Thrift must be the new passion for Americans of all ages. Unnecessary spending today means you have less money in later years when you need it. There's been a lot of talk, advice and indifference. Some find it too painful to face or act on. Ask yourself. Is it any better this year? Is it worse?
Who wants to cut expenses? Who wants to shop with coupons, buy in bulk, iron your own clothes, quit the health club (and take up jogging), vacation at home, buy stuff used, or act down-and-out, destitute, unplugging lamps and whatnot?
I didn't want to. The inevitable consequences are too terrible to mention. Kudos to my honey, because he is the king of thrifty. He's been dragging me kicking and screaming to the thrifty side of life. I finally listened. I wish I had lived more thrifty years sooner. I admit it. We're not rich. We don't have fat paychecks, but we make a comfortable middle-class living. We indulged ourselves. Lots of eating out and mindless spending without thought of cost or waste or health: Not very good habits.
One day the income we were used to stopped. We had to make an overall lifestyle change. We had to change our thinking patterns as well as our buying habits. We had to immediately stop spending, cut expenses and save more money. It was a challenge.
Cutting expenses is not difficult, but it can be painful. It does take thought, time and effort. We immediately stopped going out for dinner. Do you know how much can you save eating at home?
Cut Expenses
We were motivated. The next step was easy. You can do it, too. We made a list of all our expenses, which wasn't difficult, because we already kept a record of the bills we had to pay each month, quarterly and annually.
Trim the Food Budget
The food budget was an easy expense to trim... we thought. We've discovered several ways to save money and eat healthy... not eat less. Eating healthy means incorporating the right amount of food from each of the food groups recommended by the USDA along with making smart food choices for my current health condition.
It seems that our grocery bill just isn't what it used to be. Food sizes seem smaller and the price tag seems higher. Maybe we simply never paid attention. Here's how you can trim 50% off your food budget.Leftovers. A savings we love to take advantage of is making our own whatnots. We can make leftover dinners that keep nicely in the freezer.
Planning, properly storing and reusing parts of previous meals helps keep the grocery bill down.
We designated "Wednesday" as our official "Leftovers" day, which saves on food for an entire day. It works, and we save $18 to $24 eating leftovers one day a week, which averages $1,040 a year. If we eat 3 meals from leftovers each week, we save over $3,000 a year.
Meatless Monday. We save close to $480 a year by not eating meat one day a week. Here are 7 meatless meal ideas.
Take Lunch to Work. I make my honey's lunch. I didn't used to, but times being what they are, my honey can eat a healthy lunchbox lunch for $3 to $5 depending on what I put in it. When he was buying lunch out, the budget skyrocketed to $10 to $15 a day. GaZoWeee… that's a savings of about $2600 a year ($10/day, 5 days/week, 52 weeks/year). Okay then. That cinches it. Lunchbox it is.
Cash Solution. We set a budget, but it's been a bugger to keep. So, what we did is stop by the bank before we shop. We get cash. Boy oh boy, does this keep us on budget. We've done this for several weeks now and it works. So if you are serious about setting and staying on a food budget to trim expenses, go to the grocery store with cash. No checks. No debit card. No credit card.
Save with Coupons and Discounts
Coupons: It seems financially prudent. It's clipping coupons. We tested this out and on our first try, we saved almost $15. We shop every two weeks, so that was a savings of $390 a year and that makes it worth the trouble. Would you clip coupons if you saved $4,000 on groceries?
These first coupons were just what we clipped out of the Sunday paper. We also use Coupons.com -- which is a free online coupon clipping service. That adds more savings. Walmart accepts all coupons, and offers their own Walmart coupons so we save even more. Here's a big secret that no many do. If you buy the same items again and again, go to the product website. Many offer "savings coupons" you won't find advertised anywhere else.
We review our coupons before we go, and this is important. We do not buy something just because we have a coupon for it. If we use the product anyway, the coupon works. If not, we toss the coupon.
We make one exception and that is if the coupon is for something we use but are not out of, we buy it anyway and store it. Savings is savings if we are sure we would buy the item anyway later, buying it now saves us a few pennies. This is good.
Buy in Bulk: Buy in bulk to take advantage of reduced prices for quantity purchases. All the experts say that this is a good way to save. We have plenty of room in our home to store a healthy supply of paper goods and whatnots. So it's off to Sam's Club to stock up on bulk items that don't have a shelf life. More savings of about $600 a year. We are extraordinary savers!!!
Buying in bulk really helps. It sure cuts down on our grocery bill… but we do tally the money spent into what we've budgeted for the year.
Save on Food When Grocery Shopping
Another step we took was to stop going to two or more stores and settle on just one. I mean gadzooks, we drove on over to Central Market, stopped by Market Street, whipped up 75 expressway to Whole Foods and came home broke and exhausted. That had to stop.We finally decided to shop at Walmart Supercenter Grocery Store because prices are simply lower than any other grocer we've shopped at. I'm not sure what the bugaboo was with discount groceries, but for the most part, it doesn't make any sense to pay more for things such as can goods, boxed good and cleaning supplies.
There are many many other grocery items that just don't matter where you buy them.Walmart has a free app that really helps get good prices and stay on budget. I can browse, search and add items to a favorites list using voice input or text, or by scanning bar codes in the store or at home. How cool is this? What a timesaver!
Of course, I can create my shopping list, view, share and print it with and without photos. I can save my list. I can see the current price of items on my list and create an "on budget" grocery list before I even go to the store. I can compare with the local Walmart ad and find rollbacks quickly for even more savings.
The bottom line is that grocery shopping at Walmart has resulted in another incredible savings. The grocery receipt is not only much less on the total... but Walmart accepts coupons and down the total goes even more. How cool is that?
I have to wonder how much money we would have saved by now if we'd done this 10 or 20 years ago. It's something to consider, isn't it?
The Shopping List. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We always go to the store with a list. During the week we keep track of items that we're out of. We add these to our list first. Then, we plan the menu for two weeks. We tried four weeks and we tried one week. Two weeks works perfect for us although we do "pick ups." We pick up fresh vegetables or fruits if needed before the next shopping day.We Eat Before We Shop. We know that we either buy more food than we plan if we're hungry at the grocery store… or we eat out (dine out, that is). This blows our budget to smith-er-ines.
Store Brands. Another thing we've learned that store brands are not a sin. Ye gad, I used to hate anything that wasn't a big brand name. Not anymore. And you know what? There's not much difference. I do stay with a brand for a few things, but for the most part, generic is not much better or worse.
Limits. We limit coffee to two cups each a day, make ice tea and drink lots of water, which is good for us anyway. That saves. I do love a glass of wine now and then. We limit ourselves so we don't feel deprived, but are not investing a chunk of our food budget on the bubbly.
10-Year Savings. Now all this may seem like a lot of effort, and for many, it is just not worth the trouble. But I carefully calculated that including buying non-food items in bulk, our average savings per year is $5,500. If we banked our savings [not counting interest earned] we'd have $55,000 in ten years -- WOW! Ask yourself, is it worth the effort?
If you're not absolutely sure that the answer is a resounding YES, then ask yourself again on the day you retire.
If you're not absolutely sure that the answer is a resounding YES, then ask yourself again on the day you retire.
Clean Closets. The next task was to clean closet and purge what we haven't touched in a year. It was a challenge. Some things were painful to part with, but we did. We actually did three purges... so far anyway. It's difficult to let go of things. I gave some things to the kids. I chose a few things, cleaned them up, took a picture and posted them on Craig's List. That went well, and it was fun. This made it a lot easier to try again. For the second purge, I really evaluated whether I needed certain items. That helped, but for some, I was sad to see it go.
What helped was the money we made. Yes, that helped a lot. My purges were someone else's treasure. I made over $1800 selling stuff I no longer needed on Craig's list. By the third purge, I was a maniac about finding what I could sell... I still have way more "stuff" than we need, so the purging continues.
We love books, so we had a ton. It took days to filter the ones we wanted to keep. The rest were sold to Half Price Books. Didn't get their full value, but it was an eye-opener to have the hand full of money we did get for books someone else could use. We didn't need to store them on our bookshelves anymore.
We also gave a lot of things to Good Will. Our income didn't really need the charity tax deduction. It was just the right thing to do.
Save Money
Buying is spending, and when you cut expenses, you're simply buying less. Shop at stores that typically offer lower prices. In other words, we don't even go into a retail store that doesn't meet our "cut costs, pay less" goals. We try to avoid going to the mall.
We set a shopping budget before we leave the house. When we go shopping, my honey always says to me, "Honey, what's our budget for today?" We set the spending budget based on what makes sense for our spend-less-and-save-more objective.
We don't spontaneous spend (anymore). Once the budget is set, we do not buy anything that costs more than we decided to spend. Believe me, that's not easy when you're used to the see-and-buy method. We strive to live below our means and save the rest. Something we should have done 30 years ago.
Black Friday: This is one of the low-price savings day that kicks off the holiday shopping for Christmas season. We've taken advantage of it for two years and both times we experienced incredible buys. We've seen a small TV for one tenth of the regular price, and kitchen appliances for less than five bucks.
After Holiday Sales: Another time to save big money is after any holiday but especially Christmas. Stores put their holiday related items up for sale for pennies. We get all our Christmas gift wrap and ribbon at these after-holiday sales. What might cost us $100 would be less than $20. Holiday wrap and decorations are not the only items to save on. I've heard that some people do their entire Christmas shopping at this time — a year in advance, just to take advantage of the mark downs.
Clearance: Speaking of mark downs, "clearance" is an "any time" savings. Check the stores you visit for clearance items. You can pick up as much as 90% off the regular price. Online stores, too, such as Amazon.com also have a clearance section.
Cut Services
We purged what we no longer needed and made money doing it. Surprisingly, there are several expenses we found that we could cut or at least trim — and a few services we can reduce the cost of... or do without altogether. You'd be surprised how much money is wasted paying for services you don't really need. Here's some of what we discovered, and what we did.
Land Line Phone vs Cell Phones. Years ago, we got rid of our 3 land lines and went entirely to cell phones. I love my iPhone. It's fun. It's convenient. It's an unneeded expense. Now, with the cost of "data plans" together with our downsized home business and less calls, it seems more cost effective to dump the cells, and go back to one land line. A land line comes bundled with our TV/Internet package, so it is basically free.
Based on our current family talk cell phone plan, we save $1500/year or $125 monthly less spend from our budget. Plus... we have wi-fi, so we still have our calendar, camera, contacts, email and other apps. Our iPhone is a mini computer with phone. Cut the phone and we lose "talking and texting" along with the monthly payment... but we still have everything else. Yea!
Laundry and Ironing at Home. We were planning to do it anyway, but since our 20-year old washer and dryer finally pooped out, the time came up quicker than planned. First, we bought energy-efficient appliances and got a credit from the city, so we didn't pay a water bill for three months. Because of our new machines, we stopped taking clothes to the laundry to be washed and ironed. I got out my 30-year-old ironing board and we saved about $35/month outgo ($420 year).
Washing and ironing at home saves on gas, too, and with the price of gas, it was a nice fat savings to not make a take-and-pickup trip to the laundry. We also needed to recover the moolah we forked over for our new washer and dryer. We didn't buy the highly advertised fancy washer-and-dryer set for just the two of us. Believe me. I wanted to. We bought really nice machines that served our needs and paid less. It will take 20 months to recoup the entire appliance investment (based on what we're saving by not going to the laundry-cleaners). Meanwhile, we've reduced our monthly outgo for laundry and gas.
When the weather is nice, I hang clothes out to dry instead of using a clothes dryer. They smell so fresh drying in the sunshine. I don't do this much... but it saves up to $40 a month. During the winter, I hang some clothes inside, which has a nice side benefit: It adds humidity to the air in our home.
Trim Electric. You can use up to 60 percent less energy by boiling water in a microwave rather than on an electric stovetop. When you do use the stovetop, make sure pots and pans fully cover the heating element. A 6-inch pan on an 8-inch element translates to an energy waste of more than 40 percent.
There's just us two, so we unplugged and got rid of all the "Phantom Loads" in our home. What is that? All the electrical appliances still draw current, even when they are "off." The worst offenders are TVs and VCRs (basically anything with a remote control). Others are small appliances like the toaster, coffee pot, can opener, night lights and computers. You see, in order to respond to the power on command, there must still be some current. While the drain may only be a couple of watts, the fact that the drain is continuous makes it all add up. We saved slightly over $20 a month on our electric bill by getting rid of these phantom loads.
Printer Ink. Here's one I was skeptical of, but worked. I changed the default type font for our printer ink to Century Gothic font, which a recent study showed consumes about a third less ink than industry-standard Arial. That saves us about $1.65 a month or $20 a year (printing 25 pages a week). I'm a writer and do a bit of printing, so this is kind if a hidden savings for us.
Going to the Gym. For several years now, my honey enjoys going to the gym. Three years ago he changed from a health club to a city-run gym because the membership fee savings was significant. This year with expenses on our mind, he decided to cut the cost of the gym membership, not just because of the small $24 yearly fee but because when you add the cost of gas, it saved us $256 a year.
Raise Deductibles. We saved 10% on our insurance premiums by raising the deductible on our car and homeowner's policy to $1,000 from $250. We already know that making a small claim pushes up the premiums, so raising the deductible makes sense. Instead, we keep an emergency fund. But that's not all.
We also buy our auto and homeowner's coverage from the same insurer to get another 15% multiline discount. We lowered our premiums more with smoke detectors, dead-bolt locks and a security alarm system. If you already have one or more of these security items, be sure to notify your insurance company and ask for consideration on your premiums. We hope to put in a sprinkler system soon, which will also favorably impact the premiums, as well as, our water bill.
Medical Insurance. With health insurance premiums higher than a kite, we made a bold move. We opted for a Health Savings Account (HSA). A health savings account is a tax-advantaged medical savings account. The funds contributed to the account are not subject to federal income tax at the time of deposit. Unlike a flexible spending account (FSA), funds roll over and accumulate year to year if not spent. HSAs are owned by the individual, which differentiates them from company-owned Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA). HSA funds may currently be used to pay for qualified medical expenses at any time without federal tax liability or penalty. The savings we're experiencing is awesome!
Investing. I never really gave it much thought, but my honey did. He is in charge of our finances. There is a small fee when you invest, but you may not see it. If you have one or more mutual funds like most people do, in a 401(k) or an IRA for example, chances are you don't pay too much attention to the recurring fees these funds impose on you whether you buy, sell, hold or ignore it. These fees fly under the radar because they are deducted from your balance. Also they typically are teeny tiny next to the gain or loss in your portfolio. But make no mistake: you pay them, and the costs can be surprising high. Thankfully the costs can also be reduced fairly easily. Check into it to be sure.
Walk More. It was my doctor that gave us this idea. She is opposed to the ease of car ownership and driving everywhere. You should hear her on this subject. She says our society is setup to force us to drive rather than walk. I think she's right, but not a whole lot we can do about it. There is no store within walking distance, and if you buy something on the Internet, the cost of shipping takes a chunk out of the budget. So that's out. But we do walk a lot more than we used to… both to save on gas and to support our good health.
There's so much more that we've discovered, but the biggest thing is to just want to cut expenses and save money. If you really want to do something, you find a way to make it happen.
Be Thrifty
My dad was wise, too. He gave me "be thrifty" advice, but I failed to listen. I have to smile every time I think about all he accomplished, all he saved, and the wads of cash he carried in his pocket and stashed under the mattress. He is the epitome of thrifty, no matter how much money you have. He advised me, and now I advise my children. I hope they are smarter than I was. Listen to good advice.
The best part is that most of the changes we made really didn't alter the quality of our life. Yes, it takes some effort. Yes, we gave up a few things we obviously didn't really need. Gadgets and toys. Comforts and conveniences that didn't add anything to our life, but did cost us money to keep and pay for.
We have a 5-year goals list that we update each January. Our plan itemized what we had to do financially to be ready for retirement when we reach social security age.
We reviewed our bills list, analyzed our savings and decided what household expenses and services we could cut, and what debt we could pay off to reduce the monthly outgo. It sounds as if we're this immaculate couple. We're not. All this wasn't easy. It wasn't what we wanted to do. It was painful and rewarding. too.
Make Your Home Safe
Is your house safe from break-ins and burglars? Statistics show that most homes have taken a few steps to add a small level of safety and security. It doesn't take much.
Don't think you're safe because you live in a particular community or there's a low crime rate where your home is. Criminals are everywhere. The aftereffects of being robbed can change a person forever even if there is no one home at the time. Make your house safe.
Be Realistic About the Future
Families today cannot live as if their income will always be there, and any debt they accumulate will magically get paid. As hundreds and millions of Americans already know from experience, times have changed. You must change, too. Live on less. Cut expenses. Save money. Save more for the future.