Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Shopping with Layaway

You have probably seen the television commercials for layaway from Kmart and Sears. Layaway is another way of purchasing items instead of credit cards. For a small fee down (usually $5 fee plus a percentage of the cost of the item as a down payment) you can pick out items and make scheduled payments over a couple of months or few months and when the full amount has been paid you are able to take the item home. One difference of layaway instead of credit cards is that there are no interest or finance charges.
There are also layaway programs available for online purchases. One of which is Elayaway. You can select items from various online merchants and schedule to have the payments withdrawn from your checking account.
Even though with layaway programs you avoid credit card debt and fees. But you still have to monitor what you are spending so you are able to make the payments as they are scheduled.

Book Review - Your Money God's Way

“Your Money God’s Way, Overcoming the 7 Money Myths that Keep Christians Broke” by Ami Streater is a collection of her personal stories, stories of clients and scriptures relating to debt. Amie is presently the associate pastor of financial stewardship for the New Life Church in Colorado Springs.
Although the title of the book is Your Money God’s Way, it contains practical tips and information relating to debt and budgeting.
She tells first hand how she and her husband got into debt and worked their way out and now is helping others get a handle on their finances. The book contains simple steps to take to help you change your money habits for the good.
The chapters in the book include Counterfeit Convictions, The Fix-it Fantasy, Saviors or Enablers, Self-Righteous Slackers, You Must be Here to Help me, God is an ATM, The Scarlett Syndrome, The Cliff Jumpers and The Conviction Clean-up Plan.
I would highly recommend this book, it is a quick and easy read. By reading it you will learn how to get out of debt, build wealth, gain financial freedom and stay that way. Changing your spending habits is like changing any other habit, it takes time and baby steps for success. Just like a diet if you try to change to fast or deprive yourself too much you will fail.

This is a review for Thomas Nelson Publishers. I received a copy of the book to review. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Free Kindle Version of The Simple Dollar

One of the blogs I follow is The Simple Dollar by Trent Hamm. Right now Amazon has the kindle version for free at this link. Even if you don't have a kindle, they have software you can download to read them on your computer or phones.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Practical Money skills

Practical Money Skills is a website with resources to teach financial literacy to kids and adults which is sponsored by Visa. There are links to information for individuals and also for teachers who want to take it into their classrooms.

There are also games to teach kids about money. Sometimes it is easier to teach kids when they don't always realize you are trying to teach them something. One of the games if Financial Football and they are working on a Financial Soccer game.

Some of the topics covered under the personal finance section are credit and debt, savings and spending, and life events.

There are also calculators on various subjects such as how much you can afford to pay for a car, budget and goals, career and retirement, college saving and mortgages.

For other resources to teach kids about money, check out my other posts here and here.