I happened to see a few minutes of the Oprah show last week when she had Suze Orman (financial expert) on her show. She has her book Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan that can be downloaded from Oprah's site free until Thursday January 15th. Personally I won't be downloading it, as I think they said it was 200 pages long, so the amount of paper and ink it will cost to print it off will cost more then the $9.99 USD it costs to buy. I would borrow it from our library, but the chances that they will have it are slim to nil (enough said about the library system where I live!!)
Anyhow, she said there were three things we could do to save money right away.
1. Do not spend any money for one day.
Well I personally have no problem not spending money for the day. My goal is not to spend money 5 out of the 7 days of the week. 4 seems to be my magic number of how many days a week I don't spend money. How many days a week do you not spend money?
2. Do not use your credit card for a week.
Again I am sure I can do this, if not for two weeks. Do you use credit cards and could you do this?
3. Do not eat out for a month.
Now I have to say this would be my biggest challenge. If we go out shopping on a Saturday or a Sunday more often than not we eat out at lunch time. So this will a challenge for me. What about you?
Hope these three points help you save money........
Also how are you doing with the daily savings club, as you still putting your 25 cents per day in your pot? You should have $3.25 in your pot.
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16 comments:
you have been so busy on your posts and all I seem to do is think and think- guess I will get up to speed sometime!
At the start of the year I decided I was definitely going to be more careful from now on. So far, so good. No problem about the not spending for one day and will probably make it to 4 or even 5 days of the week, most weeks. Credit card will be used a lot less this year and we don't eat out a lot anyway. Also remembering to put that money away, but haven't counted it yet!
Early days but determined! A x
Having recently had an identity fraud through a cloned credit card - I now do not use my credit card at all!
I really agree with the don't spend money for a day, then make it two a week, then three then four etc. I seem to manage fine not spending 4 days a week. I struggle due to traveling for work.
I can easily do all 3.
I shop once a week so rarely spend money in between unless it is for gas.
I have no credit cards
I sometimes can go 6 weeks or more before even eating fast food!
still can't seem to save money though.
I think I can do those fairly easily. We don't have a credit card, and I typically only shop 1 or 2 days a week. And eating out is easy for us - we've discovered since I learned how to cook that my cooking tastes much better:)
Kris
Thanks Gill. I'm sure we ALL need to be reminded at times all of the ways that we can save money. Just living a more simple life always helps. We don't need all of the fancy-dancy things we've come to expect...
Thanks for some ideas to get us thinking.
Hugs,
Betsy
What a great post. All three ideas should result in savings.
Not a single problem with all three. (Methinks Suze has put on the kid gloves.) I usually only spend weekly. It's just cheaper that way...all errands in one trip.
Evelyn...same here. Though I did the online budget calculator and realized my living costs are too high. So we're moving and knocking those down to where they should be. It's the reason we've been just barely breaking even.
The calculator is at: http://www.cnbc.com/id/26641187/
With no debt, our savings possibility will be at 20% . We're going with 15% as a mandatory rule for us and allow the 5% as discretionary funds.
I'm still not shopping for my 3 months. I've had to make a couple unplanned purchases but they do fall under the "necessary" category (school supplies, DH's mouse broke.)
I'm also really focusing on eliminating our excesses and never accumulating them again!
I have no problem doing all 3. We often go days and days without spending anything. We don't have any cc so #2 is really easy. And we seldom eat out. We are 1 hour from any good restaurants so again that makes it easy.
Good tips...I will have to work on these...
Have a good day!
Love, Jess
I can do all three things. You need to buy a house that needs renovating, preferably surrounded by a garden full of weeds. Then you have no time for eating out or spending money. Your days will be filled with DIY and gardening.
Some useful tips here.
Anyone from the UK should check out Martin Lewis's website http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/?gclid=CIPb24jHjJgCFc0e3godGk8hCw. There's some great ideas and advice on saving money. Sign up for the weekly email too and keep up to date. This sounds like an ad but honestly it isn't, I just find it useful!
In the past when I was first married one of my ways of spending less was to ask myself before I bought something "Do I really need this?". If the answer was no, then I didn't buy it. I'm going to do this again now.
I have no problem doing all three. I go for days on end without spending any money.
I seldon use a credit card, except when making purchases on line, which is rare. I prefer to use a debit card for such things as groceries.
I like to cook so we don't eat out a lot either.
Cheshire wife having a house that needs renovating and a yard full of weeds is a big rreason to have to spend, ask me how I know lol, I have both and they are still that way as number one, no money for supplies to renovate and number two, I keep breaking shovels and need to but topsoil, fertilizer, seeds etc. evelyn
I can do the first two, though I do use the debit card for most everything anyway.
#3 is not a possibility, as hubs does supper on the nights I work so I can sleep, and as he is disabled, he goes out and brings it back from somewhere. On the rare occasions he cooks at home, I have to get up early to help dish it up and then have time to get it all cleaned up and leftovers put away before going to work, and that's difficult for me.
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