Teach Kids to Save At An Early Age

It is never too early when it comes to teaching a kid to save money. Money is hard to come by these days. Money is scarce to most and the best way to instil the value of saving money for the rainy season is to start teaching our kids early in life.

Give them a coin bank

Giving them a symbol of how to make their money grow through savings in the form of a coin bank will forge a sense of responsibility and respect for the value of saving. Encourage them to keep their small change regularly in the coin bank.  Allow them to open and count the money when it is full and help them deposit in their bank accounts.


Explain the meaning of savings

Kids may not have a sense of value for savings yet but they will just follow as directed. However, even at an early age, you can explain to them the value of savings by giving examples and showing illustrations. A book entitled "The Money We'll Save" by Brock Cole is a good classic book to read to kids. It teaches kids to be creative to help keep the costs down and save in return.


Match your kid's contribution

This sounds like a contest but it helps the parents and their kids to keep tabs of their savings and how they will grow over the years.


Offer rewards

Some banks offer their loyal savers novelty gifts to recognise their saving efforts and also reward them for their deeds. As parents, we can also do that by giving small tokens like a shirt, pen, small toys or books to read to let them know that their good efforts are rewarded and recognised.


Be an example

The best way to teach a child to save is to see you "actually saving" too. Kids will follow your lead and will see savings as a normal routine at home that has to be done. They will also get inspiration from you for setting a good example and leading the way to their bright and secured future.


Do you teach your kids to save early on? What are other tips you can share?

Beautiful Bridesmaid Gowns Within Your Budget

Always a bridesmaid and never a bride? I hope that's not your regular role in all the weddings you have attended in the past. No matter how many times you have become a bridesmaid, it is always a nice feeling to be able to primp and dress yourself pretty without siphoning all of your life's savings.

Gone are the days when you have to spend a fortune to a bridesmaid's gown that you would wear only once because of the many wedding themes marrying couples have. Some wedding you might have attended in the past had a yellow motif and you had to get something in the yellow bridesmaid dresses category or else you would stick like a sore thumb in the entourage. How many times have you went to a dressmaker for a customised bridesmaid's gown according to the design of the bride? Well, good news, you don't even have to run to a fancy couturier to get your gown stitched with all the bling adornment these days. There are plenty of resources available to get a decent and a good fit to your budget without looking like you tried to penny pinch and compromised with the quality of the dress.

Bridesmaid gowns can now be bought in many ways you can imagine. You can go to a haute couture shop or go to a fine dress store that caters to gowns, you can even rent if you like or search the internet and order online. Yes, the wedding and entourage's gowns and suits business can be ordered online like the sample of beautiful sky blue bridesmaid dress in this site that carries hundreds of varieties of dresses for the bride and the whole entourage.

The internet is teeming with many wedding gown online shops catering to beautiful and surprisingly, affordable wedding, bridesmaids, flower girls and mother of the bride gowns to fit to your style and budget. So, before you head out to the couturier to have your gown stitch, you may want to sit back and browse the internet for the many affordable gowns you can choose that will save you big time.

Being Practical At Home Improvements

I have a very tight quarter in the house. Since we are not permanent residents of Dubai, my husband and I are quite adamant to spend on furniture and other fixtures at home. Our pragmatic approach to home and interior decoration is to buy only the essential and affordable. Oftentimes, this kind of principle overlooks aesthetic results. We just end up what ever is practical to put at home.

There are times when my husband and I would not agree on something like buying new metal cabinets to install in the balcony area. The cabinets will be used a portable storage of our trinkets and tools which we use occasionally but is mandatory to have at home. Instead of buying cabinets, we end up buying storage boxes which we can stack.

The sofa is another issue we have to tackle. I planned to purchase an L-shaped modular sitting furniture to update our living room last year. My husband was against the idea because it was not sensible since we still have a sofa. Few months later, we ended up buying a sofa-bed to accommodate visitors who want to spend the night. The beautification aspect of my desire to buy is always outweighed by the practicality of having to actually buy and replace something that is still useful at home.

Home improvement is something we have to sacrifice here in the Middle East because we are transient borders in this country. My husband is right in believing and enforcing his principle of spending our hard-earned money to our dream house than spending unnecessarily here where we will just end up selling them. To that, I definitely agree!

Public Commuter

It's been a very long time since I last took the public transportation. I either drive or carpool. However, it is inevitable for me to use the public transportation today because my budget is tight and my hubby will use the car. I have no choice.

I felt a bit jittery because I don't know how long the ride would take. The wait was half an hour and the ride home was another half an hour. I am not even talking about the sun's heat that I could take in. It's good that the weather is still pleasant. Otherwise, I would have fainted there.

So it took me 1 hour for the entire process as compared to the 15 mins. drive from work to home. It was a long ride. It felt right though because I didn't have to use up petrol. I was just seated in an air-conditioned bus with nice upholstered seats and a state of the art check-in/check-out card metre. I actually had fun.

I think I'll be doing this often. Never mind the little discomforts; I'm aiming to save money, stretch my stamina and do my part to help Mother Earth in my own little ways.

Save A Lot

The global recession has put everyone's spending habits to the test. No one knew when it would hit and when it did, plenty of people were not prepared to face the great depression of  the modern time.

People who managed to save enough to cushion the blow of unemployment, deflation, and economic crisis are ones to be emulated. These people are the ones who seek discounts and great deals from internet sites like Savings.com, cut out coupons from newspapers and magazines, recycle things and re-use them, and ask themselves hundred times whether they should buy or not before making a purchase.  Many people have sacrificed the comforts they once had to be able to save money. Some go through the length of cutting back or downgrading their common services like cable subscription, telephone and internet lines, mobile phone line subscription, magazine and newspaper subscription, membership fee in gyms and other health or recreational clubs. Other sold their other properties to retain one and have taken the task of public commuting to save on gas consumption.

Saving has become the trend of most people now. The majority of the masses have reconsidered the art of spending less and thinking twice whether a purchase is necessary or not. Gone are the days of living in the lap of luxury. People have gone back to the conservative and time-tested methods of saving. People are now re-inventing ways of saving more and spending less by being wise and frugal. 

Money-Saving Tips for the Holidays

I know, it's still very early to think about the coming holiday season. As a matter of fact, I am not even sure if the economy is in great shape for people to spare some money to shop for gifts. It does not matter whether we plan to give gifts this Christmas or not. The point is to save as much as we can, as early as now.

Here are some tips to help you stretch your budget should you decide to be Santa Claus this Christmas 2010:

1. Scour flea markets. This is the best place to find unique and precious items.
2. Re-use Christmas decors.
3. Use handmade gift wrappers from scratch papers.
4. Check major sales from malls and buy in bulk.
5. Allocate at least 10% of your salary towards a "Holiday Season" fund which you can use for any other purpose. The goal is to save for the holiday season whether you want to buy gifts or not.
6. Have pot-luck instead of hosting the Christmas Eve party.
7. Use artificial Christmas Tree. This way you can re-use them for next year or the years after.
8. Offer garage sale as early as now to clear your unwanted clutter. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
9. Save on car gas, electricity and water consumption.
10. Make handmade cards instead of buying commercialized ones.

So, start saving and enjoy this year's Holiday season without burning a hole in your pocket. The economy may still be bad but that does not mean we cannot enjoy the true meaning of Christmas.

My Daughter's Back-toSchool Eyeglasses

I just posted few days ago about my daughter's official entry to the kingdom of poor eyesight. Well, she is adamant to show me what her eye doctor gave her for her vision but I know exactly what she likes!

Even before I found out that she had poor vision, she always borrows my anti-glare glasses with a brown acetate frame (makes me look like a nerd but I find it cute!) and she just loves it. Then I remember something about prescription eyeglasses I have seen recently. Ah! That's right! Zenni Optical on TV!!! I saw some nice frames there and would really like to get the purplish/maroonish one for my daughter. I think she will love the printed flowers on the side frames. I find them so cute. Not only do they have various beautiful and fashionable frames to choose from, they are quite affordable. I reckon that my husband just spent around $70 for my daughter's prescription glasses and frames which I am not sure if it looks good on her or not. Seeing all the children's fashionable frames just made my decision to get one for her. I will have a lot of savings if I buy from ZenniOptical.com rather than make her wear something very generic which she may not even like. And worse, she may not even use it and that will only defeat the purpose of the prescription glasses.

I am so surprised to find $ 8 Rx eyeglasses at Zenni Optical. Finally, there is something I can purchase before my daughter goes back to school where I can actually save money. High Five to Zenni Optical!

Disoriented Dolphins

I know humans get disoriented but never realized that dolphins do as well. About 200 to 300 dolphins were found in the shallow waters of Manila Bay yesterday near Bataan. Villagers, volunteers, fishermen and the navy were together in their effort to drive back the pod of dolphins to the deeper part of the sea. They were found swimming back and forth in an obvious state of disorientation where the probable cause is not yet defined.

I am so grateful to the courageous people who did their part to save these hapless animals. God Bless you all (and the dolphins!).

(Photo from: Daily Mail and Reuters)