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photo credit: desi.italy

In the last few years while living in my own apartment my mailbox has been periodically inundated with flyers, leaflets and packets of coupons offering a wide variety of discounts. Being the lazy college student that I was, I often just recycled these packets without even taking a second look at them. Now that I am outside the safety net of the dining halls and awesome campus giveaways I’ve needed to be a little more vigilant with how I spend my money and I’ve actually started browsing through those coupon packets. Surprisingly, there are great deals to be found in there.

Coupons are a great way to save money on the things that you frequently buy, and coupled with purchasing sale items, are a great way to save a good chunk of change. If you aren’t careful though you can actually end up spending more then you would have normally and have a house full of products you didn’t need.

Some great coupons that often show up in my mailbox are for discounted oil changes, 15-25% off of car maintenance and buy one, get one free coupons for local eateries. All of these are great ways to save on regular purchases and can provide a great opportunity for savings. The best part about these is companies send them right to your door for you to peruse.

It’s easy to get carried away with coupons though and end up buying things you don’t want or need. For instance, tons of coupons show up for food/home products that will give you $1-2 dollars off – only if you buy 5. Most households don’t need 5 bottles of window cleaner or a freezer full of Hot Pockets. By offering the discount if you buy in bulk, companies get consumers to spend more then planned and leave feeling like they got deal, which is often not the case.

Next time you head to the mailbox, take a second look at all those coupon offers you find there. But use common sense when selecting which ones to use so you don’t end up with a closet full of cleaning solution and an empty wallet.

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One of the benefits of living close — but not too close — to my parents (they live in a small town about 45 minutes north of my apartment) is that those evenings I’m able to get up to visit them, I’m (almost) always rewarded for it. Often it’s the chance to save some quarters by doing my laundry at their house, or some lucky visits its a free meal out. That’s just what happened this evening. But the downside (and believe me, it’s the only downside) of a great dinner and a couple of pints of great microbrew is now I’m too stuffed and too tired to write a totally original post.

So I figured I would at least show some link love and point you all in the direction of some other great and helpful posts from across the Interwebs. It’s the least I could do, really.

photo credit: Brian Sawyer

First, Trent at The Simple Dollar lists 20 valuable questions to ask yourself about, well, yourself. And your relationship with money. Ranging from “1. What five things do you most truly love doing? Think of things that you both enjoy in the moment and also enjoy looking back on later. Do any of these cost money?” to “11. Where do you want to be in one year? Describe your life in as much detail as you can. Can you name five actions you can take in the next week to lead you to that goal?”

Secondly, J.D. from Get Rich Slowly featured a guest post today entitled The Lazy Man’s Guide to Groceries on a Budget, which certainly hit home for me - being both a lazy man and on a budget. The recommendations included buying vegetables from a Farmers’ Market (when the season’s right), where they are typically half the price they are in grocery stores to, most importantly, never letting anything go to waste. Nothing will screw up a grocery budget faster than having to throw expired food away.

And thirdly, Ginger from Girls Just Want to Have Funds — who has an AWESOME new look to her blog that everyone should check out if they haven’t already — wrote a tell-all tale of her Disillusionment and Resentment with Graduate Education, in which she outlines her objectives, resentments and ultimate decisions with her graduate degree program; something that I think most graduates grapple with after completing their undergraduate career. Ginger also touches on the decision of pursuing passion & purpose, or pursuing a career - something I debate with myself about on an almost daily basis.

Alright, on that note - I think it’s time for a chapter or two of The Tipping Point and bed. Good night and happy reading!

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Last week I decided to, on a whim, submit a realworldreally.com article to a blog carnival for the first time; it was the “Carnival of Debt Reduction“. Well, much to my surprise - I got an email this morning from the Broke Grad Student — the carnival’s host for the week — letting me know that not only did my article make the carnival, but it was selected as one of the editor’s top picks! Not too shabby for my first time. The article I submitted can be seen — along with the rest of the selections (including some from bloggers with much higher profiles than mine, like Free Money Finance and I’ve Paid for This Twice Already) and B.G.S.’s comments on each — at the Carnival Roundup.

It was definitely a fun first carnival for me and I can assure you it won’t be my last. Thanks to the Broke Grad Student for giving my post such high praise and for doing a great job with the hosting! I’m certainly looking forward to next week’s carnival at DebtFREE-Revolution (submit your own articles here).

Technorati Tags: Carnival of Debt Reduction, personal finance, debt, blog carnival, college, budgeting, graduation

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According to the 2007 survey released by The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc - Students and parents agree that college students are not well prepared to deal with the financial challenges that lie ahead. Less than one-quarter of students and only 20% of parents say students are very well prepared to deal with the financial challenges that await them after graduation.

Anecdotal evidence seems to support this. The familiar story of students getting way over their head in credit card debt the minute they arrive on campus. Students are bombarded with credit card offers, despite having student loans and no documented income. You can hardly walk onto a college campus these days without getting harassed by some promoter peddling free t-shirts and gift certificates for signing up for a credit card. Students are definitely taking the bait. 50% graduate with $5,000 or more of high interest credit card debt (according to the Jump$tart Coalition For Personal Financial Literacy). Often the teaser rate on these cards is 0%, but skyrockets to 20% to 30% after a few months. It isn’t hard for students to get in over their heads at those rates.

Why are students falling for this predatory lending? The reason is both simple and sad. They don’t know any better. No one ever sat them down and explained how these cards work and why they are so dangerous. Same goes for credit scores and budgeting. College-aged students just simply aren’t getting exposed to this stuff at school. Many parents try to talk to their kids about this mpm, but any parent knows how that works…

One company in San Francisco, called DollarCamp, is trying to do something about this financial crisis, though, through its crash course for college kids on financial literacy. Their program focuses on teaching college students basic budgeting skills and tips and tricks for staying out of financial trouble.

“DollarCamp is about preventing kids from making easily avoidable mistakes”,

says founder Stephen Epstein. But are grads responsive to the message?

“We have had tremendous results by teaching the basics through story-telling and case studies that [students] can relate to… After all, when you hear it from your peers, it’s not like it’s your parents talking”.

Stephen is referring to the fact that all DollarCamp instructors are in their 20’s — recent graduates themselves — who often relate their own personal experience. Stephen notes,

“[College] kids are smart, they don’t want to be talked down to, but a sincere message from someone… their age really gets through”.

I wish I had had something like this before my financial hardships. But DollarCamp definitely seems like a good idea to me…

(image by weddingssc1)

Technorati Tags: personal finance, budget, debt, credit cards, college, graduation, financial literacy

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It’s long been stressed that creating a budget is the cornerstone of personal finance and the key to climbing out of debt. While I do think that having an idea of the amount of money you do spend (or can spend) each month in a certain category is important — and thus why signing up for a program like Mint.com is such a good idea — I don’t think a budget is necessarily the best route to take.

What do I mean? Well for me, if it’s nearing the end of a month — like it is right now — and I were to look at my budget and noticed that I was say… $40 under the amount I had allowed myself to spend on going out to eat for the month, I would be very tempted to go out for a big dinner that week and blow $40 because I had told myself I could and would still be financially okay.

While I might have been “okay” spending that $40, the reality is that I wouldn’t be doing myself any good. That is $40 I could have saved instead to put towards paying off debt, or a bigger ticket item I was saving up for. So instead of budgeting and then spending up to that budget each month, I have found it much more practical to set financial goals for myself.

For instance, I have about $3,000 in credit card debt built up, mostly due to the expenses which racked up during my move to a new apartment after college, buying a new car, and building a work-appropriate wardrobe. While I know what I make each month — and thus what I can afford to spend each month — and could budget out that allowance per category of expenses, if I had been $10 under my shopping budget yesterday when I went to Best Buy to ogle over flat screen T.V.s, I would have bought the copy of Wedding Crashers that was on sale.

However, I wasn’t $10 under my “shopping budget” because I don’t have a shopping budget. Instead, I know that I want to have my credit card debt paid down far enough by this summer that it could shoulder the weight of a new computer — since mine is slowly on its way out — and paid off completely by the end of the year. So I put the DVD back, saved the $10 and put it towards larger dreams. I wouldn’t have done this with a budget.

These are goals I’ve set for myself and ones I’m likely to try and stick to; goals that I am more likely to achieve, ten dollars at a time, without a budget than with.

(image via personal-financial-plan.com)

Technorati Tags: personal finance, budget, goals, debt, college, graduation, Real World

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If saving more money, getting out of debt, or sticking to a budget is on your mind (and if it isn’t, it should be) – consider online money-tracking webapp Mint.com.

What is Mint.com?

Mint revolves around automatic, no-hassle importing of your financial transactions from over 3,500 banking and credit card institutions. Once you’ve pointed Mint in the direction of your online banking accounts, the site combines all of your financial data and presents it to you in an attractive and easy-to-use interface, including a very comprehensive budgeting feature, where you can set a budget for any spending category.

Mint.com even alerts you (on its site, via email and even text message, if you’d like) when you’re getting close to going over your budget, you have a bill due, your account balances drop below a pre-determined balance, or if there is a series of expensive transactions (to keep an eye out for fraud).

One of the best and most unique features at Mint, however, is their savings feature. Here, Mint takes a look at your bills, spending trends, and credit cards, and then suggests ways you can save money through different offers (i.e. if Mint knows of a credit card with a better interest rate, or better rewards which you would qualify for, they’ll let you know).

Click to see a full-size screenshot of the Overview Page at Mint.com
Security at Mint.com: Of course there are some of you who are uncomfortable with making the leap to web-based, aggregated money management and thus will always naysay. And, even if you are comfortable doing so, no one wants to trust any of their financial information to a company that isn’t up to par (and rightfully so). But, in my research, mint.com seems to be as safe as they come (I signed up). Be sure and read their Privacy and Security Statement if you’re skeptical. At Mint.com,

• You register anonymously
• Mint asks for your online banking user name and passwords, but does not see or store that information
• Mint has partnered with the leading online banking service provider (Yodlee) to connect securely to your bank.
• All communication between Mint and Yodlee is encrypted using 128-bit SSL, the financial industry standard for data protection.
• Mint provides bank-level data security for the transaction information we store.
• Mint does not know your bank account numbers or credit card numbers.
• You cannot move money with Mint.
• Mint alerts can increase your financial security.

In Conclusion:

Even for someone in need of just mild financial help, the ability to see all of your finances right in front of you – what Mint does best – is incredibly helpful. You’ll see places and categories right away where you’re spending too much money and could easily cut back (or eliminate all together). And, since Mint completely automates your data imports, it requires very little work on your part.

Best of all for recent grads, according to the people at Mint, their next major moves will be integrating other financial bodies. Meaning that soon you may also be able to track and manage your student loans and investments from within Mint.

But, best of all, signing up and getting started at Mint.com is completely 100% free. With that in mind, it’s hard to believe why anyone with a relatively normal financial situation wouldn’t sign up for Mint!

Technorati Tags: budgeting, mint.com, personal finance, debt, college

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