Money Saving Chronicles #7: Four Free Money Saving Tools

The most important money saving tools aren’t in a software bundle or book. They aren’t found in a seminar. The greatest tools are found between your airs.

A well-known financial advisor has observed, “Personal finance is 80% behavior and 20% knowledge.” Its true. You will save more money if you utilize a few basic tools that cost no money, but are priceless.

1) Integrity

I’d submit a great number of financial problems begin with a lack of integrity or at least not taking it seriously. For example, someone who spends the rent money on something else has forgotten not only that they could get thrown out in the street but that they’ve made an agreement to pay rent at a certain time of each month.

We all have committments we’ve made, promises that have to be kept. Some will cost us legally as we’ll face likely lawsuits for failing to comply. Others will hit our credit report. Some people don’t care about these things at the time (particularly credit impact), but end up being haunted later on when it really does matter to them.

With a sense of integrity, you’re going to take an attitude of: “I’ve made committments and keeping them is my biggest priority.” By doing so, you’re going to pay your bills on time, avoid getting hit with late fees or higher interest rates. How much money can a little integrity save you?

2) Contentment

This is a huge one. We all remember inspirational stories of parents who scrimp and save to get their kids into college, even coming from a poor background.

Yet, there are other stories. There are those who buy huge houses and all kinds of great gadgets and when kids get to college age, they can’t count on anything from their parents.

There’s the same thing with retirement. How many people subsisting entirely on Social Security could be millionaires had they learned to live on less during their working years.

This is where contentment comes into play. Delayed gratification is something that you’ll hear about from most financial experts. Some needs are immediate, most can wait. Its important to know the difference.

Contentment is found in enjoying the things in life that are free such as a walk in the park, a neighborhood baseball game, or the love of your family. By building contentment you’ll be less at risk for huge impulse buys that can set you months and even years back on your finances.

3) Vision

Contentment and integrity are important, but without vision the whole thing falls apart. Most of the time when spend our money without a second thought, because we’ve not even given a first thought to what we really want in the long term.

The attitude taken by some is, “After I pay the bills, I can blow the rest.” When I first got married, judging by my spending, you’d assume that I was playing a game of chicken, getting the Checking account down to as close as zero as possible without going under.

Where do you want to go with your money? Get a vision in your head and mentally draw a road map of how you’re going to get there?

Without vision, you’re like a ship without a sail, merely being blown about by financial winds.

4) Diligence

I used to work in Customer Service for an Internet Company and on occassion I would receive calls from people who paid no attention to their finances. One man I remembered had paid for Internet access with us for 18 months and wanted a full refund.

Though, that’s extreme a lot of people end up spending money through negligence more than anything else. Many annual Magazine subscriptions renew automatically, as do annual charges for things you never use. Ironically, these began because the person something for free and planned to cancel after the trial period.

First of all, going back to integrity, its probably not a great idea to ask for a trial subscription you wouldn’t pay for. But if you are going to sign up for free programs or programs with annual fees, its important to keep track of what you’ve committed to, as well as when subscriptions expire (for websites, magazines, etc.) I’d reccomend keeping track of it in a spreadsheet. Look at this spreadsheet at least once a month. If you see a subscription coming up that you no longer need, get in touch with the company and cancel it. If you see one coming up that you intend to continue be sure to plan for it.

Also, never stop looking for better ways to do things. I’ve considered cancelling my landline phone and DSL to put everything on my Cell Phone and get a Wifi Connection. This didn’t make sense, so I didn’t do it, but I was diligent to check it out.

With some thoughtfulness and character, you’ll have a bright financial future.