This is Part 5 in a series on how to apply the 80/20 principle to save money. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

This is the final post on the series. Today I am not gonna give advices or tips but just a selection of great blogs about finance. Because living the 80/20 is also not wasting your time reading 87 different sources, I’ve selected for you three useful finance blogs. Nothing underground just the three best blogs about money:

The simple Dollar: Trent, the author of this blog, started to blog when he wanted to get rid of a tough financial situation. He writes and shares useful articles about fighting debt and building a financially secure future. Now he had paid off all his debts, quit his job and became a writer. His posts are often full of good advices like his “Reader mailbag” where he answers questions ask by readers or finance books reviews.

Get Rich Slowly: Posts on Get Rich Slowly are longer and analysis deeper. Like Trent, J.D. was overwhelmed by debts and started to read about finance to solve his money problem. Then, he started to share what he learned. As he explains his blog is “about debt elimination, saving money, and practical investing”. Get Rich Slowly was recently named most inspiring money blog by Money magazine. Subscribe, you won’t regret it.

Free money finance: I’m gonna quote the blog author, Free money finance “is about one simple thing: growing your net worth”. This blogger, who wrote over 100 articles on finance and one book, writes short posts to help his reader to easily manage their finance. Most of the time he starts from quotes or articles he’s read and gives his own opinion about it. This is a different approach but very useful. Worth the reading…

Enjoy!

This is my selection of blog about money I read regularly. Do you know inspiring finance blogs I missed?

photo credit: kiki99

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• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - Introduction
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 1
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 3

This is Part 4 in a series on how to apply the 80/20 principle to save money. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Today topic is cooking. Because I truly believe that eating well is the first step to have a healthy life and body I really enjoy cooking and do my best to cook tasty recipes for my friends or family (or myself ).

The 80/20 principle is of course applicable to cooking and allows me to simplify my kitchen and save money.

Identify your cooking pattern.

Simply answer this question : What kind of food you mostly cook?

I personally cook French or Mediterranean recipes most of the time. That determines what kind of tools I usually need, what kind of cookbooks I have and what kind of food I need to buy. For example I never use a wok since I don’t cook Asian food.

Now I know this point I can smartly organize my kitchen and cooking system.

Kitchen tools and equipments

I use 20% of my kitchen tools 80% of the time.

What does it mean? It means I don’t really need this high-tech mixer I use only once a year or this set of 18 beautiful knives while I use only 2 or 3 most of the time.

Simplifying my kitchen makes me feel calm and zen. I don’t have dozens of closets full of shit and I don’t spend half an hour to find this roasting pans hidden behind my fancy set of 72 cooking pans.

I avoid as much as possible buying new kitchen tools. Most of the time I can adapt a recipe and use something I already have. In the past I bought some items just to cook one recipe. Now these items stay in my kitchen drawers and I don’t use them anymore. I try now to not make this mistake anymore.

You are gonna tell me : “What if I like to try new things, to be adventurous with my cooking?”

First I will answer you there is few recipes you won’t be able to cook with basic equipments. Then be flexible and modify the recipe to adapt it to your taste and cooking system. The ratatouille will have the same taste if you cook it in a basic saucepan and not in an oven dutch as the recipe told you.

Cookbooks

I use 20% of my cookbook 80% of the time.

To be honest I actually have only one cookbook. So the sentence above it’s not true. But I used to get more cookbooks.

I like my cookbook and don’t waste my time to browse a bunch of books when I’m looking for recipe or idea. It saves my time and my money of course. I’am sure you know at least one person who love to buy new cookbooks but never uses them. Ok they are a great decoration for a kitchen but I prefer keep my money and room for things that matter.

I learned how to select cookbooks I liked and get rid of the others. I learned especially to not buy cookbooks I don’t need just because there is ONE recipe I love inside or because the cover is amazing.

Now you are gonna tell me: “What if I’m looking for a special recipe that is not in my cookbooks”.

If you are reading this post it means you have access to a Internet connection. So use it to get new recipes. There is tons of very good cooking Web site. Just type “recipe” in Google…

Last point: Having a lot of cookbooks doesn’t make you a cook…:)

Batch cooking

It’s something I don’t do enough. Batch cooking is a good way to save money and time. Indeed it requires 20% of additional work but saves you 80% of your cooking time or money.

Cooking bigger quantities is not a pain since you have all the ingredient and have already setup everything. Baking two pans of lasagna is not longer than baking only one for instance. You can finally freeze the second pan and eat it later. Thus, next time you will just need to unfreeze and reheat lasagna. What a big amount of time saved!

Moreover you can buy food in bulk and save money. Check out at your groceries store to get discounts.

Add a comment if you have additional cooking advices. I’d like to learn more.

photo credit: Zesmerelda

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• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 2
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 1
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 5

This is Part 3 in a series on how to apply the 80/20 principle to save money. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Today’s topic is more about how to make more money than how to save money but result is quite similar: more money on in your pocket.

Focus on tasks that pay off

80% of your income come from 20% of your activities.

Identify these activities that bring money and minimize or eliminate the few that have no real value.

I recommend you to log all your tasks during one week. At the end of the week review your list and figure out which ones make you earn money and which one are a waste of time.

Then, allocate most of your time performing these tasks and minimize time spent doing other stuff.

For example if you want to earn money with you blog(s) : Producing useful content pays off, marketing you Web site pays off, finding new advertisers pay off… Oh the other hand playing with the color of your header doesn’t, reading too many other blogs doesn’t or check your traffic statistic continuously doesn’t.

Salary negotiation

Make concessions on the trivial many.

Make a list of all your concerns about the job and identify which ones really matters for you. It could be salary, bonus, responsibilities, holidays, etc…

You can eventually concede minor points in exchange of getting a great deal on points that are important for you.

But be careful don’t play your ace too early in the negotiation. Keep it to the closing stage. Otherwise you will lose bargaining chips.

80% of the concessions will occur in the last 20% of the time available.

So take your time, don’t be impatient. Build your argumentation timely and raise your additional demands in the last part of the meeting. It’s amazing how time puts a lot of pressure on negotiation. At the critical moment the other side will be more flexible and willing to make concession. Take advantage of it.

These two advices may be applied to any kind of negotiation, not only salary ones.

Never give up

Pareto discovered that 80% of the wealth are owned by 20% of the population.

Applied to Web economy, it means:

• 80% of the money is earned by 20% of Internet markets
• 80% of weblog traffic is got by 20% of bloggers
• …

I haven’t performed statistical study but if you do I’m sure you will find an equivalent ratio (even better like 90/20)

Thus, to earn a good amount of money you need to belong to this 20%. You need to persevere and never give up under trying conditions. Make it to the top requires time and effort… Don’t give up.

photo credit: kiki99

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• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 2
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 1
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - Introduction

This is Part 2 in a series on how to apply the 80/20 principle to save money. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

You are using 20% of your stuff 80% of the time.

Today tips will allow you to control your impulse buy. I know it is very hard for some people but if you try to follow these rules you will save a great amount of money.

Limit unnecessary purchase

Use a 30 days waiting list: I read this tips on TheSimpleDollar blog few months ago and try to follow it as much as possible.

It’s very easy to setup: Every time your think your are doing an unnecessary purchase don’t buy it immediately and write it on your waiting list (I personally use a calendar to do so). Thirty days later review your list (I do this review after 15 days but, whatever, just pick a delay that fits you). If you still need the item buy it, if not just remove it from the list.

Thanks to this list you will cut a bunch of purchases you’d have done in a rush excited by a new product.

Save money on your food groceries

1. First, plan your meals for the week. (I need to do so more often )
   
2. Make a list of food you need before shopping.
3. Stick to it while in the store.

Thanks to your plan you won’t buy too much food that will be trashed if not eat soon enough. Your list will allow you to not forget anything but above all to not buy something unnecessary.

Since you meal are planned you should batch your cooking sessions. First you could buy food in bulk that is less expensive and you will save time. Prepare for example a big amount of soup for the week you will eat every night…

Another great advice is “Never go to buy groceries being hungry or with your children”. Shopping hungry will make you buy too much food and your children will beg you to buy candies, fun and unnecessary stuff.

Save money on your clothes

If your closet is full of shit you are gonna like this advice. I can’t remember where I read it but it’s great. I call it “The backward hangers rule”. The point is to identify all your unnecessary clothes to get rid of them. To do so:

You need to hang all your clothes in your closet as I do.

1. Go right now to your closet and take all of your clothes and hang them all backward. I mean “hangers in the non-natural direction and back of your outfit toward the left side of your closet for instance”.
2. From now every time you will put any of your stuff back in this closet you will hang it forward, “hanger in the natural direction and back of your clothes toward the right side of the closet”.
3. Keep doing step 2 during two or three months. Put an event in your calendar to remind you.
4. After two or three months you will notice all the clothes you never wear are still hanged backward. Remove them from your closet

Benefits:

• You will be morally appeased to have a clean closet.
• You will identify what kind of outfit you wear most of the time. It will be useful next time you go shopping. Why buy this beautiful trench coat while you never wear the one you get last winter?
• You can give clothes you never wear to charities.
• You can organize yard sale and get some money or sell them on eBay.

I hope all these tips are useful. Feel free to add your own in comments sections.

photo credit: kiki99

You may be also interested by:

• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 1
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - Introduction
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 4

This is Part 1 in a series on how to apply the 80/20 principle to save money. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

80% of your expense amount come from 20% of your expense area.

The point is to determine expenses that make a big impact on your money and focus on them to improve your financial situation.

First step to save money, identify your expense area.

You need to track your expenses. My advice is to use a personal finance web tool like Mint.com. You can also use software like Quicken, MS Money or a simple spreadsheet (Excel, Google spreadsheet…).

1. Make a list of your expense area sorted by descending order.
2. Take the top three element of your list and for each one think how you can reduce expenses.

Let’s take an example:

Let’s imagine housing and apartment rental is my highest expense. I should ask myself these questions: Do I really need this fancy apartment in a trendy neighborhood downtown? Does the spare bedroom really necessary? Can I improve the insulation of my house to decrease my heat bill?

There is a lot of question you can answer to save money from your house but the most important is buy (or rent) a house (apartment) you can afford.

Let’s now imagine food is my second biggest expense area. Can I work on it to save money and still eat well? Yes, I can. Example:

• Eggs and milk are the highest protein sources but very economical
• Eat seasonally. Melons in summer and apple or orange in winter. You don’t need to eat raspberries in December.
• Beans are highly nutritive and very cheap.
• Eliminate sugar-water beverages. Ok it’s fancy to have pink or yellow bottles in your fridge but it is a total waste of money.
• …

Then let’s take my car as my third biggest expense area. Do I need this luxuriant SUV or this big car while I have no family? Can I reduce my commute and use my bike to buy groceries?…

One advice very easy to set up that will make you save gas is : respect speed limitations. Ok you will need to leave to work 2 minutes earlier but you will save gas, money and contribute to the environmental protection.

photo credit: kiki99

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• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - Introduction
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 2
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 3

If you are reading Unbalanced Man blog I’m pretty sure you face personal finance issue. Almost everybody does. (Although I’d like to have no money concern).

In this series I will share tips on how to apply the 80/20 rule to save money daily. I don’t pretend to know everything in this topic but I will give some advices and thinking that may help you. I will be also very interested to hear your way to save money.

The first post will discuss the following statement : 80% of your expense amount come from 20% of your expense area.

The full series of saving money applying the 80/20 principle is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

photo credit: kiki99

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• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 1
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 5
• Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 3