Saving Money in February!
DeAndre' Upshaw on Feb 5, 2009 
Friends!
In the month of February, we're going to buckle down and save some coins! Using tips that we've gleaned from the past few months of Young & Free Texas and some new ones that we pick up along the way!
I've recorded a video saying basically the same thing that I just wrote, but youtube doesn't like me and keeps moving my audio, kicking it out of sync. I'm putting it up just so you guys can see it, but you might want to just listen to it as opposed to look at it - because you'll get seasick!
So!
How might we go aboot saving some money this month? I'll start out by writing down all of my expenses and saving my receipts to see where all of money is actually going.
Sometimes we don't realize how much money we are actually spending on random items, so keeping track of your money is key.
To do this, I'm going to use Mint.com - it's a site which helps you keep track of your purchases. Using online banking, you can connect your credit union or bank account with Mint.com and it will show you all of your purchases, and categorizes purchases into several groups, such as restaurants, gas, etc. Using this you can see how much you spend on different items broken down per week, month or even year!
For instance - Mint.com tells me that I've spent the most money since November at Apple, Target & AT&T. Wowzah!
Using Mint, I'm able to look at the purchases I make in a way that makes a lot more sense to me than just looking at an account statement.
This is an actual graph from my mint.com profile! It's crazy how accurate the breakdowns are, but sometimes you have to go in and correct some of the categories and clarify what you spent the money on.
It's super great and they have an iPhone app! Now there's no excuse not to save money!
DeAndre'
