Can an Envelope Budget Help You Get Out of Debt?
money jar
If you’re seeking to get out of debt, an envelope budget is worth consideration. Although it requires willpower and dedication in order to work, it’s a method that can help you start to become more aware of how your money is spent. Also, it’s very simple to implement. How can an envelope or money jar budget plan reduce your debt and do you really have to use envelopes or jars to make this plan work?
The Basics of an Envelope Budget Plan
When you decide to use an envelope budget to help you manage your debt, you must first begin by evaluating the amount of money you earn each month, as well as the specific things that you need to buy. Once you have figured out how you use your income, it’s time to designate one envelope for each spending category. For example, you may need to create envelopes for your mortgage or rent, groceries, healthcare and entertainment. Decide how much of your income will be devoted to each category and stick to it. The final step is to go withdraw the appropriate amount of cash from your bank and deposit the correct amount into each envelope. In this plan you’re going to be living on cash, rather than using debit cards and credit cards. This helps improve your mindset about money as you can see and feel how much money you truly have.
Technology Can Help You Adjust to an Envelope Budget Plan
If you don’t like the idea of carrying around a bunch of envelopes in order to help you achieve freedom from debt, there are several software programs that work on the same principle, but don’t require the use of actual envelopes. Keep in mind though that envelope budgets may take a few months before they start to make a noticeable impact on your finances. If you find that it’s difficult to leave your old habits behind and start sticking to your new envelope budget, you may find that you feel more motivated when using traditional methods instead of software programs. Regardless of how much technology is used, envelope budgeting is an effective way for many people to become more aware of their spending habits and take steps towards handling their debt and saving money
Loan Modifications and Their Role in Debt Consolidation
For many people, the chance to own a home represents a milestone in life that’s often worked towards for many years before it is achieved. However, tough economic times have caused some people to feel that debt is even more of a possibility as they try to shoulder the burden of their mortgage. It’s becoming quite common for people to consider loan modifications as an option in their debt consolidation process. If it’s something you’re considering, it’s important to be informed.
What Are Loan Modifications, And How Can They Help With Debt Consolidation?
As the name implies, a loan modification is a change in the terms of the mortgage. Once an alteration of terms is agreed upon, the mortgage is reinstated. The goal is to make a change that ultimately helps the mortgage payer feel more able to handle the necessary monthly payments.
Since debt consolidation combines all of a person’s debt into one location, and a single periodic payment, it can help reduce interest rates and monthly payments when done correctly. When efforts are made to make a person’s overall debts easier to handle, it’s easy to see why loan modifications are often done as part of debt consolidation methods.
Possible Types of Loan Modifications
Although some people feel embarrassment upon realizing that they’ve fallen behind on their mortgage payments, it’s actually a lot more common than you might think. Fortunately, loan modifications can take many forms to fit a person’s unique financial situation. Some examples include increasing the amount of years that the mortgage payments will be in effect, reducing the interest rate, or converting an adjustable rate mortgage into one that is a fixed rate. If you feel that a loan modification might be a good option in your attempts to consolidate your debt, you can get more information about loan modifications to find out if it’s right for you.
Food Storage Ideas – Could You Survive if the Grocery Stores Ran Out of Food?
Today’s guest post is the first of a series about emergency preparedness. It’s smart to be prepared for emergencies. This applies to various areas of your life, such as finances. Here’s some great advice for food storage:
Food Storage Ideas for Urban Survival
Author:
Kent Arnspiger
Most grocery stores have approximately three days worth of food on their shelves; and as experience has shown, when a known emergency event is coming, these shelves will be depleted rapidly within a matter of minutes. So, to prepare and secure your families survival a food storage plan should be part of your overall emergency preparedness planning. Living in an urban area presents unique challenges to preparing for these events; one of these is growing your own food for food storage in the event of a long term emergency.
Growing your own food takes several components to be successful including using heirloom seeds, having plenty of fertile land, large amounts of clean water, the knowledge and the time to grow the foods. You also have to control pests and diseases that can wipe out your crops, plus your growing season needs to be right in order to have success. Some advantages to growing your own food include: it\’s typically healthier, taste better, fresher, offers a wide variety, great source of natural nutrients and can be fun and rewarding. However, the shelf life of fresh food is measured in days, unless proper storing and preservation methods are used. Even then the shelf life is relatively short and requires knowledge, the right materials and time to successfully complete.
A major concern of having a garden in your yard in a long term survival event is that it can make you a target to thieves as it\’s hard to hide fresh growing plants, especially in an urban area. This could be similar to placing a sign outside your house saying ‘we are prepared, come take our stuff’. People, who would rather take from others, than to prepare for themselves, will look for these types of signs as easy victims for their own selfish needs. So what should we do?
Growing your own food can be accomplished on a smaller scale by growing plants inside your dwelling in planters and pots. This will not provide enough food in itself, but will provide variety and fresh nutrients in your diet. Unfortunately, this will also limit what you can successfully grow; for example corn, grains and other sun loving plants will not do well inside. But, herbs, lettuces, and other delicates should do well.
With this in mind, we recommend a large portion of your food storage supplies come from prepared long term food storage products. The range of prepared foods should included grocery supplies of canned vegetables, fruits, meats, fish and meals. Dried foods such as noodles, rice, legumes, seasonings, spices and dried herbs should be well accounted for and acquired as well. All of these items can be purchased in small quantities as part of your regular trips to your local grocery store and should be well stored and rotated as part of your regular meal preparations.
Another source of prepared meals is freeze dried and dehydrated foods from manufactures that specialize in long term food storage. These manufacturers typically offer a wide variety of meals including breakfast and other entrée meals that are better tasting than what you would finds years ago and provide well balanced nutrients. I personally prefer the smaller packages of complete meals as they are easy to prepare and reduce the amount of waste from preparing too large of a quantity when refrigeration is not available. These meals are easy to prepare using hot water, can be ready in minutes, are typically easy to store, are very light and have an extended shelf life of as much as twenty-five years. Plus they are a quick way to get started as they can be purchased in small quantities and will rapidly start to increase your food stores. They do require space to store and should be rotated and used first in, first out as with other food products to account for their expiration. However, the advantages of prepared food storage far outweigh the negatives and should be a major portion for effective long term urban survival.
Many urban dwelling individuals can help prepare and secure their family by adopting a balanced food storage plan of small growing operations, adequate grocery items and by acquiring prepared food for storage that includes freeze dried and dehydrated foods. All of these items can be purchased in smaller quantities on a regular basis to rapidly build your food stores. One other item to start acquiring is water filtration systems and water storage items, but this will have to be another message at another time.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/home-security-articles/food-storage-ideas-for-urban-survival-3537248.html
About the Author
Kent Arnspiger is the Owner and President of Off The Grid Ready. With more than thirty years experience as an outdoor enthusiast enjoying activities like hunting, fishing, camping, hiking and an extensive background in survival skills and knowledge, I decided to follow my passion and create a online retail store offering products to help you and your family plan, prepare and survive common emergencies. Off The Grid Ready is your premier source for Emergency Preparedness, Survival Packs and Survival Kits you\’ll need when emergencies occur and we go off the grid. We also carry Emergency Kits, Disaster Preparedness, Food for Storage, Water Filtration, Water Purification and Camping Equipment to help prepare you and your family for most disasters you will face. When you visit our site, be sure and sign up for our newsletter to keep informed about important topics and to learn about new emergency preparedness products we are continually adding to our online store.
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