Great Discount Sites for the Not-So-Extreme Couponer

The first time I watched TLC's Extreme Couponing, I was transfixed. Whether because I'm innately attracted to the idea of saving money or just couldn't believe my eyes, the show captured my imagination and made me wonder whether I'd ever be capable of extreme couponing.

For me, the answer is no. At least not the way they do it on TLC. I prefer the path of least resistance.

Digging through piles of inserts and online offers while organizing the volumes of resulting coupons into a manageable system just isn't something I'm personally capable of. But lucky for me (and the millions like me), you don't have to take it to the level of TLC's extreme couponers to take advantage of the benefits of our current coupon culture. In fact, its become easier than ever.

Couponing Sites for the Not-So-Extreme Couponer:

Below are some great sites and resources for the not-so-extreme couponer, seeking a deal without creating a completely new lifestyle in the process.

The Coupon Clippers: If you are looking to dabble in the extreme couponing craze, check out The Coupon Clippers, for some great coupons that you can print off on your home computer and forgo digging through the Sunday paper.

Groupon: If you haven't signed up for the daily deal with Groupon, there is no better time than now to start getting familiar with their deeply discounted local deals. With Groupon, you can get instant access to deals at your favorite local businesses. In fact, you can often save up to 90% on the best local restaurants, shops, events and more at Groupon.com.

Living Social: Living Social is very similar to Groupon. The company will email you a daily notification of local area deals, with the result of saving you money on restaurants, shops and events in your local area.

UPromise: UPromise discount codes offer the potential for savings at a great number of local businesses with the added benefit of offering college savings. If this sounds as good to you, visit upromise.com for the winning combination of discounts and college savings. 

Take it To the Next Level:

If, after visiting the sites above, you decide you might just want to take it up a notch and become the next extreme couponer, consider checking out Extreme Couponing with Power Couponer for more tips and tricks of the trade. 

As for me, I'll stick with the path of least resistance. Happy couponing.

Photo By: dmdonahoo

5 Mental Traits of Successful Investors

Looking to trade stock successfully? The key to successful long term investing may be less about how intelligent you are, or how well you can anticipate market movements based on short term market vagaries, and more about the mental traits and characteristics with which you were born.

While there is no such thing as a "perfect investor" and we are all prone to mistakes stemming from our own human flaws, many investors have been able to succeed over the long term. The successful long term investor likely possesses at a minimum, the following 5 mental characteristics.

Curiosity and Diligence. A mental curiosity and the desire to be consistently challenged mentally are some of the most important traits of any investor. In the investment game, knowledge is not only power, knowledge is money. But curiosity is not always enough. The successful investor must possess a diligent attention to detail that will allow her to patiently review news coverage and balance sheets for a mental edge on the market and a corporations long term potential success.

A Basic Understanding of Finance. It is safe to say that without a basic understanding of finance, it will not matter how curious or diligent of an investor one is. At a minimum, the successful investor will be able to read a corporate balance sheet and understand how the financial markets work to include the effects of interest rates and inflation on long term stock and bond returns.

Conservative and Realistic Expectations. Despite the infamous words of Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, greed is not always good. In fact, for investors greed can set one up for absolute failure in the persistent pursuit of still higher, unrealistic returns (think the internet boom in the 1990's). A successful investor will understand the difference between a fair valuation and a healthy rate of growth, and a speculative boom.

Emotional Stability. For many years, leading research indicated that the markets were "rational". But, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School, most investors are prone to making irrational decisions during times of economic hardship or financial stress. A successful investor understands this characteristic of human nature and will invest contrary to the herd while seeking greater long term returns due to the irrational markets. The successful investor, in the immortal words of Warren Buffet will be "greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy."

An Ability to Take Calculated Risks and Cut Losses. The successful investor takes calculated risks. Sometimes these risks result in a financial loss. The successful investor at once does not invest money they cannot afford to lose, and also knows when to sell stock at a loss. Selling for a loss, to the successful long term investor, is seen as both a tax benefit and a reduction in long term investment losses.

Photo By: Wagner T. Cassimiro

Save Money on Car Insurance: Review Your Coverage

Car insurance is one of the single biggest expenses in most Americans' annual budgets. If you aren't careful, you can easily overpay for car insurance, especially if you have had the same policy (and payment) for years. 

Sure, when you purchased your car you may have wanted full coverage. Maybe you didn't have a whole lot of cash on hand at the time and wanted a lower deductible or maybe you were living in a state with higher required coverage than the state in which you currently reside. 

Regardless of what has changed, chances are, if you haven't reviewed your automobile insurance in a few years, you are likely over-paying. 

There are a number of ways to save money on car insurance.

Know what you are paying for. Most insurance companies use recurring billing for their current customers. This means that if you haven't read through your policy in a few years, you may not even know what you are paying for in the first place. That's why your first stop should be your policy itself. Consider simple changes such as changing your deductible or opting out of full coverage, each of which could save you hundreds of dollars a year.

Know what you need. After reading through your insurance policy, you may have noted a few things you feel are not necessary. Before making any hasty decisions, it is important to look into the legal requirements of your state of residence while factoring in your personal situation. If you haven't yet built up your emergency fund, you may want a lower deductible. If you own a newer vehicle (especially if you financed the automobile) you may in fact want to maintain full coverage. Point is, don't sacrifice coverage you need for a few extra dollars savings a month in premiums. 

Slash coverage. After reading through your policy and familiarizing yourself with your own particular needs and wants, you should call your insurance company and make as many policy changes as possible (within reason) to reduce your annual insurance premiums. Just beware of cutting coverage that you are likely to need.

Bundle policies. Many insurance companies will offer steep discounts when you bundle your insurance policies. If your insurance company doesn't fall into this category, consider shopping for a new insurance provider by visiting AIM Auto Insurance, which offers a one-stop shop for automotive insurance.

Shop around. AIM Auto Insurance provides a great starting point when searching for a new insurance company. In addition, the insurance company Liberty Mutual offers some excellent and competitive rates on car insurance, which may be worth checking out if you are considering a new insurance company. 

Beware of disreputable insurance companies. Fly-by-night insurance companies are nothing new, but in the world of instant coverage and online only insurance corporations, they have become more prevalent than ever. Using a screener such as AIM Auto Insurance or sticking with well known insurance companies like Liberty Mutual will ensure that if you ever need to file a claim, you will be working with a responsible and responsive insurer.

Slashing insurance expenses can be a great way to slash hidden expenses and pocket several hundred dollars a year in savings. 

What steps have you taken recently to reduce recurring expenses in your daily life? 

Photo By: cityofstrangers

Easy Ways to Stretch Your Dollar

The following is a guest post from Jenni Sunde. Thank you Jenni for the great article!

Stretching your dollars so that you can afford nicer things may seem like a contradictory goal, but it falls more along the lines of quality over quantity. If you want to live a touch more luxuriously without breaking the bank, there are some simple and easy ways to stretch your dollar. All it requires is a bit of careful consideration and a basic understanding of how money works.

Beware of Small Expenses (They Add Up): Even if you are spending as little as five dollars a day on lunches out, you are still spending five dollars a day. If this is coupled with a daily coffee purchase, you are likely looking at between $7 and $10 a day spent on food, and this is a modest estimate. This can easily become $35 to $50 a week. By the end of the month you could have spent $200. Brown bag lunches are the answer. Bring your own lunches, and brew your own coffee.

Sure, it is OK to eat out once in a while, but the savings from packing a lunch can go a long way. For example, if you only ate out for lunch twice a month you could splurge and spend $15 on a meal and have a great quality of a dining experience, but still only be spending $30 as opposed to $200 each month.

Slash Recurring Costs (Like Insurance): Reducing insurance costs by seeking better rates is a great way to stretch your dollar. It is often an option to renegotiate rates with your providers every six months or so. I bet there is something you could do to reduce your car insurance premiums or your health insurance coverage. It doesn't hurt to ask. Even if it is just a few dollars here and there, that money can go a long way.

You may also want to find ways of reducing how often you drive. Not only are there reduced rates for drivers that are on the road less, but you will also spend less on gas. If you were to ride share, take the bus, or bike to work even just twice a week, you could potentially save $100 a month on transportation costs, likely more.

You could then use this money to take that extra day of vacation when the holidays roll around- another great example of high quality living on a budget.

Know Thyself (And Thy Expensive Habits): Simple strategies like not grocery shopping while you are hungry to avoid buying extra food, not getting those extra 50 channels on your cable plan no matter how cool they seem or spending less time with your spendthrift friends are all small ways to contribute to savings.

By developing good habits like these you could be saving thousands more dollars every year. Sure, you cut a few corners in the day-to-day, but do you really need all that stuff anyway?

Think about the few extra thousand you could use to plan a luxurious international trip or the fact that you could just keep the savings and put it towards something else you would like to buy in the future.

Regardless, finding ways to stretch your dollar is always a good decision.

Jenni Sunde is a freelance fashion writer and pop culture junkie. Jenni specializes in all things lifestyle-related. From home and design to health and beauty. With her love of art and all things beautiful, she delights in sharing her sense of style from her life to your computer monitor. Her title pegs her as an editor at a website that specializes in providing people with a quick car insurance quote, but her passion leads her into writing with a little more substance and a lot more heart.

Interested in writing a guest post for compounding returns? Click here.

Photo By: Images of Money

Personal Finance 101: Building a Budget

The following is a guest post by Jonny at Finance Wand. 

If you want to lead a life that is as close to financially stress-free as possible, you need to have good control over your finances. No matter what you earn, you can still live without undue financial stress provided you know the size of your own pockets. For me, personal budgeting is the best way I have found to control of my financial life and keep track of income, expenses and savings. 

If I know what I earn each month and the amount of money I have to put away for fixed expenditures, it gives me the freedom to be able to plan the rest of the month. 

Budgeting is the basic foundation of any kind of financial plan, but if you are considering starting a budget, there are certain basics that you should be familiar with.

Budgeting Basics: 

The importance of budgeting: The first thing that you should do is understand the importance of personal budget. For a lot of people, developing a budget may be a difficult financial exercise. For me, however, a good budget helps keep me on track financially while identifying hidden cash flow problems.

How to create a basic budget: Probably the most important part of personal budgeting is the creation of a budget itself. No matter what method you choose (cash budgeting, spreadsheets, or Mint.com), you need to sit down and create the budget.

My method is simple, I usually write everything down on a notepad that I maintain for personal budgeting purposes, and base my next month's predicted expenditures on my last month's expenses. However you choose to create a budget, it is imperative that you create a system you can stick with.  

How to make budgeting a success: Once you have made a budget for the month make sure that you follow it. Discipline is crucial to success. It was quite difficult for me, in the beginning, to master the art of budgeting. But, I am happy I did it. Building and maintaining a budget is similar to starting a diet. You need a lot of discipline in the beginning, but after a while it begins to yield results as long as you do not let yourself drift away from the plan.

How to automate your budget for long term success: Using a spreadsheet or site like Mint.com can be an easy and effective way to keep track of your finances. In fact, you may be able to find a worksheet on any budgeting website which will let you benefit from the spreadsheets created by others, or you can create one for yourself. 

To achieve the best results, stay disciplined: Overspending is easy to do, but if you are like many Americans with a penchant for spending more than you earn, you need to have extra control over yourself. If you are trying to follow a budget, you have to stick to it. Otherwise, it's just a piece of paper or spreadsheet with numbers on it.

Personal budgeting does not just provide a means of tracking income and expenditures. Any good budget will also help you save money, no matter how small the amount may be. So always remember to budget for savings, that way, by paying yourself first, you will always have some money ready for a rainy day.

Photo By: Images of Money

First 3 Steps in Debt Recovery

Personal debt is something that nobody likes to talk about. For many, it's extremely painful to think about the fact that they owe multiples of their annual income to creditors. Being in debt is like trying to drive a car up an icy hill. You progress 10 yards, and slide back 15. For many, this cycle continues until they find themselves standing at the bottom of the hill, staring at a mountain of debt, with no financial progress to show for their past efforts.

As desperate as this situation may sound, for many people it is all too familiar. If you have found yourself at rest at the bottom of your own personal mountain of debt, it can be an overwhelming experience. But there is hope. Today can be the first day of the rest of your financial life. Hopefully this can be the day that you finally decide to change your life and transform your debt into wealth. 

If you find yourself staring a mountain of debt in the face, with little to no savings and no plan for how to escape the endless cycle of perceived progress and inevitable descent further into debt, consider reading The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. This book provides an excellent starting point for most people in beginning their final climb out of debt to experience freedom from debt. 

Dave Ramsey is a great resource for those about to engage in a personal war on debt. But before you can begin to transform your financial life, you must first take stock of your overall economic health. An excellent resource for a step by step guide to financial freedom is our guide entitled Your Checklist for Financial Freedom.

In the first few steps of our guide, you will be prompted to determine your net worth, create a budget and know how much you owe. These three steps are absolutely imperative to building long term wealth and stopping the cycle of debt.

The First 3 Steps in Debt Recovery Explained:

Determine Your Net Worth: Net worth may be defined simply as your assets (what you own), minus your liabilities (what you owe). In order to determine your personal net worth, simply add up the value of all of your possessions and savings and deduct the amount of personal debt that you and your family have incurred. 

In order to determine how much debt you have racked up, one excellent resource is to order your free credit score and report. Getting a free credit score and credit report will allow you to finally see in black and white how much you owe to your creditors while also giving you the opportunity to review your credit report for errors.

As you embark in this life changing journey to pay off debt, you may want to consider signing up for a credit monitoring service such as TrustedID or Credit Sentry. Both offer competitive rates, and will protect you from fraudulent charges on your credit report (an extremely serious matter, especially for those paying off serious debt.) Visit our recent post 4 Ways to Monitor and Protect Your Credit Rating for more information.

After reviewing your credit report, you will want to subtract the amount of outstanding debt on your credit report from the total sum of your assets will yield your personal net worth. Write it down. This is now your starting place. The point at which your journey to a better financial future began. For many this will be a negative number. That's OK. You have only just begun. 

Create a Budget: Creating a budget is the second step on your road to debt elimination. This is because without a working budget, it is impossible to know how much money you can apply to debt repayment on a monthly basis. If you are lost when it comes to building your first budget, there are several simple ways to go about it. The first is to visit a site such as Mint.com which will help you in building an online and fully automated budget. The second is to use budgeting software such as Quicken or Excel. If you are a low tech kind of person, you could always consider a traditional, hand written ledger or even a cash budget. The important thing is that you know how much money is coming in, and how much is going out. Only then can you begin to pay off debt. 

Know How Much You Owe, and To Whom: Now that you know how much you owe and to whom you are in debt, you can begin to prioritize your debt. In The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness, you are prompted to order your debts from smallest balance to largest. Once you have created this list, you can begin to pay off your debts.

Most people will want to prioritize their debt beginning with their credit cards. These generally carry the highest rates of interest and the lowest balances. For more information on credit card repayment, visit our article A Guide to Paying Off Credit Card Debt.

Beyond Steps 1-3:

Paying off debt is a journey, but one with amazing intrinsic rewards both psychologically and financially. It's never too late to start steps 1-3 of this journey. 

Once you have gotten to step 3, it's time to really focus on your debt repayment strategy. To this end, we highly recommend checking out Dave Ramsey's Web Site for more information on the 7 Baby Steps to building a better financial future. 

Photo By: Images of Money

Top 5 Online Brokerages for Mobile Trading

Stock trading and investing in the equity markets has fundamentally changed since the advent of internet based brokerage firms and especially in recent years, as smart phone technology has again changed the game, in many ways for the better.

But where the plethora of online trading platforms and mobile brokerage accounts has made trading stocks and other investments as convenient as ever, it has also resulted in many more choices of investment accounts and online, discount brokerages. This can make shopping for a brokerage with mobile capabilities a daunting task.

Lost in the sea of online stock brokers? Here are some of compounding returns' five favorites all of whom offer a robust online and mobile trading options.

E*Trade: E*Trade offers some of the best and most user friendly tools in the business, while also being highly rated in customer service. E*Trade also offers extremely competitive commissions which are sure to attract the traders among us. If you sign up now, you can get 60 commission free days with E*Trade Securities.

First Trade: First trade is an online stock brokerage that also offers the convenience of mobile trading. First Trade makes investing in your IRA account or online stock brokerage easy, while offering competitive 

commissions and extraordinary ease of use.

ING Direct: ING Direct's Sharebuilder program is one of the best in the business, especially if you are a long term, dividend growth investor. With options such as scheduled stock purchasing plans and no cost dividend reinvestment as well as the ability to purchase partial shares of stock, Sharebuilder is perfect for the small, long term investor.

TD Ameritrade: Recently rated the #1 discount brokerage in America by the personal finance magazine Kiplinger's Personal Finance, TD Ameritrade gets high marks for both low commissions and customer service and remain high in the running for one of the best in the business among online discount brokers.

Zecco: If you are looking for purely low fees and commissions, look no further than Zecco for some of the best rates in the business.

At the end of the day, many of these services are comparable both in price, ease of use, and customer service. For most investors, the important thing is to find a service that works with your particular investing style and offers the perfect amount of hand-holding or independence that you need.

Any other favorite online brokerages among our readers?

Photo By: Yutaka Tsutano

4 Ways to Monitor and Protect Your Credit Rating

Possibly the most important component of your financial future is your credit rating and associated FICO score, which provides lenders an idea of the level of risk associated with making you a personal loan. Whether or not you intend to use credit to finance any future purchases, your credit report and FICO score are absolutely some of the most important components of your financial life.

If you intend to buy a home, or finance any large purchase, being sure that your credit report is error free and accurately reflects the level of risk associated with your financial history is the first step in ensuring you get the best possible interest rate and loan terms. 

But having an accurate credit report and associated FICO score can not only can affect your future plans for consumer purchases, but also the very basics in life. For example, most landlords use your credit report and FICO score as a determining factor in whether to lease you a home or apartment. In addition, many employers including the US Government use your credit history as a prime determinant in whether or not to hire a job applicant. If you are lucky enough to get a government job, many state and federal agencies use a credit check in conjunction with other methods to determine your suitability of a security clearance.

It is safe to say that monitoring your credit history and FICO score can have a huge effect on your long term plans, whatever they might be. Knowing this, what is the best way for an average Joe (or Jane) to ensure their credit is being accurately reported while also protecting themselves from identity theft?

Best Ways to Monitor and Protect Your Credit Rating:

Get your report free from all 3 credit bureaus (annually). The three main credit reporting companies are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Each of these reports can be ordered for free on an annual basis by ordering your annual credit report. This service is free once per year, and should be taken advantage of to ensure that the data being reported is consistent and accurate.

Sign up for credit monitoring. Credit monitoring services are often offered by banks and other financial service companies for a small fee. This is a small price to pay when you factor in the cost of identity theft or erroneous information on a credit report. If you are considering these types of services, visit identity hawk for comprehensive identity theft protection.

Be cautious. Most people think that they take the most risk online. While that can sometimes be the case, the much more likely way that your information can be compromised is through old time methods such as intercepting mail or going through a home's garbage. One great way to prevent these types of potential information compromises is by using a crosscut shredder. If you don't already own a personal shredder, consider purchasing a crosscut shredder such as the Fellowes Powershred Cross-Cut Shredder or Aurora 8-Sheet Cross-Cut Paper/Credit Card Shredder.

Be prepared. Despite our best efforts, sometimes erroneous information gets reported to the credit bureaus, or worse, thieves steal your identity and cause untold harm to your credit and FICO scores. The best thing to do in these cases is to be prepared to fight back. Repairing your credit report can be a long and arduous process, but can be made much easier by having details about your accounts available in a convenient location. This should include bank and credit card phone numbers, the contact information for the credit bureaus listed above, as well as a number for your local police department.

Gold as a Component of Your Retirement Savings

As the stock market has swung wildly up and down during the past few years, many Americans have sought the refuge of gold IRAs as a hedge against the uncertainty of equity investing and the dismal returns of the bond markets.

Using commodity based ETFs and precious metal funds, many people began to purchase gold for their portfolios in recent years, favoring the security of precious metals over the volatility of the stock or real estate markets. Those who bought gold in the wake of the economic downturn have seen these IRA gold portfolios rise significantly.

Seeing the success of gold in the recent years begs the question of whether or not gold is a necessary component of any portfolio.

Gold can serve as an excellent hedge against inflation, while also offering diversification within a 401(k) or Roth IRA. Gold 401(k) investing can be an excellent way to ensure returns over time even during a market downturn. 401(k) gold and Roth IRA gold investing has proven to be an excellent strategy allowing for diversification across asset classes, and a hedge against both inflation and the volatility of the markets.

The success of gold in recent years has suggested that the time may be right for a gold IRA transfer. It is impossible to predict whether the price of gold will continue to rise at the meteoric rate of the past few years. But, historically, gold has proven to be both an excellent way to protect your assets from inflation, and also a great way to diversify outside of the equity and bond markets while maintaining a high level of liquidity.