In a speech at New York’s Cooper Union college, near Wall Street, Mr Obama was explaining the need for new financial regulations because the United States would be risking if the existing situation will remain in place unchanged.

It clear, that the financial crisis is become a big problem that causing terror to the masses that are beginning to get nervous because unemployment’s up. They’re worried that the recession will turn worse, and that their personal finances will end up in ruins, too.

Image Credit: fofurasfelinas

So, through these article I would to share a few ways to help you to track your spending:

1. Monitor Your Spending
2. Optimize Your Bank Accounts
3. Stop Junk Mail
4. Save money
5. Educate Yourself
6. Learn From An Expert: JD Roth Book: Your Money – The Missing Manual

1.Monitor Your Spending

You can use a simple notebook, create your own spreadsheets or use your personal finance software like Quicken. It shows you where you’re spending and helps you see where to save.

However, there are other two free simple ways to track your spending online: Websabe and Mint. Both these services are great and providing the mobile version as well: Wesabe Mobile and Mint for Iphone.

2.Optimize Your Bank Accounts

If you’re not satisfied with your current bank, find a new one. Internet is become the right place to find an online savings account that offers good interest rates.  If you’re happy with your bank account, ask to your bank to give you better interest rates and eliminate service fees. Whatever your question is, remember it costs nothing to ask.

3.Stop Junk Mail

Junk mail can be a danger to your financial health. Ripe for identity and other junk mail make you spend where not necessary. You can stop indesiderate junk mail or reduce them by registering with a few services such as:

GreenDimes - Is a free service, but you can choose to pay $20(one-time fee) to get a few extra things. I’ve been quite happy with this service because each time you receive an unsolicited mail, GreenDimes walks you through some easy steps that will reduce them. Once you go to GreenDimes and type the name of the catalog, GreenDimes takes care of removing you from that catalog’s mailing list.

ProQuo - Is a free software that allows you to stop junk-mail. With just a couple mouse clicks per service you are able to stop receiving undesiderable mail, but for about 50% of the marketers you have to send a letter or leave to an external website to complete a form. It’s still better than nothing though. However, the service is free and helps you opt out of a wide variety of lists.

4.Try To Ask

Are you paying for your cell phone? Are you paying your cable? What are you paying? A tactic that have had success with my friend was to call the current service and ask the deals from their competitors. It doesn’t works always, but try doesn’t cost you nothing.

5.Educate Yourself

Check up one personal finance book. Go to your near public library, and looking for a book to read to your home. I also like books that give concrete suggestions, especially the good ones give similar advice: establish an emergency fund, diversify, pay yourself first, don’t spend more than you earn, and so on.

6. Learn From An Expert: JD Roth Book: Your Money – The Missing Manual

Most people don’t know that when I started The3dtechnologies in may 2006, I was reading a small handful of blogs. Get Rich Slowly was one of them.

J.D. Roth is one of my all-time favorite blogger on personal finance and frugality. In five years, he have managed to pay off over $35,000 in debt, quit his old job, and gone from having nothing saved to fully funding his retirement accounts every year.

In these years, he has developed some philosophy points. Here, I’ll summarize what I could find by reading his new book “Your Money-The missing manual”

1. You are the only person that take cares about your money. Everyone else will give you useful advices, and is right to listen other people’s advices, but broker, insurance selesman, banker, lawyer  don’t take cares of your money like you. Of course, you have to make your own research in order to be sure on how manage your money.

2. Often people feel trapped, and when this happens they don’t do anything. In a nutshell, they feel blocked for a long time.

In this case you need to find the right direction. If you’re stuck at a job you hate, one of the best thing you can do is take small steps toward what you really want. If you have not time, start moving slowly by taking night classes in something that interests you.

3. J.D. Roth has open several ING Direct accounts that allowed him to use them for different goals,  and make a manual transfer to each account. These multiple accounts helped him to simplify his budgeting and expense tracking, and make sure his bills are automatically deducted from his checking account.

“Establishing a home, a career and a budget in a few short months is daunting, but few things in life pay off like having a plan.” By Terry Savage

This crash course in financial basics can help you to take control of your finances. Here, are five simple but effective steps that working in conjunction and can help you to have a better financial life.

Inside this Financial Success article:

1. Keep track of every cent you spend
2. Develop a badget3.
3. Review the contracts
4. Earn extra money
5. Optimize your account

1. Keep track of every cent you spend – What does it mean to keep track of every cent you earn? Before to read Your money your life I struggled with debt for years. In a nutshell this ebook recommends that you keep a Daily Money Log. Your awareness of your money habits allowing you to control your money and improve your situation.

Image Credit: Cajie

The following are things you can use to tracking your own spending:

• Some transactions without a receipt, or online transactions, are easy to forgotten. Be careful with these kind of transactions that you can be forget. Take note each time you make these transactions in order to remember it.
• Don’t try to go to do more transactions per day. I know it is hard to do, but If I make more than two operation, I can’t find a receipt, I can’t remember a transaction, and so on.
• Stop using credit card for most of your purchases. I’m not saying credit cards are bad, but they could lose you the control of your balance.

2. Develop a badget - Tracking your spending is one thing you should make for a few weeks(or months). Once you’ve made it, you can use the data you’ve found and develop a budget. If you read The Millionaire Next Door, you discover that 55% of millionaires keep a budget.

If I had to decide what is my favorite balanced money formula is that Elizabeth Warren’s: 50% to Needs, 20% to Savings, and everything else to Wants. Simple but effective. However, there different of budgeting methods you can choose. In a nutshell, to develop a badget you need to:

• Calculate your monthly income. Make sure to calculate the amount after all of your taxes and other deductions are removed.
• List your monthly expenses. Here are some items that you should include on your monthly expense chart: Cable or satellite TV, Cell phone, Mortgage or rent payment, medical insurance premiums, automotive, Credit cards, Entertainment
• Put remaining money into an emergency fund. Create a fund that is separate from your savings account for emergency. It is become very important today that you have an emergency fund for unexpected problems like an emergency car repair.
  

This NCN’s video explain the concept in a simple and clear way.

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3. Review the contracts - Make sure to review the contracts and formal or informal agreements(at least once each year) you have with different banks, in order to check up if still covering your needs. Contracts and agreements are part of daily life, and yet they still confuse us. Also, review your financial accounts to be sure everything still works for you. In particular:

• Check up your services in order to see if you you’re only paying for what you need.
• Read your own agreements, than if you need, asking questions for clarification.
• Cut your Cable Bill. You can make this in only 4 step:
  • Review Your Service
  • Reduce Your Package
  • Compare Costs
  • Use Free Services
• Check your asset allocation – For instance, the stock market soared more than 50 percent in 2009 In china and India.
  

4. Earn extra money - Sure, you can saving a lot of money by using the right tools and reducing your spending. However, the better ways to make progress with your finances is to earn extra money.

• Ask for a raise – Negotiate your salary in order to improve your finances. Here are some tips to help you do that.
  • Check out how much others working in your field are earning in order to know about typical salaries in your field.
  • Check out how much you can earn through a salary calculators. To do this, consider the length of time you’ve worked, and the number of years you’ve been working for your current employer.
• Use your hobbies – Have you thought to making money through your hobbies? Many people have their own hobbies and earn a little extra income from that.
• Tutor – You are a grammar pro? an engineer? Have you never throught to and transform your knowledge into a paycheck. Then, become a tutor. Just advertise where you can be found – at the library, in the newspaper, on campuses, and so on.
• Blog – Have knowledge that you’d like to share with the world? Have you never throught to set up a blog, and monetize it. So, I reccomend to reade my month-long series of post here at the3dtechnologies designed to walk you through 31 step that you can use to start a successful blog from scratch.
• Sell things – To do this you can use service like eBay, Craigslist, garage sales, and the Amazon Marketplace. The money you earn can help you to reduce your debt.

5. Optimize your account – Check up if your bank account make you pay other fees from services where you do not earn no interest. Often, bank includes in your account additional fees like “service charge” that will influence your balance. You can:

• You an open an online high-yieald savings account where the money you deposit earns greater than average interest.
• Open a rewards checking account, so you can keep the money you’ll be using soon.

Usually, when you’ve to solve a problem, the better solution can be bought. Of course, based on type of problem the solution could be really expensive.

When I were my spending locked down, I’ve discovered some alternative solutions to solve problems, without buying something. They are solutions that are less expensive, or better even free.

Below, I put a brief list of tips I use:

1. Repair your stuff – Instead of replacing what you already have, you can repair what you can. Usually, secondhand items are more easily to be repairable than newer ones because are built to be unrepairable. You can use this technique for your car, furniture, clothes, appliances, and so on.

This month I wanted to replace my old library with a new. But I throught to try to repair it to increase his life span, and I was pleasantly surprised by the result. Now, it seems as new and it came out really cute.

Image Credit: Smartergrowthdc

2. Delay the purchase - When People lose their jobs or remain without money at the end of the month, one thing they can do to save a bit of money is to see how long they can stretch out time in between an purchase and each other.  Personally, I’m fans of the $100 rule. It work so: for every $100 you spend, you have to wait one day. If you want to spend $200 purchase you need to wait 2 day, and so on.

3. Use internet – If you can not solve your problem without buying, then use Google search engine to see if there’s a less expensive solution out there to save money. Look at discount sites that offer coupon codes, such as my coupons.the3dtechnologies.com website.

4. Be creative - A creative solutions can help you to find alternative solution, to buying new, so you could save a lot of money. Instead to make shop, going for a walk, or try reading a book. Instead to going at the restaurant on Saturday night with your friends, host them to your home for a dinner.

5. Ignore what you no need – Just ignore what you no need to do and do nothing.

6. Renting - Instead to buying new stuff, renting could cost you less then if you buy the same thing as new. It goes for renting a cloth as an car. All you need to do your price comparison research before renting. For Halloween, I ran into a rental store for a cowboy hat and I bought one for $3.00, only.

One of the tenets of personal finance, and the simple rule that money books tell you to do, is to pay yourself first. Also, your parents are the first persons to give you this advice.

Unfortunatly, many often people use that money for other purposes. They pay down debt, the phone bill, buy a new laptop. They don’t set aside a portion of their income to save, so when next payday comes along, they haven’t more money.

However, as a result of the economic downturn today, become important to put aside a percentage of your income for yourself.

But, the question now is: What does “pay yourself first” even mean? In brief, It means that you must to save your income before you buy groceries, pay your bills, and so on.

Image Credit: Lightmash

Once you take the habit, you can open an saving account, can help you grow your potential wealth. Of course, if you’re just getting started to work, there’s no money saved at the end of the month. You’ve paid the rent, groceries and maybe your car.

The real difficulty to developing this habit is finding the money to save. So, here, I listed some tips to get started doing this yourself. They each have their advocates, and can all work.

1. First and foremost you’ve need to establishing saving as a priority. Put your saving first to any else things such as car rent, cell phone, and so on.

2. Creating a mental list of things to pay for first. Usually people using their money, first to pay bills, second to fun, and at the end for saving money. It’s obviously that they remains little in the bank. Having money saved in the bank can be useful for emergencies, or use it to save for retirement.

3. Initially, trying to save just 1% of your income, in order that the entire process is painless, then trying to save 3%. or 5%.

3. Paying yourself is a great way to get freedom and open a world of opportunity.

4. If you’re struggling to find money to save, looking if your company offer to match employee contributions and have a retirement plan.

5. Open a high interest savings account at a bank and set up automatic transfers into this account. I reccomend ING Direct or FNBO Direct.

6. The better way to build credible wealth by paying yourself is to earn more money. When your income increases, set your gains aside for retirement and savings.

It’s not never too late to start pay yourselves first. I started saving money just a few years ago. Better late than never.

Today I’m going to highlight some of the informations that could be useful for those that want to cover those emergencies that do tend to happen to anyone of us.

Recently, my reader asked me, how much cash reserves should one always have on account. Well, according to my experience, not everyone should have the same cash reserves. People have different needs that are proportional to income they have. In particular, It depending on these four circumstances:

Image Credit: sustainable harvest

1. If you have a regular income, the percentage of your annual income you should save for your emergency fund  is 10%.

2. If your job don’t guarantee a regular income, the percentage of your annual income you should save for your emergency fund is 20%.

3. If you are retired, the percentage of your annual income you should save for your emergency fund is 30%.

4. If you have a problem of cover bills and rent in the event that you losing your job, the percentage of your annual income you should save for your emergency fund is 40%. Of course, you’ll should have it saved before you are in danger of losing your job.

If you think that you have a very low risk of income disruption, then you no need an emergency fund of 40% of your income as someone else.

Of course, the first thing to do is to take a minimum base liquidity or cash reserves in order to be safe agains any problems. I read recently that according to financial gurus you should have cash reservers equal to 3 to 6 months of income.

In my view, the 3-6 months of expenses means you have more work and many people just don’t do that. I think have cash reservers equal to 1-2 month of income is ideal. This fund should be used for instance when your car breaks down or you have an problem such as, house repairs, emergency trips, and so on.

With this economic crisis I’m trying to have at least 4 months of income in a savings account for the home and other problems. Hopefully it is never needed for emergency, but if one of us have problem we can still survive, we shouldn’t be worried if the money is there.

When we’re talking about saving money, an emergency fund is definitely critical. An emergency fund is a means that save you from something of unexpected for your badget. Having a good emergency fund is like a self-insurance and an important part for having a healthy financial picture.

Usually, people who haven’t open an emergency fund have a difficult time saving money. For a newbie can be hard to start, but all you need is a shift in mindset.

To solve your problem, here, some easy strategies you can take immediately in consideration:

1. Stop getting into debt.
2. Reduce your spending by being more frugal.
3. Build an emergency fund of $1,000.

Image Credit: Jarod Carruthers

How To Build A Robust Emergency Fund

If you have need of more help, here, some tips to build a robust emergency fund:

1. Start with $20. Despite you don’t have much money to open an emergency fund, don’t worry — the important thing is just to start. Find a high quality savings account with a decent return and put $20 there. Just start.

2. If you get a promotion, setting up an automatic transfer to your emergency fund until the fund grows large enough to accomplish the goal. Remember, don’t throw your money away.

3. In general, Set up an automatic deduction, for example by open an online savings account Emigrant Direct or ING Direct.

4.Every unplanned expense become an emergency, then take note. When your expense grow, add them into your budget. When you want to create an emergency fund you need to expect the unexpected.

5. You need of $1000 to start? Making an inventory of stuff you want to sell. I love creating an list, first because help me purge stuff, and possibly make money by selling it. Another thing you can do if you need of $1000 is to asking for a promotion or find a second job.

6. Having an emergency? Put your other savings goals away, and focus all of your energy on the priority things.

7. If you spend $350 for groceries, then save the difference. For instance, you can spend $400 for groceries, and save all you don’t spend into your saving account.

8. Cut out junk food. If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t buy junk food. Put the amount you would have spent in your saving account.

9. Keep paying debt. Once you paid a smaller debt, take the amount you were paying to that debt and add it  into your savings for the next months.

My next goal is to cover all my unexpected problem with an emergency fund of $2000, but is a slow process, and I’m building it 1 small piece at a time.