Best Practice #4: Stretch your dollars

David Thornton, Peachtree Member:

Here is a short entry from my blog a couple of months ago. It contains some tips on saving money, which can then be used for an emergency fund.

TIPS FOR CREATING EXTRA ROOM IN YOUR BUDGET

With gas prices rising, many American families are starting to feel a financial pinch. My family and I have experienced a pinch for several years now due to layoffs and slow growth in the airline industry (I made less than $15,000 in 2005). We have learned several lessons about how save money.

First, take a close look at your spending. Most of us spend a lot of money on things that we don’t really need. For example, do you really need a fancy new cellphone for $200 when you can get a free one? Do you really need all those extra cable channels? My cable company offers a minimum package of network channels for about $8 per month, a savings of $45 over the next package. Buying bottled water and $3 coffees also adds up quickly and is not necessary. Go to the library instead of Blockbuster and the bookstore. Most of us can find some areas where we can trim the fat.

Cars cost Americans a lot of money. Keep your old car after it is paid off. This will free up the amount of your car payment ($300-500), but that is not all. With your car paid off, you can reduce your insurance and drop the expensive collision coverage, saving more money. By shopping around for gas, you can also save money. Visit http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=& src=Netx to check gas prices in your neighborhood.

Another great source of savings is eating at home. A typical restaurant restaurant meal for my family of three is at least $15, even at a fast food restaurant. Multiply that by several times per week and it adds up quickly. Clip coupons for what you need and browse local supermarket sale papers. Many neighborhoods have a discount grocery store, such as Sav-A-Lot. Also, buy generic brands of food. The generic brands meet the same FDA standards as more expensive brands. In most cases, you can’t taste the difference. In some cases, generic brands actually taste better!

Finally, a long term solution to solving your credit crunch is to get out of debt. It takes time, but paying off credit cards and loans will free up hundreds or thousands of dollars each month. It will also relieve the stress of wondering where your next payment is coming from. It will also enable you to start saving so that you won’t feel the pinch in the future.

http://captainkudzu.blogspot.com/2008/06/tips-for-creating-extra-room-in-your.html

Best Practice #3 – Emergency Fund covers a multitude of sins

Pastor Dave:
Dave Ramsey says it well (and with humor): Murphy (of Murphy’s law fame) is everywhere, and he strikes most often when you’re least prepared.

So, if you can be prepared with money saved up, you ward him off.

I remember several times in the first years of our marriage when I was a hero to Katie because I had some money (usually just a couple of hundred dollars; it took a year or two to have a thousand saved up) stashed away when an unexpected expense came up, whether it was a car repair, or the ability to take her out for a special weekend trip when life got hectic, or, just as likely, to make up for if we overspent some month.

It definitely pays to be able to smooth out the bumps of life with a stash of cash…it makes financial worry all but disappear.

Dave Ramsey recommends $1000 emergency fund as a starter.

If you don’t have that yet, get to $100, then $250, then $500.

Ultimately, Dave says get to three to six months living expenses. That covers you in case you lose your job and gives you time to catch your breath, seek God, and find out what to do next.

One little twist we have: We have two “emergency funds.” One is an ING savings account that I would have to look up the account numbers and passwords in order to access…that’s where we keep money that we really don’t want to touch except in the case of a REAL emergency.

The other one is a savings account linked to our checking account as overdraft protection. I am a HUGE fan of this. If my bank didn’t offer this, I would find another bank.

We manage our budget by the checking account balance, but if we make a mistake, both spend at the same time, whatever…the funds are automatically and painlessly sucked out of this linked savings and we don’t embarrass ourselves at a restaurant because the check card is rejected and I don’t guess we’ve had an insufficient funds fee as long as I can remember. (Though, I’d guess we probably overdraw our checking once or twice a month…I’m telling you, overdraft protection is the best).

We store our monthly car repair savings, our Christmas savings, and a couple of other small things we save for in that overdraft protection savings account, so every month it builds a little a bit.

If we get too far off track by overspending too much and draining this savings, we’ll call a spending moratorium for a while and try to make it up.

Anybody got an improvement on this idea?

Leave a comment.

Best Practice #2 – Car Payments are Bad

Pastor Dave:

I love this advice:
Never borrow money on something that goes down in value.

Now obviously, sometimes as you’re starting out, you may have to. A car payment gets a great ROI (return on investment) if your options are either sit at home or drive to work. (Actually, I’ll post later on how to say goodbye to car payments.)

But American culture has taught us that cars are status symbols and car payments are normal and lifelong. The money we waste (yeah, I said it) is huge in itself, but when you think of the opportunity cost (where that car paymnent money could have gone plus the interest it could have made), making payments on a car is one of the costliest lifestyle decisions you can make.

And frankly, to me, once that smell is gone, the first grocery cart hits it, and a model comes out with a little more style and cool stuff on it, you realize a car with no car payment gets you from point A to point B just as well and lets you do bigger and better things with that money.

Check out some great food for thought from Dave Ramsey on car payments.

Play the video at this link:

http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/lms/drive_free/

And see this one.

Best Practice #1 – Automate

Pastor Dave:
It’s a universal problem…there will always tend to be more month left over than money. So, how do you pay for the things that are most important instead of shortchanging the truly valuable having wasted money that should have gone to higher priorities? I’m glad you asked!

I’m not very disciplined…I hate to sit down and pay bills and manage money…but I don’t have to be because I have a system that works for me that insures I pay for the most important things first. I’ve shared it with many others, and there’s usually one big question that comes up, and I’ll answer that question here as well.

Here’s our system:
I get paid once a month by automatic deposit. On the first day of the month, I feel rich. There is enough money that day in our account to pay everything in our monthly written budget. But that’s only if we don’t eat out too much, make a few unplanned Wal-Mart stops, etc. You know the dangers.

So, what do we do different than anybody else?

I automate every bill and payment (that I have prioritized) to go out very quickly at the beginning of the month.

The only checks I write during the month are my tithe/offering/Bearing Fruit checks to the church and we write them immediately when we get paid (btw, I would totally automate them, but I don’t want anyone in the church to watch over the course of a month and not see that my family gives to our ministry).

But here’s one important point:

We give what we’ve planned immediately at the beginning of the month…WE DON’T WAIT TO SEE IF WE HAVE ANY LEFT OVER TO GIVE.

Second, I have all bills (including mortgage and utilities) set to go out automatically early in the month.

Here’s a general list of our personal priorities in order

Giving
Food (we’ve started setting aside money in an envelope)

Shelter
Mortgage
Utilities
Insurance
Retirement (Call it saving for a rainy day, whatever)
Entertainment
Cable TV/ Movies / Eating out

So, here’s the deal…by the 6th of the month, our balance is way less than half of my paycheck. In fact, it’s sometimes depressing how low it is, BUT

You need to realize, we have already paid

Our giving, housing, food, utilities, long-term savings, etc.

Quite often, the last week of the month is a spending freeze for our family…no eating out, no renting movies, but that only lasts for one week, and then we feel rich for a day, but the beauty of it is that when we are eating something out of the pantry, and I’m eating Ramen noodles at work (come by and see my drawer of noodles), we’ve already paid everything that was important to us. I love it, and it makes the noodles taste better.

It’s easy to automate. I usually set it up through the billing companies (mortgage, utility, etc.) by filling out a form and sending a voided check. Most banks now let you do billpay through their website, also.

The advantages are:

1. No postage cost.
2. No monthly time spent on regular bills (download your bank acct to Quicken and you are really working it).
3. Never miss a payment (I have an almost perfect credit score — the secret, bills are paid automatically, and I can’t forget).
4. When you automate based on what you value, you are always making sure you’re accomplishing your financial priorities.

The biggest pushback I receive when I share this with people:
“Yeah, it must be nice to know you have enough money to pay all your bills automatically. I can’t automate because I have to manage when to pay utilities, etc.”

My response:

If you have an unsteady income like straight commission, you’re right.

Otherwise, my question is: Have you budgeted that you might not be able to pay your giving, housing and basic utilities, long-term savings? If so, you may need to cut some things out of your budget or find a way to increase income. But if you make enough, then automating just guarantees you pay your priorities first. Manage the short-term end of the month famine by cutting unnecessary expenses (pretty much all of them since you’ve automated the important stuff) for one week, and rest easy that all your priorities are already paid.

Can anybody improve on this idea?

Comment below! I’d love to hear from you.

Best Practices

When I was an engineer in manufacturing, all department managers would gather together with their counterparts from different plants about once a year to share “Best Practices.”

Best practices are improvement ideas they’d come up with on their own during the year that could be adopted by others so that everyone would benefit.

Let’s share Best financial practices here…what are your ideas for

how to budget,
how to not overspend,
how to be content,
how to get a good deal,
whatever…

Just add comments down below.  Some of the Peachtree staff are going to be sharing their best practices, and if you have a great idea, we may make it into a post of its own.

What are your best practices?  Comment below.