Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Trade DVDs to Save Money

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Why buy anything if you can trade for it?  DVDs aren’t an exception.  I’ve been using a service called Swap-a-DVD to trade DVDs for a while now.  It’s actually a sister site of the site I use to trade books, paperbackswap.  (If I really wanted to, the credits are exchangeable between the two sites.)

The premise is pretty simple.  You list the DVDs that you’re willing to trade away, and create a wish list of the DVDs that you would like to see.  Other users request the ones you want to trade off, you ship them to the user, and then receive a credit for the DVD once it’s marked as received.  Once you have credits, you can then order DVDs for yourself, either off of your wish list when they become available, or by finding DVDs that are already available.  Watch that one a few times, then list it to trade away, and you can cycle through them that way.

The only cost is the shipping to send the DVD off for credit.  Usually, it figures out to be about $2.50 a DVD.  Less than you can rent the DVD for from most places.  Most older titles are really easy to come by, with most of the new releases having some pretty long wait lists, but if you’re willing to wait to see the newer movies, you just add them to the wish list, and you’re added to the queue.  As soon as you reach the top of the queue, the next one added is yours!

We’ve used it pretty extensively to get movies for the kids.  Ones we either can’t find to purchase or rent, or ones we’d like to hold onto for a while so the kids can watch them repeatedly as they usually do.  (We’ve seen Cars about 400 times…  I wish I was kidding. It was the only movie our son would watch for close to two years)  The downside, for us, is that the kids can be somewhat rough on DVDs and they get pretty scratched and we’ve had quite a few of them that were untradeable, if not unusable entirely, by the time they got tired of the movie.

But, if you’ve got slightly older kids that are a little easier on DVDs, it could work out really well.  And it works out really well for the movies that us adults like to watch too.

What other ways do you save on watching movies?

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Spend Less with this Unique Money Advice

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To save money, people usually get the ball rolling by creating budgets. It’s true that a budget is an indispensable part of being fiscally responsible, but it’s generally not enough. To spend less and save a lot more, it’s important to implement as many money-saving techniques into day-to-day life as possible. The good news is that those techniques are typically quite simple. A selection of especially unique tips for saving cash is highlighted below.

Unique Ways to Save Money

  • Pay Bills Online – Between online bank accounts and bill pay services, there’s no reason to mail a check again. Many major companies accept payments through their websites. That’s especially true about credit card companies. Even if a company doesn’t accept online payments through its website, most banks offer online bill paying services that can be used to sidestep the problem. Postage isn’t necessarily expensive, but it can add up over time. It’s also easier to pay bills on time through the Internet because the check doesn’t have to arrive in the mail.
  • Get Rid of the Land Line – It’s wasteful to pay for a cell phone and a land line. The majority of people have cell phones and smartphones these days, and most of them can do without traditional land lines. Even if a monthly land line bill is low, it’s still money that can be set aside for something else.
  • Spend Less on Kitty Litter
    img credit: deborahdegolyer on Flickr

    Stop Using Kitty Litter – Pet lovers can save huge amounts of money by potty training their cats. It sounds silly, but this trend is rapidly growing in popularity, and it’s a legitimate way to spend less on pet expenses. There are even products out there that make it easy to teach cats how to use regular toilets. The average cost to supply litter to one cat for one year is $100, so it’s possible to save a lot of cash by putting this tip to use.

  • Be Strict about Grocery Shopping – In addition to creating a strict grocery list and sticking to it, shoppers should give themselves specific time limits as well. When the clock is ticking, a shopper is less likely to dawdle around and be tempted to make random purchases. One good option is to set an alarm on a cell phone and to be in line by the time it rings. We go grocery shopping directly after Church while our oldest child is in Sunday school.  It gives us exactly 45 minutes to get all the shopping done and get back to pick him up.
  • Paint the Roof – Buying a new roof is a major expense, but painting one isn’t so costly. By painting a roof white, it’s possible to slash energy bills. Air conditioning results in extremely high electricity bills. White paint deflects the rays of the sun, which keeps a home much cooler. In turn, summer energy bills tend to be a lot lower.
  • Periodically Shop for New Vehicle Insurance – Instead of assuming that their vehicle insurance rates are fine, people should get into the habit of shopping around regularly for vehicle insurance. Rates often drop, but auto insurance companies don’t always pass those savings on to their customers voluntarily. It only takes a few minutes to get free online quotes for car insurance.
  • Turn Trash into Treasure – Garage sales are fine, but it’s possible to make even more money on used items by selling them online. Posting items for sale on auction sites like eBay is easy. They are exposed to a much larger audience, so it’s often possible to rake in a surprising amount of money. In some cases, this can even turn into a nice way to earn extra money on the side.
  • Get Discount Haircuts and Dental Work – While they are in training, fledgling dentists and hair stylists often provide their services for free or for drastically reduced prices. This is an excellent way to spend less on cleanings, haircuts and many other services.

To stay motivated about these unique money-saving tips, keep a running list of the amount that is saved every month. Then put that money towards your debt snowball, or split it between debt and a vacation fund! Most people are pleasantly surprised by how much less they spend after implementing just a few of these simple, offbeat techniques. Over the course of a year, these unusual tips can produce some truly incredible savings.

Why I Like Passive Income

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When you’re in debt, and trying to escape from the cycle of debt, the one thing that seems to dominate your every thought is paying off that debt.  Far too often, those of us who talk about debt and finances regularly tend to focus on debt as well.  We focus on paying off debt, eliminating debt, and ways to spend less money so you free up more money in your budget to pay off that debt.  What we don’t talk about often enough, in my opinon, is making more money.  In many ways, increasing your income is just as important to your fight against debt as staying disciplined in paying your debt off.

I don’t know about you, but I often feel like my income is capped.  In any job, you are either paid a yearly salary, or paid an hourly wage.  In that way, you’re income is capped.  If you’re paid on a salary, it doesn’t matter how much you work, you only get paid a certain amount every pay period.  If you work hourly, there are only so many hours that you can work in any pay period.  There are always ways to advance yourself through the workforce, and up the ladder at work, but your income is still capped.

Uncapped income.

Passive Income Cash Machine
img credit: Whatleydude on Flickr

One way to increase your income, that doesn’t require that you work all hours, and that doesn’t cap your income is through passive income.  I’ve talked about it before here, and here, and here.  The ideal definition of passive income is income you earn without putting in any work.  And, maybe in an ideal world, that type of income would actually exist.  In our less than ideal world, truly passive income is very hard to find.

How I define passive income

I like to define passive income in somewhat more liberal terms.  To me, any income that I can earn with a minimal amount of work is passive income.  If I can make income off of something that only takes me 30 minutes a month, I consider it passive income.  Anything that continues to make me money long after I’ve put the work in counts too.  It’s like Ronco income.  “Just set it and forget it!”

For me, my blogs and websites are passive income.  A majority of the income I make off of them is income from posts I’ve already written.  The work has already been put in, and it would continue to pay me even if I quit writing.  My traditional stock portfolio is a passive income.  I did the work early on, earning the cash to buy the stocks, as well as doing the research to pick the stocks, and many of them pay me dividends on a regular basis.  That dividend payment is a passive stream of income.  Yet another stream that I take advantage of is my Lending Club portfolio of peer-to-peer loans.  (See my latest report on LC)

Other forms of passive income can include things like royalties, patents, and rental properties.  I’m sure if you think hard enough about it, you’ll find several other streams of potential income that would fit my definition of passivity.  (Share them in the comments!)

Why do I like passive income?

Naturally, I like passive income because I’m lazy.  😉  After all, what could be lazier than earning money while you sit on your behind and watch soap operas on T.V.?

“Naturally, I like passive income because I’m lazy.” — @beatingbroke (Click to Tweet)

As much as I like that reason, the real reason is a bit more explanatory.  I like paying off my debt.  I like the ability to do that while still enjoying life.  And, as many of you can attest, doing both of those things can sometimes be somewhat difficult.  Balancing the expenditures that can come enjoying life (even a frugal one) with paying off your debt is troublesome.  The best way that I’ve found to try and do both is to work hard at paying off debt, while working hard at increasing income at the same time.  Without passive income, the only way to increase income is to work more hours at your hourly job or to negotiate regular raises at your salary job.  Recently, it’s become even more difficult to do either of those.  Passive income becomes the last, best way to increase your income with little to no continuing work output.

Why do you like passive income?  What do you consider to be passive income?  What are some of your passive income streams?  What are some that you’d like to take advantage of?