Unfortunately, if your insurance cannot cover the entire medical bill, it can be a daunting task to find the money immediately to pay off your bills. Meeting monthly household budgets is a challenge itself; add to that sudden unforeseen medical bills and it could immediately start a downward spiraling financial situation for you. The good part though is that you do have options which you could utilize before things go out of hand.

The first option is to apply for a payday loan. Payday loans are short-term loans where lenders are ready to give you cash within 24 to 48 hours as long as you have a job. The moment you receive your next paycheck, the payday loan amount will be due. In simple terms, it is like you are taking a cash advance against the paycheck you will receive at the end of the month. Certain provinces in Canada have strict regulations with respect to payday loans and some restrict the loan amount you can qualify for as per your net paycheck amount. If you feel the payday loan amount you are eligible for is not enough to cover the current medical bills, you can even opt for an auto title loan.

This is another simple short-term loan which can be acquired within 24 to 48 hours. The prerequisite in this type of loan is that you need to own a vehicle which can be a car, truck or even a mobile home. In exchange of the title of your vehicle, an auto title loan lender will lend you an amount which can be used for any purposes including paying your medical bills. Auto title loans work out really well because depending upon the value and age of your vehicle; you could qualify for quite a high loan amount.

These types of loans are not only good for situations where you know you will incur a large expense, but because they are usually processed within 24 hours, they are perfect for sudden unforeseen situations which could have a huge impact on your finances.

Cut your own hair. This one is for the adventurous at heart. Cutting hair is pretty skilled work, and who knows what your attempt may turn out. But you might trust a friend who’s skilled with scissors. Less radical choice? Cut your hair less often. Even cutting your hair half as often, for a woman paying $75/cut every six weeks who changes to 12-week intervals, this brings a savings of about $300/year. And definitely color your own hair-save another $50/month.

Sell your car and bicycle to work. Some people find this to be a pretty radical choice, but when you think about how much money you could save without a car, it seems like a great idea. And your heart will thank you. You could bank about $5000 this year by giving up your car. Can’t do it? Then ride share, and save one-half the cost of gas each week.

Buy nothing for an entire weekend. That includes groceries, eating out or ordering in, DVDs, CDs, and driving your car. Make a weekend at your house a “don’t-spend-a-cent-event.” Instead, hold a dance in your living room, and invite the neighbors. Get a video cam, and You-tube it. Even turn your weekend into a fund-raiser for your favorite cause, and twitter all weekend about what your family is doing instead of spending money. You may even have people donating.

Save your pocket change. This seems like a small choice, but change-especially with our Canadian loonies and toonies-can add up to big bucks in a year. How many times have you paid for coffee, lunch, or other small purchases with change? Not spending your change can help you get control over your unconscious spending, too. Then put the change towards paying a big bill.

Don’t toss anything. No matter what it is, someone will pay for it. And you can advertise free or cheap these days on kijiji, ebay or craigslist. Keep that in mind when you want to buy something-buying on ebay or kijiji can save you big time.

Living super cheap isn’t for everyone, but if you can do it, you can put mega bucks into the bank, towards debt, or even save to buy something really great in a very short period of time.

As the wealthy barber used to say, always pay yourself first. Take your share and place it into a savings account as soon as you get paid. This way it’s done. Out of sight, out of mind. The rest of the money is yours for the month. To reach your goal, it’s important to make saving a priority.

Instead of just agreeing with yourself that you will start to save money, it pays to set a financial goal. If you would like to save $1,000 in the next 12 months, then figure this additional $84 into your monthly budget. Opening a separate account that you do not have card access to is also a great way to ensure it stays in the bank.

Not paying attention to interest you’re being charged on overdue accounts is another sure way to waste money and eliminate your chances at saving. Keeping up to date with high-interest accounts such as credit cards is very important. The interest on one missed payment can easily add up to more than what you were hoping to save, so that $84 you had earmarked for savings has now gone to a wealthy credit card company in interest. Thank you!

Trying to save money when you’re covering your costs pay cheque to pay cheque will only increase stress and dampen the efforts towards your monthly goal. Paying particular attention to small non-necessity purchases is key. Even larger bills can be cut back – do you really need 257 channels and high-definition TV? Over time, you will learn to live without them, especially when you see your savings grow. Getting ahead or starting a savings account will not be obtainable if you feel like you only have enough money to survive each month.

These tips should be able to guide you in the right direction to starting saving. Remember that the old saying is true, “every little bit counts”.

Resource Box:
If you currently find that you are overwhelmed with too many small monthly bills and that is what’s keeping you from saving, perhaps getting a consolidation loan can help. If traditional loans are not an option, there are many private lending institutions that are available and cater specifically to clients with bad credit. To find out if you are eligible for a private loan, you can fill out one of their many no obligation applications. These applications can be found online 24-hours a day.

Working in the downtown core of a major city can bring along some major parking headaches. Many homeowners have caught on to this and rent out their own space such as their driveways or garages for parking. It is common for condo owners especially, to rent out their parking stalls from 9 to 5 during weekdays while they are at work and not using them. It is also a popular idea to offer your garage for rent to people who need to store seasonal items such as motorcycles and boats. This can add anywhere from $100 a month up to $400 a month to your household income.

One of the most common ways to make money from your home is to become a landlord. Sure, adding a suite to your home will require a little cash, but it could certainly be worth the investment. Transforming your basement into an apartment or your attic into a bachelor pad can easily bring in a few hundred dollars to a thousand dollars each month. This additional revenue may be the ticket to owning a home you could not afford before. It is also a great way for seniors to be able to keep their homes.

Renting your home to movie sets is another great way to make some extra cash. There are many companies seeking homes to use for films, television movies or commercials. Every Canadian province has a government run program that allows people to list their properties that they would like to make available to producers and location scouts. Depending on the type of project, scouts are willing to offer between $500 and $5,000 a day to use your home.

If your home is one that happens to come with land, as in a parcel of land in a rural area, it would make financial sense to consider renting that extra parcel to local farmers to raise livestock or crops. Prices do vary widely depending on where you live and what the land is going to be used for, but rent can be anywhere from $20 per acre to $200 per acre.

Another common way to use your house for cash is to create a bed and breakfast. Many people offer rooms to travelers and charge $50 to $200 a night, depending on the location and accommodations provided. If your house is large enough and has an extra 2 or 3 bedrooms, offering them to travelers can easily generate additional income. Even converting sheds into comfortable one-room cottages on your property can prove to be worth the extra financial effort.

With a little creative thinking you can come up with some unique ways to profit from your home and perhaps even turn it into a regular income generating item.

The number one rule, plain and simple, is stop spending. Just stop. We’ve been taught for so long to spend our money that often we’re not even aware of the money flowing through our fingers until the bill hits. How many times has your credit card statement taken you by surprise? Here are some good ways to become more conscious of where that hole in your wallet is, and good ways to plug it up.

Get rid of all plastic and swipeables. Do you think you cannot survive without a credit or debit card in your pocket? Put one credit card into your glove compartment for emergencies, and lock it up. Don’t carry it with you into stores, or for shopping. You’ll soon become acutely aware of when and where the urge to spend comes over you. Start avoiding those places to help you get a handle on your spending habit.

Next, move to a cash-only system. This will make you very aware of when you want to spend, and how much you spend. It will be a real eye-opener when you see how quickly cash can pass from your hands into someone else’s wallet. And watching that cash pass into someone else’s pocket can be a real incentive to stop spending.

Next, put limits on even necessity spending. Do you really think you must spend $500 each week on groceries? Open your fridge, and see how many of those groceries either got tossed out, or have not been used. Some estimates are that as much as 40% of what we buy eventually gets tossed. So place limits on what you’ll spend on anything. The best way to do that, of course, is to make a budget-and that’s the golden rule of money management.

Make a budget. Keep it simple. All you need to do is write down what your expenses are, and track them. Some experts recommend you put your spending into two groups, discretionary spending and fixed costs. Discretionary means spending that you could eliminate altogether such as renting DVDs or going out to dinner. Fixed costs are the ones you have to pay such as utilities and rent.

Most costs aren’t really fixed-at least in the sense of how much it has to cost you. For example, if the rent is just too high, you may have to move to another neighborhood or smaller home. And there are plenty of ways to save on electricity and water costs that can produce really dramatic savings.

As you make more manageable money choices, take the amount you’ve dropped from your costs, and begin paying off your debts, generally the highest-interest debt first. Before you know it, you’ll have your budget in hand.

With rising energy costs, an additional appliance can make a big difference in our summer bills. There are a few simple things you can do to help ensure your home stays cool while keeping money in your wallet this summer. The first thing to consider is your insulation. If you house has been wet from a flood or any type of leak damage, there is a good chance your insulation will need to be replaced to keep cool in and heat out. Also, check your home for drafts. Not only are winter drafts a drain on the electric bill, trying to cool a home with exterior air circulating in will also add an more to your electricity bill. If you find any holes, it’s a simple solution to plug them with insulation. This can easily save 20 to 60 percent of your energy year-round.

Another way to ensure a cool interior is to keep the windows closed. It’s also important to close the drapes and blinds. This will easily deflect the sun’s heat and keep those rays outside. Having your windows tinted will also add up to a large amount of sun deflection.

Using a fan during the day is much cheaper than using the air conditioner all the time. It may be best to save that cool air for bedtime if your house is still warm inside. Before you plug in your air conditioner unit for the summer, take a few minutes to give it a clean. Check the coolant coils. If they’re covered in dirt and grime, this will cause your unit to work harder, increasing your electric bill. Cleaning this grime can easily save up to 5 percent on your summer cooling costs. . Replacing the air conditioner filter will also make a difference in performance and efficiency.

Planting a tree is not only a beautiful way to enhance your home it’s also a natural way to keep it cool. Planting a tree or two on the south side of your house will add much needed shade for the summer months. If you chose a deciduous tree, they will naturally shed their leaves in the fall, allowing for more light through your house in the winter, not to mention trees add a positive impact to the environment by improving air quality and the value of your landscaping.

Increasing your air conditioner by a degree or two warmer will also shed a few dollars from the energy cost each month. Any of these ideas can keep your bills down and money in your pocket.

Even if you have had a long and tough financial past, you can recover from poor credit, bankruptcy, and general money mismanagement. There’s really no secret to it. It’s a matter of “wanting to stop” as “Bad” does, and do things differently.

So what do you do if your spending is way out of control, and you’re spinning headlong into the money ditch? Put on the brakes, just like Bad. Then, clean house, again just like Bad does, and get what’s sent you down that highway out of your financial house.

For financial mis-managers, that can mean a few different strategies. The best one for compulsive spenders might be to remove the ability to spend. So, eliminate all non-cash sources of money, like credit cards. You can even shut down your line of credit, if you ask your banker to close the line to general use, and only allow it to be paid down. Then, use only cash, and don’t even allow yourself to carry a debit card. Make it difficult to get at your money.

Now, budget every single cost, and only go to the bank to get the money you need to live. Besides groceries, most people really can live without access to cash. Even budget your gas use, and fill-up at regular intervals, using cash you’ve taken out specifically for that purchase. If you always go into the bank, and only take out the money you need for specific purchases, you’ll find you spend a lot less than when you were carrying credit and debit cards.

Taking away the ability to spend without thinking-using credit and debit cards-making your cash hard to get at, and living by a budget where you always pay cash are three top tactics to get your financial house in order. These changes can feel like a cold turkey approach to getting your finances straightened out, but just as “Bad” discovered, life is better when the debts are paid.

Check your bank statements, and while you’re at it, your credit card statements, too. Look these over every month-at least. Review them every two weeks, if you tend to have a lot of money moving in and out of your accounts. Banks make mistakes, and so do credit card companies.

Always pay yourself every month. It’s a good idea to do this automatically so you have no choice about saving. Even if it’s the smallest amount of money–$20, $30 or even less-setting some money aside gets you in the habit of saving. When you begin to make more money, you can set aside more. Shoot for 10% of your gross, 1% at a time.

Create some kind of home-based system to track all your accounts. Consider a file where you keep all your financial statements-RRSPs, banking statements, credit cards, lines of credit, mortgages, other investments, and savings. File by type-savings, credit lines, and ongoing bills. For monthly bills, like utilities, phones, rentals, number it by the day. It can be as simple as writing the day the bill is due (say the 15th) in large print in the upper left or right hand corner of the bill, and then filing all your bills by due day. Now you’ll be able to quickly scan through your bills and know when every payment is due-and never be late again.

If you’re electronically minded, you can have an electronic notice sent to you-to the minute-reminding you to pay that upcoming bill. But, even though your billing may come electronically, consider printing out at least one copy of a bill to put into a paper-based system. Research shows that when you physically handle material, you’re more likely to remember it.

Now that you’re saving so much money every month, consider getting a chequing account with a small floating balance. Often it’s about a $1000 minimum. These kinds of accounts carry zero cost for most transactions if you maintain the minimum balance. Instead of thinking about the float as money you cannot access, think about it as making you money-chequing accounts can cost $15 and more each month. So if you’re not paying that $15/month, it means your float is making you at least $180/year return on your investment. That’s an astounding 18 percent annual return (when’s the last time your RRSPs did that?)!

Keep reviewing your how you spend your money and where until every dollar you spend is accounted for, and working for you.

Although many Canadians, even most, might be in debt, the people we want to emulate are those who have no debt. What’s their secret? Well, odds are, they know a thing or two that we can learn and copy.

First, recognize there’s good debt and bad debt. If you’re a recent grad carrying $25,000 in student loans, you’ll be happy to hear that’s a good debt. It’s considered a good debt because the return on that whopper of an investment should far exceed the money you had to borrow to make it. On the other hand, if it’s a $10,000 debt on spring break trips to southern climes and lovely Margaritas, well, try and get your money’s worth for those wild weekends, and you’ll see what we’re talking about. That’s a bad debt.

Here’s another difference between good and bad debt. A good debt expands what you’re worth, by either making you personally more valuable (because you’ve got an education and know stuff, for example) or adding tangible goods to your portfolio that are valuable (like investments, a home, or business). You’ll know you’ve got it made with good debts when you go into the bank and are immediately ushered to the second floor where the suits hang out.

A big key is to balance your good debts and eliminate your bad ones. That means paying off your credit cards as much as possible, not buying what you cannot afford (like a 42-inch high definition, blu ray television), and being sure to keep up on payments on your good debt. So pay that mortgage every month, and don’t default on your student loans. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep paying those high interest rates on your student loan.

This is another way to manage your debt. For debts like student loans, which can sometimes have really high interest rates, see if you can negotiate it down or buy it out with a line of credit. That can save you significant dollars if you’re carrying a large debt.

Debt isn’t always a bad thing. Owning a home, or capitalizing on a good education, can have terrific returns. Just be sure you know the difference between a good debt and a bad one.

First, be careful how much you borrow. The two or three big-ticket items most people hope for include an education of some kind, a home, and a car. Generally, most of us are not going to buy those things without a loan of some kind. It certainly isn’t impossible to get an education by working full-time during the day and going to school part-time at night for 11 years, or buying only as much car as your bank account will allow-say, a 1984 Honda Civic. Most of us, though, aspire to faster degrees, and cars! But everyone has a limit. Know yours.

Tip one: Don’t start school until you know when you’re going. Too many people waste two years’ worth of loans before they know what they want to do-and that’s a lot more expensive than six months’ hitch hiking through Europe while you work out what your future career path.

Tip two: Don’t over buy on your first car. Do you really need an audio or BMW? Wouldn’t a pretty nice, nearly new Golf hatchback do?

Tip three: House buying is a complicated process, but the research still says that people buy on impulse. Before you start looking for a home, put together a checklist that includes a list of the features that might be important to you. For example, do you want to walk to your work place or downtown? Do you spend a lot of time in the backyard, and have a dog or kids that need a fence? Most important, go to the bank before you go house shopping, and see just how much home you can buy. Never reveal that number to an agent, if you’re using one. And don’t be afraid to look at houses being sold privately; it can save you thousands.

In every case, house buying, car purchases, and educational choices, have a budget on what you can realistically handle. Then you’ll never have a good debt go bad on you.