How To Save More Without Spending More

Raises may be a rare occasion during these days of employer belt-tightening, and when they do come along they're likely to disappoint. Stagnant paychecks don't have to imply savings-as-usual — there's a tangible way to save money without earning more!

Scott Burns of MSN Money calls it the "Power of Attentive Spending," but I just call it a good idea. When you hold a magnifying glass to your spending there's no doubt you'll discover places where you can find better deals and spend less. Consumer Reports' August issue is confident we can save $500 each month by reviewing these six expenses: car insurance, life insurance, food shopping, phone costs, bank fees, credit card bills.

Even if you can't find $500 within your expenses that can be turned into money saved, a lesser amount would still have a positive impact on your savings. However you manage to cut your bills and save the money instead, Burns suggests you think of the amount you save over one year as after-tax income. So, if your salary is $50,000 and you find $6,000 by using your power of attentive spending, that's a not-too-shabby, after-tax, 12 percent gain.

Yay!

I paid off a credit card on Friday! The other two remaining cards are slotted to be PAID OFF on September 15th!! Woo-hoo! This is HUGE for me...after this debt is paid, I have a remaining loan from my parents, which I'll now dump the money I was paying in CC's towards, one small student loan ($800) which I will have paid off by December 15th, my computer loan (which will be paid off by December as well) and then the only thing I'll have is my large student loan. After doing some calculations, I figured I could increase my payments by $200 a month and pay it off in 5 years...so that's the minimum...I figured it would be safe to do the smallest amount I could increase my payments and pay off in a short amount of time rather than going all out and risking forgetting about other debts in the future (i.e. I'll be taking over the payments on my husband's car as he'll be getting a new one in the next month, so that's $200 a month plus $90 a month in insurance to add into the budget) as well as if we choose to buy a house or rent something larger with a higher payment than we have now. And then there's the whole having kids thing...but the good thing is that throughout all of this I'm still saving. Right now it's only $400 a month, but will increase as I have less debt. I am just so excited to have NO credit card debt and have that available just in case (being on the other side of the country from my family and having family that's ill and the possibility I may have to fly home at the last minute is a good emergency fund use.)