10 ways to stop wasting your money
August 4, 2010 · Tagged with Banking and Budgeting, Insurance
Confession: I hate to pay for parking. Unless it’s as hot as Iraq or raining cats and dogs, I will do whatever it takes to find a legal space on the street, preferably free. And I’m good at it. It mainly takes faith, patience and experience. Recently, I found a spot on Chicago’s North Avenue next to the famous Second City comedy club on a Saturday night, saving the $17 the building’s garage demanded — and the half-hour wait to climb the ramp after the show. I’ve done these kinds of things for years.
In the spirit of trading personal convenience for cold cash that remains in your wallet, here are nine other everyday expenses you don’t need:
Banking Fees of All Sorts
Banking fees are generally small — a couple dollars here, a couple dollars there — but they can add up to hundreds throughout the year if you’re not careful. Don’t pay money just to manage your money. You can take easy steps to avoid these fees:
• Overdraft fees. Sign up for low-balance alerts via e-mail, and link your checking account to your savings account to move money as necessary to avoid $35 fees for insufficient funds.
• Checks and postage. Pay your bills electronically instead. You’ll also avoid any late fees and black marks on your record if the postal service loses your payment.
• ATM fees. Know where your own bank’s ATMs are located, even in other states, so you can save $3 every time you get cash out of the wall. Or consider switching to a bank that offers free ATM usage regardless of which bank’s ATM you tap.
• Coin-counting commissions. Save the 5% it can cost you to cash in your nickels and quarters at the supermarket. Coin counting is gratis at hundreds of TD Bank branches in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Florida, whether or not you have an account. (Just pray the machine, called Penny Arcade, isn’t down for service. That seems to happen a lot.)
Basic Investing Advice
There are plenty of wise reasons to engage a financial planner or adviser — but there are also pointless ones. If all you want is help choosing mutual funds, especially if your choices are basic index funds inside a retirement plan, it’s silly to fork over as much as 1.5% of your savings each year for someone to run a common software program to do this for you. You can arrange your money among different investments yourself or build a simple portfolio with little effort. Then rebalance every quarter or six months to restore your weightings.
By all means, get an excellent estate planner or an accountant when it’s time to think about taxes and bequests. But you don’t need help for everything.
Help Applying for Financial Aid
Commercial sites like FAFSA.com will help you complete and submit the important application for student aid for $79.99. But at the U.S. Department of Education’s site, www.fafsa.ed.gov, you can fill out the application for free — with all sorts of guidance on how to assemble the proper personal information.