Once you have taken on a significant amount of debt, it can be quite difficult to regain your freedom. However, it can be done if you keep these things in mind:

1. Put some money into savings first
2. Keep an eye on your credit
3. Build up a significant emergency fund
4. Talk about money regularly with your significant other, even when times are good
5. Save, invest, pay off debt, and consider a retirement plan
6. Feel empowered through the financial control you have

When you feel empowered with the financial control that you have, you will be more motivated to continue to try to stay out of debt. Even though reviewing your finances regularly can be a pain and irritating, it is very important that you do. It is the key to staying out of debt.

Since people tend to get very busy during the course of the month, they don’t always think about what to do with their savings account, especially if they have to worry about the bills. Setting up an automatic savings transfer not only releases a person from thinking about it, but also makes it so that there is less overall discretionary money available.

This can be used to remove temptation and be fiscally responsible in the same step. Automatic transfers are a simple step to take, but make a noticeable difference after just a few months. People can feel secure when using this service, because they are building up their finances without having to think too much about it.

If you have ever thought about opening up a savings account or doing something to save your money, now is an excellent time. Interest rates that are normally next to nothing are going as high as 5% APY. Accounts are free with great perks too.

If you use a debit or credit card for purchases, some will round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and put that extra change in your savings. Some will over rewards and cash back for depositing certain amounts into savings.

The perks are great, the interest rates are only growing, and the incentive couldn’t be more. The fact is we as a nation are beginning to save our money, not spend it all and then some. Banks and other financial institutions are recognizing this and catering to the demands of the consumers.

So if savings is something you have been contemplating, start researching now. You can find the best deal out there for you.

1. Air filter

It’s estimated that 1 in 4 cars needs their air filter changed. Dirty air filters can decrease mileage by as much as 10% so money can be saved by having a new, clean one. Change your filter at least once each year for optimum gas mileage.

2. Tire alignment

Poor alignment of your tires causes them to wear faster and causes your engine to work harder. Get your tires aligned at least once a year or suffer another 10% drop in mileage.

3. Tune up

Most car owners never even give their car a tune up. This is a big mistake, as time and wear can cause your engine to stop running optimally. Tune up your car when the manufacturer suggests and your car will last longer and run better.

4. Inflate your tires

Under inflated tires can cause you to lose as much as 3% on your gas mileage. Check your tire inflation every month and make sure your tires are inflated properly to save money at the pump.

5. Gas cap

I know, sounds trivial, but nearly 1 in 5 drivers have either a broken gas cap or none at hall. This can not only harm the evnrionment, it can do harm to your gas mileage as well. Replace any borken or missing gas caps always.

6. Drive the speed limit

Your car actually gets its best gas mileage when you drive about 55 mph. If you’re going 75 or 80 mph on the freeway, slow down, go the speed limit, you’ll save massively on gas mileage. The general rule is, wherever you are driving, you want your RPM’s to be as close to the 2 as possible.

7. Smooth driving

Hard stops and hard accelerations will absolutely kill your gas mileage. If you see a red light up ahead, don’t continue driving until it’s necessary to slow down and then hit the brakes. Simply let off the gas and you will start to slow down as you head towards the light. Then use your brakes to stop, but not to slow down. Always try and slow down by letting of the gas, not using your brakes. When you accelerate, try to avoid getting your RPM’s past the 3.

8. Remove extra weight

Every 100 pounds you add to the weight of the car will decrease fuel efficiency by 2% or more. Don’t drive around with heavy items in your trunk or backseat. Carry as little as possible in your car at all times.

9. Avoid idling

Your car never needs to “warm up,” so don’t sit in the car for a few minutes every morning letting it idle. Starting your car uses the same amount of gas as idling for 10 seconds. As a rule, if you know you will be stopped for longer than 10 seconds, just turn your car off. This also means avoiding the drive thru window.

10. Take the long way

This may sound counter intuitive, but some people prefer to drive on the main expressway with dozens of lights simply because it’s the more direct route to where they are going. If there is a “long way” so to speak, and it is more of a “country road,” then take it. You may feel like you are wasting time and gas, but in reality, it may be the same amount of time, and avoiding all that stop and go traffic will save a bundle at the pump.

These are some of the ways you can improve your driving to help save you some money on gas and on your car. There’s hundreds of other ways to save money, and I will continue to post about them as I’m able. It’s coming up on the end of the year, and that means taxes will soon be upon us. One great way to save money and time is to find a someone who offers free tax services. More on that to come later.

1. Make a budget

The first thing you must learn is how to make a budget. Increasing wealth doesn’t necessarily mean making more money. It means spending less of the money you currently make. If you budget properly, you will find your dollars are being spent more wisely. Financial discipline is first and foremost in creating wealth. Wealth can never be created by spending all your money frivolously.

2. Save the surplus

Lots of people have a general idea of how much they spend on a monthly basis. What baffles me is when people find they spent less than they expected. Immediately they feel this money is free to spend, since they normally would have spent it anyway. This mindset must be avoided. If you spend less than you planned on spending, then save the surplus. Saving $40 a month here and $60 a month there will add up by the end of the year. Would you rather have $40 at the end of the month to spend, or $500 at the end of the year to spend? Plus that saved money generates interest throughout the year. Save any money you can, always.

3. The food bill

If you’re like everyone else in the country, your number one expense is for housing each month. Since you don’t have much freedom to change that expense, let’s look at number two: food. Between groceries and eating out, food is a major expense for most families. The first way to save here is to simply eat out less. Go out half as often as you currently do. If it’s twice a week, go out once a week. There’s a start. When shopping for groceries, check for coupons on those things you are going to get. Strategic shopping and buying generic brands can save you thousands of dollars a year on that food bill.

4. Take care of yourself

Besides mortgage payments and housing issues, the number one thing that puts most people into bankruptcy are astronomical medical bills. I’m not saying all these bills are avoidable. i am saying this: you can greatly reduce the chances of getting a monster medical bill by simply taking care of yourself. Sleep 8 hours each night, exercise regularly, avoid unhealthy foods, stop smoking and drinking, etc. Your lifestyle can greatly affect your chances of having a heart attack, getting diabetes, and other very expensive health issues. You can’t avoid everything, but you can certainly have a significant impact on the likelihood that you will have any huge medical bills.

5. Education

There’s thousands of websites out there offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees. While it used to be near impossible to work full time, care for a family and pursue higher education, things have changed. Ideally, everyone would get as educated as possible in a university setting. This simply does not happen. But if you only graduated high school, it’s worth your time to enroll online and get a bachelor’s degree. If you graduated college, it can be worth your time to pursue a master’s degree online. You can keep working where you are. You can even keep that job after you receive the degree. Simply having the degree forces your employer to pay you more. Higher education equals higher earning potential. If you want to have a significant impact on your income, go and get more education.

Follow these five steps and achieve your financial goals. All of these steps can be implemented immediately regardless of your current lifestyle. So what are you waiting for? Get started now and watch yourself become more wealthy in no time!

Be a strategic shopper

Most of us go grocery shopping once a week. We usually spend 30 minutes to an hour and spend around $50 – $100 each trip. For something that occupies that kind of time and resources, you would think we would be a bit smarter about it. Coupons.com is a great resource. there are plenty of other sites like them. Just spend half an hour finding coupons and planning your grocery trip and watch how much you will start to save. Thirty minutes each week in this kind of preparation can save you 25% on your grocery bill.

Skip Starbucks

You might be surprised how quickly $6 a morning adds up. Learn to go without that coffee and muffin. Substitute a granola bar and orange juice. These are also quick, easy and considerably cheaper. A half gallon of orange juice could last you a week, and it costs about the same as a cup of coffee. So before you run out the door to Starbucks in the morning on your way to work, sit down, eat a quick bite, and then go straight to work. This could save you almost $2,000 each year!

Upgrade appliances

Old refrigerators, washing machines and water heaters could be skyrocketing your energy bill each month. Upgrade old appliances around your home. New appliances will pay for themselves in a year when you see what you can save on energy.

Go generic

We’ve all been there. You’re standing in a store looking at a wall of products that are essentially all the same thing, except they are all different brands. Tide, or the store brand? Well, start going with the store brand. Typically, generic store brands are 25-33% less than the name brand products. Often times you won’t even notice a difference in your use of the product. Go generic, save money on the things you already buy.

One more dollar each day

Many of us are stuck with credit card debt. If you were to take one extra dollar each day towards paying off your credit card debt, you could be debt free two years sooner! The average debt, if paid off by the average monthly payment most people make, would take 96 months to be paid off. Add an extra dollar a day, or $30 each month to that monthly payment, and it’s paid off in 74 months. I’ve said this in an earlier post- get out of debt as soon as you can. Seems the CNN Money experts agree.

Sitter sharing

Those of us with children probably know the other parents in the neighborhood with children as well. Instead of everyone hiring their own babysitter, why not pool your resources? Hire one babysitter to watch all your kids when you go out for your date with your spouse. Families that do this save anywhere from 20-50% on their babysitter costs.

If you want to read more, check out the original article at CNN Money.

The answer is simple: get out of debt, and get out of debt now. You see, when the economy starts to lull a bit or slows down some, the government always figures that the best thing to do in order to stimulate growth again is to spend money. This is absolutely true. When consumers are spending their money, the economy grows. One problem- what about when consumers are spending money they don’t have? Now we have a problem.

When Bill Clinton left the White House, we actually had savings. The government was not spending more than it was making, and financially things were pretty sound. Well, George Bush and co. managed to not only spend all of that, in order to feed their insatiable appetite for more spending, they have been borrowing money from other countries with a surplus. Countries like China, saudi Arabia, Venezuela- yep, all those guys have been giving us money for a few years now. We are in a massive, massive debt right now. Should we continue on this course, ultra inflation will kick in and gas will become hundreds of dollars per gallon. The dollar will become worthless. That is because in order to cover spending expenses, when other countries stop lending to us we will just print more money. Unfortunately for the average American, we can’t just print more money to get ourselves out of debt.

So what is to be done? First, the government has to realize that they have to get out of debt. Stop spending like mad on anything and everything. That will stabilize the credit markets. next, we all need to rip up our credit cards and stop spending into cyclical debt. Pay off your credit cards. Pay off your student loans. Pay off that car. Pay off your house. Some of these things will take longer than others, but we have to get out of debt individually and as a whole or our economy will literally crumble. Once out of debt, don’t spend money you don’t have. Stop rolling up the tab on the credit card at the mall on a bunch of stuff you don’t need. Spending on credit contributed to this disaster.

Do everything you can right now to get out of debt. Nothing will help you more in the long run. Once out of debt, take the money you were using to pay off debts and pay it to your savings account in a bank. That’s the best thing you can do for yourself in the long run. Trust me, this thing will pass us by eventually. It may be two years, it may be ten years, but I can tell you this: no matter how long it is, it’s going to feel like forever if you are in debt. So do yourself a favor and get out of debt. George Bush I hope you are reading, because this especially applies to you and the Federal government.

A top Treasury official announced that one of the five steps to be initiated is to help keep delinquent borrowers in their homes. That’s great news if you have fallen behind on your mortgage payments. Not so great news if you have paid your mortgage dutifully since you moved in. Let me explain.

Most people who can no longer pay their mortgage payments are evicted and their home foreclosed. This means that the bank seizes the home and sells it off for whatever they can get to try to get their money back. You see, the bank loaned that homeowner thousands of dollars. The homeowner never paid it all back. So the bank forecloses the home- sells it for whatever they can get to make up their losses. That’s great news for home buyers; bad news for evicted homeowners.

With the government’s plan, delinquent borrowers will not be evicted anymore. Instead of foreclosing on their home, the bank will be given money from the government to help. Great, a bunch of people who couldn’t afford the house to begin with are going to stay in the house they can’t afford and continue to come up short on mortgage payments because our tax dollars are bailing them out. Meanwhile, those of us who live within our means are seeing the same increases as those delinquent borrowers. Our gas prices have gone up too. Our food prices have gone up too. Our energy prices have gone up too. Tell me- where’s the incentive to keep up with the mortgage payments if the government will bail out my bank if I don’t pay it?

I predict right here and right now that the banking industry will be nationalized within 10 years. Pretty soon your mortgage payment will be taken right out of your paycheck like taxes. Once socialism has struck one industry in this country, it’s only a matter of time until others follow: automotive, energy, etc. Government take overs rarely result in a better market. So here’s what to do.

Put all your money into a savings account at a reputable bank like Bank of America or Wells Fargo. These gianst aren’t going anywhere and your money is FDIC insured up to $250,000. There’s only one safe place for money right now, and it’s in a savings account. If you stay in the market you will, mark my words, you will lose your money. The market might rebound a moment, but a government take over of the private sector is starting. It will be slow but steady. And just you watch- as it happens, business and the market will suffer. The only safe place to put your money and see it grow at least at 2-3% is in a bank in a savings account. Better get it in there quickly.