Friday, December 21, 2007

Personal Finance

I am on a huge personal finance kick. I've subscribed to a number of blogs. I'll probably keep subscribing to more and slowly ween them down to the ones that are most applicable to me.

They always say it's never too soon to start working on your personal finance. I am lucky to work at jobs with pretty great retirement packages, so I already have that. However, there is certainly far more that I can do to manage and improve my personal finances.

Some great advice I've discovered includes the following:

1. Get a credit card that pays. I absolutely adore my Discover Card. I have never carried a balance on it, never paid them a cent of interest, and I have made tons of money, which I redeem most commonly in the form of Borders gift cards. More recently it has occurred to me that I should be using some of the other gift cards as gifts. What a great way to save money and still give a good gift. Apparently my other credit card has a version that pays as well. I might have to see what I can do to upgrade to that.

2. Find the discounts and use coupons! There are some great websites that I'm only just learning about: RetailMeNot has all sorts of great online shopping coupon codes and user submitted success rates. Ebates is another one I've seen but haven't really looked into yet.

3. Here's a post about 25 Ways to Save Money. I'd just like to point out number 17, thank you. Using the library saves you money!

My early New Year's goal is to pay off the money I still owe on my car far more quickly than the current schedule. One thing about goals is that you should probably quantify them. I will have to look at how much I still owe and determine an appropriate, reasonable monthly amount to pay.

3 comments:

Jeff said...

I too have gotten onto a big personal finance kick (maybe because I am finally not a student, and actually have a real paycheck). I really like Get Rich Slowly, even though the writing is sometimes a little to Magoo for me.

Roger Sramkoski said...

That Get Rich Slowly blog is something I will have to dig into, as I'm currently not very fiscally educated. I try, but I don't succeed in the big picture. Growing tired of it. :(

Kate said...

Get Rich Slowly is a good one. I subscribe to quite a few (12). I haven't figured out which ones I like better yet. They are really all good so far, although they do a fair amount of posting about what the other ones are saying.

I think I like my personal finance in bit-size chunks, and most of these blogs give that to you. Some do have longer posts though.