Use some of these shortcuts to managing your finances. They’re guaranteed to save you time and money.

Trick your mind into saving

Can’t always come up with where your money goes? There’s a simple solution: Trick your own mind into spending less and saving more.

If you’re up for a challenge, allocate yourself a weekly allowance. Put a set amount of allowance into an envelope and determine that this will be all you’ll be allowed to spend for any given week. Next, divide your allowance to take care of your expenses. When you get down to the last $20, that’s the amount you put into your emergency fund. When the money is gone, there will be no longer until next week.

Each payday, allocate a percentage to go into a secret fund used only for emergencies. When it’s crunch time, you’ll know it’s there.

Establish one dresser drawer just to toss single dollar bills. This way when the pizza man arrives, you’ll have the singles handy and won’t need to break the larger dollar amounts. This discipline forces your mind to think larger amounts and to save larger amounts. You get into the habit of spending only the singles. This works!

To control your credit card debt, carry just one card and pay it off every month. If you’re tempted to over spend, the credit card gets into the safe where you only stash your emergency fund. When crunch day comes you’ve a credit card you can use that will always be in good standing.

Jot down expenses in a notebook and tally them at the end of every week to see if you’re over or under your budget estimates. Build in more than you need so that you’ll always have a cushion in case of a cash emergency. Tracking your spending takes some work but if you take careful notes, you’ll always be able to see one or two areas where you’re leaking cash. You can then come up with an extra $20 or more per week in savings. That’s $1,000 a year in real money for an emergency fund.

More tricks to add to your own savings routine: Have your paycheck automatically deposited directly to savings rather than to your checking account. You’ll transfer money to pay your bills, but you’ll think twice about withdrawing additional cash.

Make ONLY one ATM withdrawal every week. Subtract your credit card purchases immediately from your checking account so you’re unsurprised once the bill arrives.

When you pay off a loan, add the amount to payments you’re already making to the next lender on your list. You can also send the money to a saving or investment account earmarked for a house, a vacation or afresh car and this money will be made available in case of a money emergency.

In addition to websites that market magazine subscriptions at reduced costs, there are also Internet websites that market magazine package deals. In other words, you can obtain a number of different magazine subscriptions that you might not otherwise be able to afford for a low-priced.

In the brick and mortar world, you can stop by the local bookseller and visit the magazine section. By flipping through magazines, you can find subscription cards that offer reduced costs for subscriptions to these publications. For example, they might offer upwards to 75% off the regular price for these magazines.

Also keep in mind that by subscribing to a magazine for an extended time period, the publication likely will knock a great deal of money off of the overall subscription cost. For example, you can save a good deal of money by subscribing to a magazine for a period of three years as opposed to a single year subscription.

Finally, there are some charities that sell magazine subscriptions to raise money for their work and causes. In this regard, these magazines are made available to people at a reduced cost. In addition, a part of what you pay for the subscription is donated to the charity in order to allow it to further its good works.

When all is said and done, by taking the time to shop around, you can save money on magazine subscriptions. You’ll be able to work the costs of receiving magazines into your overall budget. By keeping an open mind as to whereunto look for reduced costs magazine subscriptions you’ll be able to have the publications that you want at a price that you truly can afford.

Becoming a successful real estate investor requires being able to find good real estate investment deals and put them together. Your job isn’t to become an closing attorney, a management expert, or a repair person. Use professionals!

You must learn how to appraise and find the true value of real estate this information will help you make better investment decisions. Realtors, appraisers, and banks determine what a property is worth by looking at comparable sales usually three to five sales of similar property that has recently sold in the same neighborhood. You must be able to do the same.

Getting a list of comparable prices of properties bought or sold (and when it sold) for the neighborhood you need information about, and asking active real estate investors in your area what the market is like will be helpful and making a better investment decision. What is the ideal market for investing?
There’s no such thing as an ideal real estate market for investing. It tends to be more difficult to find bargains in rising markets if the market keeps rising the probability of selling the property quickly for a large profit increases. In contrast but when property values are falling more bargains become available.

You need to be able to assess the true value of properties based on when you expect to sell. Your purchase must be made at a good enough discount to allow for a profitable sale at a later date.

Leverage

Leverage is very important for investors because the less cash you put down on each property the more properties you can buy. If the properties go up in value your rate of return goes up. However if the properties go down in value and you’ve a lot of debt on the property this can result in negative cash flow.

Since real estate is generally cyclical negative cash flow is only a short-term problem and can be handled if you’ve other income or a cash reserves. This makes “Nothing down” investing very helpful to protect against negative cash flow for high leverage investor.

If you are a long term real estate investor leverage will work in your favor if the markets in which you invest appreciate in the long run and your income from the properties can pay for most of your monthly debt. Strategies to limit risk
To limit risk become educated in your local real estate market first by understanding the large scale trends from global down to national regional and specific neighborhoods. Learn about target neighborhoods with the help of successful real estate investors in your area along the way.

Real estate investors can help you interpret market indicators such as the average length of time houses have been on the market this month versus last month or last year. With this information it will help you make better investment decisions.

Exit strategies
It is important not to guess the future of a local real estate market you need to have a clear plan in mind when purchasing property. As a real estate investor you must know exactly how you’ll exit the property before you buy. And have a backup plan or two in case the first course of action doesn’t work. You must know your market and your plan before you begin to invest.

I think one of the greatest functions of the internet today are the bill pay online options with bank accounts. Email is nice sure, sites like Ebay are neat, shopping from home without having to talk to anyone is a novelty, but paying bills online is simply fantastic.

I hate paying bills, I’m almost afraid to get the mail every day because I know there is going to be at least one bill in the pile. Not only is the financially obligation part annoying, but is mostly the actual act of writing the check, filling out their little forms, and sending it in that irritates me.

When you have 10 or more bills coming in every month, it seems like you’re always paying bills. Bill pay online is therefore priceless to me, because I get far more bill every month than I can count.

I’ve been using Bank of America for some years, and their convenient and user-friendly bill pay online options has redeemed themselves for a long and convoluted history of ridiculous fees. Finally, they are offering me something worthy of a small fee, and the ironic thing is they offer it for free.

Most banks have a similar bill pay online set up. You have to create an online account, and once you do you can access any money accounts you have with that bank. If you have a checkings account for example, it shows up on your screen, showing you your current balance and a transaction history.

You can then select a number of preset companies to choose from to pay bills directly from your account. Most banks have a huge list of companies you can select from, and if the company you want to bill pay online with is not there you can enter it in manually. Once you’ve paid an bill online this way, paying future bills is as easy as logging into your online account and clicking some buttons.

If your bank for some reason does not offer online bill payments, or you don’t have a bank account, there are also a number of companies that offer online bill pay with out having a money account. These companies typically operate by way of credit card.

Online bill pay is worth looking into. It may sound daunting, but it’s easy to use even if you have very limited experience using computers, and it’ll save you both time and postage.

Reasons To Offer Seller Financing

1. You’ll get a higher price. The example above shows that buyers pay for easy terms. Think about it from my buyers perspective. He got a place for almost nothing, that the renters are paying for. He’ll do great even if he later sells it for less than he bought it for. I love the return I’m getting, but if I need to, I can sell the contract for cash.

2. You’ll get a decent return on your money. The 9% annual interest I’m getting is nice, but the true return was much higher, since I also sold the property for 15% more than I paid, and I get 9% on the entire balance. In fact, for a great return without the headaches of being a landlord, you can simply buy low for cash and sell high with terms. Of course this is for when you can tie up your assets.

3. You’ll sell faster. In this case, I just called the buyer up, made the deal on the phone, and closed a week later. But anytime you expand the potential market for a property, you increase the odds of selling it faster. Seller financing definitely invites more buyers to look at your real estate.

4. You can sell difficult properties. With a property that’s difficult to finance conventionally, offering seller financing may be the only way get it sold, and at a fair price. Mobile homes on property can be difficult to finance, for example, so your market is limited. If you instead raise the price 10%, and offer easy terms, you can usually quickly find a family that will be very happy to own instead of rent.

The ways you can sell are limited by mortgages and other loans, of course. I owned the rental free and clear, which meant I could sell it any way I wanted. There are other ways to use seller financing though, even if you owe on the property. There are ways to do this more safely too. However, those topics are for another article.