The good news is that there are a few things you can do to drastically reduce how much you have to pay for auto insurance.

Shopping around for an auto insurance policy can save you a lot of money. Today it’s easier than ever to get insurance quotes from several providers. All you need to do is go online and search for insurance quotes to see how many options you have. However, don’t automatically go with the cheapest one right away. You still need to do some research to see how good they are at handling claims, as well as their financial rating (you want to make sure they are stable).

The size of your deductible also has a major impact on how much you pay for insurance. Generally speaking, the higher your deductible the lower your premium. However, you need to make sure you will be able to cover the cost of the deductible if something should happen. You also need to look at the size of the deductible when comparing various policies, as some insurance providers make it look like you’re getting a great deal by hiking up your deductible.

One trick that works is to have a higher deductible, then take the amount you save on your premium and set it aside a portion of it in a bank account. Once you reach the amount of the deductible you will be safe if you ever have to file a claim.

Something that may surprise you about getting the cheapest auto insurance is that your credit score can affect how much you pay. It may not be fair, but the insurance companies figure if you’re a bad credit risk, then you’re at a higher risk of getting into an automobile accident. So, anything you can do to improve your credit score before you get insurance should help you to pay a lower premium.

If you already have an insurance policy for your home or another car, then you should be able to get a major discount for adding a vehicle to your policy. Insurance companies are willing to give this discount because they would rather keep you as a customer than risk losing you to another carrier.

The above tips are great, but if you really want to get the cheapest auto insurance, then combining all of the above tips will give you the best possible price. Taking some time to find the best policy can save you a lot of money on something you hope you never have to use.

1- When you need a haircut or a stylist, try to find ones that offer student discounts. It may not be the fanciest place, but you will probably find one that will get the job done to your satisfaction.

2- Pay bills when they are due and avoid late fees. This is one of those things that you will need to do long after you have left college. Late fees can get very expensive and force you to pay much more than you have to. Paying those bills on time will also help your credit history.

3- If you must drink, do it cheaply. Drunk is drunk and it doesn’t matter how you get there. Make sure that you don’t take your credit cards with you when you know you are going to be drinking and take only a little cash.

4- Start clipping coupons. Many that you can use will be found on the internet. All you have to do is print them off. You can find them for just about anything you want.

5- Join your families cell phone plan or use a pay-as-you-go plan. Both of these options are much cheaper than getting a plan on your own. Be careful about texting, and internet usage, though.

6- Shop at discount and secondhand stores before you shop anywhere else. What you find won’t be much different from what you get anywhere else. It will do the job.

7- Stay away from credit cards. If you feel you have to have one, only use it for emergencies. It is easy to get into some really bad habits in college using credit cards. Credit card companies prey on college students because they don’t think that you can control your spending. Prove them wrong.

8- Watch shows online rather than having to pay for cable. It doesn’t matter if you are watching it a little later than you normally would. It just gives you more freedom.

9- Ramen noodles are your friend. If you want a quick and cheap snack or something to fill you up, take advantage of the goodness that can come in those ten cent packages.

10- Quit buying coffee out. There are some really good things about going to a coffee shop and hanging out, but the money that you can end up spending isn’t one of them. Buy a good bag of coffee and brew your own.

There are hundreds of ways that you can blow your money while in college, but there are also hundreds of ways that you can save money. Once you learn how to save money in college you will have laid the foundation for a lifetime of smart economic decision making.

When grocery shopping try to load up on those staples when you see that they are on sale. Look for coupons, discount brands, scratch and dent items, or anything that might have a reduced price on it. The quality will be good enough for your household.

Conserve energy when you can. Not only is it environmentally responsible, it is fiscally responsible. Powering down or unplugging items that aren’t in use will always help lower your energy bill. Use less water by using high efficiency shower heads and water aerators on your faucets. Dress warmly and use more blankets in the winter so you can use less heat. In the mild seasons open your windows. In the summer, keep your blinds shut during the day to keep heat out.

Cut back on entertainment expenses. Try seeing movies at matinee times, making sure you eat before you go so you don’t overpay for snacks during the movie. Better than that, wait until the movie is released to a second run movie theater or it is released on video. Try to find ways to entertain yourself without spending money.

Try to carpool, use public transportation, or ride a bike. Try to find ways out of the driver seat of your car and you will find ways to save you some money.

Eat at home more. It is tempting to run out to a fast food restaurant or a dine in place instead of taking the time to cook a meal. This adds up quickly. While a meal at a sit down restaurant may cost about $15-20 a person, you can treat a group of 2-5 people to a nice meal for that amount.

Stop smoking. If you don’t have that habit then you don’t have to worry. If you are one of the millions who spend $5-10 per day on something that is only making you sick then try to find something better to do with your money. Every day you are sacrificing your health and your budget so that you can fill your lungs with pollutants. There are better things that you can be doing. The long-term cost may be much more than that as you deal with health problems that are caused by your habit. Save money now and down the road by stopping smoking. Consider it your retirement plan.

There are many ways how to save money every month. Some of them might not seem attractive to you until you see the result that is a little more money in your account at the end of the month. Once you start seeing those results you may want to turn it into a challenge to see if you can do more. Keep pushing yourself to save more and see just how well you can do at saving money.

Knowledge is power and no where is that more true than when it comes to keeping your identity safe. There are specific steps you can take to make yourself a ‘harder’ target for would be thieves.

I recently read an account of a man who lived in the Chicago area who found out that an illegal immigrant had been using his identity for several years. Since the thief paid his bills on time it never showed up on the mans credit report… he had no idea!

The first step, and the most obvious, is don’t make it easy for the thieves, learn how to protect yourself from identity theft. Don’t just give out your personal information. A friend of mine has been carrying her social security card in her wallet for years. I’ve warned her repeatedly that she is taking a big risk.

Don’t carry any more identification than is absolutely necessary. You don’t need to carry your social security card with you. Also, don’t leave the house with all your credit cards. Only carry one, unless you need more to go shopping.

2. Never give out personal information to someone on the phone… unless you called them. There are cheap devices available today that can mask the caller ID of anyone. So even though your caller ID says it’s your local bank (or utility company, or credit card company) calling that doesn’t mean it really is them.

If you ever get a suspicious call err on the side of caution and politely get off the phone then call the company back… and don’t call the number that you get from the person who just called you, make sure you look the number up yourself so you know who you’re calling.

3. You would be surprised at how much a thief can do with the simplest of information. For that reason, make sure that you shred all papers before you throw them in the trash. Again, it’s a good idea to err on the side of caution. Even if you think that the papers don’t have any important info on them, why not just be careful? It only takes a minute to shred.

4. Never click on a link in an email to be taken to a website and then enter personal information on that site. Again, just like with the caller ID on a phone, thieves can make it appear that you are on a website, say for your bank, when in reality you are on their website and they are stealing your personal information. Make sure you type the address into your web browser.

It’s actually quite easy to learn how to protect yourself from identity theft, the most important thing is to just take these simple precautions.

In this article I will go over other simple things you can do on a daily basis to keep your identity safe and sound. Remember, you’re not just doing it for you, you are doing it for all of us. Whenever someone steals an identity to make purchases, we all suffer. The credit card companies do not take those losses sitting down. Instead they pass those losses unto us by increasing fees and interest rates, one way or another, we all pay. For that reason we all need to step up and be careful with our personal information.

The next easiest, and most important, thing you can do to protect your identity is to buy a shredder and use it. It will only take a minute to run that old credit card statement through the shredder after you’ve made a payment. It’s amazing how little information a thief needs to ruin your financial life. Why make it easy for them? Crosscut shredders are cheap, easy to use and a great way to keep yourself protected. Buy one and use it, religiously.

You do not need to carry all your credit cards with you every where you go. As a matter of fact, you should never carry your cards with you at all, unless you are going shopping. When you are going about your day to day routine, stop by the ATM, get a little cash and leave the cards at home. That way if you lose your wallet, or it gets stolen, the only thing you are out is a few bucks. With no social security card and no credit cards, you’ll be making it a lot harder for the thieves if they do manage to get a hold of your wallet.

Believe me, I have known someone who had their identity stolen and it was not pretty. She spent months fighting to get everything straightened out and back to normal. The level of stress she was under was through the roof. I felt so bad for her but there really was nothing I could do to help except be her friend and let her vent about the whole situation from time to time. She did finally get everything back under control and now she uses one of those protection services to keep her information confidential.

Any one of those identity protection services is a good idea if you do not think you can learn how to protect your identity sufficiently by yourself. You’ve seen the commercial, the guy has his own personal social security number plastered all over the side of a truck for everyone to see and then says that they guarantee your information is safe with them. I think what they offer and guarantee is just a whole lot of peace of mind. check them out.

While it will be important for you to be committed to making your budget work, and that will probably mean making some simple sacrifices and lifestyle changes, it’s unrealistic to assume that you will suddenly become this ultra frugal person. Don’t set yourself up for failure by making your budget too tight. It’s just like a diet, no one will stick to a really strict diet and they will eventually fail, a budget is the same way; if you make it too restrictive you won’t stick with it and you will fail.

The first thing you need to do is grab a piece of paper, a pencil, and a calculator. Next you will make two columns on the paper. At the top of the first column you will write “Expenses”. At the top of the second column you will write “Income”.

Gather up all of your bills and any expenses that you pay on a monthly basis. Make sure to include everything including spending money and a clothes allowance. To make sure you’ve included everything take a look at the last several months of credit card bills and bank statements.

If you have bills that you pay quarterly or yearly just average them out to figure out how much you need to save each month in order to have enough money to pay them when they come due.

Now that you’ve got a complete listing of all your ongoing monthly bills, total them up. This number will be how much you spend every month (of course for most people the amount of money you spend from one month to the next will vary depending on the time of year and other factors, but if you’ve gathered all your statements this should be a fairly accurate listing of your monthly expenses.)

Next, take all forms of income, this includes your pay from work but also include any form of interest payment you may receive, income from a roommate, etc. Just like with the expense column, you want your income column to be as accurate and complete as possible. Make sure to include your after tax pay. Total this column.

Now that you’ve got your Expense and Income columns totaled all you need to do is subtract the expense column from the income column. If the number you are left with is a positive number than you are doing ok. That is the amount of money you have left over every month and you can use that money to pay down debt, open a savings account or start investing.

If, on the other hand, you are left with a negative number after you’ve subtracted your expense column from your income column, you need to make some serious changes to your spending habits. It’s simple math, you are spending more than you are making and unless you can increase your income you will have to decrease your spending.

There you go, three simple steps on how to budget money. No matter where you are financially right now, you can be in a much better position in a few months if you follow these steps and take control of your money starting today. Good luck.

Marriage Counselling

Marriage counselling can be a very effective instrument in putting a marriage that seems to be going down the divorce path back onto the right track. Counselling helps couples to identify the root of their marital problems and solve them with a little help from a professional counsellor trained in mediation. Finding an effective marriage counsellor, however, requires a bit of work on your part. Many counsellors will offer a free consultation. Ask for recommendations from friends, but in part you should call 10 or so counsellors, ask for their price packages ahead of time and then schedule consultations with the 3 or 4 that meet your pricing needs. Make sure that when you go into these consultations you grade the effectiveness on how BOTH you and your spouse feel about the individual.

Self Help

There are also many self-help tools available in the market today. There are some excellent books and articles on how to make marriages work, how to re-ignite the spark in a relationship and how a few simple steps can bring back the love in a relationship that had turned hateful. Both partners can get a lot of inspiration, advice and ideas on how to make relationships work from such books and articles. You can even find help when you think there is infidelity in your marriage. There are books and articles out there, which tell you why people cheat or stray out of line and what you can do about it.

The common thread in all of these self help guides is communication and understanding. By making an effort to understand where your spouse is coming from, and them where you are, and then making compromises and communicating, most marital problems will become alleviated.

Resorts

Then there are many resorts that are specially designed to create an ambience which is conducive to romance. These vacation packages are easy to find and require only that you be on the look out. The point of these resorts is to reinvigorate a relationship by introducing some of the passion and spontaneity that over time can be watered down by obligations and daily responsibilities. These events attempt to eliminate outside stresses so that you can focus on your spouse, and in so doing rekindle the love you feel for one another.

All in all, if you are willing to put in your best efforts to stop your marriage from slipping away, there is now help at hand and you need not have to fight alone. By utilizing the tools of counsellors, self help and resorts you can go a long way to giving your marriage the best chance for survival. But beyond survival, these tools can help ensure you a happy lifelong relationship.

Your child will also want a car that fits their personality so you had better take them along for ‘the ride’ when you go out looking at cars for your first time driver. You will want something safe, they will want something cool. Hopefully you both can agree on one that is both.

As I said, safety is a big concern for parents. Statistics show that new drivers between the ages of 16 – 21 have more auto accidents than any other driving eligible age group in the country.

The first car you should buy your teenager is one that rides low to the ground. SUV’s are typically harder to drive and control due to their higher roofline and center of gravity. Because they are top heavy, rollover accidents happen more frequentluy even for experienced drivers.

You may want to ‘steer’ clear of compact cars, too. There is less vehicle around your child and if there is an accident then your child will most assuredly suffer major injuries because of it.

Do not even think about getting your child a sports car for their first car. This would be the most irresponsible thing you could do as a parent. Speed kills. Giving your inexperienced driver a sports car is like signing their death warrant right in front of them.

They may think they need a high-performance car but in reality all they need is a car to get them to school and back and maybe to the store for the first couple of years. It is recommended that teenagers not have passengers in their cars for a period of one year after they receive their license. This is for their safety and the safety of their friends.

I had a nephew that rode in the car of his friend who only had had her license for two weeks and they were going too fast for the curve and they hit a tree. Of the four people who were in the car only one survived and that was because they were thrown from the car. The car burst into flames after impacting the tree and the other three died as a result of being trapped in the car during the fire.

If you adhere to this no passengers rule then your child will have plenty of time to get used to the more common driving distractions and getting used to the other drivers on the road.

Cars for your first time driver should be fit your child’s personality as closely as you can get and still be safe for your peace of mind. They will thank your for it later and you may just have a few less sleepless nights, too.

Find out all you can about after hours trading and then you can make an informed decision as to whether or not this really is the right way for you to go.

The first thing you want to do, if you don’t already know, is to educate your self about stock market investing in general. There is quite a bit you’ll need to learn such as what all the different terminologies mean and how to pick which stocks to invest in by researching the company and it’s management to name a few. This is a step that cannot be skipped otherwise you will lose a lot of money. Lack of knowledge is the biggest reason people lose so much money when it comes to investing in the stock market. Don’t be a patsy, educate yourself first.

When you are deciding on which stocks you want to trade remember that only the NYSE and NASDAQ are traded after hours. You can make trades on these exchanges from 4:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. You don’t have this option with the American Stock Exchange.

When researching which stocks you want to invest in, try to identify those that have a lot of potential for growth. Even though after hours trading is a little different than if you were trading during normal stock market hours, you want to still look for solid stocks to invest in. The fundamentals of investing are the same with after hours as they are with normal hour trading. One good way to start is to take a look at stocks for companies whose products you use and like, then check out how steady their growth has been and whether or not their debt is low.

You will need to find a broker who offers after hour trading, not all of them do. Make sure before you choose a broker you know exactly what their fee schedule is and what you will have to pay fees on. Some brokers have a tendency to ‘nickel and dime’ you to death. Make sure you know going in what you’ll have to pay fees on.

Since you will get a better price when selling a stock that has a lot of people interested in buying that stock, you will likely make more on your stocks if you trade during normal exchange hours. One way to protect yourself from the volatility of after hour trading is to place a limit order.

This is a basic overview of how does after hours trading work. To make sure your investing doesn’t become a nightmare never be afraid to ask questions, and keep asking until you get an answer that makes sense, and educate yourself. Doing these things will help you achieve more of your investment goals.

For the most part, a calculator will allow you to input all your household expenses and your household income and it will show you, in the form of a graph, just where your money is being spent every month and how much, if any, money you have left over every month for investing or saving.

In order to make this work for you it’s very important that you not only enter the information accurately, but that you don’t forget an expense. Monthly payments like mortgage payments, car loans, and utilities are pretty easy to remember, but what about dry cleaning bills, school lunches, or gym memberships? This is where the process can start to fall apart. Your budget will only be as good as the information you put into your calculator so make sure you take a little time to gather all your expense information together.

You also want to make sure you have an accurate income amount. For some people who are on salary, this is easy to do. For many others, though, their pay may change quite a bit from one month to the next which can make it hard to plan ahead (it will still be easy to see where you spent your money in the past month which in itself can be helpful, but it’s not much good for planning into the future).

One thing you can do to overcome that problem is to take several months worth of your income and average it out. Obviously this won’t be completely accurate but it should give a fairly reliable representation of what your monthly income is.

Once you’ve gotten all your information in the calculator you can run the program to see where exactly you are financially. Unfortunately for many people, this isn’t going to be a fun exercise. Many people live off of credit and not really realize just how deep in the hole they actually are. This can be a real painful wakeup call.

If this describes you, don’t give up. Identifying the problem is the first step to fixing it. Once you see that you are spending more money then you are making it’s time to look at your budget to determine where you can save money.

Most people will immediately think they can’t save money since they are only spending their money on the necessities, but in most cases that’s not a very accurate assessment. In order to make your home budget calculator work you will have to be brutally honest with yourself and face the results head on.