Free From Broke

A Personal Finance Blog for Regular Folks

Glen Craig

Save On Your Car Insurance With Proper Emergency Savings

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We already know the importance of adequate savings don’t we?  Well here’s an additional benefit for having savings – You can save on your car insurance!

You know about your car insurance deductible? This is the amount you have to pay on an insurance claim before your insurance kicks in to pick up the repairs.  Say you have a $500 deductible.  You get into a fender bender and file a claim to have your bumper repaired.  An estimate for the repairs is $1500.  You have to pay $500 and insurance picks up the $1000.  If your deductible were $1000 then you pay $1000 and insurance covers $500.  Get it?

So why not make the deductible as low as possible?

Sounds reasonable. You would rather your insurance pay more and you pay less.  Things is though, the lower your deductible the higher your premium is!  You pay more on your plan when your deductible is low.  This is the insurance company’s way of getting that extra cash layout back before an accident.  The opposite is true too.  The higher you make your deductible the lower your premium payments are. [find out more about saving on car insurance]

The Time I Found A Fraud Credit Card Charge

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Did I tell you about the time I found a fraudulent credit card charge on my statement?

So I open up my American Express bill and look over the charges.  (You do check your credit card charges don’t you?)  I glance through the charges and I notice the restaurant bill for a dinner we had was more than what I remember.  I went through my receipts for the month and pulled out the restaurant receipt.  Sure enough the charge on my statement was more than the charge on my receipt.

Here’s what happened:

When I paid the bill I left a cash tip.  On the receipt I crossed out the tip section.  Somehow, someone at the restaurant was still able to charge my account more that they should have.

[read more about my credit fraud experience]

25 Traits Of The Not So Well To Do

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Who hasn’t complained about money from time to time?

I’ve had my share of gripes over the years for sure!  Some people follow up their gripes by doing something about it.  They save and work hard so they can have a better life later on.  They become the well to do.

Others are the not so well to do’s.  They sacrifice their futures to live like kings and queens today, always with the latest “stuff” but at the same time complaining about money.

I’ve observed, over the years, that the not so well to do’s have some traits in common.  The following list are my observations.

These items aren’t bad per se, but when you see a good number of these traits in a person there’s a good chance they too are one of the not so well to do (read: poor)!

25 Traits Of The Not So Well To Do:

Reason you're not rich or wealthy1) Big flat screen TV

[Read more…] about 25 Traits Of The Not So Well To Do

Subscriber Swap Saturday – Interview With No Debt Plan

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No Debt Plan is about getting and staying out of debt with a plan. Kevin, the author, is passionate about budgeting, saving for the future, and using goals to reach financial freedom. You can subscribe to his blog by RSS or email.

This interview is part of a new feature he’s developed called Subscriber Swap Saturday. The basic idea is to get the subscribers of one blog to subscribe to the other blog for at least a week, just to try it out. After a week if you don’t find that blogger’s content enticing, drop it. The hope is that over time you will find several writers that you weren’t familiar with who provide meaningful content to you. You can read more about Subscriber Swap Saturday at his get out of debt blog, as well as his interview with me

What’s No Debt Plan all about?

[Read More Of The Interview With No Debt Plan]

Take Up A Sport And Become Good At It

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Take Up a Sport and Become Good at it

This is a guest post from the blogger behind Studenomics, a personal finance blog that offers common sense advice for college students and recent graduates.  Studenomics is the ultimate resource for young people looking for advice on  how to survive this current recession, grow their careers, manage their finances, and still be able to enjoy the weekends.

We all want to have a productive summer but we just don’t know where to start.  Here’s a little secret: you can start by reading The Summer of George- The Most Productive Summer a College Student Will Ever Have.

Remember right before the Summer of George begins and he stumbles into the guys playing frolf (frisbee golf) in the park?  Costanza plays one game and he gets all excited about how he will spend his summer learning how to play frolf and then that could not be further from what actually happens.  This post may not have a whole lot to do with personal finance but the point of this series is to help young people have a highly productive summer.

Obviously I’m not trying to recommend frolf as a summer sport for everyone but I’m sure all of you have a sport in mind that you have always wanted to play.  For me this sport is Mixed Martial Arts and for the past few weeks I have been training 5 days a week to learn the sport.

Please don’t fall prey for the two most common excuses: no money and no time because there is a solution for both.

The no money excuse. If you can’t afford to pay for professional training then simply don’t get professional training.  First of all there are plenty of free tutorial videos available online (what would our generation do without You Tube?) and practice makes perfect.  If you can’t organize a group of your friends to play soccer one afternoon then go towards a major park in your area and join in on a casual game.  You will get to meet new people, practice, and improve your skills.

The no time excuse. The excuse of having no time is a self imposed restriction used as an excuse for procrastination.  I can maybe count on one hand the amount of college students that I actually know that don’t have any time at all to spare during the summer.  We all have at least an extra hour a day where we can sneak in some sort of physical activity.  The trick is to figure out how we can play this sport with our free time.  I figured out that I could sneak in a kickboxing class in the mornings since I have been working evenings lately.  A couple of summers ago when I was into golf (not frolf) I would wake up really early and go to the park to tee off a little so that no one would see my embarrassing swings. Whatever the sport is you can always sneak in an extra hour or so to improve your skills.

What other ways do you think you can afford a new sport?

Please enjoy the rest of the series:

Summer of George Introduction @ Studenomics.com

Learn a New Language @ TotalCandor.com

Help Your Local Church @ GatherLittleByLittle.com

Take Some College Courses This Summer @ PoorerThanYou.com

Summer Jobs With Little Startup Funding Required- Part 1 @ MoneyNing.com

Summer Jobs With Little Startup Funding Required- Part 2 @ PTMoney.com

Take Control Of Your Financial Situation @ Bargaineering.com

Work Abroad This Summer @ CashMoneyLife.com

Enjoy Cheap Summer Activities @ MoneySmartLife.com

Creative Commons License photo credit: Latente ? Le Sbarbine nel Governo