Auction Power Guide

I’m 12.

General Strategies and Techniques on Saving Money and Earning More Money

Don’t go out to eat. Example: don’t eat out at fancy, high-class restaurants. Instead, eat at a fast food restaurant or cook a healthy meal at home. It is much cheaper than spending a lot of money at an expensive restaurant.

If you are a teen or a young adult, you might want to hold a bake sale. Post fliers around your neighborhood, school, and community center to advertise your bake sale. You can have your other friends help you out, so that you can help attain your goal of saving and/or making more money. Keep your bake sale open for at least four hours, spanning a substantial portion of the morning or the afternoon. You can also decide to host the bake sale for multiple days. Example: Bake Sale Weekend: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM.

If you have a habit of buying new clothes very often, then resist the urge to buy new clothes for a little while. You could potentially save a good amount of money. If you are used to buying

If you are a teen or a young adult, you may want to have a dog-walking service.

To help you manage your money, try http://www.mint.com/

Talk to a customer service representative at a bank or other financial institution and learn more about financial instruments. These financial instruments (which include certificates of deposit) will help you understand how to grow your money.

Don’t go out to watch new movies in theaters. Watch movies on your TV at home. Popular channels where you can see movies on the weekends include TNT, USA, and TBS. If you like to rent movies, try using Netflix.

If you are a teen, you may want to think about babysitting. You can babysit your neighbor’s children.

Don’t spend too much money when going out with friends. Have a budget in mind before you actually meet up with your friends. Example: Do not spend more than $25.00 when going out on a Saturday night.

If you are a teen, you could try to mow the lawn. Many of your neighbors probably want their lawns to be mowed at a fraction of the price that they pay others to do the same work.

Invest your money in a CD (certificate of deposit). You can hold your money in a CD for 3 months, 6 months, a year, three years, or even five years. Generally speaking, the longer you decide to invest your money in the CD, the more interest you will earn. Also, it is generally the case that the larger the amount of money you decide to hold in the CD, the larger the more interest you will earn. It generally pays more interest than the interest you get from holding money in a traditional savings account at the bank.

If you like to invest your money in the stock market, then you may want to invest your money in specific large-cap and medium-cap companies that you trust. Apple (Stock Symbol: AAPL) and Google (Stock Symbol: GOOG) are two such stocks where you can choose to invest your money.

Other stocks in which you can invest your money include:

Bank of America Corp
Stock Symbol: BAC

Microsoft Corporation
Stock Symbol: MSFT

Yahoo! Inc
Stock Symbol: YHOO

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Stock Symbol: WMT

Abercrombie & Fitch Co
Stock Symbol: ANF

Home Depot Inc
Stock Symbol: HD

GameStop Corp
Stock Symbol: GME

Ford Motor Co
Stock Symbol: F

AT&T Inc
Stock Symbol: ATT

Coca Cola Co
Stock Symbol: KO

Try to sell something of value that you are willing to part with. Sell your old stuff on websites where many people make purchases, such as ebay or craigslist. You could also sell your stuff through a garage sale or a yard sale.

Try to hold a donation drive where your family, close friends, neighbors, and other acquaintances will be able to help you out and donate a little bit of money. These people will include your parents, brothers, sisters, close friends, relatives, grandparents, neighbors, and other acquaintances. Have a box or jar in place so that people can deposit money into it. Stick a label on the box or jar with an updated amount in comparison to the target goal amount, so that more people will feel like contributing to your goal amount. Example: You may find a graphic representation of a thermometer representing how much money is left to reach your goal (the box/jar has $55.50 out of the target goal amount of $200.00, which translates to a little more than 25% complete; therefore, the thermometer would be about 25% filled up.).

If all else fails, borrow money from other people (parents, brothers, sisters, close friends, relatives, grandparents, neighbors, acquaintances, etc.) in order to get a short-term loan. Set a goal: it can be $5.00 from each person or $10.00 from each person or $25.00 from each person. Breaking up the goal into smaller, more manageable goals is easier than taking on the entire goal, which may seem like an impossible task (example: raise $5,000.00 in 3 days).

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Hope that helped!

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