Money Obedience

This is our weekly roundup, where we share some interesting posts written by personal finance bloggers we follow. As always, when we list a post in this roundup we stick with our favorite themes: setting up a budget, household expenses, lower debt, and general personal finance topics that can aid in reaching financial goals. We hope that you enjoy the insights of these blog posts!


Setting up a Budget and Household Expenses

Sorting Out What’s Important From The Rest by I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Number One Frugality Tip: Don’t Be a Woman by Consumerism Commentary

Tips for Grocery Shopping on a Budget by Bargaineering

How To Handle a Pay Cut (Financially Speaking) by Fiscal Fizzle

Budgeting and Automation: Streamline Your Finances by Five Cents Nickel


Savings

The Reasoning Behind Holding Onto Our Savings by Blogging Away Debt

Avoid These Rookie Mistakes - Overdraft Fees by No Credit Needed


Lower Debt

How to Get Out of Debt by Being Frugal


Financial Goals

An update on goals & a progress report by Living Well On Less


Investing

How To Handle Tremendous Investment Losses by Generation X Finance


Miscellaneous

Living In A Small Home: Pros and Cons of Downsizing Our House by The Digerati Life

Hidden Money Or Why It Pays To Be A Flake by Breaking Even

This being a personal finance blog, I think I can allow myself to get personal. As you all know, setting up a budget is an important exercise for me. “Bargain shopping” gets in the way of it. So, let me vent a little and explain.

I am so sick of the e-mails I receive from all kinds of stores. A special offer here, a discount there, a must-have item here, and so forth. I think this season I must have gotten at least one e-mail from every store where I ever bought something, including Tiffany. I can’t even remember the last time I bought something at Tiffany. It must be some five years ago. But I still get their e-mails, and the light blue catalogue in snail mail. I don’t even open the envelope in which the Tiffany catalog comes. Somehow I don’t see the value of bombarding me with special offers. It makes these stores less endearing to me. And I have to wonder how much of the price I pay for goods goes to pay for all this useless advertising when I do buy something at one of these stores.

How about the stores which have your e-mail address recorded from the one time you bought something through amazon.com? What makes them think I have any loyalty to their store? I bought one or two things there years ago. That’s it. No follow-up shopping. I don’t need the frequent shopper card, either. Neither do I care about the special sale this holiday season.

I should consider myself lucky that I can easily delete each and every one of these e-mails, even unsubscribe from the mailing list. I don’t feel the urge to buy anything. We already bought well-thought out gifts for the kids a while ago. And the grandparents’ gift is our visit, rather than spending lavishly on things for them. In case you want to know, both vilkri-he’s and vilkri-she’s families live quite far away – we’re talking mandatory airfare, not driving... The grandparents in our family are pretty much set anyway.

Let’s look at my late grandfather for reasons why gift giving might not be the best thing in any event. My grandfather used to take his newly received shirt, still unopened, and stuff it in his closet right on top of the other unopened shirts from previous years. I am sorry. I can’t follow my parents’ example and give the new shirt anyway. If I can’t think of a good gift for my parents, I will not get them anything. Maybe it sounds a bit heartless, but I’d rather do something nice (like visit) that has no material durability but is valuable all the same, rather than waste money on something they don’t really need or want. Besides, I know that the best gift to them is spending time with them. And if I bring the family along, it is even better.

This blog is also about our overall well-being, so, let me say this in addition to my venting. While these e-mails and catalogues annoy me, I actually feel quite good that I can escape the consumerism of the season so easily. I don’t feel bad about not spending lavishly on friends and family. I know that I will feel much better spending time with friends and family, and I always try to spend time with loved ones, whether it is the holiday season or not.

We parents know that having kids not only gives us the pleasures and responsibilities of parenthood, but having kids also comes with big financial consequences. As soon as that first child shows up, money can become tight.

When our first child arrived, I made sure that my wife and I took good care of how we spend our money. The first thing we did was record our expenses to see where we actually spent our money and how we can budget ourselves to save more. We used the free expense tool at www.vilkri.com, which we could access from any computer that had an internet hook-up. This was especially important to my wife, who is so busy she tends to forget where she spends her money. Having 24-7 internet access to our budget helped her be very good recording her/our expenses as she made them where she might have had difficulty otherwise. Another advantage of recording our expenses was that we became much more aware of how and when we spent money. I found that just knowing that I’d have to write down every penny I spent (and share that with my wife) gave me incentive not to be so careless about spending money. My wife told me that she had the same reaction to budgeting.

We recorded our expenses for a few months, after which we had a pretty good idea how we spent our money and how we could save some more. Vilkri.com gave us reports that continually analyzed our spending, explained the impact of what we were doing with our money, and showed us how well or poorly our incomes meshed with our budget plans.

Fortunately for us, both my wife and I tend to be fairly frugal. We rarely spend money needlessly, and we’re just as careful with expenditures for our children as we are with spending on ourselves. For example, we try not to overdo it with clothes and toys. I think our kids have a good amount of toys – and honestly, many of them are perfectly good hand-me-downs. When we buy toys we look for those that foster real play such as blocks, puzzles, and the like, and also those that will last or even become heirlooms, like wooden toys, or craft kits. We prefer such toys for our kids, and we buy them as gifts for our friends. It seems to us that these toys also happen to be cheaper than electronic toys, and they sure don’t have the added aggravation of having to buy batteries for them over and over again! Plus, these toys are not as noisy either. Our kids don’t need help making noise anyway…..

vilkri-he has been complaining that vilkri-she is not blogging enough. Well, if you’ve been keeping up, you know that vilkri-he has lost his job. So he blogs about personal finance more than I do, and he also irons, cooks, cleans, and generally makes it look like I’m loafing through life (just like he did when he was working full time, I might add!).

So, I stopped EVERYTHING to write this blog, which I should do before you all forget that last Friday, Black Friday, that big shopping day after that big eating day, some poor Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death just trying to keep eager shoppers from pulling the doors off the hinges, which they did anyway!

I repeat, “Are you kidding me?” This is all very scary to me. See, I was thinking that if this was a different year, I’d probably be out there shopping. I cannot tell you how many internet coupons appeared in my email inbox last week, urging me to go out and spend. And I would have, if I wasn’t the only breadwinner in our house of five bread eaters. Then again, if hubby wasn’t unemployed, meaning that the economy wasn’t so bad, I’d probably not have received so many coupons.

Still, while I might’ve gotten in my car that day to peruse the stores, I just cannot get the sentiment behind the stampede. Did you read the story? Here’s a version of the original story, http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-limart1129,0,167903.story and here’s an update http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28034543/. Okay, someone tell me this; why???? Is it not the case that Wal-Mart had the same stuff on Friday that they had the day before, and the day after? Was it really necessary to rush in to get batteries or Cheetos or even a new electronic toy at a discount? The Newsday article (cited above) says that people were crying when they were asked to leave the store. Can someone please explain this to me?

I guess I’m even more confused because my orientation is completely different. I’m not saying I’m holier than anyone – I am perfectly happy if I find come cute boots or manage to make it over to Mac to get a lipstick that makes me look a little less tired but a lot more put together. But I also teach young adults about inequality when I’m not blogging away or trying to keep up with my resident Jack of all Trades and Perfect Housekeeper. So I can’t help but think that there are people starving or facing war and poverty all over the world, and the contrast between that and our consumer culture sometimes just blows me away. And that someone died? I’m flummoxed.

Perhaps, though, there’s a correlation between how bad the economy is doing and now desperate for bargains people become. I’m flummoxed about how things became so bad for us all so very quickly. Hopefully, we’ll all manage to live well, still, in our much tightened belts. As for me, I’m starting to look up how-to sites and magazine articles with directions for lovely homemade presents. (Hey, I’ve found several – maybe I’ll blog about that next.)