Live Cheap, Save Big

Banks make a ton of money from the NSF fees they charge their customers. NSF fees are assessed when you have insufficient funds to cover what you charge or write a check for and your account goes into the negative. If you’re ever in a situation where you’re worried about some charges clearing your bank before a deposit goes through, you have every right to be. Chances are that all the charges will suddenly clear much faster than usual and you’ll end up further in the negative. For every charge you make after going into the negative, you are assessed a fee. The real kicker is that it doesn’t matter how much into the negative you go. You could make 5 charges which total less than $20 but you would still be charged 5 separate insufficient fund fees which are usually upwards of $25. To ensure this doesn’t happen to me, I opened up a $500 line of credit with my bank and pay a $15 annual fee for this overdraft protection. If you are constantly being overdrafted, I highly suggest you think about doing this as well. The best bet is to track your spending, which I do by saving receipts and keeping all my purchases, bills and pending transactions in a simple spreadsheet.

Are you one of the people who scratches their head at the end of every month wondering where all your money went? This free program from expensr may provide the answer for you. By tracking the amount and category of your purchases, this free program will show you, through pie charts and graphs, exactly where all your money is going. Many of us are not numbers people, so these visual diagrams may help you better understand your spending habits. In turn, you may be able to make adjustments that better suit your budget. This could save you some money in the long run which would otherwise be spent frivolously on items you don’t need.

The online service, Dealighted is a search engine designed to go through some of the most popular deal sites to find you the best price. Dealighted goes through popular forums including Slickdeals, Fatwallet, Gottadeal to ensure that you don’t pay much, even on budget web sites.

Dealighted [via Lifehacker] is free and another way to get your LCSB on using the Internets.

Frucall is a free service that lets you compare prices via text message as you shop. You can text the product and price to Frucall and they will text you back to let you know if you can get the product cheaper, perhaps in another part of the mall you’re in.

For SMS savvy users, Frucall Text is the simplest and fastest way to access and compare “online” prices of products while they are out shopping making buying decisions. Frucall Text works on all phones and is a convenient and accurate way to compare the best prices from major online merchants.

Frucall [via Consumerist] is still in beta and may be a bit buggy, but sounds worthwhile. To save a bit more on text messages, look up the prices online and use Skype to text the prices for comparison.

Those of you who use Skype Out to save money on your international phone calls already know that you can send SMS (text) messages too. (Usually for less than a penny per message to most cell phones around the world.) Skype has announced a 50% discount to Austria, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand and the US until May 8. Get those keyboards rolling!

If you cringe every time you pick up your land line to tell your French honey “je t’aime” get some information on Skype, a free download.

Although I don’t advocate the use of credit, it’s an inescapable part of big ticket items like a car or house for most people. In the United States people buy most things on credit making a good credit score vital to not getting overcharged with high interest rates.

Bankrate.com has a free online credit score calculator [via Lifehacker] you can use to get a decent estimate of where you stand before you go out and buy that BMW you can’t afford. Even if you’re not going to buy a house anytime soon, your score will give you an idea where you stand and a heads up to get you act in shape if it’s too low (under 650).