personal finance

How to be Extremely Frugal – Our Top 3 Tips

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Extremely Frugal
What extremely frugal do

Having studied the topic of personal finance and the extremely frugal for a few years now (I even make all my calls for free), I have compiled a list of what truly frugal people who are trying to save money would never pay for. In this recession we are experiencing, even those who have never considered themselves frugal might now think twice about their budget and running the personal finances like a business will use this list.

Extremely Frugal People Never Pay For Someone to Clean Their House

A frugal person who is concentrating on building wealth and getting ahead will not pay someone to clean their house. There are countless tips on the web to help you save the most time and spend the least amount on cleaning products for your home.

Paying someone to do this for you is a true luxury and is something you can easily do yourself, considering that you are in good health.

Extremely Frugal People Never Pay For a Landscaper

During the day I see dozens of landscapers roaming around the suburbs of New Jersey. There is no shortage of landscape companies in my state.

However, the cost of hiring a landscaper (or gardener) on a weekly basis ranges from $50 to over $100 per week, depending on the size of your property. I am lucky because my husband takes care of mowing the lawn each week.

If you don’t have a wonderful husband to do this for you or if you don’t wish to do it yourself, I have an alternative solution to avoid the high cost of commercial landscaping services. Hire a high school student to mow your lawn once a week.

Possibly even supply the lawnmower so that you have more of a choice of who to hire. This way, you will avoid the overhead costs that are built in to the commercial landscapers’ fees.

A local student would love to earn some extra money and you could offer him or her half the price of what the big companies charge.

Extremely Frugal People Never Pay for New Consumer Goods

A truly frugal person would never buy brand new books, DVD’s, video games or CD’s. There is a huge market for used consumer products that are still in good condition.

Many video games stores, such as GameStop, take trade ins on old video game consoles and on the games themselves. You can then use the trade in credits toward other new or used games.

Good places to purchase used books for 50ยข to $1.00 are local book sales held at public libraries. The website www.booksalefinder.com has a searchable database of book sales in the United States and Canada. After purchasing and reading the used books, you can resell them on Amazon.com.

There are thousands of ways to save money if you know where to look. Being frugal can be thrilling and fulfilling. It’s only as difficult as you make it

Run Your Personal Finances Like You Would Run a Business

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Run Your Personal Finances Like You Would Run a Business
Run Your Personal Finances Like You Would Run a Business

Why should run your personal finances like you would run a business? As an Operations Analyst working for a large financial firm, there are many lessons that I learn daily from working “under the hood” of the business. From this perspective, I have to make sure company transactions settle correctly and ensure minimal risk. In Operations I also work to improve the processes that make the wheels of the business turn.

One area where I bring my job home is in personal finance. I often ask myself what processes can be improved that can ensure there is minimal risk in my finances, this is not the same as investment risk. Where I work, the risk is a loss of money due to issues with transactions settling, this can be in the form of penalties, charges, and loss of business. This is the risk I speak of when referring to risk in my personal finances. I like to think of my finances as a pipeline and my cash flows inside the pipes, I think of the leaks in the pipeline as my risk exposure. I search for leaks in order to fix them using many of the great personal finance tools out there free of charge. My bank has a functionality where I can view all of my finances regardless of who they are with, but if your bank does not offer this, Mint.com is another great tool that serves the same purpose.

Little fixes go a long way

When my cash in was less than my cash out, my first reaction was to “stop the bleeding.”I looked at the pipeline of my personal finances, for example, I looked at my magazine subscriptions when renewal time came up and realized they cost far more to renew than to initially subscribe, I also realized the magazine’s website offered many of the same articles free on-line after the magazine came out. By not renewing and waiting longer to read articles I saved 50 dollars a year. I also paid 17 dollars a month to use health tools, but I was able to find an app on my phone that was just as effective for a one-time cost of 2 dollars. This switch saved me 194 dollars a year. Also, I refinanced my car. This saved me 20 dollars a month and 900 dollars over the course of the loan. These little fixes and decisions helped me to free up needed cash when cash was tight.

In Conclusion: Run Your Personal Finances Like You Would Run a Business is a Great Life Lesson

Before my experiences working in operations my financial firm, and thinking how to run your personal finances like you would run a business, I always thought that the only way to increase cash flow was to bring in more revenue from the outside, but by making the pipeline of my personal finances run more efficiently and leak-free I can get the most value from every facet of my cash flow. By doing this I am able to free up a lot of money I never thought I had. Businesses not only increase their profits by increasing their revenue but they also do it by reducing their cost and by running more efficiently internally as well. That is one the one key lesson I bring home with me every day from working under the hood of my business.