Finance Friday: Couponing made Easy

I don't 'coupon' like some folks do. It's ridiculous. But I still do what I can to save money at the grocery store.

Enter: The Kroger App (disclaimer, I have no idea if other stores have this type of thing, but Kroger does and I love it)

Each week I need groceries (which isn't that often really), I open up the Kroger app on my phone. It has the weekly specials in it. AND coupons. Generally I get my list together before checking the ads, but sometimes I have a general idea of what I need, like some fresh veggies, and see what they have.

The nice thing about this is you can add the item to "Your List" and it gets organized based on the areas of the store. You can pull up your list and it's in an order of sorts that makes sense so you're not running back and forth in the store.

The best part however, is that the coupons get loaded directly to your frequent shopper card. When you scan the card, if you have a coupon for an item it automatically deducts it. You don't have to cut the coupons out, and such.

Super nice too, I can open the app while waiting in line at the post office, while on the bus, over my lunch break when I don't have homework. It's portable coupons folks! I love it.

Bonus tip: When you get your receipt, check it for the survey code. Each survey you complete  gives you 50 fuel reward points, and with the cost of gas these days every little bit counts!

Your Quarterly Checkup

Now, before you can get into things like setting financial goals and such, you need to know where you stand. I am big believer that you can’t check up on your finances every now and then, you need to do it on a regular basis, several times a year. Personally, I do it quarterly. Aside from the first time you do this, it will only take maybe 15 minutes of your time, once every three months. 

I do mine the last day of March, June, September, and December. I like December most because it rolls around in time for you to make a Financial Goal for the Year. Basically what you are doing on these days is you are calculating your Net Worth. Your Net Worth is how much money you have that is not tied up in debts. I look to see if it would be possible for me to pay off all my debts and still have something left over.  

Here’s how I go about it. There’s this wonderful program called Excel. I opened up a spreadsheet, and use one page for debts, one page for my bank, retirement, and investment accounts. This sheet also has a spot for my Disaster Cash (which we will talk about in another post). The final sheet I use for my ‘hard assets’. These are things like your bedroom set, how much could you reasonably sell it for if you needed the cash? Anything that you own outright, and could sell if you really needed the money. Do not include your house or cars if you are still making payments on them! Those balances, the part you still owe, should go on your debt sheet. 

On my sheet, column A lists the different accounts or assets. On your asset sheet it would be things like, “Savings” “Checking” “401k”, etc. On columns C, E, G, I, and K, I have the date of each check up. I start mine with the last one from the previous year, so mine are Dec. 31, 2012, March 2013, June 2013, September 2013, and December 2013. This way I can see my progress over the course of a full year, I can see how much I’ve improved (or still need to work on) since last year.

First, you calculate how much debt you have. And I mean total debt, not just what your monthly payment is. If you have a student loan for $5,000 but your monthly payment is $20, then you put the $5,000 into the calculator, not the $20. Any credit card balances, student loan balances, mortgage amounts, etc. as they are the day you are doing this. If a payment hasn’t cleared, don’t calculate that in! If your student loan balance is $3,523.12, enter $3,523.12, not $3,473.12 because you are going to make a $50 payment tomorrow. 

If you own your home or car, and are no longer making payments on them, they go on your assets sheet, not here.  Make use of those little automatic calculations that Excel does for you.
Make sure at the bottom of each column you have a total debt amount. You will use this later!

Next calculate your money! On another sheet of the Excel spreadsheet, list all of your bank accounts, retirement funds, emergency funds, Disaster Cash, and I include my investment account here as well. Again, enter the totals for the specific day you are filling out. Look at the current account balances and insert them into the sheet. Don’t put in your next paycheck unless the paycheck has already deposited! A hard thing with this one, is that sometimes my investment account doesn’t update because the stock market info isn’t available or it’s a weekend. I just check back each day, a couple times a day sometimes, and once a total shows up, I enter it in. 

Again, get a total dollar amount for all of your accounts added together.

Finally, this is the one that took me the longest, BUT only the first time I made the spreadsheet, sit down and calculate your ‘hard assets’. These are all of the things you could sell should you desperately need the money. Things would include furniture, appliances, books, etc. Be sure you are realistic in your estimations, in fact, estimate low. Think yard sales, where people price things but then buyers come along and haggle them down. My list includes items like my headboard, my sewing machines, tv, antique desk, and dvds. If you own your home or car, include them on this list! Again get a grand total dollar amount. 

Then what you do is you add your hard asset dollar amount to your bank account amounts. Then you subtract your debt amounts from this number. If you end up with a negative number, no worries you’ll just have to set some goals and build some assets!

If you have a positive number, congratulations! You have a positive net worth and are doing pretty good financially. 

I'm off to get started on my 3rd quarter total, and see what needs to be done between now and the New Year ;)

In the next few weeks we’ll cover some things you can do to help you set financial goals, keep track of those goals, and even start saving some money!

Getting a Picture of Your Financial Situation: Mint.com

"You can't hit a target you can't see." 

Brian Tracy

I'd like to add that you can't pick a target unless you know where you're standing. 

So, before I get into things like making smart financial choices, saving money, and all that sort of thing, we need to get you to a point where you know exactly where you stand financially. Over the next couple of weeks I'll share some different ways to keep track of your finances, because different people operate different ways. What works for me, might not be so great or useful for you, and vice versa. Feel free to add anything you have tried that works for you because you never know what will work for what person.

This week is a very brief, but helpful post to introduce you to a useful online tool. (Most of you probably have heard of it already, and may even be using it.)It's a website called Mint.com. 

What Mint.com does is it links up all of your accounts that you have online access to. Credit cards, loans, savings, stocks, etc. And it adds everything up and gives you a total "Net Worth" (or how much money you actually have after taking into account all your debt). 

Mint also keeps track of things like unusual spending, unexplained fees, when bills are due, and low balances in accounts. Now this can be useful, but honestly I find it annoying at times. Mint doesn't understand the automatic identity protection program I use and that it's not a 'fee' charged to my card for using my card. It also lets me know that my bank accounts have 'low' balances when they reach something like $200, which for a starving grad school student really isn't a 'low' balance.

What I like most about Mint is it has tools to help you calculate how much you need to save for retirement. It also has a tool that shows how long it will take to pay off a debt and allows you to enter in different payment amounts. It even calculates how much you'll save on interest with each payment option you try out. 

My favorite however, is that Mint allows you to set financial goals for savings (like the retirement one), and links to an account. I set up a "House" account for a down payment on a house. Mint calculates how much I would need for a down payment, then keeps track of where I'm at on progressing toward that goal. 

And I'm all about setting and reaching goals, and I think that's the best part of Mint, it gives you a visual look at how you are progressing on goals, and what you need to do in order to meet them. 

(We WILL talk about setting financial goals later. Right now just focus on figuring out where you stand now, so you can set better goals later.)