…and lovin’ it in Austin, Texas.
Back in September I made a 0.3 second decision to attend South by South West Interactive, and I’ve never regretted it:
“In my defence I’ve been thinking quite seriously of attending for months but I had not committed myself to going, until I received an email telling me to buy before the price increase. So I did! (Having the freedom to be able to do these kind of things is one reason I save).
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The sooner you improve your money habits and start saving and investing, the more time you’ll have for your money to grow.
If you were not reading Magical Penny a year ago, here’s what you missed: [click to continue…]
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Do you have £1000 just sitting in your bank account?
In the grand scheme of things £1000 isn’t that much money, really. But if you’re living from month to month, without much wiggle-room between your income and expenses, then the idea of having £1000 in your account might seem impossible.
Why is it that some people never get to £1000 in their accounts at any one time, and others seem to accumulate money and reach that milestone over and over again?
Read on to learn how you can save £1000
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Today’s post is a guest post from a friend, David at Money Choices.
Everyone has heard about the ups and downs of the housing market in American, the UK and elsewhere. Prices are down, and have been going down for a long time, but is the decline over? Will mortgage rates stay low? Are foreclosed properties a good buy? With a dizzying array of factors to consider, how can you know whether or not now is the best time to buy a house?
Purchasing a home, particularly if it’s your first time, can be a very exciting and emotional experience. Right now, prices are still down and mortgage rates are still good. So now is the perfect time to get on the ladder and buy, or at least you’d think it is. Yet given the continuing market instability, a well-researched and logical approach will help you make the best decision.
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What better day than Valantines Day, to give you a Love Drop update to share the progress on a project close to my heart:
Love Drop is a micro-giving network of people who unite as a community to help one person or family a month. It’s a pretty unique project, founded by J and Nate, two people with very big hearts.
Click To Watch the February Love Drop
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There’s no shortage of information online about personal finance.
Ultimately if you follow the ‘spend less than you earn’ mantra you’re heading in the right direction, but the fact that you’re reading this now shows me you’re looking for something more to help you on your way:
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It’s fun thinking about all the amazing things we want to do in life. But as much as we avoid the subject, accidents happen every day and can quickly end our plans.For our cars we must have car insurance to cover bumps and crashes; for our houses buildings insurance helps address the risk that our homes may go up in smoke, or collapse to the ground. But what about our life itself? Is life insurance a good idea?
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One year ago today, Magical Penny, a personal finance blog encouraging saving and investing, launched to an unsuspecting world.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has read Magical Penny over the last year and hope you have been inspired to improve your financial situation.
There are big plans being drawn and behind-the-scenes preparation taking place to make 2011 an even better year with aims to help even more people grow their pennies. But for today, I’d like to keep this post to a simple ‘thanks’ and a chance to share the most popular posts from the first year of Magical Penny.
Thank you for reading!
Practice ‘time diversification’ and you stack the odds in your favour that some of your investments, monetary or personal, will offer a good return over time.
By following these two simple tips you can ensure the sandwich of your financial life has cheese on both sides, effortlessly.
It’s the easiest way to begin investing in the stock market for your long term future, and potentially the cheapest too.
Losing money is never fun but here are 6 reasons why you should keep saving. Yes, even if that means that are you slowly losing money in the short to medium term.
The pros and cons of using savings accounts and term deposits.
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The way we decide to spend money is really complex. We’re influenced by thousands of things –both good and bad.
Whether you’re trying to dig yourself out of debt, or just save a little bit more money each month, it can be invaluable to understand how the world is influencing you to spend or save money.
Because understanding human psychology is so critical to staying on the path to wealth I’m enjoying reading Ramit Sethi’s recent posts on his blog: I Will Teach You To be Rich. I can’t recommend the site highly enough for going deep into the psychology of why you spend and what’s holding you back from earning more.
I’ve particularly enjoyed reading about barriers to taking action and the way we can justify anything to ourselves:
Myth: “I need more information to make the right decision.”
Reality: In many cases, having more information causes “analysis paralysis” and actually prevents you from taking action.
How it relates to growing your pennies: Have you not started saving in an ISA because you’re waiting to research the ‘best deals’? Are you put off learning about investing because there’s so much to take in?
The Solution? Do something. It’s much easier to tweak an investment portfolio or even transfer a savings account, than it is to actually start one. But making the first step will have hugely positive implications to your financial future. Just do something positive with your finances and perfect it later.
Myth: “I’m in control of my own behavior
Reality: Your behavior is highly susceptible to your environment and the context around you. You can unwittingly be persuaded to stay in a smoking room, shock someone to death, or donate more money — all things you would not “ordinarily” do.
How it relates to growing your pennies: Are you really in control of your spending? Even the most conscious spender can find themselves influenced unconsciously.
The Solution? Take as much will power and decisions away from your day to day life. If today you’re motivated to improve the amount of money you save every month, then strike when the iron is hot and make it automatic: grow your savings with auto-transfers every pay-day’; set up a pension and investing vehicles, and then get on with your life, checking up on them every so often. For more on automation click here.
Ramit has also been talking about the benefits of taking action.and the importance to be always testing what works best for you.
I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how this relates to your wallet right?
Happy reading (and implementing!).
Adam from Magical Penny presents Confessions of a Procrastinator -And Why You Should Be Saving For Retirement Today, and says, “It’s hard to tell the effect of an extra few hours of preparation could have made in some instances but one thing where the impact of preparation is not in question is when it comes to saving for retirement.
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The following post is a guest post by my friend Andrew Knight, who as a a guest writer of several articles for this blog wanted to share with you part of his personal philosophy. Take it away, Andrew.
Saving money for the sake of saving will never work – few people get real enjoyment from seeing a bunch of zeroes get bigger with no aim. Spending all your money without thought will never lead to happiness for when you need money in an emergency you’ll be left without.
People rarely sit happily between these two extremes and often find themselves swinging from one to the other without consistency, very few remain wholly one or the other. My belief and my experience show that I’ve been a financial swinger. It took me many years to figure out why but in the end the answer was simple.
With no structure and no personal goals other than those thrust upon me by work and home life I found myself scrabbling selfishly for things ‘for me’.
From purchasing too many games, to paying for holidays I couldn’t really afford I was the worst of the swing-spenders. Conversely when at a financial low I’d have an amazing ability to save thousands in only a few months; but at the cost of my quality of life.
I had, and still have, many long-term financial goals, from owning land to paying off my mortgage before I’m thirty-five but concentrating only on long-term goals caused short-term confusion. No-one can only live for the future.
The answer to my problem was simple. I created a cheap, almost free, structure to my life around something I found fun. Having always believed in my creative side and a desire to see whether I could do it, I got busy and started writing a book.
If I wanted to have something ‘for me’ I spent some time writing, discovering the characters and forming the plot. I enjoyed sharing chapters with friends as I wrote them as it gave me an objective point of view enabling me to hone my skills.
One hundred and fifteen thousand words later and the book is almost complete, trapped in the final editing phase. A sci-fi epic which may never see the light of day; but that was never the point. I’d set myself a project which kept me entertained, challenged me and gave some enjoyment to my friends and family.
Even though I’m not completely finished I’m already planning my next ‘for me’ project; taking my self-taught guitar skills to another level, writing lyrics, learning to sing and doing a one-off never-to-be-repeated ‘set’ at some lonely and quiet venue. For many this wouldn’t seem like a big step, for me it would be a giant leap beyond my comfort zone.
Perhaps the best example of what I’m trying to get at is what you’re reading now. The creator of this website, Magical Penny, set his own personal goal which required little financial outlay and now when he desires he can keep returning to his project and life structure he’s created.
What about you? There is no reason why you can’t try and turn your project into a revenue-generating venture. For me, making money was never the aim and any revenue down the line would be an unexpected bonus. But the life-structure it brings and enjoyment projects gives, that is enough for me.
Editor’s note: Andrew’s right -revenue is fun but getting intrinsic value from how you spend your time is the most fulfilling thing you can do.
Someone once said ‘Idle hands are the devils playthings’. If you have no plan and no controllable structure to your life but you have a disposable income how can you expect to keep the cash and not let it fritter away and disappear on the slightest whim?
Give yourself some credit and give the subject of finding a project of your own some thought. What is your project? And have you started it yet?
Andrew’s past articles for Magical Penny include ‘Why Being Bad can be Good’ and ‘Me? Oh, I HATE Money!’
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