Category: Frugal Finance Management

A custom debt-reduction budget that fits your own family’s size, needs, etc., is crucial to debt reduction success.

April 28, 2016

5 Developments That Will Impact the Auto Insurance Industry

Today we share a contributed post from fellow freelance writer Elaine Valarie. Enjoy!

In its simplest state, auto insurance protects motorists after their involvement in an accident. Different policies offer different coverages, with liability car insurance being the most popular among consumers. The reason for this is also simple: a majority of U.S. states require their auto drivers to carry liability car insurance. But the insurance industry is changing, with new technological developments raising customer service. Let’s check out some of these big changes and how they will impact the auto industry, and subsequently, you as an insurance-payer.

5 New Auto Industry Developments that May Affect You

Telematics

What exactly is telematics? Telematics is a technological device that combines information and telecommunications. Many insurance companies offer the option to install a device that measures your driving habits, such as how many miles you drive, how hard you brake and your speed. The telematics system sends this information to your insurance agency. If your insurance company believes that your numbers demonstrate you as a safe driver, you will get a good driving discount. But if the system reports that you are not a safe a driver, don’t worry; your insurance company will not raise your premiums, at least not yet. While telematics is currently in use, we’ll see widespread adoption by insurance companies in the coming years.

Big Data

Insurance agencies base their premium numbers on risk factor. Factors they consider in determining your risk include:

Age
Gender
Profession
ZIP code
Marital Status
Make, Model and Year of Vehicle

After determining your risk factor, the insurance agency issues you your monthly premium. So what is Big Data? According to Forbes Magazine, Big Data refers to the amount of digital information that is generated and stored, and the sophisticated analytics procedures that are being developed to make sense of the data collected. In layman’s terms, this means agencies are collecting data about you and determining the likelihood of your involvement in an accident through predictive statistical modelling.

Crash-Avoidance Technology

With forward-collision warnings, blind-spot monitoring and lane-departure warnings, the Insurance Information Institute (III) reports that the number of predicted auto collisions will drop dramatically. III further reports that the improvements in safety technology have led to lower fatality rates. Because of these developments, insurance agencies could lower their premium rates. But there is a catch here. Insurance companies haven’t yet compiled enough information on crash avoidance technology. Agencies are still gathering information on product liability claims. If product reliability claims should rise, insurance premiums will reflect this. So, where one area in your policy may give you a discount, another area may charge you for more coverage.

Comparison Websites

To stay competitive in the market, insurance agencies are offering auto insurance policies at discounted rates on insurance comparison websites. According to Property Casualty 360, in offering their services online through mobile applications and websites, insurance agencies are working to make it easier to file claims, get quotes and make appointments with agents to discuss policies. Comparison sites like CoverHound take your information and run it through a variety of filters. After evaluating your information, these sites show you the most affordable price ranges from top-rated insurance agencies. After you select the policy you want, you will continue through the portal to sign on for said policy.

Self-Driving Vehicles

With Google and Tesla working on self-driving cars, insurance agencies will have to establish insurance policies that take into consideration operating maintenance and product liability, such as is considered under crash-avoidance technology. Automated vehicles will engage in front-end braking and lane-departure warnings. Automated vehicles will also allow drivers to take control of the vehicle, going from automated to manual driving. This chosen balance of automation versus manual driving is likely to play a big factor in the premium prices a self-driving vehicle owner pays.

Driving technologies are evolving, and with it so is the auto insurance agency. Use these developments to save money when you renew or get a new auto policy.

Bio: Elaine Valarie is a ghost writer, curator, literature geek and author. She has several journals, articles and papers to her name. Writing is her passion. She writes about mostly all genres. She resides in Hoboken, Hudson County in New Jersey.

April 21, 2016

How Millennials Can Get Started Investing

Millennials, it’s time to grow your money!

If you are one of the millions of young adults in this country and you’ve been considering investing, congratulations! You’re already ahead of the majority of the other millennials out there. But don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. You still need to do the work to get the ball rolling. But what’s the best way to get started? It may seem difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some tips that can help you get started investing right away. Read more

April 18, 2016

How to Prepare Financially for Your First Baby

What you need to do to prepare financially for your first baby

Today we welcome a guest post from fellow blogger, Kate. Kate is the blogger behind the MaternityGlow blog, where she writes helpful tips & tricks for new parents.

It’s no surprise that becoming a parent for the first time can be ridiculously expensive and financially overwhelming.

My head began to spin just thinking about all hospital bills, baby expenses, and a college fund.

What should I do? Where should I start? Read more

April 4, 2016

Why You Should and How You Can Save More Money

For most of the nearly twenty years of our marriage, we never had any money in our savings account. Oh, we’d occasionally shove some money into the account for a week or two, but we’d always find a reason to take it out and spend it. Either we’d spend it because we needed it to pay bills (because we spent our bill-paying money on other stuff), an “unexpected” expense would rear its ugly head, or we’d see a “new and shiny” thing that we “needed”.

We read all the advice about paying yourself first, but, you see, that “didn’t apply to us” because we were “different”. We didn’t make as much as others. We had more expenditures than others. On and on the excuses went for many years. Read more

February 12, 2016

Northpointe Bank: 5% Interest and $50 Bonus

Here in the Frugal Farmer family, we’re big fans of local banking. Instead of using the large conglomerates, we do all of our banking at small local institutions. The reason for our patronage of smaller banks and credit unions as opposed to national or worldwide banks are threefold:

Personalized service and appreciation of our business
Competitive products
Support of small business

As small business owners ourselves, we’re constantly on the lookout for ways we can support other smaller and local businesses. Of course, we only support businesses that show exemplary management, products and services.

This is why we whole-heartedly support Northpointe Bank, located in Michigan and with lending centers in both Ohio and Indiana, Northpointe Bank offers banking, home mortgage lending and insurance as well.

I want $50 + 5% checking! Read more

January 26, 2016

Before You Go to College

Read this BEFORE you go to college

Last week I heard about a recent study conducted at the University of Minnesota showed that a full 20% of U of M students there had, at some point, worried that they wouldn’t have enough food to eat. Frankly, this statistic stunned me. Why on earth would a student choose college when they couldn’t even afford food to eat? Read more

December 17, 2015

5 Mistakes You Need to Avoid to Spend Money More Wisely

Money Mistakes You Need to Avoid

Greetings, Frugal Farmer friends! Today we welcome Tina Roth, a blogging cohort who blogs over at ProFinance blog

. Read this awesome article and then head over and check out the great articles on Tina’s blog.

True, mistakes do give you the chance to learn, but repetitive mistakes lower the odds of success. Making one or two mistakes early in the life is okay – but make too many of them when you are all grown up, and you are sure to fail in life.

When we become adults, everyone around us expects us to be responsible with money. During teenage years, we recklessly spend money. But when we are in our late 20s or early 30s, we have to take care of it to secure our future.

It is that time in life when committing a mistake results in paying a hefty price. However, a lot of people still commit mistakes. In this article, I’ll discuss some common mistakes with money, made by us, and how to avoid them. Read more

November 11, 2015

When Frugality Was Normal

When Frugality was Normal

In one of my very favorite books, given to me by a friend who knows of my love for the era known as The Great Depression, the subject of frugality arises often. The book, How to Cook a Wolf , written by MFK Fisher, is described on the back cover as being:

Written to inspire courage in those daunted by wartime shortages.

The book, written by what seems to be a quite well-off woman well-versed in frugal living, shares the joy in living a frugal life and practical tips for doing so. You see, up until the early 1900’s, frugality was “normal” in America. It was the way of life. Phrases such as waste not, want not were commonplace in homes. To drive home the magnitude of the differences between life in America now and life in America 100+ years ago, let’s look at some statistics: Read more

October 16, 2015

How to Feed Your Family for $400 a Month Part 1

I’ve gotten several requests lately from readers asking how we feed our family of six for roughly $100 a week. We spend roughly $400-$425 dollars a month to feed our family. One sweet gal brought a smile to my face when she wrote “Do you mean $400 twice a month?” Nope. $400 for the entire month. As I started to think about how to share our tips, I realized that when I was looking online for ways to feed our family for cheap, I wanted details. Details about what they bought, how much they bought and what they served for meals.

So that is what this post (and part 2 of this post) will entail. I think you’ll be surprised to find that we feed our family relatively well on the little we spend. We buy only organic milk, flour, sugar and butter, for instance. We don’t eat a ton of junk. Here are the nitty gritty details on how we feed our family for $100 a week and on how you can feed your family for less too. Read more

October 5, 2015

Money and Marriage: Paying off Debt When Your Spouse Isn’t on Board

Money & Marriage: How to Manage When You’re Managing it Alone

Hannah over at Unplanned Finance wrote a great post last week about how it was tough when her and her husband first started to work on finances together. Those initial budget meetings were anything but fun. They often led to frustration and arguments. Now though, with some practice, Hannah and her hubby enjoy their budget meetings. They’ve got a system in place that’s working, and they’re enjoying seeing their financial picture get better each month.

Hannah and her hubby’s success in this area happened because they were both willing to work through the tough times and stick it out until they found a plan that worked for the both of them. However, that’s not the case with every couple. Many times money and marriage don’t work together: one spouse digs their feet in staunchly, absolutely refusing to be involved with any kind of a financial plan. Read more