Yo – You Wanna Save Some Dough?

I’m not sure if it’s the idea that things start over in January that gets people thinking about saving money, but there’s definitely something in the air. I’ve written several articles for She Does The City during the past few months about saving and making money, and it’s totally been on my brain. In fact, this past year has been really focused on paying off my debt and earning additional income.

By saving money and a few good strokes of luck, I’ve actually been able to pay off all my debt, start a Tax-Free Savings Account and start and RRSP within the past year. I’m still not sure what all those terms exactly mean, but it feels pretty good.

The best part has been that I’ve had people influencing me and helping me out along the way. He has always been pretty financially savvy, so that’s been a huge help. For Christmas He also bought me two fantastic books that I’m just plowing through – The Wealthy Barber and The Wealthy Barber Returns. Both books explain financial tips and tricks in common sense terms that even I can understand. Okay, except the section on wills and life insurance, but hey, you’ve always got to have a goal, right?

If you want to save some funds and grow your income as well, take a read of a few of my latest posts here and here.

Need It, Want It, Gotta Have It

Yeah yeah, so I’m still thinking about the green. No, not weed Mom.

Money.

There are lots of great sites about money out there, especially ones on how to save it (and how to spend it, obvi). We try to read them often, especially the ones that are written really well and in a conversational tone, like Moneyville and Give Me Back My Five Bucks.

We’re even debating cutting out really non-important spending, like buying wine just to have with our dinners of Hamburger Helper and frozen Ristorante pizzas (when they’re on sale), just to save more money so we can hopefully buy a house sooner.

I recently signed up for an ING Direct account. Because He referred me, as an existing customer, we both got $25, just for signing it. That’s $50 between the two of us! Pretty awesome. (Note – if you need people to “refer” you to get an account, just ask us – it’s a free $25 for you if you do, and you don’t have to have a set amount of money to begin with to put in, nor does it charge you anything. And, you get free cheques for signing up) I was checking it out the other day, and I also noticed that if you have your pay from work direct deposited into that account, they’ll give you $100. Not bad, not bad at all.

Do you know of any other great money blogs, or tips that save you money?

Money Money Money

We’ve decided we need more money.

He was reading an article today by Krystal Yee called “How I hope to give myself a $25,000 raise.”

After forwarding it to me, it got us both thinking.

Basically, Yee talks about finding additional ways to make money and increase her income, on top of her full-time job. We think it’s a great concept.

At this point in our lives, we definitely need the benjamins. I have student loans, we want to buy a house within the new few years, take a great vacation, and of course, eat (and shop). While we both have well-paying full-time jobs, we’re definitely interested in increasing our income wherever we can.

We came home tonight and discussed ways for us to rake in the dough. I already babysit, on average, about once a week, so that’s a good start. I also receive bonuses from work, while He earns overtime (something I can’t do). We figure we’ll have a garage sale in the spring, and work on selling some of our belongings we don’t really need – we currently have two TV’s, two microwaves, two blenders, two printers, and five cameras. Not only will be make some moolah, but we’ll also free up a lot of space hopefully.

With our calculations, we’re hoping to earn an additional $7,000 each this year. It’s extremely ambitious, but hopefully doable. It’s no good making a goal that we can easily accomplish.

I would encourage anyone reading this to take a quick glance at Yee’s article, and her blog as well – “Give me back my five bucks.” She’s got some good tips, and it definitely inspired us to start saving!