How can we get snowflakes out of our budgets?  One way is to look at our variable categories and determine where we’ve saved money.  The savings over the course of the month can become snowflakes at the end of the month.  For example, if your grocery category is $300 per month and you spend $268, you can take that $32 in savings and apply it as a snowflake at the end of the month.

I choose to do my budget snowflakes a bit differently.  I tend to have a few categories that come in under each month, and a few categories that come in over.  Not the same categories every month, or I would adjust the budget for those, but every month something is under and something is over.  So for me, I look at how much my entire month is under budget, and I use that as my monthly budget snowflake.  I call that my surplus.  Whatever my surplus is for the month, that gets applied to my debt the next month as an extra snowflake.

What ways do you use your budget to find extra snowflakes?

Welcome to the Snowflake Member Spotlight! Each week, I’ll be posting an interview with one of the Snowflake Revolution member blogs. This week’s volunteer is PT who blogs at Prime Time Money as a place where those of us in our ‘prime’ can come to discuss money and all things personal finance. If you’d like to be the subject of a future spotlight, contact me using the join the revolution link. I hope you enjoy learning more about PT as much as I did!

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m PT. I write about all things personal finance at Prime Time Money: personal finance for your prime time. I’m just a regular guy. I’m in my early thirties, married, no kids yet. I’m a CPA, but I don’t practice publicly. I work for a technology company in Texas in the Internal Audit department. I love my job and the lifestyle it affords me. I love to travel and I love all types of sports. I also enjoy managing my money responsibly…that’s one of the reasons I started Prime Time Money.

What is your favorite blog post of your own and why?

I’m really proud of my post on how we bought our home. We were able to save and put 20% down on our loan. That felt really good and I feel like I articulated that experience well.

What attracts you to the concept of snowflaking?

If you read my blog you know that I’m not void of a little debt. I have a huge desire to rid myself of my bad debt (car loans). I’m lucky enough to have a high income, but I still like the focus on the little savings adding up. I think the snowflaking method offers a great reminder to keep those little things in focus and work towards paying down the debt. I’ll have to admit, I find it hard to keep track of the little savings and how they are applied to my debt. I just try and throw as much money as I can towards my debts with the knowledge that some of the little things I’ve done are included in that payment.

What is your favorite snowflaking tip?

I really like to focus on earning money on your short-term savings. Most people, I think, have at least a few thousand in their savings account. Also, most of these accounts aren’t earning interest for these people. I like the idea of moving your short-term savings into an interest bearing account and then taking that interest earned and applying it towards debt. Essentially, make your money work for you.

Is frugality a part of who you are? Why or why not?

Living a frugal life is crucial to success with your personal finances, I think. You can always spend the money you earn and life just gets more expensive as you go. So you’re eventually going to have to learn to live more frugally. Start with the big things, like your house and car (are they more than your lifestyle requires?), then move to the smaller things. Nothing is more satisfying in personal finance than learning to live within your means.

Every Wednesday will feature a snowflaking tip of the week found on one of the Snowflake Revolution member blogs. This may be a place to find snowflakes, a method to use snowflaking, or anything else I find in our vast and knowledgeable membership. If you’d like a chance to be included, send links to your best snowflaking posts to me through the join page contact form.

This week’s tip comes from Shana at Smart Easy Money, who writes about taking something you enjoy and turning it into some extra money in addition to your normal income.  For example, she pet-sits (although that isn’t all!).   I’ve also written about this recently, in that I am turning my taekwondo hobby into a source of more income for us.  So think about the hobbies you love - and ways you can monetize them!

Because literal snowflakes are small, there is a misconception that financial snowflakes are always small too. They of course can be, but they definitely do not have to be. Often when one falls into a large windfall or any other unexpected income, it is treated differently than a small amount, and the first thought is how to spend or otherwise use this large amount over and above normal spending. But this doesn’t have to be the case. A large amount can be applied to our financial goals as simply as a small amount can be, and in fact, will make an immediate noticeable difference in interest earned or interest reduced (depending on which side of the debt/savings coin we are working on) and can be a major motivator all on its own.

When my spouse was given a substantial (to us) amount of money by his parents as part of an inheritance his father received, a lot of things went through our minds as to what we could do with it. We came up with a lot of ideas, but in the end, we decided to stick with our original plans for all additional and unexpected money, and snowflake the vast majority of it to our credit card debt. That $1000 windfall ended up being the motivation and push we needed to finish off the rest of our credit card debt once and for all. Not that we wouldn’t have paid it all off without that windfall, but reducing our debt by a significant amount at once gave us a lot of positive reinforcement that made the goal seem immediately achieveable.

Don’t neglect the big snowflakes.  Use those opportunities to give a huge kickstart to your hopes and dreams.

Welcome to the first edition of the Snowflake Member Spotlight! Each week, I’ll be posting an interview with one of the Snowflake Revolution member blogs. This week’s volunteer is Shanti who blogs at Antishay Ventenne about personal finance, life, self-improvement, simple living, and much more! If you’d like to be the subject of a future spotlight, contact me using the join the revolution link. I hope you enjoy learning more about Shanti as much as I did!

Tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Shanti - I live in Seattle and I have too many interests for my own good. I came into PF blogging in a very roundabout way and love every minute of it. In addition to personal finances, I adore organization and all things design - interior, web, graphic, clothing - and spend most of my free time reading and creating in those fields of interest. Besides that, I am obsessed with languages and study them as much as I can. Outside of hobbies, I love being creative with my hands and spending time with my other half, Sean - boyfriend extraordinaire.

Why did you start blogging?

I started blogging because I love to write and had no outlet for writing. I love researching and reading, too, and the three fit nicely together when writing a blog. I actually started Antishay Ventenne to write about fashion and makeup! But I quickly realized that all of my posts were going on and on about finances and debt reduction - and I hastily changed gears. I didn’t realize that I wanted to write about personal finance until I started writing about personal finance, and now I know that I love it. It fits me well.

If you could be remembered for only one thing, what would you like it to be?

I’d like to be remembered for my love. I am very compassionate and giving in my own way, and I’d like to think that those closest to me will think of me as someone who genuinely cared about and for them. This is part of the reason I started my WWSD series - I’d like to get closer to my readers and talk to them face-to-face - or, as much as video allows, anyway.

I’d also like to be remembered as very smart I am an INTJ (for all the MBTI people out there) and am obsessed with my brain. I love to learn and to teach what I learn, and to continue to ponder on all the things I don’t know enough about (meaning: everything). I romanticize about being in a think-tank some day.

What about finances inspires you enough to blog about it?

Personal finances are deeply related to everything we do: how we view the world, how we view ourselves, how we handle our own lives and how we interact with the people around us. I am deeply intrigued by the inter-personal and inner-self development that goes on when we start to work on, control, and monitor our own spending - and saving - habits.

What I’m most inspired by are the stories that people share about the improvement in their lives as a whole once they decided to take control of their finances. I especially love those stories which reveal the author’s love of life, found by discovering personal finance. Those are the stories that keep me writing, and keep on trying to be a better person.

What attracts you to the concept of snowflaking?

I am attracted to snowflaking because the concept is very encouraging. Sometimes it can be very difficult to look at a long road ahead and actually SEE the finish line. Snowflaking is the same as “baby steps,” is the same as “one step at a time,” is the same as “brick by brick, we will build this house.” In any classic metaphor, the best encouragement is that little by little, something great can be done.

I love snowflaking because it can apply to everything in life - not just money! I apply the snowflaking concept to my finances, for sure, but that’s not its limit. Whenever I do little things for myself, or for others, or see any teeny thing that makes me just a little bit happier, I call those moments “snowflakes of happiness.” I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while…

When a tiny happiness occurs, I smile to myself and think, “Another snowflake!” And the moment will cheer me up all day. I honestly believe we can snowflake happiness into our daily lives and be happier overall. This is why, no matter how frugal it would be to stop it, I still cherish those little things that make me sigh and smile - a milk chocolate truffle, a lavender bar of soap… Snowflakes of happiness! Because, after all, life is about living

What is your favorite snowflaking tip?

Never assume a little thing is a “nothing.” Even if it seems like total nothingness to you, keep it up for a while, and soon you’ll have a snow clump… later to be a snowball. I stop at the gas station frequently and, without fail, find change on the ground outside the convenience store. At first I’d walk by the pennies and nickels and ignore them, but about a year ago I started picking them up. After a couple of months, I had a few bucks in change in my car’s cupholder! So I continued. While $5 total means hardly anything in the span of six months, it gave me incredible encouragement to continue snowflaking in all the other income areas of my life, so that I was eventually snowflaking over $400/month. So I would remind you that it CAN be done… all you have to do is see through the falling snowflakes to the snowball ahead.

What is the strangest snowflake you ever had?

I went to Value Village to pick out some old clothes to cut up and use as fabric in this grunge-inspired top I was sewing. To go into the store you have to walk through the parking lot and past the dumpsters - and next to the dumpsters was a box of clothes someone obviously didn’t bother to take in. So I dug through the clothes and took out a few things and left. About a year later, I finally got to using one of the shirts in the box and in the pocket was $30! I don’t know why it was there but it was a surprise and completely confounding.

What is your favorite financial practice besides snowflaking?

Certainly not budgeting! I am terrible at budgets. Period. No, my favorite thing would have to be paying myself first. It was really a struggle to save for my emergency fund (Dave Ramsey’s Baby Step 1) when I was barely making the minimum payments to all my credit cards. But as I started to see money build up in the bank, I began to get more encouraged about this whole paying-me-first thing Now, I am psyched to be DEBT FREE!!!!! and to pay myself first and pay myself ALL of my income

Is frugality a part of who you are? Why or why not?

Yes and no. I was born with the creative, do-it-yourself, jack-of-all-trades gene, so I’m naturally inclined to try and do everything myself and pay for nothing I could potentially do on my own. I cringe whenever something costs a lot of money and I could do it without paying - for example, moving. Why pay movers?! I can do that! However, I went through a long period of time where I was getting into debt simply because of my seriously inflated expensive taste. So I’d say that part of me is completely indulgent and the other part is very frugal.

The balance came when I started to be able to see long-term rather than short-term. Looking at the long term, I’d rather be frugal, and I believe I grow more and more conscious of that every day that I get older and see more clearly my long-term goals and dreams.

Share some of your short term and long term financial goals.

I recently wrote about my early retirement plan and how I plan to retire at age 35. In the short term, I am working on paying off the last of my debt, then buying a motorcycle (my car is about to be no longer), then saving rapidly for 13 years and retiring.

How has blogging about finances improved your finances?

Blogging keeps me accountable and in touch with reality. I have a tendency, even now on a budget, to over-earmark bits of money for unexpected expenses. By blogging about my money weekly, I remember a lot more of what I plan to spend, and it helps me stay on budget and within the real-life parameters of my dollars. It also forces me to look at my finances objectively, rather than just inside my head, and often times leads me to wise decisions I don’t think I would have come up with otherwise

Thank you for this opportunity to share about my money, blog, and about me! The Snowflake Revolution is a great resource for so many people and I am honored to be part of it!

Every Wednesday will feature a snowflaking tip of the week found on one of the Snowflake Revolution member blogs. This may be a place to find snowflakes, a method to use snowflaking, or anything else I find in our vast and knowledgeable membership. If you’d like a chance to be included, send links to your best snowflaking posts to me through the join page contact form.

A timely tip comes this week from Beachgirl’s Budget Blog.  She recently completed her tax return and was getting a sizable refund.  She immediately earmarked this money for savings and debt reduction, two worthy snowflake targets!  Too often when we receive windfalls of this sort, we make plans for big purchases.  Snowflakes are not only small, they can be big too, and one big snowflake can really make a huge dent in your goals quickly!

Thanks Beachgirl for the tip! 

On Mondays, I will be running an original post from either myself or a Revolution member involving snowflaking in some way, shape, or form - from ideas, to implementations to thoughts about methods or anything else imaginable. If you are a Snowflake Revolution member and have a topic you’d like featured, contact me!

For snowflaking to be effective, it needs to be frequent. There are different levels of frequency of course, and different abilities at different times. Sometimes snowflakes can fall like a light flurry, and sometimes they create a blizzard. But why many times, people get frustrated with snowflaking or don’t see progress being made, is because of the frequency. Small amounts do add up, but one snowflake a month is simply, one snowflake. If a single snowflake falls, most people don’t even notice it, and it melts before it builds up to anything significant. This can be said for financial snowflakes as well. If you make a $2 overpayment to your credit card once a year, you’re not going to see any difference at all. That’s an extreme example, but it illustrates the point that small amounts do add up, but the emphasis is on the plural “amounts”.

Make sure that you’re considering the frequency of your snowflaking when evaluating your overall progress. If you do not have the ability to snowflake frequently, track the total amount over a longer period of time to see progress. Each extra amount does make a difference, but the smaller the amounts, the more of them added together it will take to feel a satisfying change in your financial position.

Don’t let frequency be your enemy. Try to find one way to add more frequent snowflakes to your pile, be it a small source of alternative income, a continuing way to be frugal, or another place where you can find a snowflake in your budget that can recur over time. Just make sure to keep your snowflakes classified as snowflakes!

Starting in a few weeks, I want to start doing member spotlight posts on Fridays.  This would involve any interested members filling out a short interview by email, and then on Friday I would pick one to turn into an interview here and post the answers.

I am still working on the list of interview questions so I am not sure if it will start next Friday but definitely by April it will be in full swing.  If you are interested in being spotlighted as a member, please send me an email through the Join Contact Page and I will add your name to the list and send out the interview questions as soon as they are completed.

In other business, tomorrow morning my Snowflaking Primer post will be in the Sweet 16 round of March Madness at Free Money Finance facing off against some very tough competition from The Simple Dollar.  Consider spreading snowflaking awareness and hopping on over to vote for my post. :)  The winner receives $500 for the charity of their choice, mine is the Make A Wish Foundation.  I’ll post another short reminder this weekend with a link to the actual voting post once it is live. 

Every Wednesday, I am going to choose a snowflaking tip of the week I gathered from one of the Snowflake Revolution member blogs.    This may be a place to find snowflakes, a method to use snowflaking, or anything else I find in our vast and knowledgeable membership.  If you’d like a chance to be included, send links to your best snowflaking posts to me through the join page contact form.

This week, my snowflaking tip comes from Me Vs Debt, which is obviously from the name a debt reduction blog.  Amanda is an avid snowflaker and the tip I’m sharing from her blog is to snowflake rebates you receive.  She illustrates that in this post by snowflaking the money she got from a rebate on her cell phone (which the company actually ended up paying her to buy, bravo!) but this can be done for any rebate.  Think of it this way:  you’ve already paid out the money, the rebate check comes much later, so it is almost like found money.  And found money is snowflaking money. 

Thanks Amanda for sharing your tip! 

Thanks to everyone who headed over to Free Money Finance this weekend and voted for Snowflaking: A Primer!  We won our game in round two!  Go snowflaking!

Next weekend in round three we’ll be facing off against a post from The Simple Dollar, so it’s an uphill battle but I believe in the power of snowflaking (and my post ).  The $500 prize for the best post of the last year goes to charity - I am playing for the Make A Wish Foundation.  Fourth round, here we come (I hope)!

If you’re not yet a part of the snowflaking movement and interested in joining the Snowflake Revolution, make sure to check out the join page!   We’re growing every day!  Keep watch on this space for a list of snowflaking resources as well as weekly snowflaking tips highlighted from our member blogs coming very soon!  Let’s all reduce our debt and increase our savings!