The world is an amazing place. There are magnificent mountains, spectacular rivers,  and wonderful cities. I like travel. Usually, when I go from a palce to another I don’t fix plans, but I know where I intent on arriving and I know how much my vacation was going to cost.

The question now is: How doing a realistic budget before you leave, in order to survive a long road trip without to cut your trip, before.

When I took a vacation in the US in early august, I set a budget for the trip in order to know how much I want to spend before I left. First, I needed to know, what kind of car I had to use, and how long would it take me to travel. Now, I was interested to know the cost to drive from one place in the United States to another.

There are several methods to calculate the cost to drive from a place to another, but  in my opinion, none surpass the simple and quick work that Cost 2 Drive do. In brief, It’s a free web tool that help people quickly and easily discover how much it costs to drive anywhere in the US.

How Does It Work

It easy to discover how much it costs to drive anywhere in the US. Once you come to the Cost 2 Drive home page, all you have to do is to set up your starting point, for example News York(you can insert, address, city, state, or zip code) and your destination, for example Los Angeles. At this point you might set the car you are driving(you can choose type, model, year), and then click on “My Cost To Drive” button.

Cost To Drive calculates travel distance, approximate driving time, and an estimate of your fuel costs as you can see from this detailed image, below.

However, I notice that it really not your actual cost for the trip, but an approximate value.  For now, Cost To Drive simply calculates your estimated fuel costs, but the team  plans to add features in the future.

I’m repairing my home this week and working to paint a wall. Over the years, the walls have been infested with rot, so my brother and I have took a moment of ours time to painting the wall. It could be more easy to hire somebody to painting the walls, but this seems like an easy way to save a little money. That’s the focus of a most excellent article write from Liz Pulliam Westom at Msn Money.

Image credit: Phoney Nickle

You can make a good argument for hiring out certain tasks because it frees your time or because the person you hire will do a better job. In fact, people have. Author Timothy Ferriss turned the idea of outsourcing your life into a best-selling book, “The 4-Hour Workweek.”

Thus, the following four point are a summary of advices that Westom give about how save money:

1. Save money by cooking - “The simplest and fastest way for most folks to cut their budgets is to stop outsourcing food preparation,” I have always been a lazy man cooking, but sometime know how to cook it was been useful for my finances. For this first point I’ve two advices: If you have time, then learn to cook more meals at home. If you have space, then start a vegetable garden. Cutting recurring costs for a food preparation can be a great way to save money and be more stable with your finances.

2. Home repair - Usually, people who want to repair their own home have need to ask a professional. But sometimes, it can be useful to save a little money by doing the work yourself. I am willing to take on my own home repairs when there is no risk of death. Sure, electrical tasks can be a bit hard to resolve, but other little work as paint a wall don’t required particular dowry.

3. Personal care - When I was a poor student, I learned to clean and press and cut my own hair, as well. Another little way to save a bit of money.

4. Lawn and home care - Don’t use cleaning service can be a great way to save money.

There are other things Weston consider yourself to save a little money, such as Laundry and tailoring, basic car maintenance, computer maintenance, and tax preparation. My advice is: You take some time and learn all these little things to solve your problem. I’m sure once you’ve done it, it will be much easier in the future.

The current financial crisis created an economic downturn worldwide. To try to survive, you should look into as many different ways to save your money as possible and the discount card are one of the best way to save money during these crisis.

Today I’m going to highlight an interesting site that allows you to buy discounted gift certficates to restaurant. Restaurant.com is an online network of thousands of restaurants across the united States that give your recipients a wide variety of restaurants to choose from.

It allows you to buy a 25$ gift certificate for only 10$. All you need to do is to print your certificates and you can take them and use them.

It’s easy to use. Just use their search to find a restaurant. They provide brief descriptions and even menus to help you decide which gift certificate purchase and print out. Restaurant lets also you know latest news about restaurant offer. Once Signed up you can get a special offer or promotions directly sent to your inbox.

When you sign up for an account, you will enjoy a number of benefits, including:

• 25$ gift certificates for only 10$.
• Save on online take-out/delivery orders.
• Free online reservations.
• Save even more with special email offers.
• Email notice of new restaurants in your area.
• Access to all easy checkout.
• and more.

Read more at the Restaurant.com FAQ.

Restaurant.com accepts Visa, American Express, Mastercard, Discover and Paypal for all orders. The downside is that to use these gift certificates requires a minimum purchase. There may also be other requirements and restrictions. (Be sure to read the terms and conditions).

I feel it’s ok for people to use this service because you can find great deal. Restaurant gift cards really are the perfect gift for friends, family, and co-workers.

There’s always been an economic crisis, but this time the difficulties are not a few complex, and I believe that  will take quite a long time, perhaps even a decade, to resolve. These days, a finance book can give some answer to all peopel that want useful advices for their finances.

I’ve begun to read a new finance book. I made a jump to the public library where I borrowed a stack of personal finance books. There were dozens of personal finance books out there, and I read five book or so.

What I Watch In A Personal Finance Book?

That I like in a personal finance book, is that I find a lot of useful advices about psychology of money. Also, I get pratical information that can help me to make my business better.

For instance, some month ago, a friend reccommended me “Think and Grow Rich” a motivational book written by Napoleon Hill that has developed 15 “laws” of success intended to be applied by anybody to achieve success. You can download it from my left sidebar for free.

Many books — especially the good ones — give similar advice: pay yourself first, establish an emergency fund, don’t spend more than you earn, diversify, etc.

When I must choose for a personal finance book, usually I check the recommendations or reviews on other personal finance websites, or traditional media. I prefer an book that help me to find some strategy on how to get progress on sunk costs, to debt elimination, that I’d never been able to delete before.

There are three reason why a financial book is worth:

• Preparing you on how build the financial independence.
• Give you the advices on how to reduce spending, and encourage you to save money.
• Give you advice on how to increase your income. Not all authors mention this, instead I think this is an important step on the road to financial independence.

If you haven’t taken advantage from it, a good personal fianance book can give you some useful ideas you can apply in your personal life in order to improve your independence.

The thrift is all about. Lately I was overweight and to solve at this problem, instead of obsessing about tasty lunches, I focused my life on change my eating habits. In this way I’d saved calories and money at the same times.

Thanks this lesson, I’ve also learned that using less of things saves me money each month and reduces the amount of wast I produce each month.

Image Credit: Zibekk

There are many ways we can cut back on the things we use. The following advices are ways(in order of importance) that can help you to facilitate your life. They come from ours daily habits, that if changed can make save a lot of money.

1. Save money on store - First, but maybe the most important factor that can influence your economy, is certainly the place where you are buying your product. My advice is that to buy with wisely. Consider to buying direct from the producer. In alternative exist a variety of markets, stores, superstores, local shops is worth checking out to see if you can save money.

2. Save money on cooking - Second, but don’t less important is that to using less in cooking. For instance, you can try to add one and half instead two spoonfuls of sugar on your coffe. I don’t think you will notice a taste difference.

3. Save money on paper product - I know that can seems obvious, but do you have never think to use one kleenexes to blow your nose instead to use two. The same can be applied to the toilet paper. You have not really need a huge of paper, if you know that it will do the same work with less.

4. Save money on shampo - Lately I tried to fill the bottles of shampoo with water. I Stirred  water and shampoo, this will not reduced the effectiveness of your product but extended the life of the product.

5. Save money on drink - When I find drink too sweet, I tend to mix them with water.

6. Save money on engine oil - Check your own manual for the recommended oil engine interval. Most vehicles can go much further than 3000 - mile oil. I don’t think it be just 300 miles as tell you the manual!