273 - Make Money In An Hour. Once all of the big financial things are accomplished such as coming up with financial goals, writing a budget, and making savings a priority, there are small things you can do to save money in an hour's time. First, I know you are busy. We all are. But even so, there should be at least a few minutes in your day at least some days per week that you can do things that help you make money or spend less. It is often the small things that help you meet the goals of your big things such as sticking to your budget. Let's look at some examples.

-If your goal is to eat out less then make food preparations in advance, especially for meals that you need to eat outside the home. Waking at 6 am and running out the door at 6:45 AM doesn't leave you much time for making lunch. Find time in your day when you don't have to be out the door in a hurry to prepare your lunch. This could mean making a sandwich the night before, washing grapes and putting them into small containers in advance on Sunday night, cooking a pot of noodles and separating them into a few meals for the week, cutting apples and soaking them in lemon juice or orange juice, filling up your water bottle, and otherwise making lunch preparations in your free time rather than when you are rushed.

-If your goal is to spend less at the grocery store, then find time in your free moments to study the weekly grocery circulars. Spend time making a shopping list. Check out your cabinets and your refrigerator to see what you actually need to buy. Cut out coupons while you are watching television or taking a car ride. If you go to the supermarket without a shopping list, without knowing what you absolutely need to buy versus what can wait a few weeks, without coupons, and without knowing which store has the best prices for what you need, you will end up spending more money than is necessary.

-If your goal is to make some money on the side, then find time to do some money-making activities. If you have a free hour, take some surveys online. The pay isn't much at all but it's better than the pay you get for watching tv. And with a few minutes here and there, it adds up to a few small checks. Sign up for Swagbucks to use as your search engine online. Just by using it on a regular basis, you should be able to build up gift cards at Amazon that can be used toward gifts, groceries, a needed appliance, etc. If you want to make bigger cash, then take time to go through your clothes that don't fit and bring them to a consignment store. Or go through your children's toys and clothing and tag them for a consignment sale. Find bigger items and put for sale on Craigslist. Or sell things on eBay. If nothing else, start a box for a future garage sale, and throw things in the box throughout the year for one big sale in the spring. These are small, but effective ways to make money without leaving the house and perfect for someone who only has a free hour here or there.

-If your goal is to cut down on spending for clothing and household items then organize your things. You might be surprised at what you already own and do not need to buy. Fill a free hour with matching sock from your mismatched sock bag. Look through your cabinets and pull from the back any leftover shampoo bottles, cleaning detergents, toothpaste, and sponges that you bought way back when but forgot about. Go through children's toys and find missing pieces. Anything that can be used that you already own will save money on not buying new ones of the same object.

-If your goal is to do more do-it-yourself work rather than hire someone, then start doing it. That 70's wallpaper in the bathroom? Spend a few minutes a day spraying it with water and peeling. It may take weeks, but it will come down if you take an hour here and there to work on it. Spend time to sew a button your suit jacket. Wash a stain out of a blouse. Start planning games, crafts, or activities for your child's birthday party next month.

Without making this post any longer than it already is, there are many things you can do in even limited spare time to cut down on costs. They shouldn't come at the expense of bigger money-making and money-saving strategies, but they can be helpful supplements to a solid financial plan that you have set out for yourself.

In Real Life (IRL) - I am as guilty as the next person for wasting time. When I have free time, I love to browse the Internet, read books, or sit on the hammock. But as a stay-at-home mom, I have many responsibilities such as making school lunches, buying groceries, planning birthday parties, and keeping the house presentable (at least somewhat). And even though I do not officially work for a living, I do help contribute to my household financially. And I do it in my spare time. I continually go though my children's toys and list them on Craigslist when they outgrow them. I put our used books, DVDs, and CDs on Amazon if it will bring in some money. This month, I've been filling a box to sell items at a kids' consignment sale.

Generally, I take up to 3 surveys a day on the computer. I use Swagbucks as my search engine rather than Google and have built up about $70 balance in gift cards on Amazon in a year's time. When we wanted to redo my daughter's bedroom and two bathrooms, I painstakingly removed wallpaper and wallpaper borders literally for a few minutes per day while the kids napped. It was much cheaper than hiring someone to do it for us. And it wasn't bad to peel for 10 minutes at a time.

At least once per week, I make shortcuts in the kitchen. I prepare peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in advance and freeze them for my kids' lunches. I cut up fruit and put in small containers, and open a bag of pretzels or other snack and dole out in small quantities for the week. It makes it much easier to pack lunch in the morning and makes us less likely to rely on school-bought lunches which are at least twice the price of what I can put together. I try to make healthy snacks such as apple muffins in my spare time rather than rely on convenience foods. I try to keep water bottles filled at all times so we bring them with us rather than have to buy drinks while we are out.

I always browse the grocery circulars and try to cut out coupons when we take long car rides. If not, I at least look through the coupons in advance and bring them with me to the store. I make a shopping list before I go. I try to buy certain items when I am at certain stores that have better deals on those items so I am not overpaying at other stores.

Of course, there are always more things I can do in my spare time to help make money. However, I tend to do the things I like (such as kitchen work) more than the ones I dislike (such as sewing). So none of us is perfect with our finances, but I find when I do take the time to make us money or save us money, I always feel better about spending on things we need to buy. All of us can spare some time here and there to make some money in order to stick to our budget and reach our financial goals. For other financial ideas, check out Frugal Fridays.

Start Off On The Right Foot

Tip #272 - Start Off On The Right Foot. First, two quick notes - sorry about the lack of posting. All I can say is that I'm not as organized as I could be and the start of school is crazy! Second, this post is not meant to make people feel bad about getting a late start to finances, it's meant to encourage people to start early.

For those of you who went to college, think about the grades you got the first semester. You had your semester GPA and you had your cumulative GPA. Your semester GPA WAS your cumulative GPA. So if you got a 3.8 the first semester, your cumulative GPA was a 3.8. When second semester grades came out, they counted as half of your cumulative GPA (assuming you took the same number of credits as the first semester). So if you got a 3.4 then your new cumulative GPA is a 3.6. The first semester of your sophomore arrives and you get a 3.6. These grades contribute toward one-third of your cumulative GPA (again assuming an equal number of credits as each of the first two semesters), and you still have a 3.6 GPA. For the remainder of your sophomore year, your whole junior year, and your first semester senior year, you get a 3.6, a 3.4, a 3.8, and a 3.6 semester GPA, respectively. Now it's your last semester of your senior year, you have maintained a solid cumulative 3.6 GPA up to that point. And you slack off the last semester and get a lousy 2.0! Aaahh! How will that effect your cumulative GPA? Surprisingly, not that much. Your cumulative GPA is still a respectable 3.4.

Do grades in the early years of college count more than grades toward the end of college? No, of course not. Each semester counts 1/8 toward the total. But as time goes by, each semester's GPA contributes a smaller proportion toward your cumulative GPA (as earlier semesters' GPAs do as well). Let's look at this scenario in reverse. Suppose the college student started out with a 2.0 first semester. If he wants to graduate with a cumulative GPA of 3.4 by the time he graduates, he needs to buckle down and get a solid 3.6 GPA's each of the remaining semesters. Sounds hard, doesn't it? It can be done, but psychologically, it's harder because he's starting low and needs to improve.

How does this apply to finances? Saving money is similar to that cumulative GPA. How well you do early on sets the stage for the rest of your saving years. And it's even more dramatic because the early savings has time to compound its earnings. We've probably all heard those financial scenarios. If you put $100 away per month for 10 years in an account earning 3% interest and then do nothing for the next 20 years, you will have over $25,000.* If you wait twenty years until you start saving and put away $100 per month for 10 years you will have just under $14,000.* (The amounts are more dramatic with greater interest rates and/or longer time periods.)

In other words, sacrifice a bit now to put away savings in order to be able to sit back and not worry about it later. It's very easy to put off your savings for when you think things will get better when you are older or when you will be making more money. But why not start now, and if you are in a position to save later on, then by all means do it. But if you aren't, at least you can fall back on what you have already done. If you already have many years behind you where you weren't saving, then start now. The sooner you do it, the greater your cumulative worth will be. (And if you are responsible for a young adult, stress the them the importance of saving early. Starting them off on the right foot will set them up for many years of savings.)

In Real Life (IRL) - When I graduated college and was living on a meager salary, I managed to put away a couple hundred dollars per month, even though at the time there were plenty of other things I could have done with the money - live in a nicer apartment, live without roommates, go out to dinner more, etc. My dad taught me the importance of savings, so I stashed away that savings month after month after month. Then 12 years later when I had my first child, I stopped working (for pay), and stopped saving. That was 9 years ago. Back then in my imagined, perfect life I had planned to go back to work after 5 years and start saving again when my (not yet conceived) second child was 3 years old. In my reality now, my third child is now 3, and I still haven't gone back to work.

That savings I did for about 12 years has allowed us to make a decent-sized down-payment on a house and allowed us to do a 15-year mortgage. It also allowed us to have an emergency fund available and for me to be a stay-at-home mom. (Other things also contributed.) The fact is my early savings has paid dividends both literally and figuratively. Psychologically, it has been freeing knowing that we have that money there for emergencies. Financially, it has allowed us to pursue other savings opportunities more freely - like putting money for college and retirement. Personally, it has allowed us to pursue other things we wanted like staying home with my children.

This in no way is intended to sound like bragging. Believe me, I know I started out ahead of many other by financial benefits my parents gave me (I had no college or car loan when I got out of college.) Instead, I want to point out how freeing it was to save early when I really didn't have too many financial responsibilities. Back then the financial decision I made was whether to share an apartment with a roommate or to put away $200 per month. If I hadn't saved, my decision now would be do I put away money per month or do I pay for my child's braces (sorry, honey, crooked teeth are in style).

If you haven't started on a savings plan yet, don't despair. Now is the best time to get started. Think about what sacrifices you can make. If the sacrifices are still relatively easy (put away $50 per month versus eat out once per month or put away $100 per month versus take a beach vacation) then make them. It's better than the alternative decisions you might have to make down the road such as looking for a second job at age 70 or not be able to pay your rent. It's not too late to start off on the right foot.

*I used bankrate.com to do my calculations.

For other ideas on saving money, check out Frugal Friday over at Life As Mom.

Start Out Simply

Tip #271 - Start Out Simply. When thinking about our finances, it's easy to get overwhelmed - stocks, bonds, budgets, taxes, interest rates, IRAs, 401(k)s, 529s. It's understandable that many people just throw their hands in the air and ignore everything that has to do with money. There is A LOT to learn when it comes to finances. There's also a lot to learn when it comes to cooking. How many of us cook gourmet 5-course dinners with exotic ingredients using techniques such as braising, sauteing, poaching, and blanching? Very few. Instead, most of us learn how to bake, broil, and grill and mangage to keep our families fed well. And we call it good. So why do we think we have to understand everything in order to manage our finances? Does it matter if we don't fully understand the consequences of the Fed raising interest rates by 1/2 percent? Does it matter if we can't predict what Wall Street will do after a fall in foreign markets? Does it matter if we don't quite comprehend the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit?

Of course it doesn't. We need to know how to live on less than we earn and to build up our savings. Just like the beginning cook needs to know how to boil water and put in some dry spaghetti to feed her family. Once we've done that, we can learn how to heat up jarred sauce to add to the spaghetti. And then maybe we can learn how make the sauce ourselves with freshly bought tomatoes. And then maybe we can learn how to grow our own tomatoes to make our own sauce. But even if we never learn to make homemade pasta, we still feed our family well by starting out simply with dried spaghetti and boiling water.

Why can't we apply that same logic to our finances? We can! Don't be overwhelmed if you don't understand what affects the direction of interest rates, if 529s and 401(k)s are just numbers to you, or if the thought of losing money in the stock market sends shivers up your spine. The important thing is to learn how to put away some money month after month. This can be as simple as creating a budget, putting your money in a savings account and CDs and calling it good. Once you have conquered that, you can start contributing to your company's 401(k) plan, even if is all in guaranteed investments. Then maybe you'll start investigating various investments for your daughter's college fund. And then you might start investing in mutual funds, and then stocks. Or maybe you won't. Maybe you will never invest in individual stocks. Maybe you won't ever understand the how Greece's economic crisis affects the US economy. But if you can at least start out simply with a budget including a line-item for savings, you are doing well. You can build up from there. Otherwise, it will be like making chateau briand when you haven't mastered grilling a hamburger, you won't be able to get it right.

In Real Life (IRL) - I got my first passbook savings account when I was a 7- or 8-year old kid. I understood that if I gave my bank $100 on January 1st that they would give me about $105 back on December 31. It sounded like a good deal to me then - better than sitting in my drawer, anyway. (And 5 percent on a savings account sounds like a great deal to me today!) I also learned that if I saved my allowance week after week, I could buy something very nice after a few months. And if I blew my allowance on gum and candy, I wouldn't have enough money for a nice toy several months later.

A few years after I had that knowledge, my dad taught me about money market accounts. If I put a larger amount of money in that, I could get a greater rate of return than in the passbook savings account. But I had to keep my balance above a certain amount, and I could only make large withdrawals at a time. My knowledge of finances was quite simple back then. But it served me well. I learned if I put money away I could make back more money. And the more and longer I put it away the more I got back.

When I first started out on my own after college, I continued to put money into banks, until my dad taught me about mutual funds. I, little by little, started to add money to that account. Then I began investing in my company's 401(k). Once I maxed out on that, my dad suggested IRAs. Then I joined an investment club and learned to invest in stocks. All the while, I continued to save my "allowance" (income) so I could buy a house one day. It wasn't until we bought one that I learned about tax deductions. And when I had kids, I read up on 529 Plans. It's been over 30 years of learning to get to the piont where I am today. And I still don't know squat about selling stocks short or don't read up or care about how the Nikkei market did yesterday. But I can make a darn good hamburger. And sometimes I can even add a few tasty sides. All because I started out my financial education simply.