Why Buying in Bulk is Not as Good as You Think

Ask most people for a common way to save money on groceries and household goods, and they may come back with this answer: Buy in bulk. While it can be an amazingly simple way to potentially save some bucks, it can also be a buying trap. Here are the 4 misconceptions we typically attribute to bulk buying, and the truth for each.

Myth #1: Buying a larger package usually means that the cost per unit (ounce, pound, etc) is lower.

Truth: It's one of the many reasons people rush to buy bulk, but it isn’t always so.

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How to analyse your spending and why you need it

When you first decide that you may need to structure your finances and get more control over it you very quickly discover that the corner stone of successful budget is a good understanding of your pending patterns.

When I first started I thought it will be easy! How can I not know what I spend?!

Well, the truth was – I actually had no idea… I knew the end result documented on the month end in a fat overdraft but I had no idea how it came about!

I’ve tried several things and none worked in isolation but together they helped me a lot – so here I am sharing my experience with you!

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Step by step of your first budget - What Would I Do Differently?

I am now in our second month of living adhering to a budget that I’ve set up. Some lessons I learned so far moved me to write this post.

Knowing what I know now – how would I set up my very first budget?

1. Collect / download itemised bank statements for the last two months

2. I would still ask a friend to help me identifying actual spend based on 2 months of bank statements. It’s way too easy to trick yourself into declaring some of your spending a one off or simply “not seeing” them – you need a help of an outsider!

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No, You Don't Need a Large Emergency Fund - or Convince me That I am Wrong!

I recently have written a post about the myth and fallacy of an emergency fund and why I don’t want to have one. This led to a lot of discussion and a lot of people disagreed with my view.
I have just completed a guest post for Penny’s blog about MBTI type and their attitude to money and while researching for that post I also came across an interesting study about the link between the MBTI type and risk.
Since Emergency funds are all about mitigating risks and hedging your bets looking at MBTI type made sense.
Sonya Zichy conducted a survey asking participants about their investment preferences.

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Why Should You Use ZOPA?

ZOPA is a pioneer in social lending. You might have heard about it as a peer-to-peer lending and I am fascinated by this idea!

It's quite simple: financial transactions take place between the individuals without any intermediate financial institutions. And Zopa is a marketplace where people can lend anything from £10 to upwards of £25,000

Lending and borrowing from person to person like it was done hundred of years ago... But apart from its nostalgic value social lending has a lot of benefits for the participating individuals.

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Russian Women and Their Money

Penny Farthing, in her personal finance blog,  published an interesting article about money in Japan and it inspired me to write a similar post about money and Russian women!

• In traditional Russian families it is very common that women look after the day to day budget and men tend to get some spending money handed out.
  
• Both man and woman are likely to have saved some money from their salaries without disclosing it to their partners. A man would call it...
  
  

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344 Tips to Help You Save from All Over the Internet

This week's Friday list is dedicated to Saving Money!

As I am not blogging over weekends I hope the links below will give you enough food for thought and action!

Some posts and sites in my Friday selection are not new and been around the internet for a while. I have selected the sites below to give you good, useful, entertaining read over the weekend.

10 Shopping Tricks That Stores Hate - A seriously good article on how to shop more for less from Consumerist

Top 10 Ways to Trick Yourself into Saving Money from Lifehacker. While every person's financial needs are different, anyone can set up simple systems to help themselves stop buying what they don't need and almost automatically save money they'll need later

Force Yourself To Save! 15 Painless Ways To Pay Yourself First - Digerati talks here about some interesting ways to fool yourself into saving money.

10 things you shouldn't buy new - MSN Money asks why we should waste money on shiny packaging and a fancy store when you can find it online and 'pre-owned' for a fraction of the cost?

Little Steps: 100 Great Tips For Saving Money For Those Just Getting Started - I had to include this article since it got 159 comments! Each of the tactics described are simple little moves you can make to improve your financial situation.

118 Ways to Save Money in College - a long list of both practical and creative ways you can save some green while you’re going to campus.

The Cheapskate Guide: 50 Tips for Frugal Living - confession of a cheapskate at Zen Habbits

Top 10 Tips for Talking Your Way into a Better Deal - negotiating tactics to use next time you want to get more for less.

21 Money-Saving Sites from Around the Web - A list compiled my Get Rich Slowly with even more sites recommended in the comments

Get smarter with your money, get updates straight to YOUR EMAIL or RSS Feed now!

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The Myth About an Emergency Fund and Why You don’t Need One

Read any blog, web site or book dealing with personal finances and you are bound to find one or many pages written about the necessity of having an EMERGENCY fund … The advice ranges from few hundret to start with to the equivalent of 6-12 months expenses.

Continue searching and reading comments on this topic and you will soon discover that most people don’t have such a fund and those who try to have one struggle with: defining its size, knowing when to use it, keeping paying into it in the longer run.

And is if it was not enough there are further considerations like: do I pay into an emergency fund or do I re-pay my debt first? Do I have to have it in cash or in one of mine accounts? What is more important my emergency fund or my retirement fund?

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6 Easy Steps to Save Quicker

May be you've already heard about a Snowball debt re-payment model. You are using a snowball when you first through all your available resource to pay off the debt with the smallest amount and once it payed off you use all money that became availble to pay the next one in the row.
Now, yesterday a friend of mine shared her approach to saving. What she does is

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Carnival of Personal Finance – Support Haiti Edition

I am very please that my recent post about Budgeting has been accepted into the current Personal Finance carnival, this time being hosted by Million Dollar Journey.

It is a clearly written, accurate, informative, not over-selling an idea, just telling you what you need to know blog about personal finance and investment from Canada.

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How to Find Out If You Can Afford Your Job

I've been inspired by the power of financial visualisation.

So, below is a pretty picture of how many days in a month me and my husband need to work to pay for our living. The most depressing part of the picture below is that it takes us 9 working days each month to earn enough to be able to ... well, go to work!

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When is it wrong to save?

Three years ago my husband to be and I went shopping for my engagement ring. We ended up buying it from Theo Fennell in Selfridges. The engagement ring did cost my husband about £3000.
Good quality jewellery is an investment, not a particularly good one but it doesn't depreciate

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5 Retail Sneaky Strategies You Need To Be Aware Of!

Yesterday I was ranting about people getting into debt during Christmas. Not saving for future purchases is only one piece of the "special occasion" debt. The other piece is the retail tricks used to lure us into spending more.

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Budget: 16 Gold Nuggets of Budgeting

I've spent a considerable amount of time finding out as much as I could about budgeting before I actually created one.

So I thought, others may find it useful  if I shared what I’ve learned while researching this topic for myself.

Couple of  things I want to point out before diving into the bottomless topic of budgets. I have:

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Spending: 4 Things To Watch Out For On a Menu

The bad news first: even if you are aware of the influence a carefully designed menu will have on your decision making you won’t be able to do much about it! The good new is: at least you could try and sometimes re-consider your choices!
There is a lot of research on how combination of products presented to us and

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Debt: the true Cost of Christmas

The new numbers are in: Almost 4 million people in the UK have already gone into debt to pay for Christmas this year (aka in 2010!), according to research released today by R3, the insolvency trade body.

The research also finds that

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Personal Finance: 10 Sites to Get You Started

If you feel the time has come to sort out your finances consider following these easy steps. It is not a comprehensive list but something that I have tried out myself. This list focuses on basic steps that are very important to get right. It might take a day, but most likely to

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Glove over Marriage

Ever tried to stick to a budget? Ever tried to keep track of your expenses? Isn't it really hard and the tracker gets abandoned after a few months? Well, it might be frustrating that you are not able to follow through, but here is a fine example why

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Paying Your Bills Off

Recently a billpayregistry site has been launched that allows you to register online bills you need paying and than let your friends and family contribute towards the outstanding amount. There is no way

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Moderator vs. Abstainer

I really like this article from Gretchen Rubin who runs her Happiness Project. She writes about two ways of how you can approach changing your behavior. Gretchen suggests there are two types of peopel- a moderator and an abstainer. So, would you rather

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