Eat at home. Or maybe I should say, eat food prepared at home. Every meal that you don't buy at a convenience store or a restaurant can save you money. Big money over time.
Even an egg sandwich. The arches offer a sausage and egg sandwich 2 for $3.00. But I can buy a dozen eggs and a dozen english muffins for $3.00. Replace the sausage with a thin slice of turkey ham (a thin slice of any lunch meat would have to be healthier than the mcsausage slice, don't you think?) and half a slice of cheese. So I spend less than $6 to buy the ingredients for a homemade equivalent of that sandwich that seems so convenient on the way to work. I'm getting it my way (I love a runny yolk). And I only need one sandwich each day. Instead of $3 a day on the two sandwiches (one of which I don't need), I eat healthier for less than 50 cents a day.
Do you pack your snacks and lunch for work? Brown bagging saves you money you can put straight into your 401K. David Bach's Finish Rich series explains The Latte Factor. Pay attention to the things you purchase and then make your plans with your overall savings and investment strategy in mind. Brown bagging (in a "green" reusable bag) can save you big money over time. Pack nutritious snacks that appeal to you so you won't be tempted to buy from vending machines.
Remember, if you keep doing the things you have been doing, you will keep getting the things you have been getting. To save money you will have to make changes. Food factors in our budget several times a day and therefore is an easy target to make a change that quickly accumulates.
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Needs Versus Wants
To begin pinching pennies out of your budget, you should consider all of your expenses and determine which are needs, which are wants, and which are some combination of the two.
Needs
Needs include clothing, shelter, food, and transportation to work. You may need medicine or education. If you have dependent children then you must provide for their needs as well. And we all need love.
Wants
Wants are just about everything else. They are the pie-in-the-sky dreams we believe we may never achieve, but they are also the frivolous things on which we waste our money because advertisers manipulate us into "needing" them. I do not mean all wants must be avoided, just that you should recognize them as optional.
The gray area
When saving money, you will make the most progress looking at those items that reside in the gray area. I think of these as needs dressed up in wants. You need protein, but you want a rib eye steak. You need shelter, but you want a loft in the city. Your children need exercise, but they want a trampoline. You get the idea.
Why are these distinctions important? Needs are not optional; you must make sure needs are met. You will go into debt if necessary to ensure your child gets food to eat or to fix your car if you use it to get to work. But as you consider all of your expenses in relation to these categories, you will begin to see places you can cut wants and better meet your needs. Perhaps you will decide that although you need a snack at your 10:00 am break, and you have wanted and purchased something from the office snack machine each day in the past, from now on you will bring a snack from home that saves you $.40/day.
You will also begin to weigh your wants. You may find that you want a newer, more reliable vehicle more than you want the latest video game or a night on the town. Or you may decide instead that you want the nights on the town enough to squeeze a few more months out of the car you have.
Getting clear about what you want will help you choose what you want most and help you pinch the pennies to pay for it.
Needs
Needs include clothing, shelter, food, and transportation to work. You may need medicine or education. If you have dependent children then you must provide for their needs as well. And we all need love.
Wants
Wants are just about everything else. They are the pie-in-the-sky dreams we believe we may never achieve, but they are also the frivolous things on which we waste our money because advertisers manipulate us into "needing" them. I do not mean all wants must be avoided, just that you should recognize them as optional.
The gray area
When saving money, you will make the most progress looking at those items that reside in the gray area. I think of these as needs dressed up in wants. You need protein, but you want a rib eye steak. You need shelter, but you want a loft in the city. Your children need exercise, but they want a trampoline. You get the idea.
Why are these distinctions important? Needs are not optional; you must make sure needs are met. You will go into debt if necessary to ensure your child gets food to eat or to fix your car if you use it to get to work. But as you consider all of your expenses in relation to these categories, you will begin to see places you can cut wants and better meet your needs. Perhaps you will decide that although you need a snack at your 10:00 am break, and you have wanted and purchased something from the office snack machine each day in the past, from now on you will bring a snack from home that saves you $.40/day.
You will also begin to weigh your wants. You may find that you want a newer, more reliable vehicle more than you want the latest video game or a night on the town. Or you may decide instead that you want the nights on the town enough to squeeze a few more months out of the car you have.
Getting clear about what you want will help you choose what you want most and help you pinch the pennies to pay for it.
Labels:
budget,
expenses,
Pinching pennies,
saving money
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