Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

31 Days to a Better Bank Balance

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If you’re ready to make a change and get your finances in order, you need to check out the 31 Days to a Better Bank Balance by my Yakezie friend, Money Crush!

Each post contains a great nugget of personal finance wisdom and a task/step that you can complete that very day to improve your personal finances.  The goal being that at the end of the 31 days, you’ll have a much better hold on where your money is, where it goes, and where it comes from!

Money Crush has already posted the first day today, so go to the link above and get started.  I think you’ll thank yourself for it.

Unautomate Your Finances

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Unautomate Your FinancesIsn’t that a funny title.  Even I had to double take to make sure that it wasn’t typed wrong.  But, yes, unautomate it is.  And the man with the plan is Adam Baker.  You likely know him from ManVsDebt.  Maybe not, but if not, you should.  And he’s got a plan to help you unautomate your finances.  From reading his blog, it certainly seems to have worked for him and after reading the review copy of the ebook, it might just work for a few of you out there too.

The concept is pretty simple.  Automating your finances can go to far.  It can cause you to “set it and forget it”. And that can lead to expenses getting out of control.  Which is where Baker’s Unautomate Your Finances comes in.  The eBook is 83 pages of wonderful advice for minimizing your financial footprint and living a life of controlled finances.  He’s got a pretty impressive list of bonuses that you can get when you buy the eBook too!  There’s two awesome interviews.  A video one with Leo Babauta, who writes a ton on minimalist living.  And there’s an audio interview with J.D. Roth of GetRichSlowly.com (And author of Your Money: The Missing Manual).  He’s also throwing in the templates that he’s created for the program’s minimalist budgeting system.  One in .pdf for printing and one in excel for use on a computer.  And finally, he’s giving you all the updates you can handle.

And he’s only charging you $17 for the whole shebang.  I know he’s planning on upping the price to $27 eventually (I don’t know when) so I wouldn’t wait too awful long if your interested.  This program could be a great thing for those of you who are feeling out of control of your finances and want a more simple way of getting them back under control.

You can read a bit more on the program and the eBook by visiting: Unautomate Your Finances

Disclaimer: I’m an affiliate of both Amazon and Unautomate Your Finances.  If you click through and end up buying either the books I’ve linked or the eBook from Baker, I will get a portion of that sale.  That didn’t sway my review, I really do believe all those things I said up there.  Affiliate links like those are how I pay to keep this site operating, so I appreciate when you do click through.  Thanks.

Save a Little Money with PaperBack Swap

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One of the sure fire ways to save money that is touted here and everywhere is to cancel cable service.  Whether you cancel the whole thing or just pare down to the smallest package for network stations, you’re left with a fair chunk of time to do something else.  Again, another suggestion to take up that time is to read a book.  I completely agree.  Depending on the book, it can be entertaining or educational or both.

One of the downsides to taking up reading is that even a paperback book can cost almost $10 at most of the bookstores.  Amazon is slightly better, but not by much.  The all time cheapest way to read a book is from your local library.  The downfall there, of course, is that you have to return the book in a set amount of time.  That puts the pressure on to read the book or to remember to go in and re-check-out the book.  I don’t like to be rushed and I have a horrible memory for errands like that, so I prefer to buy the books that I read.

With our current situation, I am unable to buy as many books as I once did and now depend largely on gifts for my new book purchases.  Yay Amazon gift cards!  Another way that I’ve found to get my hands on a book cheaply is to swap it.  I think there are a few places to swap books, but the one that I’ve been using is PaperBack Swap.  It works on a credit system, so each book that you list and send to someone else gets you a credit to request a book from someone else.  All you have to do is pay for the shipping to get it where it’s going.  You get a new book for about $2.38.  That’s  quite the deal if you ask me.

So far, I’ve only gotten a few books, but I’m picking up steam and I may start looking at my local thrift store for books to swap for books that I want to read.  If there are any of you who are using a different service, please let me know what they are.  I’d like to check them all out.  They’re just another way to become a Frugaler!