The blog about personal finance, budgeting your money, and the Birdy

The Birdy will be coming to Chicago for Memorial Day weekend, May 26th. I’m organizing a meetup. Email me at chicago@thebirdy.com and let me know what time works best for you. Then come on down, and let me buy you a beer!

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You save them for everything—the coffee you had this morning, the iPhone you finally broke down and bought, the gas you filled your car with.

They pile up on your bedside table, on your desk, on your dresser.

They drive everyone crazy: your husband, your girlfriend, your wife, your kids…hell, even your pets.

And now, especially, everyone’s wondering: when the hell are you going to get that tangled mass of receipts on the bedside table under control? And besides, what are they really getting you anyway? Are you really going to find them all by Tax Day (which is in four days, by the way)?

No, you’re not.

There are some new applications that have popped up to help deal with this very problem. Expensify, for one, sounded tempting. Scan your receipts and forget about them. All well and good, if I could actually figure out how the hell the thing worked.

Then, it dawned on me.

I’m already tracking all my purchases every day with the Birdy, sorting every dollar into a neat little category and I buy most things on a debit or credit card.  So next year, when spring rolls around, all I have to do is use the Birdy to figure out what’s deductible. If the IRS comes knocking (knock on wood, they don’t), my bank account statements and credit card statements will back my Birdy data up.  As long as I save my cash receipts, of which there aren’t many, I should be set!

Next year, Tax Day is going to be A LOT easier, thanks to the Birdy.

Goodbye, receipts! I always hated you.

[editor note: I use the tag #biz to remember what's deductible, myself. Great suggestion, Gina. Thanks!]

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Jordan Crook gave the Birdy a great write-up on TechCrunch today, after we presented last night at New York Tech Meetup. What a treat! Thanks, Jordan!

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/28/could-the-birdy-be-the-word-in-simple-expense-tracking/

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There’s a great question and answer thread going on over at Quora. If you you’re wondering about how to teach your little ones about money, there’s some great advice:

http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-teach-young-children-about-finances

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I have a crate full of comic books and baseball cards from when I was a kid. They hold no sentimental value. I just always thought they’d pay for my retirement some day. 

With this in mind, I took two hours out my day off yesterday to lug the comic books to a dealer, and you know what I got for them? $10. And the baseball cards? Nothing.

When I thought about it, I realized that I’ve moved them fives times. They’ve taken up valuable space in as many apartments (this is New York City, after all). And when I cashed them in, I couldn’t even pay for lunch.

You can probably tell from my tone how disappointed I am. Once again, I learn a valuable lesson.

Are you holding onto something just because you always have? Do you ever stop and think about what you’re really getting out if it?

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When your monthly spending is seriously getting you down… When you’re left scratching your head, wondering how you managed to spend an extra hundred bucks this month… When you’re eating beans and rice while posting pictures of your beans and rice to Instagram…

Well, the time has come. What time? Check your phone. It’s time for you to open your mind when it comes to your cell bill.

Are you one of those people who constantly needs the newest technology? Who scoffs at anything less than an iPhone or a high-end Android? Who would rather be dead than caught carrying some knock off, or shudder, a phone without a full-color screen?

You are not alone. Of the 4+ billion mobiles phones in the world, over 1 billion are now smartphones. That’s about a quarter. That’s a lot.

These phones also cost a lot. But what’s killing you about your phone is not the sticker price, which, even when subsidized, can be heavy. It’s those bills…those bills that suck up your cash as you suck up data through a     3G or 4G connection.

The good news is that some fantastic options for cutting your bill are beginning to emerge…and they don’t involve flip phones.

One route, once you’re out of contract, is to ditch your big provider and go with a prepaid. Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile, Metro PCS and a number of other, smaller providers offer prepaid unlimited plans that cover talk, text and data for a fraction of your hefty iPhone bill.

Another, more tech-savvy way to go is to buy an unlocked high-end phone and hook it up to a     low-cost provider. For more information on how to do that, check this out.

Finally, if the iPhone is something you NEED, do some digging into available discounts. Does
your office offer any help with phones? How about an organization or club you belong to? Do you have a friend or family member you could set up a family plan with? Do you know someone who works at a cellular provider who can get you an employee discount? It may not be much, but even cutting your bill by $15/month will save you about $200 at the end of the year.

Get yourself off of autopilot and do some research. It could save you up to $80/month or a grand over the course of a year. Think of all the apps you could buy with that.

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Hi. My name is Gina and I’m a writer living in Southern California.

When I joined The Birdy on January 10th, my intention was to get a better handle on my spending habits and to curb areas of splurge that could be considered, well, runaway. I always suspected that the categories where I was the most reckless would have something to do with my daily latte habit and going out to eat with pals. While I wasn’t at all surprised (the cafe/restaurant hunch was sadly confirmed), there were plenty of less obvious lessons to take from my first few weeks checking in with myself about my spending.

Here, in no particular order, are five big things I’ve gleaned from the experience so far:

1. I am not flat broke, but I am definitely in conservation mode…

…and I need to act like it.

As a largely self-employed freelancer, life is all about cycles of feast and famine. Right now, I’m deep in famine mode, with the inevitable post-holiday slowdown forcing me to live mostly on savings.  Now more than ever, I need to focus my spending on essentials like groceries, car payments, rent and other monthly bills.

Checking in with The Birdy has helped me actually realize just how deep into conservation mode I am, which brings me to the second point…

2. Acknowledgment makes all the difference.

This is a basic idea, yes, but one that bears repeating: it’s amazing how much more control you can take when you actually involve yourself in your spending on a day-to-day basis.

I’ve always been one of those people who was good enough with money to not “need” a formal budget. Now, I’m realizing that while I can keep myself afloat just fine on autopilot, it doesn’t mean that I’m always making the best decisions. Like everyone, I make better decisions when I’m engaged and informed.

Besides, being mindful about spending doesn’t require that much more effort and yields immediate positive results. Just forcing myself to actively think about how and what I purchase has been enough to begin curtailing my spending.

3. Credit cards are expensive…

…and so is insurance. They also feel like tricks.

Credit cards: didn’t I already pay for this? Oh, I didn’t? So now I’m REALLY paying for it, but with interest this time? So let me get this straight: I pay extra for the pleasure of feeling like I paid for this twice? Great!

Insurance: these health, car and home bills are hefty. Am I ever going to use this? Picture yourself hydroplaning, getting robbed or in the ER and suddenly these big checks feel at least a little more worthwhile.

4. Eating at home really is A LOT cheaper.

As someone who lived in NYC for the past five years, I’ve developed some pretty bad attitudes about home cooking. An actual quote: “It costs exactly the same to go out as it does to cook at home.” Trust me, I am not proud of this.

I always knew that I wasn’t exactly right about this one, but I never knew just how wrong I was…until now. The #Groceries section of my pie-chart versus the #OutEatSection has conclusively proved this particular point. I’ve been striving to mostly eat at home this month, so I’ve only gone out to eat seven times over the last 22 days. That means I’ve eaten roughly 60 meals at home.

Even though my meals out were relatively inexpensive, those seven meals cost half of my total 60-meal grocery bill for the last three weeks. Going out to eat cost an average of $14/meal. Cooking at home meant my meals cost about $3.50/meal on average. Yowch.

5. Small changes add up.

I decided that my first target would be to take a bite out of my daily coffee situation. Even
just skipping a cup or two a week has really helped. I decided to drink eight espresso drinks, instead of 22, which meant spending $36 instead of $99.

Seeing how much little changes add up is a great motivator in the quest to increase savings and improve habits.

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Corey got interviewed on Foundville. Find out how we’ve grown in the first 6 months.

http://foundville.com/2012/01/31/corey-maass-interview/

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I want to thank all you wonderful Birdy users for your encouragement, wonderful notes, and patience. We’ve been working around the clock to get new features and updates out the door, but it’s been taking longer than expected.

Keep the great feedback and ideas coming. We’ll be bringing you lots of great stuff in 2012!

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