Net advice on how to make frugality pay
Roth discovered that most people don’t get rich overnight, but as the title suggests, over the long term, with the right approach, most people can get rich/achieve financial independence slowly.
The key ingredient is patience. The Get Rich Slowly blog offers well researched and actionable information about everything from getting out of crippling debt to how much to tip for service.
With a broad range of topics such as “What matters in matters of love and finance”, posts on “Frugality and financial independence” and guest writers promising to reveal “The real secret to making money by following your passion”, Get Rich Slowly has evolved into one of the web’s most important personal finance blogs.
It adopts a strategic view on personal finance and shows you which direction to head in. A lot of the information is specific to the American market but when Roth points out that “When we overspend we’re making mental mistakes, not math mistakes”, it’s thought-provoking and sets the ball rolling in the right direction.
For more tactical help, the Wisebread blog at Wisebread.comoffers myriad ways to save pennies every day on your quest to develop a fruitful yet frugal lifestyle.
A group blog with a number of contributors, Wisebread offers frugal advice on everything from cocktail recipes to rolling your own washing powder, green living, job-seeking and how to stretch out the clothes in your wardrobe so that they last throughout the season.
Whatever your financial goals are, if you want to pay down a loan, start a company, get a grip on your spending or free up money for other things, then Wisebread is full of tips on how to do it and is constantly updated. There are lots of things to learn about, including gardening, sewing, DIY, haggling and car maintenance.
For the interactively inclined, Wisebread runs Twitter chats, a Facebook page and email updates to cycle through the tips on a daily basis.
If you think you’ve got your machine tuned up and you’re running lean enough to generate a small surplus, you may like to turn your attention to savings and investments. The Simple Dollar specialises in “financial talk for the rest of us” ( thesimpledollar.com).
The blog discusses a range of topics from financial planning to insurance and retirement. It seems obvious when author Trent Hamm says “spend less than you make” but the free ebook outlines ways to build a cash-positive financial lifestyle.
If you like your financial prescriptions combined with a little celebrity and fashion, then savvysugar.comis the way to have it all. Aimed more at younger people, it has a lot of advice on discount fashion, travel, education and careers, with a slideshow of Hollywood A-listers never far away in the sidebar.
It may seem superficial, but being cute about money doesn’t have to be a bland pursuit all the time.
Savvysugar has handy tips such as shaving the bobbles off your old woollen clothes alongside pictures of the fashion extravaganza at the Emmys, top must-have millionaire habits as well as a list of apps that will save you money at the supermarket.
While by no means exhaustive, the articles are informative and topics such as 10 Things You Shouldn’t Ask a Pregnant Co-worker may come in useful some day in unexpected ways.
Billionaires are not known for their frugality but who could argue with this advice from celebrity billionaire Mark Cuban on savvysugar.com:
“I tell everyone the same thing. Pay off 100 per cent of your debt. Use the transactional value of cash to get an absolute return on your savings (buying something in bulk to save 40 per cent on something you know you need is a guaranteed return of 40 per cent. You can’t get that anywhere in the market). And don’t invest in things you don’t know.”
