Posted by Money Tips Staff

As the American economy continues to suffer, more and more people are looking for ways to improve their financial situations.  Joining the military is one method you might use to discover your place in the world as well as offer you the opportunity to make money and help you build your character.  Here are a few of the ways that enlisting will benefit you financially:

Loan programs.  Military loan programs are available through the federal government as well as in the majority of states.  Whether you are currently in the military or you have served in the past, you can apply for student loans, mortgages, or for a small business loan.  One of the major incentives for this kind of program is the incredibly low interest rates offered.

Signing bonuses.  Depending on the branch of service, your level of education, any prior professional experience, or the length of your enlistment term, the Army may offer you a bonus for enlisting that can be as high as forty thousand dollars.

Education.  The Army is well known for helping out students who are unable to afford to pay for college or do not qualify for other student loans.  When economic turmoil troubles the country, many people respond by going back to school.  If this is an idea you’ve been turning over in your head, you might consider the advantages to enlisting.  You can attend school and then serve for three or four years, or you can serve first and attend college later.  The GI Bill will offer you a tuition waiver, a living stipend, and will help you pay for your books and other necessary educational supplies.  The military is also interested in people who can offer special services such as nurses, who may be offered a bonus at the beginning of their program and one at the end, which is often as high as fifty thousand dollars.

Your current career.  By enlisting in the military, you will undoubtedly acquire many skills that you can apply to your life or help you climb up to new levels at your job, particularly with regards to technology.  You will probably be trained to use the most state of the art computer technology that will aid you once you have finished serving and are ready to return to civilian life.

Your future career.  Or you might learn a new trade altogether.   Many companies or corporations in the private sector will be interested in your increased technological skills as well as for the security measures you undertook during your training.  And even if you are not interested in being taken on for your computer or security knowledge, you can always utilize the martial arts or fitness expertise you have gained.

The U.S. military is eager to enlist new recruits, and you could easily become one of them.  Whether you’re looking to beef up your bank account or acquire new skills to better your life, you can certainly take advantage of army scholarships to ensure that you are getting the best military education that will help you succeed!

8 Hidden Ways To Save Money On A Daily Basis

Posted by Andrianes Pinantoan

Are you a frugality maestro looking for even more ways to save money? As an enthusiast, it amazes me that there are always parts of my life I can trim expenses from. Without further ado, here are the 8 ways that I find a lot of people miss:

1. Opportunity Cost

The opportunity cost of an action is the potential foregone benefit you could have had if you took the alternative. A lot of people don’t consider the opportunity cost of a so-called “frugal” activity.

For example, I often read personal finance “gurus” recommend that people cook their own food. Yes, it saves a lot of money but do it only if you like cooking! Cooking your own food – especially if you want it to taste good and you want it healthy – takes time… time that you could’ve spent doing something else. For most people, that time could’ve been spent freelancing, and thus make more money than they could save from cooking their own food.

If you don’t feel like freelancing outside of a full time job, you can always spend more time with your family, or pursuing a hobby – so that missed opportunity is the opportunity cost of cooking your own food.

This doesn’t apply to everyone, of course. It assumes you want to do something else with your time. It is, nonetheless, important for you to consider the opportunity cost of every “how to save money” advice you get.

2. Waste

Did you know that as a country, America throws away up to 50% of their food? That’s about 51.8 million tons of food – and it’s costing the country approximately $1 billion just to dispose of it. Our surplus alone, the U.N. World Food Programme said, could have satisfied “every empty stomach” in Africa.

The easiest way I know of to save money, without changing your lifestyle or depriving yourself, is to simply eliminate food waste. There are techniques that I used to do that. First, always take away your left-overs in a restaurant and reheat it later. Second, if I plan to cook or throw a party, I plan for exactly how many people I need to prepare for.

If I need a backup, “just in case”, I get something that can be stored if they are not used. Like a frozen lasagna or pizza.

3. Supermarket Tricks

Supermarkets are businesses. As such, they are designed to extract as much money out of you as possible. For example, you’ll notice that staples like milk are always to the back of the store. They do that because they want you, the customers, to walk through isles of other higher-margin products before you can reach for what you want. The more products you are exposed to, of course, the higher the chances you’ll buy more unnecessary stuff like a bag of chocolates.

This is why it’s crucial that you make a list of what you need. Eat a nice filling lunch, leave your kids at home, THEN drop by the supermarket with your list. If that doesn’t work, try reducing your supermarket trips from twice a week to once every two weeks. You’ll see a marked difference in your grocery spending immediately.

4. Store Brands

Multiple studies have shown that there are absolutely no difference in quality between store brand and premium brand products in most industries. In fact, many of them come from the same producer.

The premium you’re paying for branded goods are going towards the marketing dollars they spent to get you to believe it’s really superior. Unless store brands taste significantly different in blind taste tests for you, keep to it.

5. Electricity

Electricity is one of those things that people never consider when they want to save money. There’s a reason for that: because you assume it’s negligible. But it’s not true at all. According to the Green Blogger, the average American family spends about $1400 a year on electricity alone.

The good news is it’s easy to save on electricity. Reducing your water heater from 140 degrees to 120 degrees – which is negligible, temperature-wise – will save up to 10% of your heating cost. And if your phone, laptops, digital cameras aren’t charging, plug it out. Americans spend about 8% of our electric bills simply because they didn’t plug their electronics out when they finish recharging.

Last, heat and cool your house sparingly because they are responsible for about 50% to 70% of your electricity bill.

6. Banking

You’ve probably read about all the ways about how banks rip their customers off, so I won’t go there. My only advice here is this: bank loyalty is dead. If anything, new customers are always treasured more than loyal ones, what with the special rates offers and other bonuses. CEOs are incentivized for the short-term, so they always choose short-term tactics to increase their bonuses.

So don’t get lazy with switching banks! Compare credit card offers, savings accounts and even home loans at least once a year. The larger your debt, the more you can save in interests by actively switching and making the banks compete with each other.

7. Exercise

Want a surefire way to save at least $50 a month by tomorrow? Ditch your gym membership. A gym membership is useless unless you want to build your body. Everything else can be done in the comfort of your own home, or in the great outdoors.

For example, doing body exercises like push ups, lunges, pull ups, crunches, skipping, etc, are great ways to tone your body and lose weight. If that’s not enough, go for a quick walk/jog around town.

8. Taxes

You don’t do taxes on a daily basis but you sure are getting taxed every single day you’re making money. So it puzzles me why people only get busy with their taxes at the end of the financial year.

For example, I intentionally attend educational conferences throughout the year so I can then claim the expenses against my income. I also often work from home so I can claim part of my home office expense. And if you’re unemployed, make sure you keep track of your job-hunting expenses – they can be claimed in the U.S.

Note that I am not an accountant so make sure you consult with one before you make any tax decisions.

This guest blog is written by Andrianes Pinantoan, a personal finance enthusiast hailing from personal finance sites that provide tips on how to save money and budgeting spreadsheet. He finds it weird to write in third person so he’s going to stop now.