Why Am I So Excited About Two Jars of Pennies?

As you are probably aware, college is not cheap, even when you go to a fairly inexpensive school I like I did.  Like so many other students, I need to take out loans in order to complete my education.  This included both my undergraduate and both of my graduate degrees.  Yes, I am a perpetual student and I love being in school.  However, I do not like the reality of student loan debt and student loan payments.

Each month, my wife and I pay almost $350 to student loans.  $350!  That's crazy!  So this year, we've decided we are going to pay off the loans (or make a fairly sizable dent).  Currently, we have a little less than $28,000 in student loan debt.  Just typing that out makes me sweat a little bit.





 

Now, why am I so excited about the two jars of pennies?  Well, we decided to make a visual representation of the amount of money we owe and the amount of money we've paid off on the principal.  That is where the two jars come in.

The first jar (the one with all of the pennies) stands for the amount of money we owe presently.  As I said, we owe almost $28,000, so this jar contains 280 pennies.  Each penny is worth $100.  Every time we pay $100 toward the principal, we move a penny from the first jar to second jar.  This includes our monthly loan payment.  I looked at how much goes toward the principal and how much goes to interest each month.  After the payment posts to the account, I'm going to make a payment for the difference between the amount that went to the principal and $100.  In each situation, it will be around $20-$25.  It looks like we are going to have to skip a meal out in order to cover that difference, but that's better for us, right?



If you look closely in this jar, you can see that we've already been able to move 4 pennies to the "Paid" jar.  We decided not to make a purchase and instead to put that money toward the debt.  Additionally, we "found" $300 in our bank account that we could safely afford to put toward the debt.  It felt really good to be able to move those pennies, even if it was just a small drop in the bucket, or jar, as it were.  Hopefully this is the start of some great momentum and we can start moving pennies like crazy.  I would love to be able to show the two jars at this time next year with all of the pennies moved.  How awesome would that be?



What financial goals do you have for the coming year?  Please share in the comments below.

Making Ends Meet - Using GymPact

The other day, I shared with you how you can earn gift cards by participating in Swagbucks. I want to suggest another way to help you earn a little extra money to help loosen your budget a little bit.
Everyone knows you are supposed to eat fruits and vegetables. We also know that we are supposed to exercise. What if there was a way that you could get paid for doing so? What if I told you there is? Gym Pact is the answer.

Gym Pact is an app for your smartphone. At the beginning of each week, you commit to eating a certain number of fruits and vegetables. Right now, my current number is 28. Each day, I eat my fruits and vegetables and take a picture of my serving with the phone's camera. The picture is uploaded to the app and other users vote on whether or not the picture will count. You can receive credit for up to 5 pictures each day. Most of the time the picture will count, but there are times when the community will decide that what you are eating is not actually a fruit or vegetable or that it is not a full serving. For this reason, it is best to take several extra pictures.

If you complete your pact for the week, you are paid a small amount for doing so. If you do not finish your pact (you don't eat all your vegetables), you are charged a fee for each one that you miss. This provides a great deal of incentive to make sure you are eating healthy.

In addition to eating fruits and veggies, you can also make a pact to exercise daily. The exercise pact requires that you complete an exercise session of 30 minutes or more. You can connect the Gym Pact app to a number of other apps, including RunKeeper. There is also a motion tracker that lets you use the Gym Pact app to record your exercise. I have mine connected to my FitBit, so my workout counts when I hit my goal of 10,000 steps for the day.

Using Gym Pact certainly won't make you rich, but every little penny helps, right? Currently, by completing 5 workouts and eating 28 vegetables, I earn about $3 each week. That's not a whole lot, but it keeps me motivated and has me eating as many vegetables and fruits as I can. I saved my Pact earnings for a number of weeks and was able to use it to pay for most of the parking fees we had on our trip to Walt Disney World this past summer. My wife has been saving hers and she just cashed our nearly $100! It all adds up.

I really hope that you if do sign up that the little bit of extra money you make is used to make your life just a little bit better.

Making Ends Meet - Using Swagbucks

It is no secret that most teachers are grossly underpaid. I am fortunate to work for a county that makes teacher salaries a priority, but even then, sometimes it can be hard to find extra money for birthday presents, Christmas, and just every day items. Fortunately, there are ways to make these things a little easier. My hope is that I can share some ideas with you to help you make a little extra money and, by doing so, make your life a little bit easier.

Today, I want to talk about Swagbucks.

Swagbucks is a website that will "pay" you to complete different activities online. There are videos to watch, polls to answer, and purchases to make. You can even earn Swagbucks by searching. Put in the terms that you are searching for and, periodically throughout the day, you will be awarded a number of Swagbucks for your search.

Swagbucks doesn't pay you in cash. Instead, you are rewarded Swagbucks, or SB. As you collect SB, you can then use them to purchase gift cards from a number of top retailers. My wife and I use our Swagbucks to purchase gift cards to Amazon.com, which we then use for birthday presents and Christmas gifts. You can also purchase gift cards from Kohls, Target, Best Buy, and Restaurant.com. There is also a gift card for PayPal, which is the same as cash. I used my SB earlier this year on our trip to Walt Disney World. I cashed in enough SB to receive $35 worth of gift cards to AMC theaters. We were able to take our entire family to the movies for about $12 because of the gift cards.

This may sound like a lot of work and, to be honest, it does take a little bit of effort to accumulate enough SB to get a gift card. Right now, you can get a $3 Amazon.com gift card for 300 SB or a $25 Amazon.com for 2,200 SB. One of the easiest ways to earn SB is to make use of the SBTV app available for your smartphone (just do a search in your smartphone's app store). I have it on my iPhone and use it every day. This is a really simple app. You simply make certain you are connected to WiFi, turn on the app, and let it run. During the day at school, I will set the app to run and leave it on my desk. Simply by running the app, I earn about 30 SB each day. I think my wife and I have earned a couple of hundred dollars in gift cards through this program.

If Swagbucks sounds like it might be helpful to you, you can sign up by clicking here. Please note, this is an referral link and I will receive a bonus because you signed up. You will also receive a 150 SB bonus for signing up, so it is win-win for both of us.

I hope that by joining Swagbucks, the little bit of money that you save from purchasing the gift cards will help make your budget a little bit easier.

Saving Money for Your Disney World Vacation

I am a huge Walt Disney fan. I have Mickey Mouse t-shirts. I have Mickey Mouse coffee cups. My wife bought me a Mickey Mouse lunch bag. Our boys love to watch Disney movies (my favorite? I'll tell you at the end.) For our tenth wedding anniversary, my wife and I took a Disney cruise (best trip ever, by the way). As you can see, we are huge Disney lovers.

We are currently saving for our next trip to the Walt Disney World Resort. My wife and I took our boys last summer and it has been our goal to go again as soon as possible. Because of the size of our family (two adults and five children), we have to do Disney a little bit different. This means driving from West Virginia to Florida and staying off-property. Doing these things (among others...I'll share sometime) help us keep the costs way down.
Because a trip of this nature can be so expensive, it is important to plan ahead make sure that you have enough money saved up. There is nothing worse than going into debt for a vacation. Dave Ramsey would fly in on his giant black helicopter if he knew you were doing something like that.

Unfortunately, from my research, I have found very few articles or ideas on how to save for a Disney vacation. There are a lot of articles and blogs that will tell you how to save money at, but not many that help you save for a trip. The exception is Couponing to Disney. That site has some really great ideas.

Here are the things that I am personally doing to help save for our Disney trip. This list is by no means exhaustive and I am sure that there are a lot of ideas that I am missing or not doing. These are just the things that I am doing.

• Set up a savings account and do direct debit to that account. My wife and I have the privilege of banking at Navy Federal Credit Union. Through NFCU, we have an account called an Easy Start Certificate, which earns us 2.96% on the amount we put into the account. It's not much, but every little bit helps, right? In addition to this account, I set up our checking account to automatically transfer $53 to the savings account every two weeks. Why $53? I found this chart on Pinterest and modified it a little. By having the money automatically put into our savings account every two weeks, we are guaranteed to be saving that money. And, by using the certificate account, it makes it a bit more difficult to withdraw the funds. I can get the money if I need to, but I have to call Navy Federal and talk to an agent (who are wonderful, by the way), so that makes me less likely to take the money out.
  
  
• 
  Put all your loose change in a jug or jar. I love to go to the movies, especially during the summer. We don't have a movie theater in our town, but we do have a nice theater in the next town over. It costs me $12.50 (as of this post) to get a ticket, a medium popcorn, and a bottle of Vanilla Coke each time I go to the theater. I always go to the ATM and take out $20 before going to the theater. When I get home, my change goes into our "Disney Jug." When our boys (mostly the little ones) get birthday money, we make a big deal about having them put their money into the Disney Jug. Any coins we find or get from spending cash goes into the Disney Jug. I realize that this isn't a new idea, but this is what we are doing. My older boys and I recently counted the money in our Disney Jug and discovered that it is slightly over $100. We aren't going to pay for our entire trip, but it is certainly going to help.
  
  
• Save your "found" money for the trip. I call any unexpected money "found money." This is money that you receive or earn that isn't a part of your regular paycheck. For me, a lot of my "found money" comes from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I make products and activities to use in my classroom and I post them online for other teachers to purchase if they can use them in their classrooms. In addition to saving for Disney World, my wife and I are also trying to pay off a credit card. Each month that I have my TpT store open, I set an earnings goal for myself. All of the money that I earn up to a certain amount goes to my credit. Anything above that amount goes into our Disney fund. I have been blessed to be able to put a little bit into the Disney fund each month for several months now.
  
  Other places we receive "found money" from include my after-school activity and from Amazon.com. Three times a year, I have a program called Running Club that I host at my school. I typically have about 20 or so students who stay after once a week to run laps and receive incentives based on the number of laps they run. A simple concept, but it helps me to earn money to put toward the credit card and the Disney trip. From Amazon.com, my wife (who blogs at Mamas Like Me and I will share items and books we find beneficial. For example, I wrote about how I use dice in my classroom and I posted a link to the dice I purchased. When someone follows the link and purchases the dice, we receive a small percentage. This money goes into the Disney fund.
  
  I know other folks sell items online or at yard sales to raise money. Others tutor or write blogs to earn extra money. This "found money" is a great way to help save your way to a great trip.
  

Like I said before, I am positive that there are a number of other ways to save money for a Disney World vacation. These are the ways that we are saving money. I hope that these methods will stir up your imagination and get you thinking about how you can save for your own trip, whether it is to Disney World or wherever your dream vacation is.

By the way, my favorite Disney movie is Mary Poppins. In fact, Mary Poppins is probably my most favorite movie of all time. It never gets old.

What ideas/suggestions do you have to save money for a vacation? Please share below.