Gather Little by Little

Congratulations! You are going broke! I mean”¦ getting married! As I mentioned in my first post on how to save money for a wedding over at my other blog, my best friend is getting married next spring (and I also have a sister-in-law getting married at the end of next summer, in 2010). So, while I will end up  broke in 2010, as I am the best man for both weddings, I will try to share all the money savings tips related to  weddings that I could find:

Money Savings Tip #1: Talk to people

On Monday, I wrote about some of the problems with mass transit and I thought that I would spend today on some of the other means of transportation.

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Many people use mass transit to save money. I like mass transit. A couple of years ago, I visited Germany and fell in love with their rail system. Buses, trains, light rail, the subway, the elevated train all make sense as a way to reduce cost and congestion – but not in every circumstance. Make sure that you are actually saving money before making the switch to the bus or train.

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I was reading over on CNN Money this weekend that a health care market research company is seeing a growing trend in consumer use of credit cards to pay for medical bills. Due to high unemployment and ever increasing health care costs, consumers are reaching out to credit in order to continue receiving health care. Now, here’s the scariest part: CNN also reported that health care industry watchers see a multi-billion dollar opportunity to offer specialized “medical” credit cards!

If you haven’t figured this out already, let me explain this simply: “Consumers” (That’s you folks) visit the doctor one day, and potentially pay for that doctor’s visit for the next 1-5 years.

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When we purchased our current home, we knew it would require some work and a few upgrades. Namely some new paint, repairs to some of the work the owners did (but didn’t do correctly) and yard work. The big item we knew we would have to address was the upstairs. When the original owners built the house, they left the upstairs unfinished. The middle area of the upstairs was finished off as an office later, but it’s very obvious the work was done by the homeowner, and unfortunately not done well at all. Then, when the owners decided to sell, their real estate agent recommended the remainder be finished off as well. They finished it, but did even a worse job than before and cut corners. For example, the middle office area has drywall ceilings. The two outer rooms have cheap suspended ceilings.

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We purchased a new gas grill over the weekend. I’ve been shopping and reading about them for a few months as we slowly saved our money for one. After all of my research, I decided to buy a Weber E-310, which consistently received excellent reviews from every source I found. The Weber is very expensive though and right at $700.00. The question of “is quality really worth paying more for” kept looming in the back of my mind.

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I often get emails from people desperate to get control of their finances and immediately reduce their spending. Most often, these emails are the result of a sudden job loss. While I’ve published more than 80 money savings tips as part of my Money Saving Monday Tips series, I thought it would beneficial for some out there to have a consolidated list of quick tips that would provide immediate money savings.

Here are 5 ways you can save money now:

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Due to the warmer weather, we’ve gone 100% without either AC or heat for more than a month! I received our first resulting electric bill a week or so ago. I was excited to see how low it was going to be. While it was significantly lower than our winter bills, about 45% lower. The bill was still higher than I anticipated.

I’ve been assuming all winter long that the primary consumer of electrical power in the house was the heat pump and underlying electric based back-up coils. While certainly a large portion, it would seem  there might be some additional opportunities to reduce costs as well. Here’s the run-down of other consumers and in the order I think they are “guilty”:

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This guest post is by Amanda Steinberg of DailyWorth.com. DailyWorth offers daily personal finance tips for women by email.

I’m a Weight Watchers master. In 2003, I was 5’8″ and 160 pounds “” not exactly ideal for a 25-year-old single girl living in Manhattan. I spent three (!) years on Weight Watchers, and for two years, failed repeatedly. I obsessed over every drop of salad dressing and kernel of popcorn only to learn at my weekly meeting weigh-in that I’d gained half a pound. I quit multiple times, but would return months later with new resolve. Finally, in my third year, something clicked. I dropped thirty pounds in just six months.

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When saving our money, we all want to get the best savings rate possible. In the past in order to do that I’ve either used bankrate.com or manually visited the the various online savings banks to see what their current rates are. That is until I learned about MoneyAisle.com.

Remember LendingTree.com? LendingTree allows you to provide information about the mortgage loan you’re interested in getting, and then banks bid to provide you with the most competitive rate. MoneyAisle is LendingTree for savings accounts. MoneyAisle allows you to specify the amount of money you wish to save, either as a standard savings account or CD, and banks will “bid” for the best rate. If you’re only saving a few hundred dollars or maybe even a couple thousand, you may not care about a slight interest rate variance. For larger savings though, you definitely should.

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