One of the biggest reasons people don’t have a budget is because of time constraints. Especially when it comes to starting your budget, gathering all of the information you need and picking a budgeting program or designing your own budget spreadsheet can be time consuming.

Luckily, a budget doesn’t need to be very complicated to be effective. And if you follow these steps, you can easily manage your money in less than ten minutes a day. In fact, if you’re efficient, you may be able to budget in as little as ten minutes per week.

Start by Getting Your Finances Organized

Nearly all of the transactions that you need to make a budget are included in your checking account and credit card accounts. Actually, your credit card payments are also included in your checking account, so for a more simple budget, you can track your finances by simply keeping a running tab of your checking account.

Most people pay their bills a few times each month. When you do, simply list all of your transactions in a spreadsheet. In your spreadsheet, add a column for each transaction with the date, source (ATM, debit card, check number, or direct deposit), amount, account balance, budget category and description. Make sure that you check your online banking so that you can add any debit and direct transactions to your spreadsheet.

If you also want to show some detail about your credit card transactions, you can add this too, but you should use a separate list so that you don’t account for credit card spending twice. This part of your budgeting can usually be done in a few minutes per day or less than a half hour per week.

[Ben’s Note: This is one of the reasons why I ;put most of our expenses on our Blue Cash credit card and use online bill pay for most everything else. Being able to download and analyze all your spending in a spreadsheet or personal finance software makes it easy to see where your money is going.]

Summarize Your Spending Once a Month

Now that you’ve got a list of all of your major financial transactions, use it to create a monthly budget summary. A budget summary is really very simple. It shows your income and expenses for each category. To compute it, you already have all of the information in your checking spreadsheet.

If you are good with spreadsheets, you can easily create a pivot table that will summarize the transactions for you in just a few clicks of the mouse. For help with this step, you can use a video tutorial on how to create a budget spreadsheet.

When you are finished with this step, you will have a summarized list of each expense and income category. It is essentially a simplified budget, but it is all you really need. If you want to create a more detailed or easier to read budget, continue to the next step.

Enter the Summarized Information Into a Budget Template

The previous steps shouldn’t have taken long to execute, so you may have some time left to make your budget a little more detailed and easier to read. After all, one month’s worth of expenses typically doesn’t include things like your annual property taxes, income taxes, and insurance payments. That’s because many expenses only come up once or twice a year.

To account for these, you can enter the information you calculated in the step above to a household budget template. This will add a portion of the annual fees into each month’s budget so you can have a better picture of where you stand financially. This step could take as long as an hour or two to set up the first time, but each month after that you should be able to do it in just a few minutes.

While this method of budgeting is very simple, it is effective because you can easily customize it and keep it as simple as possible. This will save you a lot of time as compared to other budgeting techniques, and is a great way to start organizing your finances in the hopes of saving more money.

Chris Snelling has been writing articles about money related topics for over twelve years. His most recent endeavor has been creating Budget Ways, a resource devoted to budgeting and saving money.

Even though it seems an insurmountable task, it is best to get your finances together as quickly as you can. Organize your finances now, and you can begin digging out of your debt hole sooner, or get on the right financial path for a successful future.

Importance of Organizing Your Finances

One of the biggest reasons that people overrun their incomes, and find themselves paying overdraft fees or getting into debt is that they don’t know what is happening with their finances. When you don’t know where your money comes from, and how it moves through your personal economy, you set yourself up for failure.

Without the knowledge of where your money has been — and where it is going — it becomes easy to spend more than you earn. Plus, without the proper organization and planning, you could easily spend money on things that you don’t need (and perhaps don’t even want).

When you organize your finances, you can see your fixed expenses, track your spending, and make plans for a more successful financial future. Putting off your finances can lead to a future of indebtedness and an inability to meet your money objectives for important milestones like retirement.

Take the Time to Organize Your Finances

Once you realize that your financial situation needs help, start by organizing your finances. If you haven’t done much in terms of planning your finances in the past, this might actually take some time. It’s worth it to block off two or three hours (or more) to get the basic organizational structure of your financial life in place.

In order to make things easier, set up a budget app on your computer. You can use software that is meant for your computer, or you can sign up for a free account with some sort of web application. It is possible to find a number of free and freemium money management programs that can help you keep track of your money, create budgets and even plan for the future.

Keep track of your checking account(s), of course, but you should also set up a way to track your savings, and your credit cards. You can also track your investments if you want (although you may want to set those up on another day).

Start by figuring out where you stand. Set up your software to show you where your money is right now, and then, from this point forward, begin tracking all of your spending. Even on your credit cards. Go back through bank statements and credit card statements to see what you have been spending your money on.

Look for money leaks; most of us waste money on items of little importance. Once your identify these leaks, you can try to avoid spending on those things in the future. And, of course, keeping track of your spending in your personal finance software will help you cut back on the spending that leads you to overrun your income regularly.

Bottom Line

The longer you wait to organize your finances, the worse your situation will become. The costs in fees, as well as the lost opportunity costs for saving and investing, will add up to quite a bit. Take the time now to get your finances in order, and you will be better equipped to plan for success with your money.

1. Spending More Than You Earn
The root of most financial problems is the inability to control spending. No matter your income level, if you spend more than you earn you will be broke and in debt. Whether you have $10,000 in income or $1,000,000 in income, you must spend less than you earn.

2. Not Doing an Annual Review of Your Finances
It’s “okay” to make a money mistake for a little while if you are unaware of it. Real problems start if that mistake sustains itself for years on end. Sitting down at a specific time every year to review your finances can ward off these problems.

You might notice an extra fee on your cable bill due to a data entry error. Or you can make it a habit to comparison shop your car insurance and home internet costs in order to negotiate for the best rate. They say ignorance is bliss, but it can cost you dearly.

3. Over Paying for Convenience
It’s easy to justify spending money when it is convenient. You don’t plan out your meals and find nothing in the fridge to eat, so you go out to a restaurant and spend enough money to feed you off of groceries for a week. You need your coffee in the morning, but instead of getting up a little bit early to make it for pennies per cup you spend $5 at Starbucks. Paying for convenience is fine, but do it all the time and in excess and you will always wonder why you never got ahead financially.

4. Avoiding Tough Decisions
Sometimes life is tough. Sometimes your income goes down or disappears. Sometimes your bills go up dramatically. During those times you have a choice: you can try to finance the gap between what you make and what you spend, or you can start cutting items from the budget.

Having an argument with your spouse and whether to cut cable or not isn’t fun, so you avoid the conversation even though you could really use $100 per month to buy groceries. At the end of the day if you have the necessities of life: food, water, shelter, clothing on your back, your health, and a way to generate income to live, you’ll be okay.

5. Not Protecting Your Credit Score
A bad credit score can cost you thousands of dollars in interest. People with bad scores are seen as credit risks, there’s no doubt your credit score impacts your interest rates. It might cost you $1,000 on a car loan or $40,000 on a home mortgage to have a bad credit score. That’s a mistake when you can improve your credit score by making your payments on time and lowering your overall debt utilization.

6. Spending Impulsively
A big mistake many people make is buying impulsively. They see something they want (or think they want, thanks to clever commericals), and it is right in front of them so they buy it. A few weeks later they discover they don’t really use what they thought was so important, and have wasted money.

Before making a big purchase, sleep on it. Your emotional craving for the item should die down after a while and you may come to your senses with the realization you didn’t really need it in the first place.

7. Avoiding Preventative Maintenance
Doesn’t it make sense to spend a few dollars now in order to save hundreds of dollars later? Avoiding maintenance is one of the easiest mistakes to make because it doesn’t usually immediately impact you. You avoid some car maintenance and it saves you $300 now, but the engine blows up a year from now costing you $3,000 for it to be rebuilt.

Or maybe you live an unhealthy lifestyle and don’t exercise. It doesn’t cost you much today to sit on the couch, but when you have a heart attack or stroke earlier than you should the cost will be real. Spend the time and money necessary for preventative maintenance and avoid the major costs on the back end.

8. Thinking Everything is an Emergency
It is wise to have an emergency fund handy for when things go wrong. Having 6 to 12 months of living costs set aside really protects you from unemployment or big disasters. But even if you’ve been smart enough to build an emergency fund, you can start to think everything is an emergency. That’s a mistake that can whittle your emergency fund down below what you really need, and when the actual emergency comes along you aren’t financially prepared.

9. Letting Compound Interest Work Against You
Compound interest is a beautiful thing if you are the one with the money being lent out. If you deposit funds into a savings account, you are letting the bank borrow from you to lend to others. They pay you interest for this privilege. On the flip side if you are carrying a balance on a credit card or taking out payday loans, compound interest works against you.

10. Paying Your Bills Blind
A simple mistake to make is to simply pay your bills without looking at them in detail. Every bill you receive has a summary of the charges and then a breakdown showing what you were charged. It is easy for companies to have data entry “mistakes” that throw an extra charge in on your account. If you don’t review the bill it can easily slip past you. While setting up online billpay and automatic payments is a good thing because it helps you avoid late fees, be sure to check the actual statement to make sure you were charged the right amount.

Be aware, not all checking accounts are free, and some of them have hidden fees; those are the ones you want to stay away from. Below are four reviews of checking accounts that are worth your time to consider opening up before you leave for school.

ING Electric Orange Checking Account

If you missed my article about the ING products, go checkout the electric orange checking and orange savings account review. This is a great checking account for college students. You can do all of your banking online, which is definitely a benefit for college students, and there are absolutely NO fees associated with it.

The main downside is that you have to mail in checks for deposit, or set up another checking account to transfer money. (Or you could sign up for direct deposit into your Electric Orange account.)

The Campus Edge Checking Account by Bank of America

Bank of America has some good financial products. This is the account that I had while I was in school at the University of Florida. There are no fees, and all you need is $25.00 for an initial deposit to open up the account. After that, there is no minimum balance. BOA will also enroll you for free into their “keep the change” program which rounds your purchase up to the nearest dollar and puts the change into a separate savings account for you.

They’ll also match give you a 100% contribution match for the first three months. This could make it easier for you to balance your check book, because all of your purchases will be rounded to the nearest dollar, making it easier to figure out your balance. Convenience is the biggest advantage to a Bank of America checking account. Bank of America has a ton of branches so an ATM isn’t usually hard to find.

USAA Free Checking

The free checking account from USAA is only available if you, your spouse, or your parents served in the military or are USAA members.  Since USAA is used to serving service members deployed around the globe it’s easy for them to provide the same great service to you while you’re away at school.  With features like USAA Deposit@Home and Deposit@Mobile it’s easy to deposit checks from school.  The account is very competitive, with free overdraft protection, free checks, free billpay, and no monthly fees.

Perkstreet Financial

An option for college students who want to earn rewards when they spend is the PerkStreet Financial cash back debit card. This checking account provides you with a debit card that allows you to earn cash back on your purchases. There are no fees and no minimums with this FDIC-insured account, and you can withdraw cash from a network of more than 37,000 ATMs. You can have money directly deposited into this online bank account, or mail deposit checks (or transfer from another account). A great way to earn rewards and get a little extra cash as a student.

College Student Checking Accounts

One of the most important things you can do as you establish your independent financial identity is to open your own checking account. If you are a college student, you want to be able to find the best checking account that meets your needs while at home and away. While many banks and credit unions offer “student” accounts, recent developments in banking make it possible for you to open a superior checking account that may not be labeled specifically as a student account.

You will want to consider what is most important to you in a bank as you shop around. If you prefer to be able to go into a bank, an online checking account may not be best for you. However, if you deal mostly electronically, and have no need to enter a brick and mortar bank, an online account can help you dodge the fees that seem to be cropping up everywhere these days. Look for a bank account that has no minimum balance or activity requirements, and try avoid those with monthly fees. If you plan to write checks, look for a bank with unlimited check-writing privileges. You should also consider the reputation the financial institution has for customer service.  Your bank can make a big difference in how you manage your money; choose carefully.

Opening a Student Checking Account
So, get on it. Go and check out these checking accounts. Believe me, sticking your money under your dorm bed won’t work. You never know when your roommate or their friends might need some extra cash and decide to help themselves. Watch out with your debit card, though – it’s so easy to swipe that thing. Make sure you set up a budget for the month, and take out cash for items like entertainment and food. Otherwise, you’ll debit card swipe yourself to oblivion, and non-sufficient fund charges are no fun.

If you’re getting ready to head off to school, check out this article on decorating your dorm room on a budget. We also review the best student credit cards as well as student health insurance options and how you can compare them with eHealthInsurance. If you’re looking for some cash to put into your new checking account, look through the list of ways you can make extra money in college.

This review of the best checking accounts for college students is part of the College Student Money Guide.

I showed how the act of tracking each job before it’s printed and assigning it to part of the budget causes us to more careful with what we print. I ended my discussion with two questions.

• Are you tracking your spending against your budget?
• What system do you have in place to monitor your expenses?

Personal Budgeting Styles

The example I gave was of a very detailed tracking system and Plonkee brought up the point that such precise tracking wouldn’t work well for her:

“I don’t know – there’s a limit to how much tracking is worthwhile. I’m not very detail oriented and would struggle to keep up with anything that was in depth. I prefer to give myself allowances. I can spend whatever I like, on whatever I like, but the total budget for *frills and frippery* is limited each month.”

I definitely understand where she’s coming from, in a financial confession earlier this year I admitted that I hate budgeting.  Of course ctreit sounds like he feels the opposite when he shared how he budgets and tracks his spending:

“When we track our expenses, we are very diligent. We include every single dollar we spend. After all, even the afternoon candy bar for 75 cents adds up to 20 bucks or so in a month. There is one big benefit when we track our expenses: we become very careful about spending money because we don’t want to face the music at the end of the month if we spend money stupidly. I for one would not want my wife to reprimand me for foolish spending.”

Our Credit Card Tracking System

I think each person has their own personal budgeting style that works best for them.  For example, when I asked, “are you tracking your spending against your budget?” the answer could be that you sit down with your credit card statement at the end of every month and see where you spent your money and how it compares to what you had budgeted.

We charge everything on our credit card, our system for monitoring our expenses is to leverage the technology of American Express and Visa to track and categorize each expenditure.  Then we can can download the transactions into Quicken to categorize anything that was missed and compare it against our budget.

I don’t what makes different budgeting styles fit better with one person or another.  I suppose it’s partly your personality and partly how you were raised to manage and think about money.  So regardless of what system for tracking and monitoring your expenses you use, the important thing is that you have and use a system at all.  If you have one, great.  If not, here are some tools for tracking and monitoring you can play around with to see what fits you best.  Credit cards for spending and tracking and personal finance software for monitoring and analysis.

Credit Cards

• American Express True Earnings
• Discover More Card

Personal Finance Software

• You Need a Budget
• Quicken Online
• Wesabe

If not, here’s a story that might convince you to track your money more closely. It begins several years ago at my old job, where it was open season on our office printer.

Out of Control Spending

The cost of paper, ink, and printers was part of the general office overhead budget and kept growing each year.  The creeping costs were understandable, the table next to the printer was always covered with stacks of printed pages.  Some of them were printed and forgotten, they would sit there for a week before being tossed into the recycle bin.  The table was littered with mapquest directions, personal emails, order confirmation pages from Best Buy, all sorts of random things that had been printed.

Organized Spending

Now fast forward to the printer table at my current job and guess how many sheets of printed and forgotten paper there are lying around the printer table. Zero. 

That’s because the new company outsources all of the printing so every page you print has to be billed to a project. Every time you print a document a dialog box pops up and you have to decide which part of the budget the cost of printing will come from.

Tracking Our Spending

Since there’s a system in place to track and account for each piece of paper that’s printed people don’t waste it.  We’re not discouraged in any way from printing. If we need something printed we don’t have to ask or justify it, just simply pick which part of the budget it comes out of.  Of course that act of tracking the expense and tying it to a project budget keeps us accountable and helps avoid waste.

How Do Your Track Your Spending?

So the question is, what areas of spending in your personal finances would you like to improve?  Are you tracking your spending against your budget? What system do you have in place to monitor your expenses?

Until you have one, your actual spending may be more like a scattered heap of unused and wasted paper rather than the clean and organized budget that you strive to follow.

Face it, America loves movies. We embrace great actors, and we talk about classic movies all the time in general conversation. But, I’m sure that you’ve noticed the price of a movie ticket going up quite a bit in the last 10 years. Most nice movie theaters are now $9.00 to $10.00 for a movie ticket. And the food, that’s a whole different story. We know that the food at the movie theater is massively marked up, but people still buy it.

These days it’s tough for a family of four to go see a movie together without paying $60 to $75. That seems ridiculously expensive, so here are some simple tips for saving money at the movies.

Go To a Matinee. This is the most simple way to save money at the movies. Most people like going to the movies at night, but if you choose the matinee, you’ll save $2 to $3 per ticket. If you’re taking your children to the latest kid’s movie, go during the day. They’ll have a better time, and you’ll save some money. Plus, the crowds are usually a little smaller during the day.

Patron Your Locally Owned Movie Theater. Like many industries, the movie theater industry has been taken over by the mega plex movie theater companies such as AMC, Regal, and United Artists. However, there are still locally run movie theaters that offer less movie options and less amenities, but you can still get the movie theater experience for a little cheaper. When we lived in Gainesville, Florida, there was a local movie theater that offered all of the latest movies, but they only charged $6 per ticket at night. It was a great deal, and there were less crowds at this theater.

Join the Rewards Program. Some corporate run theaters such as Regal Cinemas offer a rewards program where you get points every time you buy a ticket. We’ve bought concessions food and received free tickets simply by filling out a form for a free rewards membership.

Check The Local Newspaper For Promotions. In West Palm Beach, Florida, the local newspaper offers free tickets to one of the latest movies out if you go and pick them up at the newspaper’s office. They might try to get you to buy a newspaper subscription, but all you need to do is simply say, “no thanks”.

Eat Before You Go. If you come to the movies on a full stomach, you’ll be less likely to be lured into the magnificent scent of movie theater popcorn. Fresh popcorn is one of the greatest smells on earth, and movie theaters know it. That’s why they jack up the price, because the smell sells itself. if you’re taking your kid to the movies on a special occasion, then go all out and get him or her popcorn and candy, but if it’s just you and your spouse going out to the movies, eat before you go. You’ll save a lot of money by skipping the concessions stand.

My philosophy about saving money is that you don’t need to pay retail for anything in life. If you continue to find ways to save money in every aspect of your life, you’ll start to see a surplus of money in your bank account at the end of the month. Use that surplus to invest and give to others and you’ll become a wealthy person. Don’t pay retail prices for the movies.

These money saving tips are part of the series on saving money on entertainment.  So far we’ve covered how to save money on your television bill.

One option is to simply spend less on gifts, another alternative is to earn some extra income. There are many ways to do this, but many of us want to find the quickest and easiest way to do it. This is tough to accomplish, because as we all know that making money hardly ever comes easy. Here’s a list of ten different ways you can earn some extra cash for the holiday season.

Surveys & Trial Offers You can fill out surveys or trial offers on sites like FusionCash or CashDuck. When I was using Fusion Cash on a daily basis back in 2007, I made $134.50 in three weeks.

Sell on Craigslist. Pick out 10 to 20 items around your house that you can sell for $5.00 or more, and start listing them on Craigslist. It’s free to list stuff for sale, and they give you up to four photos to upload for free. I highly recommend putting photos in your listing. Two years ago, my wife and I sold a ton of furniture and home accessories all on Craigslist, because we didn’t want to move a bunch of stuff that we weren’t in love with.

Resell on eBay. This is a little risky, but I saw that Wal-Mart is selling a playstation 3 for $399 plus a $100 gift card with the purchase. If you bought the playstation, resold it on ebay, you’d only be out the tax. You would have a $100 gift card to spend on gifts at Wal-Mart. Be careful on this one. Only buy something that you know you can resell for the same amount of money.

Do Some Odd Jobs. Do you own a pressure washer? Print out fifty fliers and stick them in the doors around your neighborhood. If you get five jobs out of it, you’ll make a few hundreds bucks for the holidays. Do you love dogs? Put out some fliers to start walking your neighbor’s dogs.

Change W-4 at Work. This sounds weird, but SO many people end up with a surplus of tax dollars withheld at the end of the year. Lower your W-4 withholding number to what it should accurately be, and you’ll start getting more money put in your paycheck. Don’t let the government get a free loan on your money!

House or Pet Sit over Thanksgiving. Many people go out of town for Thanksgiving and they hate knowing that their house is just sitting there. Solicit your services to watch their house or pet. You can also water their plans and take in their mail.

Start Blog Writing Online. It will take too long to start making any money from starting your own blog. Christmas will have come and gone long before you earn a few bucks.  Instead, start writing for someone else’s blog. Check out Problogger Job Board for tons of different paid blog writing jobs. Pick a subject that you are passionate about.

Perform a Research Study. I know, you don’t want to be a lab rat, but if you live near a research university or hospital, they might have chances to make $500 to $2,000 participating in a study. I did three studies when I was in college, and I made a total of $1,900 doing them! I am still here, and I haven’t grown a third arm yet.

Make Crafts for Sale. Christmas time is the peak season for all things involved with crafts. If you are crafty, then start making Christmas ornaments, embroidered kitchen towels, wall hangings, door decorations, and anything else you can think of. You don’t even have to purchase a booth at a local fair or craft expo you can sell your items online at Etsy.com.

Free Money. You can earn an extra $50 when you sign up for a TradeKing account or a ShareBuilder account and make a trade by the end of the month. They give you $50 for trying out their service, although it won’t cover your whole gift budget it should be enough to pay for at least one present.

There are a tons of different ways to make money, but it takes some effort on your part. All you need is a little bit of drive and creativity to earn extra income. Do you have any other ideas to share with everyone? You can leave it in the comments below.

Budgeting for Christmas Gifts

Many people go nuts with Christmas and holiday shopping.  I know I’m guilty of it; I tend to wait to buy certain items because I know the deals will be so good in the Christmas shopping season.  But, if you want to live a life of building wealth and making wise financial decisions, you need to prepare for Christmas. 

Hopefully, you’ve already started thinking about how much money you will spend this holiday season, and maybe you’ve already started saving for it.  I am a big believer in preparing for Christmas to the point where you don’t need to use your credit cards, so here are four steps for building your shopping fund for the holidays.

Step 1: List out all of the people that you will buy a gift for this season.  Make sure you don’t go overboard on this.  My wife and I have started prioritizing our gift giving to parents, nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, best friends, and each other.

Step 2: Put a dollar amount next to each name on your list.  This represents the total amount you can spend on them for a gift.  Then, total it up and analyze if the number you came up with is realistic for your budget.  If it’s not, tweak some of your numbers until the total amount looks reasonable for your financial situation.  Once you’ve come up with a total amount, you now have a number for your shopping fund.

Step 3: There are seven weeks until Christmas.  If you haven’t set any money aside for the holidays yet, start putting aside money each week for your Christmas fund.  Also, any extra income that comes in during this time should be thrown in your Christmas fund such as a holiday bonus, quarterly bonus, or side income.  You may also want to consider putting extra money in the fund for Christmas entertainment and family trips that you may take over the holidays.

Step 4: Don’t let your Christmas fund suck the fun out of the holidays.  If you set aside $50 for your brother or sister and you spent $53, don’t freak out.  It won’t break your bank.  Let the budget be your guide.  Just look for a better deal or a coupon on the next gift you purchase.

Trust me, if you’re following these steps, chances are you’ll be doing much better than the majority of the population that has no clue how much they are really spending on the holidays until they get their credit card statement in January.

Making Christmas Special

Remember to give back to others in need during this time of year if you can.  It seems we all run a little short on money during the holidays so the best way to make sure you can donate is to budget in a certain amount for charitable giving ahead of time.  These acts of kindness are what really make the holidays so special. 

Also, don’t get caught up in getting the perfect gift for a loved one.  Instead get caught up in spending quality time with the people you love the most.  Thinking about your finances now will allow you to think about what is most important during the holiday season.

Mobile shopping can save you both time and money.  You can use your cell phone to help you shop around and get the best deal possible or you can use your mobile device to purchase things online.

The use of your cell phone to help you shop and get better deals is quickly catching on with younger and even older generations. Mobile shopping is becoming increasingly popular as cell phone technology and network speeds continue to improve.

There are many tools out there to help you, and we will go over a few different ways to use your cell phone to help you be a better shopper.

Product Research

Doing your research is key if you want to save money when you’re out shopping. Some people do plenty of research before they leave their house about the best deals, but there area always certain products and deals that come up while you are out shopping that you did not research. Epinions is a great website to access from your mobile web browser to help you perform product research on the go. The website is comprised of a social network of users that write product reviews and rate each other’s reviews its usefulness.

Comparison Shopping

One of the hardest parts about shopping is that you get caught up in the moment of a good deal. You may find the LCD TV you want for a given price, and it looks to be a good deal, but you’re unsure if you can get it for a better deal somewhere else. Using your cell phone helps you figure this out right away, not when you get back home after you bought the TV.

Try Price Grabber on your mobile web browser to compare products and prices. FruCall is another great website that gives you three different options for comparing prices and products. You can call their 1-800 number, text them the ISBN number, or check out their mobile website.

Capturing Information and Social Shopping

My first experience with using a cell phone to help me shop was when my wife took a picture of a kitchen appliance that we had been looking at and sent it to my phone to view. Many of you have cell phones that capture photos and videos, but watch out, because many stores don’t like you taking photos or video of their products. They don’t want it getting in the wrong hands, their competitors! So, try to respect the wishes of a retailer when taking photos or videos of a certain product.

Dressing rooms are becoming social networks at places like Bloomingdales and the Gap. This article from Forbes Magazine talks about retailers beginning to offer interactive dressing mirrors that will take a photo of each outfit you put on, so you can look at it again later after you’ve tried everything on. Bloomingdales and Prada are also installing webcams and microphones into the dressing rooms to allow friends or family members to log on to their website and see you in your new outfit in the dressing room. I sure hope those webcams have good security on them!

Shopping On Your Cell Phone

mShopper is a newer web application that you can access from your cell phone to shop online. mShopper will search for the best online deal and help you make a quick purchase straight from your cell phone. You set up your account’s financial information and shipping information and saves it. When you want to buy something, type in your pin number, and your item will be purchased and sent to your door step.

You can also use your mobile web browser to shop online and buy items straight from your cell phone. You may want to check a store’s website first before you purchase it, because many retailers offer web deals to encourage online spending. Retailers save money when you purchase online, because it costs them less to deliver the good or service to you.

Mobile Shopping & Banking

So, are you ready to start shopping on your cell phone? Take the time to learn the ins and outs of mobile shopping and you can save yourself both time and money.  Cell phones aren’t limited to just shopping, you can use them to access your money as well.  For information on mobile banking, check out our mobile banking review.