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Money, money, and money. That’s what most of us think about when it comes to living. Sure some of us love to live life to the fullest by not thinking about obstacles, but money hits most of us in the behind because almost everything these days require cold hard greens known as, money. Now earning money is the hardest part of growing up because when you’re a kid, your parents would be the ones giving you money for lunch or the ones that would buy you toys. As you get older into your teen years, you would realize that money is harder to obtain because your parents may not be the ones supporting you as much anymore. Now that you realize that you would have to work for money, how are you going to spend it?

The economy is in fact a lot worse than before and I don’t even know who I can blame it on? George W Bush? Scientists? We can’t really blame anyone for the economy changing because one way or another, we’re somehow at fault. Some of us may be contributing more to the economy change and some of us may be contributing a little. No matter what, we’re the ones at fault.

The Problem

As prices go higher in supplies, vegetables, wheat, the prices of grocery in markets and restaurants would change. The restaurants and markets don’t want to lose profit, so raising the prices will be the only way to cope with the new priced economy. As prices go up for daily necessities, some of us may not have the money to purchase everything we need, which includes food. The result is the government decides to raise the minimum wage to an amount more feasible to citizens, so they could purchase the same necessities as they did before. Here in California, the minumum wage changed 2 times in 2 years. The original minimum wage was $6.75 and it changed to $7.50 in 2007. We’re now in the year 2008 and the minimum wage here has raised to $8 per hour of work. The government thinks it was a good idea to have these raises in wages, but because of the wage increase, inflation kicked in and if you live in California, you would notice that everything is going up in price. The only thing that I know that is still cheap is the dollar menus at McDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy’s. Hell no I’m not going to eat fast food every single day, so something has to be done to the financial plans.

Being Frugal

First of all, what does frugal really mean? There are a lot of post titles and even domain names being used with the word “frugal” in it. Here’s the definition and it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand.

1. economical in use or expenditure; prudently saving or sparing; not wasteful: a frugal manager.
2. entailing little expense; requiring few resources; meager; scanty: a frugal meal.

Soooo…the point of being frugal means that you’re saving rather than spending or using. This could be anything from using too much resources, too much money, or too much gas when in fact you could be saving more on your part to help yourself and/or your family. It isn’t always a bad thing if you’re being called frugal because it could help you in most cases rather than hurt you.

Saving Too Much

First I’m going to discuss how it could be a bad thing to save too much money. When you become a frugal spender, you tend you save money whenever you can, but sometimes even at times where you do not need to save. For example, if you’re at an amusement park and you’re very thirsty, the first thing you would want is to purchase a bottle of water or a bottle of soda. After seeing the price tag of $3 and $4 respectively, you tell yourself that you won’t need to purchase it and would rather wait until you go home. Well, the human body needs liquid (especially water) when it is dehydrated, so if you decide to be frugal and save on purchasing some liquid.

Because you decided to save some money, you probably felt miserable because your body was just way too dehydrated. This is an example of saving way too much money. I know it’s not one of the best examples, but I tried . A personal experience of mine is my family. My family are very frugal spenders that save money whenever there’s a chance to. I had no idea my parents had so much money hidden and just within 2 years, they purchased a used BMW X5 and a Mercedes ML320. I’m not trying to brag, but I just wondered where that money came from because I want a new car to drive…:-( . When I talked to my dad about the cars, he told me that it was what he always wanted, to drive a luxury European car. With that said, I knew that he has deprived himself for a very very long time and just barely realized that he should spend the money now before there is no time left. My parents still have a long time to live, but you should have fun whenever you can.

Having fun is what a person needs because when you get older, you would realize all the fun times you missed because you were being too frugal. Thankfully my wife has taught me that life is all about fun and it takes your wherever it wants, so you might as well make the best out of it. You never know what may happen tomorrow.

Spending Too Much

When you decide not to save and be a frugal spender, you may be spending way too much money. Purchasing your daily, monthly, or yearly necessities is all you need as the bare minimum. Of course you would need to spend money to have fun (like I mentioned above), but some spenders go overboard and purchase everything they see. These type of spenders aren’t just window shoppers because they purchase everything they like in a store.

I’m going to base this again on my personal life. My aunt, Judy, loves to spend a lot of money on things that are pretty much considered useless. She loves Anime, so she purchases a lot of Anime books, DVDs, and little nick-nacks. The funny thing is, she never opens any of these and never has the time to watch the DVDs or read the books. She also buys a lot of clothes, which is usually what women loves (no offense), but the tags are still on more than half of her clothes. I have asked Judy why she purchases so much junk and not save money, but there was no comment to that. She works very hard to earn her money, but in the end, she donates most of her stuff to charity (good in some cases).

Even if you’re rich and don’t have to worry about financial issues, you shouldn’t spend too much money. Lets say you’re rich because you own a few high-end stocks, but if the stocks drop down in the stock market, you will lose practically everything. If you were to have saved some money, you wouldn’t end up living poor because you made a good decision.

What Do You Prefer?

My opinion is still towards the “spending too much” side. I think it is good to really save money because it would pay off in the long run. My wife tells me that it is bad to deprive myself, but I do think it is good to save money. It could be my parents that are the ones to blame for my current personality towards spending, but if you think of it, the economy is changing way too much. Saving a few cents would be a good idea. What do you guys think?

MoneyNing Review

Background - MoneyNing About Page

David Ning is the owner of this terrific blog, MoneyNing. He is one of those guys that strives to become wealthy because he didn’t come from a wealthy family. His parents didn’t make much income and his mom fasted 1,487 days from dining out and purchasing anything unnecessary. In 1989, his family decided to move to Canada, but his father was forced to stay behind because he was afraid that he would not be able to find a new job. This actually drove his father to finding a better and higher paying job that allowed David to have all the gadgets and toys that a rich kid would have.

David has a Masters degree in Computer Engineering, but he realized how difficult it was to find a job because that industry wasn’t as popular back in 2003. He found a job at a golf course picking up balls and it made him realize that he needed a full-time job. Now this wasn’t his first hard money earning job because he worked part time at a fish and chip restaurant for 10 hours a day being a chef when he was still attending school. This all paid off when his self-rich uncle offered him a job, which allowed him to meet his current wife. Because he wants to have a family and a home, he considers money a very important factor to his life.

Tips And Strategies

There are 3 things that David stands by and hopes to master.

1. Earn as much as he can
2. Save as much as he can, as soon as possible
3. Learn as much as he can

What you can expect from MoneyNing.com is that David pretty much writes down all his life situations and how he works at it. There are a lot of tips and strategies that are discussed on the blog that helps everyone save some money. There are a lot of topics that are discussed such as investing, money tips, retirement, stocks, 401 plan, and more. Most of the published articles on this blog are lists that helps you save money.

Interesting Posts

I’ve been a long time visitor to MoneyNing and I learn a lot of things from his articles. I can basically say that the way my family and I lived is very similar to the way David and his family lived theirs. My family came from a very poor town in China, where the job for the residents there were to walk into the fields to farm. I’m lucky I didn’t have to endure that life, but I know how difficult it would be if I had to.

Anyways, here are a list of posts that taught me a little thing or two about saving money and spending wisely.

• Stretching Our Dollars - Continue to you or wear what you have without the urge to buy a new replacement. Learn to stretch your dollar for months or even years.
  
• Tips on Budgeting and Saving Money - Budget your financial spendings by having a list of what you spend on. Know where you’re spending too much and cut back a bit. Apart from that, cut back on your electricity usage, avoid dining out for lunch, and purchase from outlets rather than shopping malls.
  
• Great Entrepreneurs Suck At Investing - The best investors are the ones that worry about the potential bad outcome. Some Entrepreneurs are very aggressive, which results in risking everything.
  
• Buy Low and Sell High - Buy the stock that no one else does and sell it when people catch on.
  

The Critique

David, you run a very great blog here and I’m also sure that you’re one of my regular readers too You can consider this review a token of my appreciation for always having me on your link roundup posts. Anyways, when there is a good, there’s always a bad, which I’m sure you know of. Here are a few things that requires some of your attention:

• A much needed archive page. You publish a lot of great articles with tips and strategies, but it may be useless if you don’t make it easy to be found. I suggest taking a look at the archive plugin, which would gather up all your posts automatically Since you use tags a lot, you should also try to find out a way to get that organized on a page too.
• The next thing you need is a contact page because you may be missing out on a lot of opportunities by not having an easy contact page. I use Contact Form 7, which is very easy to use.
• Rather than monetizing with all those Google ads, you should start selling advertising opportunities. A lot of those Google ads are scams and I’m sure you don’t want one of your readers to be scammed.
• A lot of your readers are probably experienced in the financial field, so if you create a forum, you should be able to utilize that with your blog.

That’s pretty much it David. I hope you like this review and I appreciate all the tips you teach me when I read your blog posts
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