Our Week 3 Winner

Absoblogginlutely jokingly gave the tagline “3rd Time Lucky” and it turns out they were right — they’ve been selected as our week 3 giveaway winners and will take home a db clay “Version 3″ wallet.

This week we’re asking everyone for their budget tips — give us your best (or your worst — it’s a random drawing) and you might be next week’s winner!

Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org. He is also a freelance writer and university instructor in Las Vegas, NV, where he lives with his partner and three children. His personal site can be found at dustinwax.com.

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http://blog.fruitfultime.com Productivity Blog

The key to effective budgeting is tracking. Once you keep track of very single expense that you do, then you become aware of how much money you throw away in useless stuff!
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Barbara

Decide if the purchase is worth however many hours it would have taken you to earn the money to pay for it.
DIY Coach

I have a big “WWGD?” sticker on all of my credit & debit cards. WWGD is, “What Would Gary Do?”

The real-life Gary is a distant relative who is GREAT with money – no impulse items and saves up for the Fun Stuff he wants. Whenever I see the “Pretty, Bright… Shiny!” of the world, I ask, WWGD?

I also have a “Gary List” for Things I Want Bad and Why. Sometimes, I can fulfill the “Why” part more cheaply. Also, this list helps identify emotional spending vs. real need. I can also review the past wants and laugh at myself, seeing that I got along just fine without them.

There’s more to my “WWGD? System” but can’t list here. Will post it somewheres on the Intertubes this weekend.
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http://www.mumhacks.com/blog Rebecca Rowe

Don’t impulse buy. If you see something you want, write it down on a calendar/put it in your tickler on a date two weeks from when you saw it. Then, on that date, re-assess whether you actually really want/need it.
Steve

Give yourself a cooling off period before committing to buying anything out of impulse. 72 hours is good. If after 72 hours your want is still a need, then consider it. Chances are after 48 hours sanity will have prevailed and the impulse will have disappeared completely by the 3rd day.

Another great tip is to never ever buy anything that is not on your pre-determined shopping list. That will save you from stocking up on the gallons of buy-1-get-1 free bubble bath that will take you about 6 years to use up, or the boxes of biscuits that you would never have bought in a month of sundays if they had not been on ‘offer’.
If it’s not on your list, its not in the budget.
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