Money

Considering Starting a Garden to Save Money? Here Are 5 Tips to Help!

Starting a home garden can help you save money and get closer to nature. Even a few basic homegrown herbs and vegetables can positively impact your budget and overall health. While there’s no way to go around certain upfront costs, there are steps you can take to maximize savings from your garden after the initial setup. Here are five tips to help you save money on your home garden.

1. Sow Seeds Instead of Seedlings

While seedlings save you time, seeds save you money. You just need to be organized and plan ahead because it takes time for seeds to germinate and grow to a point where you can transplant them. However, you can harvest more plants from a packet of seeds compared to a punnet of seedlings. Although seed packet prices vary, most edible flowers, sprouting seeds, microgreens, herbs, and vegetable varieties go for two to four dollars on average. For some varieties, you can get hundreds of seeds in a packet, enough to last a lifetime or to swap or sell.

2. Choose the Right Spot for Your Garden

Regardless of where you decide to put your garden or the plants you intend to grow, there are two fundamental requirements your chosen spot must fulfill for the best success: light and water. Vegetables, like other plants, rely on the sun to initiate photosynthesis. Vegetables that grow fast generally require at least six to eight hours each day in direct sunlight without obstruction from fences, shrubs, or trees. According to Arbor Day, areas under a tree’s shade can be 20 to 45 degrees cooler. That’s why planting sun-loving vegetables in shady areas won’t yield much.

If your garden receives partial shade, plant herbs, and vegetables that can withstand those conditions. These include thyme, parsley, cilantro, chives, spinach, chard, kale, and lettuce. If your chosen spot gets at least four hours of sunlight a day, consider root vegetables such as beets, radishes, and carrots. If you have a sunny patio, container gardening is a better fit. This approach allows you to place sun-loving herbs and vegetables like rosemary, dill, basil, beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes, where they’ll thrive.

3. Mulch Your Garden

Mulching your garden can work wonders for your budget. It conserves water and prevents weeds from sprouting, so there’s less weeding and no need for herbicides. To protect your established trees and shrubs from the effects of weather, surround them with a layer of two to three inches of brown compost, birch chips, wood shavings, or dried leaves.

4. Attend Plant Swaps

Plant swaps are events where plant enthusiasts come together to trade specimens. Attending these events allows one to swap a plant you don’t want for one you love for free. You can also find free plants by logging on to your town or neighborhood online forum for local gardeners.

5. Pick Plants with Multiple Functions

If you’re working with a small space, make cautious plant selections. Grow plants that serve at least two purposes, which means you’ll need fewer plants. For instance, blooming herbs such as chives, basil, and mint taste great. When they bloom, they attract helpful insects like hoverflies, ladybirds, and bees that feed on pollen and nectar. In turn, these insects provide crucial ecosystem services, such as pollinating food crops and managing pests such as aphids.

You don’t need lean beef to get your recommended daily amounts of 10 key vitamins and nutrients, including B vitamins, riboflavin, selenium, niacin, zinc, magnesium, and iron. You can get your nutrients from your garden! You should also consider planting oilseed rape, cotton, soybeans, and maize, which make up 99% of global crops worldwide. Get started on your vegetable garden today and it won’t be long until you start reaping the benefits.

9 Reasons To Invest In Rare Coins

For some of you reading this, you may have already heard from others about how rare coins are quite a stable type of investment. It’s a popular opinion for those who’ve started investing in rare coins – one which should give more than just a grain of truth to it. Before reading this, you may have already done your research about investing in rare coins, and while there are avid supporters of this type of investment, you may have also encountered mixed responses from others. Continue reading

How to Track Money When You’re a Busy Family

When all your family members are busy managing their own lives, it can be hard to keep track of the money coming in and going out. This can create a lot of stress for you as the head of the household.

Here are some of the best ways to manage your family’s budget, as well tips on how to stay out of debt:

Step 1: Get Organized With A Budget Planner

With a budget planner, it’s easy to keep track of your spending and set goals for the future. You can use an app, a spreadsheet, or even a notebook to create a budget. Budget planners can help with financial security. Whether you are looking for ways to lower your monthly expenses or saving up for that big purchase, a budget planner will help you stay on track. Initially, your budget will not be accurate because of many variable expenses, but after a few months, your ability to predict expenses based on averaging your costs will improve.

Some tips for saving money with a budget planner include:

* Saving on groceries by using coupons and store sales.

* Selling used clothes, books, and toys online and then using the proceeds to buy other items.

* Planning out your meals beforehand, so you only buy what you need when going to the supermarket.

Step 2: Designate a Money Manager in the Family

Money management is vital for all members of the family. One way to make it easier to manage all everyday household expenses is to have a family budget managed by one of the parents. This “money manager” will then collect money from the earning members of the family and spend it on household expenses.

Step 3: Automate Your Savings and Investing

Amassing savings is not always the easiest thing to do, but it will force you to think twice about everything you buy, especially if you tend to use credit cards to spend more than you earn. Automation can be used to make saving money easier.  You can use an app that will automatically put away a set amount of money each month. The app will take care of all the complicated calculations for you.

Step 4: Make Better Decisions For Your Finances

To make better decisions for your finances, it is crucial to be aware of the pros and cons of each financial decision. There are many ways to do this, but one way would be to start with the most expensive option and work your way down until you find something that is most sensible. This method considers not only what you want in a specific financial decision but also how much money you have and what decisions will be the most beneficial in the future.

Step 5: Check Your Credit Score Regularly To Keep It In Good Condition.

It’s easy to keep an eye on your credit score. There are many ways to do this, such as with an app or by logging onto the website for your credit card company. To ensure that you have a good credit score, make sure that you always pay off your credit card balance, avoid maxing out the card, and make sure that you do not spend more than 20% of the limit on any one card.

Summary

Although it might seem a little awkward in the beginning to use a budget planner, designate a family money manager, and automate savings and investments, you will soon get into the habit of doing it.

These three habits will then push you to start making better financial decisions based on the consequences you will experience in the future and become more vigilant about your credit score.