The Money Jar Budget - Get Debt-Free

If you want to buy a house, you’ll need a mortgage. The right mortgage is important and those who take the time to find the right one are: more likely to get approved, more likely to get a reasonable interest rate, and be more likely to have payments they can afford.

There are a lot of options available for financing your home. Some people automatically visit their bank, because they have a relationship with them but if you only see your bank’s loan officer, you’re not doing your due diligence and ensuring you’re going to get the best deal. A mortgage broker could be a better option for you based on the following scenarios. It’s not easy to get approved for a mortgage in the current economy and working with a mortgage broker could work to your advantage from an approval and a pricing perspective. Many who are turned down by their bank, or who get really high quotes turn to a mortgage broker and find a world of difference in how much easier the process is.

Bad Credit Mortgages

Do you have less than pristine credit?  A mortgage broker works with you and typically has several sources that they can use for financing so they’re able to submit your application to a financial company that is likelier to approve you than your bank, who may only be willing to work with someone with perfect credit.l

Home Loans for Self Employed

Those who work for themselves often find it difficult to obtain a traditional mortgage because they can be seen as a risk to some financial institutions. A mortgage broker can help you.

Mortgage brokers will often come to you and go through your options based on several scenarios. They may have several companies willing to lend to you or may be able to help you work to get approved at a slightly higher interest rate or larger down payment.  Before you finance your home, consider at least talking to a mortgage broker to see what they can offer you.

The savvy shopper shops around for the best deals, and the best quality. When you make a major purchase, it’s very wise to use tools and resources to help you find the best brand, figure out what specs mean and how they impact your wants and needs for a product, read reviews from other people who’ve bought that product, and save money.  I’ve recently discovered a great gem for saving money online.

ShopGala.com offers online coupon codes for everything from: big brand names to specific stores and restaurants.  Since more people buy stuff on the internet than ever, coupon codes are fantaastic. Instead of coupon clipping and dealing with expiry dates, you can check ShopGala and find codes that will give you a % off discount or free shipping or other deals as well.Not only can you use these codes to buy things but you can use them for online services as well. Save money on downloadable software, web hosting, and domain registration and then when you’re shopping for gifts or a new computer or something else you can get discounts as well.

In this day and age where we want to and need to stretch our dollar, couponing can make a vast difference.  If you’re doing an envelope or money jar budget, don’t forget to take that % off or fee saved when you use an online coupon and add it to your savings or rainy day fund. It can become a fun (and very rewarding) challenge to see how big you can grow that fund!

If you’re doing a money jar budget or an envelope budget, you might need some help determining what your budget should be for all the categories in both your fixed and variable expenses.

Here’s some help for deciding how much should go in each jar.

-Write down all your fixed expenses

-Write down all your variable expenses into a budget

Does the budget balance?

If there is money leftover, this is a good thing. If the numbers don’t jive, you need to do some crunching and some trimming to make this work. The goal is to have more than enough money to cover your bills and your variable expenses.  If you’re allocating $200 a week to groceries, for example, but your numbers aren’t balancing then it’s time to trim that number.

Once you’ve made the numbers work, take your monthly earnings and divide it into 4. This is the amount of money you have per week to work with.

Divide the amount of the variable and fixed expenses into  four and this is the amount of money you need per week to cover all your bills and have money to put into your envelopes or jars.  Do you have money left over? If so, this amount can be divided between savings and debt repayment.  The sooner you can pay down your debts, the more money you’ll have to put in savings and your jars.

Here’s an illustration:

Gail makes $3,000 per month.

Her fixed expenses come to $1,600.00 and her variable expenses come to $1,200.00.

She crunches her numbers and trims her variable budget to $1,000.00. With the $400 leftover, she pays $200 extra to her biggest debtor and the other $200 goes into savings.

Here’s a breakdown of her variable budget jars:

$125 weekly to food: $500 total

$50 transportation : $200 total

$25 clothing /gifts  $100 total

$20 Entertainment : $80 total

$30 Emergencies: $120 total

If during the week any budget jar needs excess funds, Gail will need to borrow it from another jar. And, if any jars have money left over, you can then save it in your emergency jar or envelope for any unforseen expenses in a future week.

Budgeting is hard work but doing so is the best way to get yourself out of debt and save for the future. With a budget you can spend confidently, always knowing what you can and cannot afford. This equates to true financial freedom!