Budgeting Tools

If you are trying to get your household budget in order, follow the link to ten free household budget worksheets. Worksheets

Good Ideas

If you are looking for some creative ways to save money, follow this link to the article: 100 Things To Do During A Money Free Weekend.

If you have any other suggestions, please send them to me and I will add the best ones to a future posting.

Free Stuff!

Did "Free" get your attention? Most of us like to receive free stuff. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of freebies in life. Groups such as freecycle are located around the country. They serve as an exchange board for all the stuff people no longer want or need.

The concept is pretty simple. Once you join a group, you can see the items others have and no longer want and you can post items you have and want to get rid of. Members of the group then contact each other and make the exchange.

Besides being able to get these items for free, you are also preventing many items from being thrown into the trash when they are still useful. This is good stewardship.

Sumter does have a local group which is quite active. Freecycle is just one of the organizations out there. If you do not have a freecycle group in your area, start one or search for a similar group and sign up. You will save some money, keep trash out of the landfill and be a good steward in the process.

This link will take you to an article on Yahoo! for more details:
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/149/the-thrill-of-shopping-without-the-bill.html

Credit Reports

Obtain your free credit report from each of the credit reporting agencies at www.annualcreditreport.com. You can obtain one free credit report from each of the three credit agencies each year. To give yourself all year monitoring, run a report from a different agency every 4 months. By doing this, you can see all the activity on your credit report spread throughout the year and monitor any incorrect information or fraudulent activity. Keeping a clean and correct credit report is vital to managing your finances. This is one easy, free step you can take as you continue to get your financial affairs in order.

Money Management Tools

As you begin to develop and live by a budget it is necessary for you to keep track of your spending and income in an organized fashion. There are many tools available to set up your budget. Keeping your budget on paper is one option. However, I would recommend trying an electronic budgeting system. There are many great products on the market which cost anywhere from $19.99 on up. One great product I personally use is Ace Money Light. It is a freeware program. You can download and use the program for free. It offers the same features as many of the programs you can buy. The one option the free version does not offer is the ability to track more than one bank account. If that is a feature you need, the full-featured version only cost $30.

This is a powerful, full-featured program that is user friendly and easy to set up.

If you personally use another program that you would like to recommend, send me a comment and I will check it out and put a link on the page for others to see.

Free Stuff on the Web

There is a great article on BusinessWeek.com with 100 things you can get for free on the web. The freebies range from software to phone calls to merchandise. Click on the link below and enjoy. Happy hunting!

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2007/tc20071121_708667.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily