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Budget Dial Communications Living on a Budget in a Non Budget World
Issue Date January 1, 2007
Money Saving Tips
Featured Article New Year Financial Tips
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The Frugal Five
Frugal Food Soup filling and frugal!
The beginning of the year! A time for reflection and renewal. How did you do on your 2006 Financial Goals? Were you able to make some goals for the new year? If you haven't we will be reviewing some tips to get you started for 2007.
If you are new to Living on a budget in a non budget world, check out our past issues
Money Saving Tips:
When approaching hills or steep slopes while driving, accelerate before the hill. Accelerating once on the slope will consume much more gas.
When shopping, buy the amount you need. Just because something is on sale doesn't mean you need to purchase a large quantity of it. Buy only what you know you will use and no more.
Find more money saving tips and Thrifty Thursday Tips
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New Year Financial Tips
Is one of your 2007 New Year Resolutions to get in better financial shape! Here are some little things that you can you do to jumpstart your New Year's Financial plan.
Create your 2007 filing system. This might include new file folders, a new box to hold them or space in a filing cabinet with easy access.
Set up a folder to collect all the important 2006 tax documents which will be arriving soon. Sure to arrive at your house are W-2s, 1099s, mortgage statements, etc.
Set up an appointment with your tax professional early so you get the appointment of your choice. This also gives you a deadline to get your information ready! If you’re self-employed, the next quarterly estimated tax payment will be due on January 15. If you prefer to do taxes yourself check out TurboTax
Review last year’s retirement investments. You should be especially reviewing 401k contributions? Can you make additional contributions in 2007? A good rule of thumb is to increase your contribution % by the same amount you got a raise for! Remember you can still make a 2006 IRA contribution until Apr 15, 2007.
Are you tracking your money? The beginning of the year
is a great time to start tracking your budget via software. Microsoft Money 2007 Deluxe
- Savings & Spending Budget helps you plan for retirement, savings, and debt repayment
- Money's Spending Tracker automatically categories your transactions and compares them to your budget
- Manage your bills using multiple online accounts, even schedule the payment of bills in advance
- Simplify your taxes by automatically exporting your information for tax software
- See all of your accounts--checking, savings, investments, and credit--in one place
Will and Estate Planning. Don't stop putting this off ! No one wants to think about dying Planning for the future and protecting against uncertainty is life insurance why exists.
Create your Freedom Account We all know those car and home
repairs, school fees, medical expenses and vacations are going to happen. Why
not determine how much you’ll need and save 1/12 of it each month? Some
people call them "rainy day funds" or you can follow financial expert
Mary Hunt's freedom account advice 
Financial Goals for next year Think about where you want to be next year at this time financially. If you want to save $5000, put aside $14 each day and you’ll be there! Break down your financial goals into monthly, weekly and daily amounts and watch how quickly your savings will grow.
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Money Blog Spotlight
One Frugal Girl see money as the ticket to freedom. I am 29, happily married to the sweetest man in the world, and desperately trying to find ways to scrimp and save so that I can retire or start a second career as soon as possible.
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Top Discussions on the Save Money and Budgeting Forums
Do you pay extra car payments? If you have a
car loan, do you make extra payments on it, and if so, how much? What are
the benefits of paying off your car early versus putting the money in your
emergency fund? I'm trying to determine the best thing to do in my
situation (I owe $6,300 on my 2002 car at 4.39 percent and I'm earning
4.4% in ING not including other funds in CDs making higher rates). In a
couple of months when my personal debt is gone, I was planning to make
extra payments on my car to retire it early. What would you do?
How was your 2006 financially speaking?
As we wind down 2006, I'm starting to look
at how our portfolio fared this year. Our worst equity fund is up over
10.5% and our best is up nearly 40%. And our cash and fixed-income
investments fared well too thanks to higher interest rates.
All in all, a very good year. Hope you all did well too.
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The Frugal Five
Sherry is a new mother with a 10 month old baby from Arizonia
What is your financial life? My husband and I just had a our first child. It was really a last minute decision for me to stay home and we didn't prepare for it financially . However the good news is that I starting working for several companies at home as a customer service rep and also do some occassional ebay selling to help make ends meet. We are currently following Dave Ramsey baby step program to get out of debt.
What is your budget
buster?
Baby stuff. I wasn't able to breastfeed so the formula is very expensive. I try to do the coupons. Diapers are expensive but I tend to use the generic names.
What is your favorite money saving tip?
I am pretty new to this frugal lifestyle that you need to almost treat
this as a job. Using coupons and planning for food can greatly decrease
your cost. Also staying out of the stores helps as well.
If you had an extra $1000 what would you do with it?
I would pay
it towards credit cards since we are on Step 2 for Dave Ramsey.
What is your best resource for frugal living?
Well the Dave Ramsey
message boards.
They are very helpful to get me on the frugal lifestyle and get
out of debt model.
Thanks Sherry for sharing all of your great tips! Let us know if you would like to be profiled in the Frugal Five
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Frugal Meal Planning
Soup: Simple, Frugal and Filling Fare!
Soup making isn’t complicated, and it is a great simple, frugal, and filling meal, especially if you combine it with homemade bread ( There are some basics to soup making. The most important thing to remember is to relax and experiment!
Soup is basically a liquid base and fillers.
Bases:
-Store-bought cans of stock—beef, chicken, vegetable
-Bouillon cubes (make them low salt if you can!)
-Tomato juice/vegetable juice
-The saved juices from that crock-pot chicken that you could put into a recycled container and shove into the freezer just for this special moment!
-Milk and/or canned evaporated milk—makes great bases to chowders and potato soups
-Desperate? How about ketchup mixed with water or a bit of leftover pasta sauce mixed with water?
Basically, if it’s a savory (although there are some wonderful summer soups with sweet bases, which is an entirely different article!), flavorful, liquid, I can and will consider it for a soup base!
Fillers:
-Almost anything from your fridge! I keep a container in the freezer just for soup making. I put everything in that can be used for future soup: a few teaspoons of leftover vegetables from dinner, half a slice of leftover meatloaf, leftover meat of any kind, the last bit of leftover spaghetti sauce that I get out of the jar with some water will be poured over the whole thing as well (it adds to the base flavor), the last ten ziti in the pasta strainer that no one has room to eat; it all goes into my soup container in the freezer! Oh, and how about those sad, over-frozen peas sitting way back in your freezer (don’t ask how I know they work so well!)?
-A mix of canned or frozen vegetables works well too! Just grab a bit out of each freezer bag or a can of corn, peas, and green beans with some pasta of some type (even spaghetti, broken into little pieces) added to your base, and you have quick soup!
-Instant potato flakes help to thicken soups, add flavor, and make them appear more hearty.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cleaned out the fridge and looked at the amassed pile and either decided on a leftover night (restaurant night in our home, laid out as a buffet!), or I’ll put it all together into a pot with some type of stock or base and add a few additional herbs and spices and voila! SOUP!
The only problem with soup making like this is when it’s a big hit and they want you to make it again! My dad loves my refrigerator soups and asks for more of it, but I can rarely, if ever, recreate it. No batch is ever the same twice!
Tammy Paquin is a work from home mom of 3 boys and the publisher of Frugal-Families an online resource for frugality, budgeting and families. You can also get more frugal recipes at Frugal-Families Recipes.
Share a recipe or cooking tip with us
Check out Easy frugal Recipes and Tips to save on your grocery bill for more recipes and food bill savings.
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