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Follow Through on Financial Goals

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Follow Through On Financial GoalsHave you set financial goals?  Are you following through on them?

If you have ever been coached in most any sport, you have undoubtedly had the term “follow through” beat into your psyche at length.  Whether dealing with sports, house projects, political promises, or finances, follow through is an essential lesson to be applied in all aspects of life.

Thanks to recent article by Jeff (@stretchydollar) of Consumerism Commentary on financial goals, I was reminded of a couple tasks I had yet to complete in order to consummate a few of my goals.  I had reached most or all of the milestones, but needed to perform important money redistribution tasks to truly finish them!

Specifically, I have been cutting costs & making shoe money all over the place, but had not yet made the necessary adjustments to move my spoils out of my checking account & into a purposed savings location.

Ways you may be missing out…

Have you recently paid off a debt but have not reapportioned the income?

When I began my Debt Free Adventure Mrs Jabs & I had 4 credit cards we were working to pay off.  Since we are using a combination of the Debt Snowball method & the High Interest First method I was paying the most on the card with the lowest balance & apportioning the rest to the other 3 based on balance amounts & interest rates.  Once I paid off the first card, I reapportioned all the excess to the card with the next lowest balance! Now I’m almost down to two cards; and plan to continue redistributing the same overall payment amount accordingly.

The unwise alternative would be to let that extra amount from paying off the first card swim around purposeless in a checking account.

Have you cut an expense like TV Service lately but have yet to employ the money elsewhere?

If you are a regular DFA reader then you know that my wife & I canceled our satellite TV last month.  In short, we watch less TV, have an indoor HDTV digital antenna for local stations, & subscribe to Netflix.  The combined effort is saving us $76 every month.  Before reading Jeff’s article I had forgotten about the extra money and was just letting it pour into my checking account unaccounted for, but have since added this amount to my Capital One 360 Automatic Savings Plan (ASP).

Are you making shoe money but not really saving it?

Have you made some extra money on the side recently?  Are you being faithful to reapportion all of it correctly?

One of the reasons I started Debt Free Adventure was to make extra money.  Once the money started trickling in, I noticed that the proceeds were just being diluted in my checking account.  Instead of letting the money continue on purposeless I made the commitment to channel every dollar earned into a separate Capital One 360 savings account dubbed “Side Hustle”.  Now every time I earn money from one of the multiple income streams, 100% goes into the separate fund… not to be touched.  Soon I plan to create an LLC for my online endeavors at which time I will open a business bank account.  By separating the money now, it will make it easier on me when I go to move.

Have you recently refinanced your home to a lower rate?  Don’t forget to properly employ the monthly savings?

My friend, & fellow blogger “K” has graciously allowed me to share the story of his recent mortgage refinance story.  He just refinanced his mortgage from a 6.5% interest rate down to 5.2%.  He reduce his monthly mortgage payment by $150.  Since he is already used to that money being spent each month, instead of letting that money get lost in translation, K plans to create a new Capital One 360 savings account & fund every month.  What he stands to realize is $1,800 every year!

Here is the record of our recent IM chat discussing the matter…

K:  sorry just got back from my Refi Closing
Me:  awesome, did you get a lower rate?
K:  yes sir!  6.5 to 5.25
Me:  WOW…sweet, that’ll shave off some money each month
K:  yea.. but it doesnt translate much into monthly pymt, 150 tops.  But still, that’s money i don’t have to pay
Me:  $150 is a lot!
K:  hehe yea i guess i was being too greedy
Me:  that’s $1,800 a year buddy
K:  when i look at it that way, it’s big!
Me:  exactly.  i have some advice.  since you’re used to paying the old number, do this… set up a new fund in Capital One 360 & put the $150 directly into it each month.  call it a “Vacation Fund” or something, otherwise the money will just get lost in translation
K:  u r right, great idea man!

I told K that he should give me a finders fee of 50% since it was my advice… he just laughed at me.  Hey, at least I tried!

Other examples of people properly following through…

These fellow bloggers are beneficially employing their savings from both short and long term goals:

  • In order to have a debt free wedding (yay!) Ray started blogging & began teaching on the side.  He set all the money from his side gigs apart from his main incomeand was able to pay off his wedding along with some new household items!
  • In an effort to kick start his Emergency Fund & Debt Snowball (love it!) Paul & his wife inventoried their lives to find over $1,000 savings in one month!  Some of Paul’s efforts were one time money makers, while others will be paying him back for years to come.  Instead of frittering away the residual savings Paul and his wife wisely reapportioned the excesstoward debt repayment & savings!
  • Back in 1999 Matt vowed to stop buying CD’s (mp3’s in today’s economy)and save the excess.  Instead of letting the small bits of extra money each month dilute back into his checking account to be piddled away, Matt rolled some of it into a savings to be used for college expenses, and the rest into an IRA.

So what about you?

Have you recently made side money, reduced some expenses, or paid off a debt, yet failed to follow through by properly redistributing your savings accordingly?  Now’s the time to act!

DFA is passionately dedicated to helping others break the bondage of debt using biblical principles.

Beans Beans and More Beans – How we plan to reduce our grocery bill

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Beans – healthy, delicious, and cheap

Sure…beans make you fart, and deep down inside we all know that farts are funny…well…most of the time!  Let’s move on shall we.

Due to our recent but ongoing financial fast (which I recommend everyone try for at least one solid month) my wife & I have not been spending money on anything outside of our normal bills and expenses.

We stopped going out to eat which is saving us over $5,000/year.  We subscribed to Netflix and stopped going to the movies which saves us $600/year.  We are working diligently to reduce our monthly bills which has helped us cut at least another $600/year.  All told, since January of 2009 we have reduced our monthly spending by over $500!

I of course keep pushing by wondering…how I can cut this down even further?  Looking over our budget it appears that one of the few categories I can still reduce is our monthly grocery expenditures.  Enter “Beans Beans and More Beans”!

The remainder of this article is a quick break down of how beans, which beans, and why beans – with a core goal of – how to use beans to reduce costs.  Our specific goal is to reduce our grocery budget from $400/month to $250, mainly by using a ton of dry beans. An additional benefit my wife & I stand to realize from our great bean adventure is increased health.

The Low Cost of Beans (dry) vs (wet a.k.a pre-cooked)

Yes beans are cheap, but did you know that buying dry beans is a much more frugal choice than buying wet beans?  Wet beans cost more because of their swollen size & water weight.  You actually get about 66% less beans by weight if you buy them wet.  Companies selling wet beans actually have a brilliant business plan.  Take something they can get for SUPER cheap, soak it in water overnight, then sell 1/3 the amount at double the price.  It works for them because the wet beans are STILL super cheap!

Basically dry beans will yield 3x their volume once they are cooked.  This in turn means that you will get three times your money if you purchase dry beans versus cooked beans.

Okay, I’ll buy dry beans, what does this have to do with my grocery bill?

I’m glad you asked.  If you substitute dry beans in your recipes in place of other protein sources you stand to save big time!  When you are trying to make ends meet in these tough financial times, replacing high cost meats with low cost beans is just sound financial sense.  Don’t worry, beans taste excellent and have a good “meat-like” texture.  I am a big fan of meat in meals and thought I would have a tough time substituting beans, but I have not really even noticed much “missing”.  There are also a ton of health benefits when substituting beans for meat because beans are just so healthy!

The Health Benefits of Beans

Beans are one of the most nutritionally well rounded foods available to us.  They are classed as both a vegetable and a protein and are both high in complex carbohydrates and low in calories.

I know I said we were moving past the fart talk, but I just can’t help myself.  The reason beans make you fart is because they are SO VERY high in fiber.  That’s right, not only does that mean a lot of farts, but MUCH more importantly it means a cleaner colon for you!  More and more studies show that good colon health is directly indicative of good overall health.  Beans are also extremely high in protein; which supports our claim that there is no better meat substitute than beans.  Are you trying to lose some weight?  Beans are incredibly good for the waistline and may also aid in disease prevention!

Simply put, it is obvious why beans should be a part of any person’s diet.

Which Beans are Best?

When it comes to which bean is best it is quite simple, the darker the better.  The darker the bean the more flavonoid antioxidants it contains.  Black beans boast the most, followed by red, brown, yellow and white beans. (Brown and yellow beans are similar to the manteca-type beans widely eaten in Latin America.) A 3.5-ounce serving of black beans contains about 10 times more antioxidants than the equivalent amount of oranges.

Washing & Preparation

I do not want to reinvent the wheel with instructions in this post so I will make this very brief.  That is not hard since washing and preparing dry beans is very easy.

Wash your beans in a colander, then lay them out on a dish towel and scour for stones.  Once cleaned, soak most beans in three times their volume of cold water for six hours before cooking.  I make this easy and just soak my beans overnight…just set ’em & forget ’em.

Once the beans have been soaked I then bring them to a boil in their soaking water and then reduce to simmer for about an hour.  The amount of time can vary for each bean and since I do not feel like listing them go here to see the cooking times for different beans.  Here is another more in depth tutorial on using dried beans.

Recipes

Last week we started our “Bean Adventure” by making a lentil & chickpea stew.  The entire meal cost us less than $5 and provided us with 10 servings or better! Here is the recipe:

Lentil & Chickpea Stew

Ingredients:

  • 1 lbs bag dry lentils (wash & soak overnight before cooking)
  • 8 oz dry chickpeas (wash & soak overnight before cooking)
  • Soak beans in at least 14 cups of water
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 3/4 cup fresh cilantro chopped
  • 4 carrots sliced
  • 1/3 cup of your favorite rice (I use brown Basmati)
  • 6 cloves smashed & minced garlic
  • 1 1/2 tsp paprika
  • 1 1/2 tsp chili powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp cumin
  • 2 tsp sea salt
  • 2 tsp fresh cracked black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper (optional)
  • 1/3 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp whole wheat flour, dissolved in 1/2 cup warm water
  • 3 Tbsp salted butter

Bring beans to a boil in their soaking water then let simmer for 60 minutes.  Add all ingredients except the cilantro, butter, lemon juice, and flour.  Stir together and let simmer for another 60 minutes.  Heat the butter & lemon juice in a sauce pan over medium heat and whisk in the flour slowly to create a roux.  Once whisked together add the roux to the pot and simmer an additional 15 minutes.  Remove from heat, add cilantro and serve!

I am looking here for a bunch of awesome bean recipe

In Closing…

I will keep you posted on how our bean adventure pans out.    We will also continue to pre-plan our meals, but now plan on basing our meals around our local grocer fliers to save even more.  I am confident that these slight changes will enable us to cut the desired $150 from our grocery bill each month.  I am excited to have this experiment underway and am also pretty excited to be getting the added health benefits of all these beans!

DFA is passionately dedicated to helping others break the bondage of debt using biblical principles.

Budget Your Money! – DFA Tip of the Week – 3/23/2009

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There are many ways to reduce costs in our every day lives, so to help do just that each Monday I will post a money saving “Tip of the Week”.

“And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.” Luke 19:17

This weeks tip involves…keeping a budget!

One of the single best pieces of financial advice you could ever receive is simply to keep a budget.  This is far from new information, but is something that bears repeating over & over & over again until it is adopted!  In Philippians 3:2 Paul says, “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe.” I too am saying it is not grievous for me to mention your need to budget your money, and indeed for you it is safe.

Budgeting

There are several approaches you can take to budgeting:

  1. Manual – use a pen & paper to create a physical copy of your family budget. You do not see this option mentioned on a lot of modern finance blogs and may think of it as “out-of-date” or “unstylish”…however…despite all that modern technology has to offer, this can be one of the most effective forms of budgeting available even today; it all depends on your specific situation.
  2. Spreadsheets – use MS Excel…even better…the free OpenOffice Calc or Google Docs Spreadsheet. This is an option a lot of people prefer due to the control you have, the privacy you have, and the flexibility you have.  A draw back of this option is that it can be both time consuming and tedious to set up the spreadsheet, especially if you are not versed in the use of spreadsheets.  There are many good free templates out there, but again…if you are not a seasoned spreadsheet user, this can be a tough road to hoe.
  3. Online tools – Using a piece of software built for the purpose of budgeting. There are both free & pay options available.  Some of the best free tools include Mint & Wesabe.  Two fee based software packages that are not free but are very effective budgeting tools  are YNAB (YouNeedABudget) and Mvelopes.  I am actually in the process of reviewing both of these and will be posting my results  soon.

What do I use to budget?  Currently I am using a combination of all three methods.

Because my wife has a serious aversion to computers & technology, we use a Moleskin journal to record our family budget.  The journal is used as a simple & quick overview for our income & expenses.  We do not go into detail here, but simply list the basic monthly debits & credits of our money.

The one technology interaction I request my wife does participate in is Mint.com.  We both have separate Mint accounts and use them to help us budget and keep track of our spending & individual transactions.  Keeping track of this information in a handwritten journal is both time consuming & impractical when free tools such as Mint.com exist.  Another benefit Mint provides us is the ability to view spending trends which enables us to visualize & identify problem areas, then develop a plan to curb them accordingly.

As I mentioned above I am currently in the process of downloading, installing, using & reviewing both YNAB & Mvelopes software budgeting tools.  Both of these softwares come highly touted and offer free trials, of which I am taking full advantage.  YNAB provides a 60-day free trial and Mvelopes offers a 30 day free trial.  Some differences between the two include but are not limited to the following:

  • Software type – YNAB is a software you purchase once & install on your PC whereas Mvelopes is a web & fee based subscription service.
  • Data importing – Mvelopes automatically downloads & imports your banking information for you while YNAB requires you to manually import the data.
  • Acessibility – YNAB is only accessible from the computer you install it on, but is more secure in that wise.  Mvelopes is accessible anywhere you have an Internet connection and browser therefore making it susceptable to security hacks and is also unusable if the Internet connection goes down, but if all is well gives you the ability to view your information from any Internet device.
  • Cost – YNAB is a one time purchase whereas you must pay for Mvelopes every month you use it indefinitely.

What do you think?  How do you budget & which methods mentioned above do you use?  Like I said, I am currently using all three & hope to narrow it down here in the near future.  Please share any experience you have for the benefit of all readers.

Click here to see all our past DFA Tips of the Week.