Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Adjustments to Make (Price Checking)

By 1 Comment

I’m making this post in part to share with you, but also to make a reminder for myself of the things that I need to look into.  One of the mistakes that I and many other people make is not shopping around enough.  While you may have found the best deal when you bought something, if you are still paying for it, you might not be getting the best deal still.

The most obvious place where this could be true is with insurance.  I’ve been with my insurance company for about 10 years.  When I first purchased the insurance, I did a fair amount of shopping around and comparing and bought the insurance that was the best fit.  Since then, many things have changed.  I got married.  We’ve had two children.  We bought a house.  We both turned 25 several years ago.  All of these things could easily cause some drastic changes that really warrant a new comparison.  But, we never did that.  It’s time we did.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be doing a bit of shopping around for better insurance rates and coverages.  In particular, our home owners insurance seems much higher than it should be, and consequently, I am now in the market to find cheap home insurance cover.

The other thing that I really need to look into (and should have a while ago) is the mortgage on our house.  We managed to buy our house when rates were good.  We’ve since added a second mortgage that is about 25% of the original mortage’s size.  The rate on that is not as favorable.  (9% ish)  So, I need to look into whether refinancing the whole thing and rolling the two together might help us out with a lower overall rate and maybe even a lower payment.

That’s just the two things that came up recently.  I’m sure there are plenty of other things that need to be checked regularly that I and others do not.  What are the things that you check regularly to save money?

Frugality and Brand Names

By 2 Comments

The words Frugal and Frugality have been some very popular words lately.  With the economy the way it is, it’s not very hard to see why. Even so, I still know people who claim to be frugal, but refuse to buy anything but the brand name products.

There is very little room for brand names in a frugal lifestyle.  The good news is that many of the non-brand name products are very similar products.  In some cases, they are the exact same product.  In other cases, they are not even close to the same thing.  In those cases, you have to weigh how much you want that exact product against your desire to save money and live frugally.  Is the extra $1 worth it?  Depending on the product, you might make an exception.

If you decide it is worth it, here are some things you can do to try and help cut that cost.

  • Coupons!  Check the manufacturer’s website.  Many have customer loyalty programs that you can sign up for and get occasional coupons.  Look through the Sunday paper.  Or, see if you can find a coupon train to join up with.  Swap Mamas has one, and I’m sure many other sites do as well.  There are also coupon trading sites that you can make use of.
  • Buy in bulk.  If you’ve just got to have it, buying in bulk can sometimes help cut the cost.  My favorites are Sam’s Club/Costco and Amazon.  If the item is perishable, maybe you can find a friend that will split it with you and you can still reap the frugal benefits.  Sometimes it’s worth the cost of a Costco membership.
  • Cash back rebates.  If you have a credit card that gives cash back, you can use it to help cut the cost of the item.  Just make sure you’re paying off that card every month, or the interest will eliminate any benefit.
  • Supermarket Loyalty programs.  Some supermarkets have a loyalty program.  Spend $XXX and get $X off!  It’s usually not anything spectacular, but every little bit helps.

Sometimes the brand name is worth it.  But, I encourage you to try the generic stuff too.  You just might be surprised to find that it is a very sufficient replacement.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

SwapMamas.com: Mother’s Little Helper

By 1 Comment

One of the side effects of my wife’s entrepreneurial adventures has been that we have a very unstable income on her side of the balance sheet.  And part of how we’ve dealt with that is to try and save money in as many ways as we can.  Frugality has become the modus operandi in our household.

Anyone with kids will tell you that there are certain things that you cannot go without.  For example, kids need clothes, and lots of them.  They’ll go through several outfits a day depending on the messiness of their meals and the level of dirt outside.  Kids like to have toys too!  And being frugal and buying your kids toys don’t always go together.

But, we found a site that helps us a little with both.  It’s called swapmamas.com and it is pretty darn cool.  In a nutshell, it is a social networking site for moms where they gather together and swap/barter for items.  Say we have  some formula left over after our youngest moves up to real food.  We can list the sealed cans on swapmamas.  Another mama comes along and uses that formula, and has some clothes that will fit one of our kids.  Or some DVD movies that her kids no longer watch.  She offers the trade to us, we accept and all that’s left is the shipping.  We pay for the shipping for  the formula, and the other mama pays for the shipping for whatever it is that she traded us for.  She gets a can of formula that she can use and that would have done absolutely nothing for us except sit on a shelf and we get a new movie or some new(ish) clothes.  Win Win.

Swapmamas.com is worth a look if you’ve got kids and want to try and be frugal as well.  It might even be worthwhile if you don’t have kids.  I can’t attest to that since I would have never known the site existed if it weren’t for having kids. 😉