Save $300 in 30 days
Thank you to David Bach for his advice on starting over this New Year. He will be sharing periodic guest posts with us throughout the month and this Friday (01/08/10) he will be participating in a live chat on Borders Face book page from 11-1pm EST to answer our questions.
Many of you posting comments have mentioned the tactic of mapping out a period of time in which you will abstain from using a credit card or purchasing completely; Karen mentioned Suze Orman’s tip of not spending anything for one day—(remember, Suze Orman will be doing a live chat on Borders Face book Friday January 15th from noon to 1pm EST—a wonderful chance to get advice from the expert.)
In my house-hold this week we are vowing not to use our credit cards other than for purchasing gas. We also have a dry-erase board up on our fridge where for the entire month of January we are recording any daily purchases made.
Most resources on personal financial guidance point out the amount of savings that can be attained by cutting out the day-to-day spending that occurs in the work place.
–A tip for reaching the $300 goal; brown bag it and bring a refillable bottle for water rather than spending an average of $5 a day on lunch.
Here is advice from Leah Ingram’s new book Suddenly Frugal:
“Packing Frugal Lunches
If you want to be truly frugal, you need to start packing lunch every day—whether for you to bring to work or for your kids to bring to school. Invest in reusable containers that you can keep in daily rotation for lunches.”
Seems reasonable enough—so far this week I have brought a refillable water bottle (usually I spend $1 per day) and have forgone purchasing the usual morning cup of coffee ($1.29 per day) and drank the home-brew instead.
Projecting forward the savings of not purchasing at work the daily water ($20) and coffee ($25.80) that is already a monthly saving of $45.80. Well, $254.20 to go.
Coming up this week I will share with you a tip on how to save on the cost of packing a lunch that will seem too good to be true.
Related posts:
- Save $300 in 30 days–guest post from Leah Ingram5 Surprising Ways to Save Money This Year By Leah Ingram If you’re still unsure how to cut your spending in 2010 but still live the good life, here are five (of the hundreds...
- Save $300 in 30 daysLast post I mentioned the advice of packing a lunch in order to save money. Well before you can pack a lunch, you still have to buy the materials. Here is a video from...
Great blog. By the way, I make my own no-kneade artesanal bread now using the many online recipes available for that. For 50 cents worth of flour and yeast, you can have something quite acceptable (way too acceptable - I only do this once a week as it’s too easy to inhale it all when fresh baked) on hand. Fortunately the dough freezes, too.
So…(bread at the store seems to run from $1-4 a loaf - so lets call it $1.99. This cuts $1 a week for bread and simply involve putting stuff in a bowl, mixing til scraggy, covering it, and letting it sit in a warm place for 18 hours (give or take flouring and folding the mass once and cooking it in a 425 oven). Not bad, eh? $4 for you!
wow, what an easy way to save and get the bread fresh! i will look for no knead arteseanl bread website.
thank you
OK been taken lunch to work so far this new year.Free coffee at work (savings $1.89/day).Free spring water at work (savings$1-$2.00/day) $19.45 savings/wk all this saving only because i don’t have any money to buy any of these things !!!!!! Go figure LOL!! My intensions and thoughts are good right?
Thanks so much for highlighting some brief advice from my new book Suddenly Frugal. If your readers are interested in the topic of frugal living, they can subscribe to my blog of the same name here: http://www.suddenlyfrugal.com
Let me know if Borders would like some guest posts from me, too.
Keep up the good work.
Leah
Another good strategy is to ditch cable. Hulu is all you need - legal, free, and less commercials. It’ll save $15/mo. if you had basic, as much as $30 if you had digital and HBO.
Search for a cheaper cell phone plan. Chances are you are paying more than you need to, just call up the major phone companies and they’ll tell you. You’ll have to calculate if the contract cancellation fee is less than the savings over a year period. Look at your own phone bills to make sure you’ll be easily under the minutes provided, because overages will kill you.
This isn’t for the faint at heart, and I don’t know where you live, but if you live in or around a city the single fastest way to save lots of money is to sell your car. Taking public transit is not convenient, but its not impossible in any big city. Dropping repairs, gas, oil, insurance, and a car payment off your budget will easily save you $5,000 a year.
If you can’t give up your car, set goals to drive less. Stay in 1 weekend per month [don't drive]. Group your errands into one trip and use Google Maps to see if you can do all your errands in one area of town to minimize mileage. Car pooling to work is great to if you can convince your co-workers.
Lastly, get rid of the debit card. Although using a debit card makes in much easier to track expenses (mint.com), just using cash will make you spend less… because you’ll run out of it! And nothing is more annoying than finding an ATM more than once a week.
Hm… my last didn’t make the trip. Anyway - I use a free website and online fitness videos to do 200 minutes of fitness (jogging, tai chi, and various moves) while watching the fitness videos or general videos (TV also works - but I don’t have TV)… my estimated monthly savings depending on your “fitness website ($20), gym ($60), and TV costs ($40 or much more) are therefore $120 a month… minus internet costs of course, or any Netflix!”
As for public transit? YEAH! (I live wayyyyy out where there isn’t any, but I combine trips as much as possible (e.g., to recycle, shop, go feed stock at the farm) and try to buy gas only 2x a month. Here’s the coolest transportation adjustment I just made, however. My (one) credit card (I do pay it off completely every month, it’s like a checkbook) offers reward points. I just lashed out 39,000 points for a Vespa. Next summer when our gas prices go up (right now it’s 2.84 a gallon, when all’yall come to see this incredible place we’ll make sure to raise it up over $3), I’ll have a putt putt to supplement my bicycle and my high mpg, 11 year old car.)
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