How To Live On Cash Only And Avoid Credit Card DebtApr 18 '10 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Office Supplies
The Bottom Line You can still have a load of fun in life living on cash only and I am going to tell you how to start doing it today!
The first step is to ask yourself, How Can I Live On Cash Only? Many people are struggling out of a home foreclosure, bankruptcy or loss of a job right now in America and are tempted to purchase high end items but cannot quite afford them yet. The solution to getting the most of out of your life in this tough economy is living frugally and making the most of it at the same time. The steps below are going to outline a plan that I endeavored on once I moved from college into my career. Watching all my friends drive nice new cars and buy celphones was tough but I can now say that I am financially independent when they are not. Four years ago, I threw all my credit cards away and began paying them off. Any daily expenses are paid with a debit card on my checking account that has no pin number to prevent casual use at an ATM. To be honest my first two years were a struggle as I paid off all my debts aggressively. During that time, I began reading and writing reviews to keep myself distracted from shopping or visiting local bars. The following article details how I accomplished my goals through living frugally and only buying products that entertained me for a long time. Yeah, I do not own the latest Apple iPAD but I also have more cash on hand than any of those guys who think these new technology devices are worth having. Living on cash only means that you do not get a single new loan without first having the cash stashed somewhere to pay for it. Yeah, that means no expense new cars, jet skis or vacations. Home loans are different, obviously, all you can do about this is buy a home with 750 square feet or less per person living with you. The mortgage payment must be less than an apartment in your area by about 15%. First Look At All Your Bills, Grocery Costs And Gas Expenses Create a balance sheet that lists your bills, grocery costs and expenses compared to your monthly income and get a number that shows how much free cash you earn monthly. Now work to have that free cash number reinvested back into the high interest bills to pay them off. Then do your absolute best to never increase your credit card bills by not increasing your open credit card balance so the monthly payments do not go up. Paying just an extra $10 per credit card a month over the course of 6 months will result in lower minimum payments. Pay Your Bills Online And Stop Paying For Stamps, Now! I do not like waiting for my checks to arrive by mail. Online banking allows me to see the money get withdrawn in less than three days and I can manage my account balance accordingly. If you are in the process of meeting minimum payments on credit cards, then online banking remembers your last minimum payment so you can begin to just file your mail. Check Your Bank Balance As Often As You Check Your Email Just like you would check your wallet or purse to see if that $20 bill is still there, you must do the same for your bank account balance in a Debit Card Only model. Living On Cash Only depends on you knowing your checking account balance at all times so that you can keep from spending so much that you get hit with overdraft fees. Overdraft fees can total more than $30 per transaction and compound quickly if you have multiple instances. Bring Homemade Lunches To Work In Your Tupperware Taking your lunch to work is smart for many reasons. First, you have full control over the excessive costs of eating at Burger King ($6 for a decent meal) and you can use the savings to buy something nice or pay off your debts quickly. I have found that eating at work with other coworkers is also a way to focus more on your job and get the jump on any ideas that they may have to make the workplace better. Early in my own career, I began doing this and found that I was able to make myself more valuable to the company just by noticing inefficiencies in the office that coworkers never realized could have been done better. So yes, you could say that I everyday I eat at the office helps me double my value as a professional. Cancel Your Cellular Phone Or Yard Man! Honestly, why do you or your children need a cellular phone if it is not used to advance your career? If it is needed for work then they should be paying for it anyway. Now if you hire a yard man or housekeeper and facing financial troubles then it is time to get in shape and do the work yourself. Not only will you get a workout but you can also cancel that gym membership! Take Pleasure In The Small Things Life is all about pleasure and enjoying yourself. Until I put myself on a financial crackdown, I never realized how low the satisfaction I got from my big purchases. Buying the latest car or buying everything I saw at Wal-Mart usually made me feel worse because of the resulting credit card debt. Now, I create lists of things that I would like to buy and compare these items online to product reviews to see how people feel about them. Often, I discovered that buying the Apple iPhone was going to cost me more than it was worth because of buggy software issues or long-term contracts. To maximize the value of my purchases, I only buy products that will take me a long time to fully utilize. Instead of buying the latest DVD movie for $20, I get a television series on DVD for almost the same cost but gain over 8 hours of viewing time. To feed my video gaming addiction, I buy role playing games like Disgaea DS which require 45 hours of gameplay to complete. The cost is the same as other Nintendo DSi XL game but it requires much more time which maximizes my entertainment value. Apply this logic to your other purchases and it will pay huge dividends in the long run. Fun With Cash Online I use Amazon.com to power my passion for new video games but also to comparison shop for these titles. Amazon.com allows me to put all my favorite items in a shopping cart but not buy them. As a result, I can check the cart every few days to see if any products went down in price and make a decision to buy them then. Of course since it is Amazon.com, most of these products have through online reviews to help you get the most for you money by avoiding the purchase of defective toys or video games. Wal-Mart does not do this for you. At Wal-Mart, you buy and then discover the product was a failure for one reason or another and then must try to return it. To keep my mind off the new Apple iPAD, I follow cheaper gaming hardware like the Nintendo DSi XL. You see in October 2009, I heard that Nintendo was releasing a new console and decided that I must have it. The new handheld only has bigger screens on it but it also costs just $190 online which was $400 less than the Apple iPAD. I was sold! For the next few months, my buying habits nearly stopped as I was swept up in a frenzy of excitement waiting for my little Nintendo DSi XL. To be honest, I saved $750 worth of monthly spending during this October 2009 to March 2010 time period as I did not buy my usual computer equipment toys. I am looking for the next cool gadget right now so that I can save money and become excited again! Advanced Saving Techniques Once you have mastered the techniques above and paid off all your credit card debts and student loans, you will need to continue the momentum by implementing these ideas that have worked quite well for me financially. Continue Paying Bills To Your Savings Account After all those bills are gone, you will be tempted to spend the free income. DO NOT SPEND MONEY FREELY! Instead, dump all that free cash into a monthly, auto transferred, direct deposit into savings accounts. I put money in three savings funds so that when I go to the store, I know that the money is just not there on my debit card. The motivation to avoid overdraft fees will become very strong for you after practicing these financial constraints for just a few months. The cool thing about all this saving is the interest that starts coming in. Yeah, it is meager but watching $$ arrive in the bank on a monthly basis is a huge motivating factor to this former college debt sufferer! Using Cash To Secure 0.0% Financing Offers While Collecting Interest The banks and credit unions want you to be a consumer. I agree with them as well. So I put my money in bonds and certificate of deposits when I want to purchase something. Then, I take the bank’s money at 0.0% through offers retailers make on consumer electronics. I can build my credit by making automated payments while at the same time have no access to my corresponding fixed assets which are tied up in one or two year bonds. The beauty of this is that I collect interest on these investments and still increase my credit rating. Write Reviews For Epinons.com To Earn Spending Cash! The ASUS 1005HA netbook that I am writing this article on was paid for by Epinions.com! I earn all of my monthly gas money from Epinions.com now. Additionally, the writing skills that I have developed helped me advance my career in big business by having the ability to write emails that accurately describe situations occurring at my workplace. If you are in financial trouble or just want to save up for the future, I believe you can do it with this advice. Go for it, you are in control!  |
| Read all comments (3)|Write your own comment |
- Top 500
