Photography and saving money

Well, to start off I'd like to say that I've done an absolutely terrible job budgeting. And up until this point, I didn't really have a need, but with the economy and having a lot of new expenses. I have decided that I need to pay closer attention to where my money goes. So, good thing I decided that THIS week AFTER I bought a whole bunch of new photography stuff!

Last week I bought a camera flash, light meter, and one step gray card, white balance adjuster, and exposure aid! The one step aid is really 2 steps, but still it's nice to have! I bought the flash on eBay and the hot shoe was damaged, but the seller was not aware of this and he quickly refunded me the amount for the replacement part. I was so excited! Now it's fixed and it works great! I joined a local photography club and I was inspired by the studio lighting setup that this one guy had. So I set out to buy myself the minimum to take some great looking shots. I also bought what they call a strobist kit that you can mount your flash on and bounce the light off an umbrella. I can't wait until I receive it! I've already been taking a lot of great pictures.

I also switched my web hosting provider to save myself $5/mo to pay for a tiny bit of what I bought. A very tiny bit haha. Last weekend they had a special speaker who talked about how to keep yourself afloat and out of trouble in a recession. He also promised that if you really stuck to the "common sense" steps, that you could easily become a millionaire by retirement. Of course, in 40 years, $1,000,000 will probably be worth $200,000 of today's money. Either way what he said made sense. And most of it was common sense. Unfortunately, most people don't do it and that's why this recession is having such a big effect. The first common sense step he had was to make a budget and stick to it. Just having the budget makes you more conscious of where your money goes and you can control it better. The second step that was not too common sense, but actually may work. He said that there are stats showing that if you spend cash for everything you spend 10-12% less on average. I partially think this becomes true because when you run out of cash, you don't spend more. But your checking account is virtually a botomless pit compared to the $50 most people keep in their wallets. You also will have to plan your spending and take out the proper amount of cash. He also said that you feel the effects of your spending much more when you count it as you spend it! The last and most common step is to not have debt! Now, at first I was thinking bull crap. You can't not have debt. But he began to explain it better. Most people have multiple forms of debt including, credit cards, student loans, car loans and home mortgages. I currently have all of this debt! He went on to say that the way that you get rid of debt is to pay off your smallest loan as quickly as possible first and make minimum payments on the larger loans. Now, you may think that you will be paying more interest on the larger loans. This is true, but when you really think about it, the interest you would save by paying off the smaller loan is the same you would save by paying off only part of the larger loan. And then you still have to pay off the smaller loan. So once you pay off the smallest loan, you have that minimum payment as extra cash flow plus the cash you spent monthy to pay extra on that loan. You go to the next smallest loan, and repeat. Soon you have that minimum payment added on to your extra cash flow once that loan is gone. Eventually, you will be able to pay off exponentially more on your loans. Now this not having debt step also means saving up for thing you want like cars and toys instead of buying now and paying over time. So when you keep driving your 8 year old car for a few more years, people will probably make fun of you. But once you buy that one car with cash, you save on all that interest you would've paid to the bank. You also have to make sure you have an emergency reserve in cash. That is your first priority. You should have 6 months of cash to cover your expenses. Before paying off your debt, you need to save at least this much. Wow, that took a lot of typing. I think I'm done!