Ways to Save Money & Live Frugally

I'm not going to get into a battle of whether herbicide is good, bad, or killing you slowly or fastly or cancer or whatever. I am just going to hit on the cost of what you mention. I buy generic Glyphosate for about $45 for a 2.5 gallon jug. That works out to about $0.20/ gallon when used as a grass killer and for most weeds. I just bought 8 pounds of rock salt at Walmart and know what it costs and kind of know what a gallon of viniger costs. So unless the rocsalt is diluted and sprayed or the viniger sprayed at a 20% solution of viniger and water. It is really not cost effective?

 

This method works. My wife and I paid off $60k in 26 months (3 credit cards, 2 auto loans, 1 student loan). Anything and everything extra went towards debt. It's amazing how much $ is left over after the mortgage and utilities are paid now.

 

Cool thread! Now I have to take the time to read the rest. Hopefully tomorrow.

 

Ol' Ben Franklin said it best:
Rather Go To Bed Without Dinner Than To Rise In Debt, and
Never Keep Borrowed Money An Hour Beyond The Time You Promised.

 

I’m not as debt adverse as some especially if the interest rate is low, but i’ll throw out there:
Pay off higher rate debt first. I.e. It is counter productive to put extra money towards your mortgage if you have outstanding credit card debt.

Also, Mortgage rates are historically low again. Consider a refi if your rate is over 4%. Maybe switch to a 15 yr if you have less than 20 yr left, you can get an even lower rate.

 

Another option is to payoff the lowest balances first...that way you can then sock the money for that payment toward the next lowest balance too...so on and so forth...you can make headway pretty fast that way sometimes! Helps with giving a sense of achievement and encouragement to keep plugging away at that debt elimination too!
But you are right...if you have to pick between two, hit the high interest first!
BTW, this is basically right out of the Dave Ramsey play book...

 

And you can just read my post instead of buying his book. I saved you even more money right there

 

We took the class some years back...

 

You can also listen to his shoe o. The radio for s week or two and understand his principles.

 

He is an interesting guy. He says he just goes to buy new shirts at Goodwill instead of dry-cleaning because there clean at Goodwill and cheaper than dry cleaning them.

 

And then after you learn to appreciate how the debt snowball works you can see how it works the other way too. An investment snowball. Reinvest the earnings, compound interest, at some point your contributions are meaningless compared to the earnings. That’s when the investment snowball has gained its own momentum. Exponential growth for the win!

 

Does anyone have a good source of info on IRA investments? I opened a Roth earlier this year but haven't contributed to it yet.

 

Not really! I opened one up for my wife years ago with CapitolOne investment which was bought out by Etrade. We contribute as much as we can to it and it's slowly growing

 

Here ya go...
2019 Roth IRA Rules - Income, Contributions & More | RothIRA.com

 

Also, when they first started the Roths, they were wonderful, you could add to Roth CD's anytime until they matured, and the interest rates were the same as other CD's. Now it is different; you can't contribute UNTIL they mature, and the rates are usually chit-poor.

 

Roth IRAs are great if you exceed the income limits for traditional iras but still make pretty good money. You can access the contributions anytime with no penalty or taxes. We use our Roths as an emergency fund.

A Roth IRA isn’t an investment, it’s a shelter or way to buy investments. So you go to vanguard and choose a normal mutual fund and then set up a Roth IRA “account”. 6000$ per year per person.

 

As mentioned, the Roth is just a type of account, that you put money in post-tax, but don’t need to pay taxes on the gains. So you could invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds or index funds. Don’t waste it on tax free bonds because it is already tax sheltered. In fact I like REITS because they are internally tax advantaged because they have to pay out taxable dividends.. but not taxable in a Roth, so there is a marginal additional advantage.

 

Anytime 5 years or more after funding your first Roth. Less than 5 years, there are penalties.

 

Yes, I did that before he came into notoriety. Aside from mortgage, the reason you want out of debt is to have money freed up. Pay off the smallest first, you have a feeling of progress and more money in pocket to go after the next obligation. Playing the interest game is pointless, as the objective is to pay off way ahead of time anyhow.

I don’t live and breathe that stuff, though. Have a small loan on o motorcycle that I could pay off, but interest was only 45 bucks a year, so I just let it ride.

The Ramsey method is very sound; especially for those who are up against it and fighting for their financial lives.