Saving Money

9 Smart Spending Strategies for Back-to-School Season

If you’re a parent, you’re likely eyeing the calendar with a mix of anticipation, relief, and dread. On one hand, the approach of the new school year means a return to your normal routine, and it means an end to finding new ways to keep the kids entertained and occupied day in and day out. But on the other hand, the back to school season is really darn expensive:...

7 Movies That Teach Valuable Money Lessons

Like most folks, I go to the movies to get away from my day-to-day life; to escape reality for an hour or so and think about something other than work, or bills, or dinner plans, or any of the other hundreds of mundane things most of us have to think about. But, as a financial guy, I can’t help viewing movies from a money perspective. I also can’t help...

20 Fantastic Summer Staycation Ideas

Summer is here. The sun is out. The kids are out of school, and you’ve got plenty of vacation time saved up at work. One thing you don’t have? Money. Or, more specifically, the kind of extra money you need to take a traditional family summer vacation – and you have no interest in using your credit cards to finance a trip you can’t afford. The good news? You...

DebtGuru’s Top 5 Frugal Household Products

Frugal living isn’t just about canceling cable or brown-bagging it to work (although those are great strategies if you’re trying to cut living expenses). Frugal living is also about shopping smarter and looking for ways to stretch your hard-earned dollars farther. One way to do that is to buy inexpensive household items that can be used for more than one task. To help you get started, I chose five...

7 Money Saving Tips That Can Backfire

Seems like everyone has an opinion about money – how you should spend it, how you should invest it, and how you should save it. But as someone who has made a career out of helping folks pay off debt and get their finances back on track, I can tell you that not all financial advice is created equally. In fact, a lot of commonly repeated money advice may...

Learn 5 Ways To Live Frugal from The Great Depression

Perhaps you have an older family member – a grandparent or a great-grandparent, maybe – who can remember life during the Great Depression. If so, you’ve no doubt heard stories about how tough things were back then: People struggled to find work. Finances were tight. Budgets were tighter. You didn’t spend money unless you absolutely had to – and when you did, you paid cash. If you’re looking for...

Best Apps and Websites for Budgeting and Saving

It’s easy to spend money online – too easy, really. It’s near-impossible to surf the web without being bombarded by advertisements and sales emails targeted to your exact preferences and interests. With a few clicks, you can find yourself spending money you don’t have on things you don’t really need. But that’s only part of the story. When it comes to your finances, there’s more to the Internet than...

Friending and Spending Social Media and Money

There’s more to social sharing sites than witty status updates, silly memes, and cat photos. Social media can influence our behavior in all kinds of ways, including our spending habits. This makes sense, if you think about it: There’s the friend whose Instagram feed is an endless stream of perfectly filtered shots of gourmet meals. And the cousin whose Facebook feed seems to be completely composed of pricy home...

Curb Impulse Buying to Stop Overspending

If you want to save more money, pay down debt, and become all-around more financially responsible, all you have to do is stop spending money on stuff you don’t need. Sure, that sounds easy. Just stop spending. End of story. But if changing your spending behavior were as simple as flipping a switch, there wouldn’t be people out there struggling with budget problems and credit card debt. Nobody would...

7 Tactics for a Financially Sound Year

It’s official: The New Year is here.  What better time to give your finances a fresh start?  Maybe you’d like to make this year the year you pay off that high-interest credit card debt or the year that you finally buy a home or bulk up your emergency fund.  Maybe you’d just like create a better budget or get your finances a little more organized. Whatever your goal, you...