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Nearly all banks offer safe deposit boxes to their customers for a nominal fee. The benefits of a safe deposit box are many and the drawbacks few, making them one of the best security values for your money.

A safe deposit box is a storage area within the bank that is used to store items valuable to you. To access your box, you typically show ID and sign in. Your signature is compared to the one on file with your account. You are then escorted to the safe deposit box area, where a bank employee unlocks one of two locks holding your box in place. Your key opens the second lock. You are then able to add, withdraw, or review the contents of your box.

The main advantage of a safe deposit box is the security that it offers over other alternatives. Storing valuables in your home, even in a safe, is probably much less secure. House thefts are extremely common whereas safe deposit thefts, because of the many security provisions described above, are extremely rare.

A safe deposit box also has the advantage of being separate from your home. As a result, items that may be necessary if your home were destroyed by fire, flood, etc., can be stored there. A home inventory or insurance policy that is destroyed along with your home is not as useful as one protected in a separate location.

For the added security of a safe deposit box, the main disadvantage is accessibility. You can typically only access your box during normal banking hours. So if your passport is in your box, you’ll need to plan ahead if you are leaving the country on a weekend. Safe deposit boxes also have no record of their contents. That means that items placed inside may be forgotten or misunderstood. To combat this problem, I keep a written inventory at home, which is updated whenever I access my box. The privacy of box contents is actually seen as an advantage to many people. The last downside is that a lost safe deposit key can be costly to replace.

My bank only charges a few dollars a month for a large safe deposit box. I do keep some items at home in a fire resistant box, but my most valuable items are all in my safe deposit box. The security and peace of mind are well worth the investment of a few dollars to me, and may fit in with your lifestyle as well.

Home energy costs are typically discussed in the wintertime, but can also play a role in summer. The cost of keeping your home cool can be reduced, if the following tips are used.

Even if you have air conditioning, which can do a great job of keeping your house cool, implementing other cooling methods can help reduce your cooling costs. Like most energy-efficient methods, some of these tips incur upfront costs that will be recovered in lower cooling costs or higher comfort over time.

Most of the summer heat in our homes comes from the sun. Keeping that heat out of our homes to begin with makes the job of cooling that much easier. The first step is to reflect as much sunlight as possible. Choosing light colors for exterior surfaces or applying reflective coatings to roofs and windows can accomplish this.

The second layer of defense is to block as much sunlight as possible. This can be done through natural and artificial means. Trees and other landscaping features can block significant amounts of sunlight. Trees that lose their leaves in the fall are often the most energy efficient because they will block the summer sun, but allow the winter sun to help keep your home warm. External awnings and shutters and internal shades and blinds are great at blocking your windows. Insulating and sealing doors, windows, attics, and garages are also an effective way to keep the cool in and the heat out.

Opening up your windows during cool times, either at night or anytime a cool breeze is present, will help to naturally regulate the temperature in your home. Opening windows at different levels on opposite sides of your home will create a natural airflow as well.

One last heat reduction method is to limit the amount of heat generated within your home. The main sources of heat are appliances, specifically ovens and clothes dryers. Cooking outdoors and line drying your clothes can both reduce the heat generated in your home. If appliances must be used, consider running them at cool periods of the day when natural airflow is present. Upgrading to energy-efficient appliances will not only reduce your electric bill but the heat output of the devices as well.

Investing the time to implement efficient cooling strategies can end up saving you money in reduced cooling costs. Many of the above steps will also make your home less costly to heat in the winter. In addition to the added comfort you’ll feel, your actions will also have a positive environmental impact.

As someone who is always looking to save money, I was interested in an offer to refinance my mortgage with no closing costs. My suspicious nature picked up on the true cost of the deal, but I fear that others who receive the offer might not be so lucky.

Refinancing your mortgage can save you money in a few ways. The main one is that by lowering the interest rate on your loan, you will end up paying less interest over the life of the refinanced loan than what you have left to pay in interest on your current term. The main obstacles to saving money by refinancing are the closing costs. That’s why I was so excited to see the offer I received for a “No Closing Cost Refi.”

Features of the offer included: no points, no application fees, and no title fees at closing. The benefits of not paying closing costs, such as “keeping more money in your pocket,” were included in the marketing material. Lastly, to try to guilt anyone not already convinced to apply was the headline that seemed to summarize the entire deal: “Pay hundreds, or even thousands, at closing or PAY ZERO – you decide.”

After reading the entire offer, I was nearly convinced about its savings potential. Then I read the fourth asterisk of fine print and the true cost of the deal became clear. By choosing this No Closing Cost refinancing option, instead of all the costs being due at the closing, they are added to the amount that you finance. So if you borrow $100,000 and the closing costs would have been $700, your actual loan amount would be $100,700. There’s nothing inherently wrong with financing closing costs to keep the upfront costs down, but advertising such a program as having no closing costs borders on outright lying. Such an arrangement won’t save you hundreds of dollars; rather, it will actually cost you even more than if you had paid the closing costs at closing. The reason for this is that by rolling closing costs into the financing, they too will be subject to interest over the life of the loan.

To make matters worse, the offer that I received went on to say that by not paying closing costs at closing, you may not qualify for as low an interest rate. So under this scheme, not only would you be stuck with a larger principal balance, but you would also pay at a higher rate! Assuming the $700 cost on a $100,000 refi from above and an interest rate of 6% for the No Closing Cost option, versus 5.5% if closing costs were paid up front, the No Closing Cost option would actually cost you $12,243.98 more over the course of a 30-year term.

Calculating the costs of different options is not difficult, but many people will not take the time to do the calculations. As a result, they may buy into the hype of a low cost deal while failing to realize that it may actually cost them more. Any time you are borrowing money, read all of the terms carefully to ensure that your decision is made on facts as opposed to aggressive marketing.

Living a frugal lifestyle is a great way to get ahead financially, but how far should you take it? You can only minimize expenses so far before the additional burden of cutting back is no longer worth it. Balancing your basic needs with extreme frugality is delicate and should be handled with care.

Your personal situation and tolerance for a certain lifestyle will result in a much different maximum level of frugality than that of someone else.

Trying to eliminate all of their food expenses, some people have started to scavenger for free food in dumpsters. To me, that’s taking things too far. I realize that such actions may reduce my food expenses, but the time, health, legal, and safety issues mean that it would not be worth it for me. My goal isn’t to eliminate every expense, just those that are excessive or wasteful. So I might shop sales, use coupons, buy in bulk, etc., to reduce my food expenses, but I’m not about to take more extreme measures to reduce costs for a basic need.

It seems more achievable to reduce overall expenses by say 30%, than to try to reduce 30% of your expenses to zero. In other words, I may be able to reach my savings goal by making reasonable cuts across most areas rather than extreme cuts across just a few. Clearly, any expenses that can be totally eliminated should be, but usually such categories fall into discretionary spending areas rather than basic needs.

As I said in my post on focusing on heavy hitters, your largest expenses probably have the most potential for cuts. Frugal living has different meanings for different people. While eliminating all expenses may be the goal of the extremely frugal, I prefer a balance of having my needs met while remaining conscious of my spending.

As the saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun. That a year has already passed since I began blogging for Lending Club speaks to the enjoyment I have gotten from the effort. I’ve covered a wide array of topics, from debt consolidation to predatory lending, consumer protection to financial philosophy, retirement planning to the housing crisis and many subjects in between. This year has greatly expanded my knowledge of personal finance and I hope that it has done the same for you.

Looking back, the most surprising thing that I’ve learned is that the actions required to improve your financial situation are quite simple. Why, then, aren’t more people better off now then they were a year ago? The reason largely has to do with the mindset of the people in question. Knowing what to do and actually doing it is a subtle difference, but hugely important.

Unless we take action and use the tools at our disposal, things aren’t likely to improve. Here are a few example scenarios with simple solutions:

1. Do you have a lot of high interest credit card debt? Then consolidate that debt with a P2P loan.
2. Are you living beyond your means? Then start tracking your finances to figure out where the money is going.
3. Are you unable to save any money? Then make savings a priority.

These are just a few examples, but they highlight a trend common to most financial troubles. Not one of those ideas is difficult to understand, but implementation often gets in the way. We make excuses rather than take action. As a result, our situation remains the same or gets worse.

Making improvements in our personal finances is difficult, but not for the reasons we might expect. Until we decide that improvement is worth the small sacrifices necessary to achieve it, we won’t reach our goals. Even in cases where no sacrifices are required, we often allow our fears to hinder our actions.

You have the power to make a change, so long as you can convince yourself to take the necessary steps. Thanks for a great year!