Savings

How Much Money Do I Need To Retire?

Need To Retire

When Will I Retire?

We all dream of that day when we don’t have to go back to work and we can enjoy our free time in retirement… at least, I do.  We all know we need to retire, but how do we know if we have enough money saved to have a comfortable retirement?

That is a difficult question to answer because it depends on many different factors, such as your age when you retire, lifestyle, health, and how long you plan on living on retirement money.

There are dozens of retirement calculators that will tell us how much money we will need to retire, but most of them only makes my heart skip a few beats.  The numbers those calculators tell us are a little too high, at least for me.  My plan is to be able to retire early, but according to those calculators I’ll never be able to retire.

Ting Review – 3 Months

Ting Review

Save Money!

It’s crazy how fast time passes by.  It has already been three months since I switched my phone plan to Ting and I’m so very glad that I did.  In just three short months I’ve been able to save over $250 without compromising my coverage.

If you don’t know what Ting is, you can read my 1-month Ting review where I explain how Ting works.  But since I’m a nice guy I’ll give you a quick run down of what it is.

What is Ting?

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Homemade Laundry Detergent

DIY Laundry Detergent Ingredients

In my constant quest of saving money, I’m always looking for ways to cut down my spending.  And when I went grocery shopping and saw that the most expensive item on my list was laundry detergent, I knew I had to do something about it.

I went to my favorite library – Google – to see if I could find a cheaper alternative and quickly found hundreds of recipes to make your own laundry detergent.  Since I’m a big proponent of Do-it-yourself I decided to give it a shot.

7 Supermarket Tricks You Can Use To Save Money

Supermarket Tricks

Save Money Fast!

On Monday we discussed 7 Tricks Supermarkets Use To Get You To Spend More.  Some of these tricks are subtle while others are obvious, but now that you’re aware of them, you’ll have your guard up next time you go food shopping.

These tricks were mostly obtained from a Reader’s Digest slideshow which had a few more tips and tricks.  Most of them were not relevant so I decided to summarize the ways supermarkets try to influence you into spending more money – and add a few of my own.

The slideshow also mentioned a few tricks you can use to SAVE money on some items while food shopping, but since I don’t really want you to go through 50 slides of mostly useless information, I’ll summarize the ones I found more useful.

7 Tricks Supermarkets Use To Get You To Spend More

Supermarket Tricks

Oh So Pretty… maybe I should buy more stuff!

Besides a mortgage or rent, food shopping is one of the biggest expenses in most households.  The main reason behind this expense is because we have to eat to survive.  And since most of us are too lazy to grow our own food, we love to pay for the convenience of having other people grow our food so we just have to pick it up at the store.

We’ve already covered ways you could save money food shopping, but we should also be aware of some of the tricks supermarkets use to try to get us to spend more.  Reader’s Digest put together a list of 50 supermarket tricks you still fall for, but some of them are not even tricks and the article is a series of slides (51 freaking slides) that keep you clicking around until your hands go numb. I should write about “50 website tricks to keep you on their sites longer”… making you click through 51 slides is one of them.

Here I’ll summarize the most important points in the article and add a few more that I’ve learned along the way.

Need To Eat More Vegetables? – Join a CSA

CSA

Our CSA box for Week 8

Healthy eating lowers the risk of developing various chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and may also lower the risk of some types of cancer.

Last year I got blood work done and even though the results weren’t alarmingly high, they were not within the normal range.  My total cholesterol was normal, but my HDL “good” cholesterol was low, my LDL “bad” cholesterol was elevated, and my total cholesterol/HDL Ratio was high.  My triglycerides were also elevated.

I am 33 years old, I’m not overweight – at least not by much – and although I don’t exercise as much as I should, I do work out at least once a week.  I know it is not enough; all I’m just saying is I’m not completely lazy.

I could exercise more often, but exercising five time a week won’t help me much if I keep eating unhealthy.  I knew I needed to change my eating habits and the best way to do so is by eating more vegetables.

Trying to get me to eat more vegetables is the main reason we joined our local CSA.

10 Common Money Mistakes

Money Mistakes

Money Down The Drain

You would think that since we handle money on a daily basis we should be experts on money, but the reality is that we make a lot of money mistakes that lead to us losing our hard earned money.

If you read my story, you know that I made a lot of money mistakes that kept me living paycheck to paycheck every month.  Fortunately I have rectified some of those mistakes, but I’m still working hard to get on the path of financial independence.  Below is a list of common money mistakes I’ve made and that you should avoid.

How I Saved $450+ On Getting My Car Painted

car painted

Car Leprosy?

A few months ago I noticed the paint on the roof of my car was fading a little bit.  I found this to be a bit odd because my car is not that old (2007), but I also never use wax on my car so I figured that’s probably what happens when you don’t wax your car.

The “fading” started growing slowly until it got to a point that I had to do something about it.  If I ever want to sell my car I don’t want it to look as if it spent too much time in the sun and now its skin is peeling.

I couldn’t allow the car leprosy to continue so I decided to go to auto body shops and get quotes on getting the roof of the car painted.  I stopped at a body shop on my way to work and the technician there said he would paint it for $450 – my job now was to find someone who can paint my car for less.

Why You Need an Emergency Fund

Emergency Fund

Do you have an emergency fund?

Murphy’s Law is typically stated as: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And if we don’t have an emergency fund we are risking going into debt when Murphy comes knocking on our doors.

According to the most recent Bankrate’s Financial Security Index survey, 26% of consumers have no emergency savings and another 24% have less than three months’ expenses.  I was one of these people not too long ago.

And this is not just an issue with low-income Americans, more than 25 Million middle class American families are living paycheck to paycheck and have little or no savings.  This staggering number proves that regardless of how much money we make, we have a savings problem.

Ting Review After 1 Month of Usage

Ting Review

Switch to Ting and Save Money

If you already read my Ting review and are ready to switch, please use my referral link and claim your $25 credit.

For most people having a smartphone is a luxury that they can’t live without, I know I can’t.  But if you’re still using one of the major carriers, then you are getting robbed big time.  I’ll explain.

I mentioned before that I switched to Ting in order to save money because my Sprint bill was too much for me.  I was paying $127 for two phones (Family Plan) and that’s including a 25% discount I got from work.  That means I was paying $1,524 a year just to have access to Google on the go.  And that number is way below the average cost of owning a smartphone.  The average cost of owning a smartphone for 2 years is around $3,400 for ONE phone!  I just wasn’t okay with this.

Like many people, I always thought that there were only 3-4 cell phone carriers and that’s it.  I thought everything else was either a scam or didn’t work.  Oh was I wrong.