Take control of your money

Henry82 said :

Classified said :

Try this: spend less than you earn and save/invest the rest. Worked for me.

Yep, what he said.

Also, if you’re low on funds, don’t waste money on booze, cigarettes, flashy cars, consumer electronics, 42″ plasmas, junk-food, and fast-food.

Its all about spending between wants and needs. Most people I come across can’t tell the difference.

Watson said :

– find out where your money may be leaking to so you can stop it before it’s too late –

It’s about 7 years too late for an abortion…

Its all about planning..you have at least another 14 years of spending to go.

Stevian said :

poetix said :

Grail said :

In addition to the “spend less than you earn” method of budgeting, here are some ideas for people who are struggling to make ends meet:

Get rid of the TV. No Foxtel, no TransACT, no Wii/XBox/PS3
Get rid of the telephone and Internet connection, switch to a mobile phone plan worth about half the monthly telephone/internet costs
Take up gardening instead of watching TV or playing computer games: this is especially useful if you grow your vegetables from seeds that you’ve collected yourself!

Never eat anything but gruel, although at Christmas you may eat your pet.
Shank’s pony is the only proper means of transport.
Each teabag to be used until the water is totally un-tead.
Cask wine is quite adequate for a birthday treat. Use the liner to scare birds from your vegetables, and the box to make fun Christmas presents such as ‘cask-people’.
The Chronicle was made for your anus’s more pressing demands.
KFC is a ‘restaurant’.
Holiday in Canberra! It has everything you’ll ever need.

We should be thankful we live in a world where frugality is a joke.

It wasn’t so long ago that such extreme economies were the norm. A few of us are willing to learn from history, but people like you seem intent on dooming us to repeat our mistakes.

‘People like me’ aren’t always serious, Stevian. You seem to notice this, than fade back into a tired little homily. I forget that some people are a bit frugal on the funny.

We are commenting on a thread leading from an advertisement; a way for people to be parted from their money, in order here, to save money. This struck me as slightly odd. Hence my ‘That’ll be $500’ that you didn’t reproduce. And lists of ‘good ideas’ are always slightly patronising, I feel.

How does my defending the enjoyment of good wine and food ‘doom’ *you* to making mistakes, anyway? Please go ahead and save as much as you like, and enjoy yourself as little as possible.

MERC600 said :

” Most people have no idea what happens to their money.” Regret I know where a good deal of it went; Pies to win back to back.

c’arn those cats! sadly, had no money on that…

LSWCHP said :

I stood behind a woman in a bank one day. She was complaining that a credit card transaction had been refused. The teller explained that the transaction had gone hundreds of dollars over her $5000 credit limit, thus causing the problem. The woman said that her card had been maxed out for years, and she always went over her limit, but paid it back so it was slightly below the limit each month. She was really upset that things had gone wrong this time around.

[Facepalm] A fine example of stupidity being its own punishment.

Stevian said :

We should be thankful we live in a world where frugality is a joke.

If you’re a single hoping to own your own home in the age of the Working Family, you can try frugality before the maths have you subsiding into a gibbering jelly.

m_ratt said :

LSWCHP said :

have one credit card which gathers dust, and I haven’t paid a cent of credit card interest since 2002.

Don’t use credit cards.

I have a couple of credit cards, used almost daily.
I haven’t paid a cent of credit card interest _ever_.

My hat is off to you. Unfortunately, most people aren’t able to work like that, and end up throwing money away in pointless interest charges. It’s very easy to fool yourself into thinking “I have $1000 in the bank, and I owe $1000 on my card, therefore I have assets of $1000”. The evil banks rely on this sort of thinking to make their profits.

I stood behind a woman in a bank one day. She was complaining that a credit card transaction had been refused. The teller explained that the transaction had gone hundreds of dollars over her $5000 credit limit, thus causing the problem. The woman said that her card had been maxed out for years, and she always went over her limit, but paid it back so it was slightly below the limit each month. She was really upset that things had gone wrong this time around.

So there’s someone who had been paying probably $1000+ annual interest on her credit card debt for years. I suspect that that’s a lot more representative than your card usage, or mine.

LSWCHP said :

have one credit card which gathers dust, and I haven’t paid a cent of credit card interest since 2002.

Don’t use credit cards.

I have a couple of credit cards, used almost daily.
I haven’t paid a cent of credit card interest _ever_.

+ a bajillionty

Another RiotACT massacre. I love you guys!

Stevian said :

poetix said :

Grail said :

In addition to the “spend less than you earn” method of budgeting, here are some ideas for people who are struggling to make ends meet:

Get rid of the TV. No Foxtel, no TransACT, no Wii/XBox/PS3
Get rid of the telephone and Internet connection, switch to a mobile phone plan worth about half the monthly telephone/internet costs
Take up gardening instead of watching TV or playing computer games: this is especially useful if you grow your vegetables from seeds that you’ve collected yourself!

Never eat anything but gruel, although at Christmas you may eat your pet.
Shank’s pony is the only proper means of transport.
Each teabag to be used until the water is totally un-tead.
Cask wine is quite adequate for a birthday treat. Use the liner to scare birds from your vegetables, and the box to make fun Christmas presents such as ‘cask-people’.
The Chronicle was made for your anus’s more pressing demands.
KFC is a ‘restaurant’.
Holiday in Canberra! It has everything you’ll ever need.

We should be thankful we live in a world where frugality is a joke.

It wasn’t so long ago that such extreme economies were the norm. A few of us are willing to learn from history, but people like you seem intent on dooming us to repeat our mistakes.

My parents are children of the Great Depression. The grew up in rural NSW with no electricity and no cars. Mum still gathers all the little tail end pieces of soap and mixes them together to make a big piece. She also advised me a while ago that I can save on my rubber band expenses by cutting old rubber gloves into strips. The fingers make small rubber bands, the wrist sections make large rubber bands.

I’ve been hearing stuff like this all my life. They were poor and hungry as kids, and that has never left them. It’s soaked into me as well. have one credit card which gathers dust, and I haven’t paid a cent of credit card interest since 2002.

Spend less than you earn. Don’t use credit cards. Purchase things with money you’ve saved up. Live like that, be debt free as far as possible, and you’ll fell a helluva lot better in yourself.

poetix said :

The Chronicle was made for your anus’s more pressing demands.

WHAT THE HELL AM I READING?!

Stevian said :

We should be thankful we live in a world where frugality is a joke.

It wasn’t so long ago that such extreme economies were the norm. A few of us are willing to learn from history, but people like you seem intent on dooming us to repeat our mistakes.

Only a generation ago people did these things to make ends meet. As a society, we have become a bunch of spoiled brats.

poetix said :

Grail said :

In addition to the “spend less than you earn” method of budgeting, here are some ideas for people who are struggling to make ends meet:

Get rid of the TV. No Foxtel, no TransACT, no Wii/XBox/PS3
Get rid of the telephone and Internet connection, switch to a mobile phone plan worth about half the monthly telephone/internet costs
Take up gardening instead of watching TV or playing computer games: this is especially useful if you grow your vegetables from seeds that you’ve collected yourself!

Never eat anything but gruel, although at Christmas you may eat your pet.
Shank’s pony is the only proper means of transport.
Each teabag to be used until the water is totally un-tead.
Cask wine is quite adequate for a birthday treat. Use the liner to scare birds from your vegetables, and the box to make fun Christmas presents such as ‘cask-people’.
The Chronicle was made for your anus’s more pressing demands.
KFC is a ‘restaurant’.
Holiday in Canberra! It has everything you’ll ever need.

We should be thankful we live in a world where frugality is a joke.

It wasn’t so long ago that such extreme economies were the norm. A few of us are willing to learn from history, but people like you seem intent on dooming us to repeat our mistakes.

Grail said :

Thus we have the Liberal party labelling the Labor Party as “insane” because the Labor Party intends to run the country at a surplus, in a world driven by mutual debt.

Where did the Liberal party say that? I’m pretty sure they criticised the Labor Party’s ability to bring the budget back to surplus, rather than the idea of running a budget surplus. Costello ran a budget surplus for ten straight federal budgets.

I don’t like either party, but wish I had a dollar for every time the Liberal Party got blamed for some current economic or social ill. Hasn’t Labor been in office for four years now?

Grail said :

In addition to the “spend less than you earn” method of budgeting, here are some ideas for people who are struggling to make ends meet:

Get rid of the TV. No Foxtel, no TransACT, no Wii/XBox/PS3
Get rid of the telephone and Internet connection, switch to a mobile phone plan worth about half the monthly telephone/internet costs
Take up gardening instead of watching TV or playing computer games: this is especially useful if you grow your vegetables from seeds that you’ve collected yourself!

Never eat anything but gruel, although at Christmas you may eat your pet.
Shank’s pony is the only proper means of transport.
Each teabag to be used until the water is totally un-tead.
Cask wine is quite adequate for a birthday treat. Use the liner to scare birds from your vegetables, and the box to make fun Christmas presents such as ‘cask-people’.
The Chronicle was made for your anus’s more pressing demands.
KFC is a ‘restaurant’.
Holiday in Canberra! It has everything you’ll ever need.

That’ll be $500.

Classified said :

Just the opposite – capitalist pig.

No, capitalist pig would be the one who leverages their liquid capital (i.e.: goes into debt up to their eyeballs) to procure means of production (i.e.: capital, plant & equipment), then runs their workers into the ground while servicing the machine which produces the income.

That’s the operational definition, from the guy who (literally) wrote the book on Capitalism.

In the modern age we’re so used to spending money we don’t have (i.e.: using “credit” cards to go deeply into debt) that anyone with the idea of running their budget at a slight surplus is considered to be “odd” and is thus labelled with disparaging epithets. Thus we have the Liberal party labelling the Labor Party as “insane” because the Labor Party intends to run the country at a surplus, in a world driven by mutual debt.

In addition to the “spend less than you earn” method of budgeting, here are some ideas for people who are struggling to make ends meet:

Get rid of the TV. No Foxtel, no TransACT, no Wii/XBox/PS3
Get rid of the telephone and Internet connection, switch to a mobile phone plan worth about half the monthly telephone/internet costs
Take up gardening instead of watching TV or playing computer games: this is especially useful if you grow your vegetables from seeds that you’ve collected yourself!

“Most people have no idea what happens to their money”

Don’t we exchange it for goods and services?

Deref said :

Classified said :

Try this: spend less than you earn and save/invest the rest.

Worked for me.

Commie.

Just the opposite – capitalist pig.

Classified said :

Try this: spend less than you earn and save/invest the rest. Worked for me.

Yep, what he said.

Also, if you’re low on funds, don’t waste money on booze, cigarettes, flashy cars, consumer electronics, 42″ plasmas, junk-food, and fast-food.

Classified said :

Try this: spend less than you earn and save/invest the rest.

Worked for me.

Commie.

Try this: spend less than you earn and save/invest the rest.

Worked for me.

Deref said :

If I had all the answers about how to get the best out of my money, I’d have done it and I’d be rich. I’d be shipwrecked and comatose, drinking fresh mango juice with goldfishes nibbling at my toes. I wouldn’t be wasting my time wearing a suit telling other people how to do it.

Isn’t the answer “tell them how to spend their money and charge them for it”?

I’m actually impressed at how complicated being smart with your money can be made to sound.

– find out where your money may be leaking to so you can stop it before it’s too late –

It’s about 7 years too late for an abortion…

I think the government and various nonprofits run free budgeting courses on exactly these topics – aimed at gamblers and low-income folk, but the principles would be similar for higher income earners wouldn’t they? The “enjoy living without credit cards” doesn’t exactly reek of high-income, so I suspect this business is aiming at poor people who can get useful finance info for free. High income earners should be milking credit cards, not avoiding them …

If I had all the answers about how to get the best out of my money, I’d have done it and I’d be rich. I’d be shipwrecked and comatose, drinking fresh mango juice with goldfishes nibbling at my toes. I wouldn’t be wasting my time wearing a suit telling other people how to do it.

” Most people have no idea what happens to their money.” Regret I know where a good deal of it went; Pies to win back to back.