Money Tips Network

There are lots of ways to save money around the house. Here are a bunch that you can add to your collection of money-saving tips …

Learn how to do your own repairs

YouTube is your friend. There are so many tutorials on YouTube for pretty much any kind of repair you want to do that it is very difficult to justify not trying it. If it doesn't work out, at least you tried, and hopefully learned something. We've tried to repair washers, dryers, refrigerators, and more (with varying degrees of success).

Back to school season is here, with many schools starting classes in August and September after a nice summer break. I have two children going to middle school this year and another going to upper elementary, which means this is my ninth (tenth? sheesh, who can even count the years at this point?) year of dealing with back to school supply shopping.

Along the way, I have learned several lessons about effective back to school shopping for clothes and school supplies that have helped cut the cost way down. Here are seven really effective things we do each year to keep the costs low.

Paying your bills on time is a great idea, stipulated! Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, paying your bills on time is not the only thing you need to do to earn great credit scores.

Credit scoring is considerably more complex than that. In fact, roughly two-thirds of the points in your credit scores have nothing to do with paying your bills in a timely manner.

There are, in fact, several ways to hurt your credit scores while never missing a payment.

Running Up Large Credit Card Balances

Roughly 30% of the points in both your VantageScore and FICO credit scores are based on your debt load. And, a large portion of that 30% is specific to how you use credit cards and the size of your balances compared to your credit limits, more formally called your revolving utilization ratio.

Connie writes in:

I am 37, female, and single, and have no interest in getting married or having kids of my own. My younger sister (33) and her husband are having their first child in November. I want to help that child succeed. What’s the best way to do that? I have read about a 529. Is that the best route?

This is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart. As the parent of three children, having extended family that’s supportive and actually cares about your child is a truly wonderful thing.

There are a ton of things you can do to help that child succeed, not just financially, and all of these things are important. The key for you is to choose a few things you can easily do and do them well, rather than pledging to do most of them and not really doing them well at all. Some of these have financial commitments and some of them do not.

Editor's Note: Congratulations to Robert, Amanda, and Kimberly for winning this week's contest!

Getting into shape doesn't have to cost a fortune.

I am not a trained financial expert. I'm not an accountant, I'm not a financial planner, and I'm not a stock broker. What's more, I've made many many money mistakes on my own financial journey. As a result, I've always been reluctant to sit down with people and go over their budgets.

That seems to be changing.

In March, I spent a couple of hours talking with a friend about her financial situation. A few days ago, another friend asked if I'd be willing to meet with him in the near future to puzzle through his budget woes. And yesterday, I took three hours to chat about money with my friends Wally and Jodie.

Saving for college is a daunting task.

It’s hard enough to find room in your budget for contributions on top of your other financial responsibilities, and when you combine that with the fact that college tuition has been steadily rising over the past 30 years, it might feel like sending your child to college is an impossible goal.

And while you shouldn’t stress too much about saving for college, you can at least try to get the most out of every dollar you do save. And one of the easiest ways to do that is simply making sure that you’re using the right type of investment account.

As I mentioned yesterday, Get Rich Slowly is making the leap to video. It’s a brave new world! I’ve been skeptical about this for a long time, but one of the things that convinced me to give it a try was an interview I did with my pal Jillian (from Montana Money Adventures) a couple of months ago.

For those unfamiliar, Jillian Johnsrud (and her husband Adam) are from Kalispell, Montana. When they were married fifteen years ago, they had $55,000 in debt. After deciding to get better with money, they paid off that debt, then started to save for financial freedom.

What makes Jillian’s story unique is that she and Adam are doing this with a family. And not just any family. They’re doing it with a large family. They have six children — two biological and four adopted — all of whom are relatively young.

Marcus writes in:

I was really intrigued by your goal setting process. Could you walk me through that in more detail?

Quite honestly, I wasn’t sure what Marcus was referring to until he pointed me at this little section in my article early this week about the battle against scarcity: