Karen McCullough is the author of a dozen published
novels and novellas in mystery, romantic suspense, and fantasy and has won
numerous awards, including an Eppie Award for fantasy. Her short fiction has
appeared in several anthologies and numerous small press publications.
Today, along with telling us about her newest
release, Karen brings us some money-saving tips. She’s not a financial adviser,
nor has she played one on television. She’s culled these tips from a lifetime of
struggling with her own finances. The advice she presents here has worked for
her, and she’s happy to share it with our readers today.
Five Practical Hints to Make Managing Your Money
Easier
1. Carry a small notepad in your pocket or purse and each time
you use your debit card or write a check during the day note down the amount on
the pad. At the end of the day,
give it a quick glance to check the total and mentally compare it to the cash
available in your account.
2. Use a program like
Quicken to track your financial situation. I update it once a week, entering all the transactions from
the previous week. By doing that,
I know how much I have in the bank and therefore how much I can afford to spend
the coming week. It's made it much
easier for me to keep up with what I have. I also keep up with my credit card expenditures as
well. You can even set it up to
download transactions from your bank, so you don't have to enter them
yourself. You just have to be sure
your notes match what the bank says.
3. Use Quicken or some other
program to track all your accounts -- savings, investment, etc. You can keep up with your mortgage and
other loans as well, so you can quickly get a look at your net worth. I know it can be a bit depressing
(believe me, I KNOW!), but ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance can mean ugly surprises. And knowledge can both
help you plan for the future and provide incentive to improve your situation.
4. Sign up for electronic
bill pay if you haven't already. Your bank doesn't support it? Find a new bank. Seriously. This is such a time and money saver
it's worth the effort involved in changing banks.
5. Okay, this one is going
to be a bit more controversial.
You know all those articles that say you can save xxx amount of money by
not stopping for that latte every morning or taking your lunch to work in a bag
instead of going out and buying it?
I say the heck with most of those.
The savings are small potatoes and probably largely offset by the irritation
of doing without a treat that helps make the rest of your day bearable.
Instead, look at the bigger
picture. Can you have ten or
fifteen or even twenty dollars a month transferred automatically from your
checking account to savings the day after your paycheck is deposited or once a
month on a specific day? It's so
much easier if the money goes out before you ever see it. Find trade-offs: things you maybe don't
need as much that you can sacrifice.
The Wizard's Shield
To solve a
murder and retrieve a stolen magical shield, a pair of wizards journey into a
dangerous, magical underworld, where the weapons of choice might be guns... or
lightning bolts.
A powerful wizard with a physics degree and a checkered past
invents a shield to ensure he'll never again be tortured almost to death. The
wizarding powers-that-be fear the repercussions of such a device and send his
former girlfriend, an accomplished wizard herself, to retrieve the device or
destroy it. When the shield is stolen by the magical mafia, Ilene McConnell and
Michael Morgan have to set aside their differences and work together to recover
it. Michael claims he needs the device as insurance against the kind of injury
and injustice he suffered once before. Ilene maintains its potential to upset
the delicate balance of power makes it too dangerous and that it needs to be
destroyed. But none of that will matter if they can’t retrieve it before a
ruthless, powerful wizard learns how to use it for his own ends.
