The world is going crazy. Prices are up around the globe. People are giving up food to pay the rent and the list goes on. What can you do to help offset spiraling expenses? Where can you cut back to make your paychecks go farther? Let’s take a look at options that may not be too obvious.
An obvious expense is buying your lunch every day and the just as obvious answer is take your lunch from home. Not quite as obvious is the vending machine candy bar every afternoon or the coffee machine eating quarters. Just one dollar a day in vending machines is $250 a year you spend by dropping quarters in machines. (250 working days in a year with a two week vacation)
If you can find 3 or 4 or even 10 places you can save an average of one dollar a day, you can easily make an annual dent of $1000, $2000 or more in your expenses. $2000 in the coming year might be enough to pay off a credit card, or at least buy a little extra gasoline each week.
Specialty coffees every morning can add up in a hurry. You could save $17.50 a week by giving up a daily latte that cost $3.50. Does your morning caffeine fix cost more or less? Add another evening iced coffee and you might be spending more than you realize.
A few dollars at a time never seems like a lot of money, but if you total those single expenditures for a week, a month or a year, you’ll find that you spend a lot more money than you realized. Two hundred and fifty days of $3.50 coffee totals $875 in a year’s time.
So far we have saved $1.00 a day in vending machine expenses and $3.50 in coffee costs and have $1125 in savings over our normal expenses.
Another way to look at that savings is that it is 1125 gallons of gas. OK, not actually, but if you think of gas at $3.00 a gallon and then at $4.00 a gallon, you have covered yourself for the difference in price for over 1000 gallons of gas. If you could afford $3.00 a gallon gasoline, you can now afford $4.00 a gallon gas based on cutting a few expenses.
By saving on just a couple of expenses you have in effect lowered your price of gas back down to $3.00 a gallon. Maybe that is still too high a price, but what can we do? We can make use of our current resources more effectively.
Start looking at your recurring expenses. Find some where you can cut back or cut out the amount you spend. Cutting back will often be painless. Drink 2 sodas (from home) instead of 3 a day. Smoke 15 cigarettes a day instead of 20. Change your home heater or air conditioner by 2 degrees or more to save on energy.
If you have a job, it is difficult to get more money. However you can learn to save more until you can increase your income by getting a higher paying job or creating a part time income.
There are several frugal living websites online. Do a search for “frugal living” and you will find a number of “living better for less” type websites with hundreds of ideas on how to stretch your dollars and survive in a world gone crazy.
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