My wife and I love Red Box, and the best thing about Red Box is FREE RED BOX MONDAYS.  We thought it was about time we start sharing that FREE code with our readers!  We hope you enjoy Red Box as much as we do!

Monday September 7th, 2009 Red Box Code is T46T3Q7

We hope you enjoy your free movie!

To learn more about Red Box click here.

It’s time! I know you have all been waiting to know who will win the $500 stimulus giveaway.

We gathered up all the entries.

Assigned them random numbers.

And used a random number generator to choose the winner.

Congrats

Katheryn of Provo Utah!

You are now $500 richer!

Thanks everyone who participated! We will be doing similar giveaways in the future, keep checking back to know how to be entered to win.

And happy budgeting! 

When creating an account on MyFinancialBook there are a two thing that you should think about before beginning. First, what are the areas that you are planning to save for? You have up to 4 categories that you can create for you savings. Second, what areas do you typically spend in? You have up to 12 categories for your expenses.   

MyFinancialBook uses the following tool bar to organize your personalized budgeting plan:

The following summarize what each link on the tool bar does: 

“Wallet” allows you to see an overview of how you are doing with your budget and is the default page when you login. 

“Income” shows you all of the income that you have for the current month. 

“Enter Income” allows you to enter your planed income and the income that you have earned. If you are trying to enter your income for a month in the past you simply need to change the month and year as needed to the desired month and year. 

“Savings” shows you all of your savings areas and how much you have saved for the current month.  

“Enter Savings” allows you to enter your planed savings for each category and the savings that you have accomplished. If you are trying to enter a savings amount for a month in the past you simply need to change the month and year as needed. 

“Expenses” shows you all of you expense areas and how much you have spent for the current month. 

“Enter Expenses” allows you to enter your planed expenses for each category and the expenses that you have currently spent. If you are trying to enter an expense for a month in the past you just need to change the month and the year as needed. 

“History” allows you to see how you have done in the past. When you select a month a new menu bar will appear on the side.

“Wallet History” will show you an over view for the selected month, and then becomes the default page.

“Income History” will show you the entered income for that month.

“Savings History” will show you the savings areas and the savings for the selected month.

“Expenses History” will show you the expenses for the selected month. 

“Personal Information” will allow you to edit your information.  

Set up a free account today! If you have questions about MFB contact us at support@myfinancialbook.com 

 

Budgeting is an important aspect of life, especially in todays economy. My goal in this post is to explain the importance of budgeting, how to get started with your budget, and how to use MyFinancialBook (MFB) to aid you with your personal budgeting.

 

Importance of budgeting

It is proven that simply tracking where your money is being spent will save you money in the long run. This is because you are seeing how much you are actually spending. The next step to saving money is to create a “spending plan”. This is a nice way to say budget.

 

Spending plans give you an outline of how much you planning on spending during a particular time frame. Most personal budgets plan for a month at a time. Creating a spending plan allows you to determine how much you want to spend during the month, and by tracking how much you are actually spending you are better prepared to stay within the budget you have set. Some big advantages to creating a budget are being able to save for something you want, need, and saving for your retirement.

 

Getting started with your budget

Setting up a budgeting plan is simple. First, think of the areas that you want to save for. Are you looking to buy a new car? Then make a car fund. Do you want to get out of that apartment? Then make a house fund. If you want to have some money when you retire, then make a long term savings or retirement fund. Do this same thing for your expenses. Brainstorm and write down all the areas that you spend money each month: utilities, rent/mortgage, car, insurance, donations, etc. Categories will vary with everyone.

 

The next task is to determine how much you want to save for each of your savings categories, and how much you want to spend in your expense categories. Having a set amount will help you limit your spending, and maximize your savings. This planning, and sticking to your plan, is the most critical part of your budget.

 

Next, you need to start tracking your money. At the end of the month make sure that you are looking back and seeing how well you did. Continue to adjust your plan. As you budget you will find ways to save money in some areas, and maybe that you need a bit more in others. You will be able to incorporate strategies to save more too!

 

Get started with your personal budget today, and start planning for your future!

I was listing to the local radio station, and Dylan form Utah’s hit music station 107.9 the mix, had a contest to see if people could guess how many times the average American eats out per weak. What do you think,… 1? 2? 3? 4? The answer was 4 times in one weak. Let’s do a breakdown to see if eating out is really cost effective. 

To be conservative in our numbers we will say the average cost of eating out is $6. That means that the average person is spending $24 per week just for themselves to eat out. This is a total cost of $96 per month. Is that a lot? Let’s find out. According to WikiAnswers the average cost of groceries per person is $150 per month. That is an average of $1.79 per meal. That is a difference of $4.21 every time you eat out. 

This is not to say that you shouldn’t ever eat out, it is just a warning that we should be looking at where we are spending our money.  Maybe we should take a second look at how much we are spending in areas that we really don’t give a lot of thought.

We are now almost one month into the New Year!  Most of the goals that were set at the first of the year have almost been forgotten. However, with the economy the way it is now it is hard to forget about our finances.

 

Here are a few suggestions to think about at the first of this New Year. Don’t spend more then what is coming in, pay off the credit card, and don’t make risky business decisions.

 

Spending more then is coming in is a very common problem. After all there are always desires and needs even if there is not the cash flow to support them. However, this is how families get in trouble.

 

Paying off credit cards might be particularly hard, especially if you are in a pattern of spending more then is coming in. Once this debt cycle is entered it is very hard to get out of it. Spending less then is coming in and paying off credit cards will help to get out of the debt cycle. If spending is limited to less then what is coming in there will be extra to pay off the credit cards or other debt.

 

There is a trap in this cycle. This trap must be avoided. This trap is entering into risky business decisions. When risky business decisions are presented it is very tempting to enter into it because there is a vision of getting out of the deep hole. If a business deal sounds too good to be true it probably is.

We are currently testing our new blog.  We want to give you the latest financial information and tips using this blog.  However, right now we need to get a few things worked out!  Thank you for viewing, and check back at a later time to see what new information we have!