There are some great online tools out there to help you save money. Try to stick to the free ones though, unless it offers a tool that you think would really help maximize your savings. Please remember that your trying to save money. It would defeat the purpose to pay for an un-useful tool to save money.
SmartyPig.com is a social banking site. I'm not a huge fan of the social part of it. But everything with the internet is moving towards being more social (think Twitter, FaceBook and so on). My favorite feature of Smartypig.com is the amazing interest rate of 2.15%. This is an awesome rate when you consider the average bank only has an interest rate of .77% according to BankRate.com Another feature of Smartypig that many of you will love is the social aspect of it. I'm not a huge fan of this feature (and remember you do not have to use it), because to me, my money is a personal matter. With SmartyPig you can share your savings with your friends and family, share it on Facebook, and people can even make contributions to your savings account on SmartyPig. After you reach your savings goal on SmartyPig, you can transfer it to your bank account, get it put on a debit card, or redeem it for a gift card. If you select the gift card option, you get special bonuses and such.
PearBudget.com is a simple budgeting and expense tracking tool. Part of saving is budgeting your money instead of spending it mindlessly. It is free for 30 days, after that it is just $3 a month. Please keep in mind, that there are a lot of ways to do the same thing for free but if you need it to be as easy and simply as possible, then you may want to consider PearBudget.com
Mint.com is the easiest way to track your finances. It is important to analyze exactly where every penny goes every month. For example, drinking coffee at home instead of getting a small coffee at Starbucks will save you over $40 a month (based on drinking just 1 cup of small coffee 5 days per week). Mint.com tracks your spending and sends you budget reports. It even does bill reminders.
Do you know of an awesome money saving tool that you can share? I would love to hear about it!
Friday, April 30, 2010
Set Your Savings Goal & Make A Plan
The first step to saving money is deciding how much you want to save and for what. For me that was easy, I want to start small. If I plan for something big, I will get overwhelmed and lose track of what I want. So I am starting off with a goal of $500 and I want to use this money as an emergency fund.
The next step is to set a time limit. At first I wanted to achieve this goal within 2 months. So that mean's I would need to save $62.50 each week. For many of you, that's loose change but with the amount of debit that I have in front of me at the moment, I need a little less of a commitment to start off with. So I'm going to give myself 4 months, which is $31.25 each week.
Now that I have a plan, what do I do with this money? Well, I could always use an old coffee can (kidding)! I want to make the most out of my savings, and the best way to do that is interest. The question is, should you put it in your regular bank account? That depends on your bank. In my case, the answer is an clear NO! To decide, you must first check out what your bank's interest rate is. My bank's interest rate on a personal savings account is .04%. I found a site called SmartyPig.com with an interest rate of 2.15%, which is a huge difference.
I'll keep you updated on my savings plan. Please share yours with me, I would love to hear it!
The next step is to set a time limit. At first I wanted to achieve this goal within 2 months. So that mean's I would need to save $62.50 each week. For many of you, that's loose change but with the amount of debit that I have in front of me at the moment, I need a little less of a commitment to start off with. So I'm going to give myself 4 months, which is $31.25 each week.
Now that I have a plan, what do I do with this money? Well, I could always use an old coffee can (kidding)! I want to make the most out of my savings, and the best way to do that is interest. The question is, should you put it in your regular bank account? That depends on your bank. In my case, the answer is an clear NO! To decide, you must first check out what your bank's interest rate is. My bank's interest rate on a personal savings account is .04%. I found a site called SmartyPig.com with an interest rate of 2.15%, which is a huge difference.
I'll keep you updated on my savings plan. Please share yours with me, I would love to hear it!
The Need to Save Money
Now I know that this blog is supposed to be all about making money and jobs, but please bare with me.
I've been thinking a lot about saving more money lately. Being self employed for me means that I work 3 to 4 times more than the average Jane does. I bust my ass for the money I earn each month. Yes, I can do it in my pajama's, but there's a reason why most days I stay in my pajama's. I'm working too many hours to change or even do laundry!
What does this all mean? It means that I need to be smarter with the money that I earn. I need to treat it like its precious. To me this means, I need to figure out ways to save more money. I know that if I am struggling with saving and stretching out my money then many of you are too. From now on, in order to help both myself and you, I am going to be adding a money saving feature on this blog....Stay tuned!
I've been thinking a lot about saving more money lately. Being self employed for me means that I work 3 to 4 times more than the average Jane does. I bust my ass for the money I earn each month. Yes, I can do it in my pajama's, but there's a reason why most days I stay in my pajama's. I'm working too many hours to change or even do laundry!
What does this all mean? It means that I need to be smarter with the money that I earn. I need to treat it like its precious. To me this means, I need to figure out ways to save more money. I know that if I am struggling with saving and stretching out my money then many of you are too. From now on, in order to help both myself and you, I am going to be adding a money saving feature on this blog....Stay tuned!
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Amazon Mechanical Turk MTurk.com
I hesitated with writing this blog post. This blog is all about LEGIT jobs. I decided to write it anyway, to hopefully help you decide for yourself what is and what is not legit.
Amazon Mechanical Turk program (or MTurk) is a program that connects people that have jobs to offer with those who want to work. There are plenty of jobs listed on the website. At the very moment I am typing this there are 119,392 jobs available. My bet is that at least 50% of them are jobs that you do not want to do. You must be very very careful with Mturk and make sure that you are selective.
One of the problems that I have found is that a lot of jobs want you to go to another site to do something on that site. The sites seem to be spam, phising, and virus sites. Be very careful before you go to any website that looks strange to you. Also make sure that you have a good virus scanner installed.
Another problem is that some of the sites want you to pay for something. Here is an example, one person on there is offering $10 if you test out his website and obtain a free credit report. Seems like an easy way to make good money doesn't it? Well, here's the problem. You have to pay for it! The sites asks for credit card information, and they clearly state, that if you do not cancel within 7 days, you will be billed $24.95! Now your probably thinking, so what's the big deal? I'll just get the free credit report, cancel right away, and I'll have $10. Well, can you trust this site? Can you trust this person? Identity theft and credit card fraud happens every single day! So becareful!
Also make sure that you are getting paid for your time. There are a lot of people offering $1 for 40 minutes worth of work. Not at all worth it. Usually when you work from home you make more money, not less.
There are two ways to get paid. The first is direct deposit. You must have $10 minimum in your account. The second is with an Amazon gift card. You only need $1 to cash out for a gift card.
There are too many different people offering jobs on MTurk to deem is as being a legit work at home job. There are lots of legit work on there. You just have to judge for yourself!
Amazon Mechanical Turk program (or MTurk) is a program that connects people that have jobs to offer with those who want to work. There are plenty of jobs listed on the website. At the very moment I am typing this there are 119,392 jobs available. My bet is that at least 50% of them are jobs that you do not want to do. You must be very very careful with Mturk and make sure that you are selective.
One of the problems that I have found is that a lot of jobs want you to go to another site to do something on that site. The sites seem to be spam, phising, and virus sites. Be very careful before you go to any website that looks strange to you. Also make sure that you have a good virus scanner installed.
Another problem is that some of the sites want you to pay for something. Here is an example, one person on there is offering $10 if you test out his website and obtain a free credit report. Seems like an easy way to make good money doesn't it? Well, here's the problem. You have to pay for it! The sites asks for credit card information, and they clearly state, that if you do not cancel within 7 days, you will be billed $24.95! Now your probably thinking, so what's the big deal? I'll just get the free credit report, cancel right away, and I'll have $10. Well, can you trust this site? Can you trust this person? Identity theft and credit card fraud happens every single day! So becareful!
Also make sure that you are getting paid for your time. There are a lot of people offering $1 for 40 minutes worth of work. Not at all worth it. Usually when you work from home you make more money, not less.
There are two ways to get paid. The first is direct deposit. You must have $10 minimum in your account. The second is with an Amazon gift card. You only need $1 to cash out for a gift card.
There are too many different people offering jobs on MTurk to deem is as being a legit work at home job. There are lots of legit work on there. You just have to judge for yourself!
