Blogging Away Debt

In Debt and Want to Start a Blog? Here’s How.

I received a comment from a visitor who is looking to reduce debt and was wondering how she could start a blog. A fellow personal finance blogger wrote an excellent article on how to do it, and you can find her article here.

A few things that I will note is that I started my blog on Blogger.com. This is a free service that is owned by Google. The only problem with using a free site is that there is often times you cannot get into to your blog and you are limited with the things you can do.

I did recently move my blog to my own domain name and obtained very reasonable hosting. Depending on what company you use and the offers available, you can obtain hosting from $4.00/month to $12.00/month. The company I host with actually has an easy installation available for one of the most popular blogging platforms, WordPress. WordPress also has free hosting for blogs.

I believe that starting this blog was the best thing for me to do. I feel accountable because my words are out on the internet for anyone to read. When I have the urge to purchase something, I now think about my blog and my readers. Do I want to let them down?

If you decide to start a blog to help you reduce your debt, please let me know. Support is so important when making a big change in your life. In addition to this blog, I also am a member of the No Credit Needed Network. Even if you don’t have a blog, you can sign up over there and NCN will make a nice chart for you showing your starting debt and your progress. He’s also a great motivator and if he sees you straying from the path to become debt-free, he will send you an email showing his concern.

If you have any other questions, please let me know. I will do my best to answer, or provide links to information that will help you.

Ways I Save Money: Skip the Brand Names (usually)

by Tricia

Just because a product has a famous name on it, does it make it that much better? Not usually. Some of the products that have a well-known brand name are really just other products under a different label and some are even made by the same manufacturer as generic versions.

If you think about it, it makes sense that brand names are more expensive. They advertise more! That’s why you can see a logo and be able to tell what brand it is associated with. The swirls of Coke…the swish of Nike. We see tons of ads a day and that costs A LOT of money. So brand name products cost more to recoup the company’s advertising costs.

Whereas, the generic “no-name” brands do not advertise. They do not spend thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars perfecting the graphics on their packaging. They basically put out a product as inexpensively as they can and they pass the savings onto you.

Okay, there are sometimes differences with the taste of generic versus name brand. One thing I can think of is store brand mac & cheese versus Kraft mac & cheese. The Kraft version generally does taste “cheesier.” Personally, though, I like the more muted taste of the generic when made with the right amount of milk and margarine. So sometimes it is personal preference that needs to “rule” when deciding what product to purchase.

All things considered, we are largely a generic household. The only real exception would be when the brand-named items are on sale and they cost less than the generic. But overall, we are pretty happy with the bland packaging but not so bland taste of generic items. In fact, sometimes I think they taste better.

If you are willing, give generics a try and see if they work for you.