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: free budget planner, household expenses, lower debt, and general personal finance topics that can aid in reaching financial goals. We hope that you enjoy their insights!

Setting up a Budget and Household Expenses

Living Within your Budget - Why and how to go about setting up a budget. - This post gives you a reason why you should set up a budget and a short introduction to what you need to do to set up a budget.

7 Ideas for Spring Break on a Budget – Jenn gives us 7 refreshing ideas about how to be frugal during spring break.

Real Value vs. Perceived Value – This post discusses the different values we might assign to an item. What something is worth to you may be quite different from what is it worth to others. It’s very interesting!

Lower Debt

Credit Scores Across the Country: Which Third are You In? – Read a summary of a recent study about the credit scores of US citizens. Apparently, for one third of the population, the credit score has increased.

How We Changed Our Family’s Financial Future – This blogger summarizes the steps his family took so that they get out of debt and onto a solid financial footing. They have been debt free for three years now!

When It Rains, It Pours - But We Keep Trudging Through - This blogger describes his journey to become debt free, describes a set-back, and explains how he handled the setback.

Credit Counseling Services: A Primer - Kristy gives us a good introduction to credit counseling, telling us how to get the process started and what kind of options we have once we start.

Investing

Three Investing Lessons Learned the Hard Way - Experience is the best teacher, but it is a lot easier (and cheaper) to learn from the mistakes others make. Read this post and learn what to look out for when you want to invest money in financial markets.

Lost the 401k match — now what? - Kacie confronts new circumstances as her husband loses his 401k match. She walks us through her decision making process as she decides they should keep contributing to the 401k plan even without a company match.

Miscellaneous

"What would you do if you learned you were going to die tomorrow?" - Philip comments on two questions whose answers are supposed to let you know what is really important in life: "What would you do if you knew you'd live a hundred years?" and "What if you knew you were going to die tomorrow." He argues that these questions only help you figure out the balance between short-term pleasures and long-term goals.

"How The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009 Can Help You" - This blog lists a bunch of benefits you may get that result from the big stimulus package President Obama signed last week.

I Don’t Want Your Freakin’ Extended Warranty… - Pinyo describes a frustrating experience at a car dealership.

We want to share some interesting posts of other bloggers whom we follow. When we list a post in this roundup we remain 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 the bloggers whom we highlight.

How To Create A Zero-Based Budget. - In this free budget planner NCN describes the steps needed to set up a budget.

How do you budget and shop for clothing? - Kacie talks about budgeting for a wardrobe when you get your body back after pregnancy.

Experiencing Difficultly in Making Your House Payments? - James gives us three “C”s to act upon when you find yourself in difficulties making house payments: communicate, coordinate, consolidate.

Start A Sunny Day Fund - If rainy day funds are for negative life experiences, it only makes sense that sunny day funds are for the good times.

MBO: Marriage By Objectives - Kim advises couples on setting financial goals together.

Frugal Finances: What To Do When A Spouse Loses Their Job - Jeff discusses a very timely topic – unemployment - and what to do if it hits your family. He addresses two How Tos: “How to support your spouse after they have lost their job” and “How to adjust your finances to live on one income”.

Personal Finance Success is Rather Simple, but Not Easy - This blog points out the difference between easy and simple. For example, the rule “spend less than you make” is a simple rule but not always easy to follow.

Don’t Bury Your Financial Head In The Sand. - David give us some basic advice about how to face financial problems, an especially important topic for times like these.

10 ways to stop worrying so much about money - Steve sums up the basic steps to organize one’s personal finances. In this entry, Steve focuses on what we do: good personal finances should lead to less stress and a happier life.

Understanding Your Financial Fortress - Jim makes a medieval castle a metaphor for our financial lives.

Recycled Love & Reused Cards: A Pack Rat's Frugal Love Story - Sharon shares a Valentines story with a frugal theme that is just too cute not to mention it in our weekly roundup.

Again, we want to share some interesting posts of other bloggers whom we follow. When we list a post in this roundup we remain 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 the bloggers whom we highlight.

How To Make A Budget In 10 Easy Steps - Emiley Thacker gives you 10 easy steps to set up a budget.

The Ten-Minute Budget - Erica Douglass makes a rally call to all of us to get going with budgeting which really does not take that much time.

If you want control of your life, take control of your money - Trisha Wagner discusses the impact our money decisions have on our lives. It goes without saying that we like her argument as we take the same idea as our guiding light for our blog.

Are You Among the Sandwich Generation? - Kristy writes about the “sandwich generation” who help their children and their aging parents. She goes on to discuss how a member of the “sandwich generation” has to make personal and financial adjustments.

7 Things Your Insurance Company or Agent Won’t Tell You - In this post we learn about what to watch out for when buying or owning an insurance policy.

30 Simple Family Pleasures - The mommy blogger Vered DeLeeuw gives us thirty great ideas for quality time spent with the family – without having to spend a bunch of money for these pleasures.

Creating A Good Life With Back To Basics Living - Harder economic times will make us focus on basic pleasures and on things that really matter to us in our lives.

Surviving a Recession: Lessons From Our Ancestors - While we are not sure yet how bad things can get in our economy, we read in this post how to prepare for bad times and how to survive the tougher times ahead.

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…..