unnecessary spending?? Lets all do a project together..

[Timmay]

My wife , few friends and I  were sitting outside the other night enjoying our pit fire.  The conversation turned to unnecessary spending.  We all do it and do not even realize we do it.  Have you ever just sat back and thought about the little things you spend money on that you really do not have to?

You tend to not think about it when it is just a single purchase but once you look at it over a months time...its kinda shocking actually.  

Every morning...which you all have probably heard me say, I get a fountain pepsi and a hostess cake of some sort for breakfast.  Along with that I also purchase the morning newspaper.  My wife picks her up a soda everyday as well.  Doing that everyday over a months time adds up to $119.00 a month!

Then it went further.... Very depressing at that.  We eat out alot.  Im not saying everyday , but we tend to get lazy.  Every friday night we go to eat, Saturday afternoons, and sunday afternoons.  With 5 people in our family, its not cheap.  We will spend anywhere from $100-$150 a weekend just eating out..which again, figure that over 4 weekends a month...$400-$600 a month.  Add that with $119 we spend a month....dudes thats almost $750 bucks a month that is just GONE!....GONE!  

We are implementing some new ideas within our family.  What those idea's are Dont know yet...but we are lookign for suggestions from you SlyGuys.  What are some of your money saving ideas that you have begun in your family, or do you ?  Be interested in hearing what are some alternate ways you all have spent or saved your money?

[schro]

Great topic, Timmay!

David Bach wrote a book called "The Automatic Millionaire" that addressed this very thing. He had something called "The Latte Effect" where people taking the $ they spent on their mocha choca lotta frappa crap from Starbuck's and put it away. With the power of compounding, the $ they could put away is substantial. Oh, I brew my own coffee at home, so that's a big savings in the coffee dept.

1. With two active kids both involved in select soccer programs, our weekends are usually "on the go", so avoiding eating out is not easy. Still, we usually pack lunches & drinks to avoid the eating out.

2. We usually prefer to eat our meals at home for three reasons; #1, Healthy meals #2, cost and #3 both the Lovely Mrs. Schro & I love to cook.

3. The Lovely Mrs. Schro is not employed outside the house, so my paycheck is the only income. She does 99% of the shopping, and is very
thrifty and is smart with coupons and goes to a couple of different stores for different things.

4. BUY STORE BRANDS! This may surprise you, but if you have a chance, take a look at store brand foods (canned foods, cheese, etc). I used to work in the grocery industry (finance) and got to know the head of our Private Label brands. The quality is just as good and costs a ton less.

These are just a few of what we do at Chateau Schro.

[buddha]

I was just talking with someone a ccouple of days ago about how, in our society, we complicate our lives in many ways and then tell ourselves that we are "simplifying". The truth is that I wonder if any of us, excluding the homeless, even have a clue as to what a "simple" life is. The reason I exclude the homeless is that there is an entire class of people in this country who live the "simple" life out of necessity. True enough, many of them are in the fix they're in due to negligence on their own part but a lot of the homeless are forced into their situation by way of circumstance: layoffs, divorce, bankruptcy, etc.

My parents grew up in the depression and one of the things that experience fostered was what is called the "depression mentality". My dad saved like a fiend, passed on a lot of luxuries that other people believed to be necessities, and generally lived what my aunt thought of as a drab life. Any time he or my mom needed something, though, the money was right there. Other people who strove to forget the depression by livin' it up had to save up for things or buy on credit.

This is the problem when a President tells people to go shopping after a time of national crisis. Shopping has replaced baseball as the national pastime. As a nation we have found ourselves to be in debt all the time. What Tim said about the expenses that we don't even keep track of, the morning pop, twinkie, and paper (good healthy fare!) and eating out even a couple of times a week amounts to hundreds of dollars a month. And even though we know that it's putting a strain on us, not only financially but mentally, we (I) continue to do it.

Thanks for this post Timmay. This really made me think.

[D.A.L.U.I.]

Everyone seems to be watching their copper pennies these days.  Rather than spend $3-4 for lattes and cappacinos I took out our expresso machine that we've had for ages and cleaned it up.  Now, a home made latte or cappacino costs less than 50 cents, even using premium brand 100% arabica bean expresso at $12 a can.  We eat out less than before, and rather than having our drinks at the restaurant we have cocktails at home and come back for coffee--really saves $ on the restaurant bill--they plan for up to 50%  of a bill to be for drinks and coffee!  Their plan, not ours. 
We don't eat out a lot, once a week usually--and we enjoy cooking at home.   We shun prepared foods--we've even used Julia Child's receipe for home cured corn beef--a very interesting and thrifty treat.  It's easy to make baba ganouche (sp) and it's a real favorite--and MUCH cheaper than the store bought stuff.  And the extra benefit of cooking from scratch and enjoying it, you become a much more discriminating restaurant customer. 

[Timmay]

So, is it safe to ask that we all agree that we spend way too much on "junk"? 

Would you all be interested in doing a little project together?  Say we start this on Monday Sept.14, choose an activity or two that we spend unnecessary money on and cut back.  Take that money that we would normally spend and stash it away?  At the end of every 4 weeks we can all report what we have "saved" back?  We will all have to remain truthful and honest on it, if we arent, then there is no purpose of doing it.  Along with posting our savings, we can list what we cut out.  Sound like a deal?

I am willing to start doing it.  I think it would be amazing to see what we all have saved up in like 6 months time.

[marty22]

we all do it; our unnecessary extras is food out. Not the expensive kind. A fancy luncheonette or Diner if you will. Ive been looking to cut back approx. $1,500- a year on this stuff.

[BReady]

Being broke as a joke, I tend to keep my unnecessary spending to a minimum:

I pay 43 dollars a month for internet.... however, I use my Internet for phone and tv (mediaserver in living room TV w/ justin.tv and hulu as my TV enterainment)... so 43 for internet, phone and cable is the way I like to see it.

I pay 93 dollars a month for two cell phone lines and one blackberry plan.  There's some uneeded expenses right there.  My wife either loses or doesnt charge her phone 9/10 times, so I can cut off her line.  The BB plan, is "uneeded" I guess, but this serves two purposes: emergency internet (tethering laptop) is I miss an internet payment and.. I can't do crap with out my blackberry.

Those are LITERALLY the only unnecessary expenses I have.  The rest is spent on mortgage, child support, CAR PROBLEMS (which I have a lot of lately), food and utilities.  I've gone out to eat about 3 times this summer (2 were at mcdonalds).

It sucks big time, but that's life!

BReady

[jamesh75]

Great topic you started here Timmay.  I think my biggest unneeded expense would be eating out.  My wife and I both work 40 hour/week jobs and have two kids in karate and scouts, plus homework.  We just don't have the time to cook, so we do a lot of eating out and carryout.  We talk all the time about saving money by not eating out, and we have cut back, but we still eat out way to often.  Plus, it's hard to find a healthy meal eating out. 

Keep the tips coming, saving money is always a good thing.

[SBG Math Guy]

I moved to Ottawa away from my parents for 8 months.  I received funding from university but it just wasn't too great.  I was left with $271 exact for food.  I wanted
to make some profit.    Therefore, I cooked at home (on my own) and usually spent somewhere between $90 and $130 for food per month.  I tell you sometimes poverty can bring you wisdom.    Now that I am back with my parents I spend a lot less on eating out because I'm used to not doing it.   I absolutely love eating out (who doesn't ), but man as Timmay pointed out it costs A LOT. 

[buddha]

We have a group of friends that we go out for fish fry with usually 2 or 3 times per month. One of the other couples suggested that what we do instead is have a pot luck at one of our houses to replace the fish fry. Normally one would think that a simple fish fry would be about 9 or 10 bucks per person but when you throw in that someone wants a baked potato instead of fries and a couple of rounds of drinks there goes $40-$50 a couple.....oh yeah, I forgot the tip.
I think I'm gonna resurrect the pot luck idea.
I'm gonna sit down with Mrs. Buddha and see what else we can trim.

[Timmay]

Seems like the biggest portion of our money goes towards eating out.  
I was talking to my wife at lunch...and yes we had lunch from home. I forgot how good Fried Bologna tasted.  Anyways, we talked about the topic I posted on here about saving money.  One of her co-workers who sat near by said they on one of the weekend nights they have "theme night"  her kids get to choose ahead of time what night and what theme.  The themes range from , Italian, chinese, Greek, Mexican, American and etc.  A few examples she gave was with American night, they would have the usual hamburgers/hotdogs with red and white plates/napkins , Mexican night would include a somberro.  Better yet she said, with satelite radio you can tune in to music to fit your night.  Everyone gets involved in preparing dinner as well.

I dunno, could be fun...might even be more fun if you were to invite a couple of friends over as guest as well.

If its an adult party, you can have a wine themed dinner, which would go great with a french, greek or italian theme....Have fun....what are your ideas?

[Tyler]

Great topic Timmay!! 

One of our biggest spends was eating out.  Like Schro, with a kid it can be had to cut out completely, but we've done a few things to help curb these costs.

1) We pack food.  Sandwiches and fruit are easy to pack.
2) We now share food if we go to a restaurant.  Portions are already huge.  We usually get 1 appetizer, 1 main entree, and a large bowl of soup.  My daughter loves soup, so that's usually her meal for $3 and my wife and I split the rest.  This has cut our average bill from $40 to $50 down to $20 or $30.

Another great side effect of doing this is that you eat healthier. 

[BReady]

Better yet she said, with satelite radio you can tune in to music to fit your night.  Everyone gets involved in preparing dinner as well.

That's another way of saving money w/ internet (which you probably have anyways) and a semi-old computer or modded xbox.  I can stream just about any type of music in my living room w/ the mediaserver and in the garage w/ XBMC (when I BBQ).  Sat radio is kind of cheap anyways, but I guess that could qualify at some savings.

BReady

[andrew]

Like everyone else, we spend too much eating out.  Additionally, my wife was spending way too much grocery shopping.  This has been an issue for a while, and I'd taken over the grocery shopping a few times to prove that we could spend much less and still have everything we need.

I work a lot of hours so it's not always practical for me to do the shopping, but we seem to have solved the problem.  One of the supermarkets in our town, Stop & Shop, has a new device available to shoppers that has helped a lot in keeping to our budget.  This device allows each shopper to scan each item before putting it in your carriage and it keeps a running total.   My wife watches the running total and tends to watch the prices much more.  She also puts things back when she's over budget.

Items may be removed from the carriage and removed via the scanner.  When checking out, the scanner is put into a dock and all the info is uploaded and totaled immediatley for checkout, making that process easier.  Also, as items are scanned and put into carriage, she puts them right into one the re-usable fabric bags, so checkout doesn't require any bagging.

We've been saving quite a bit since my wife started using this device ...

Andrew

[Baldboss]

As the cook and shopper in my house, I can tell you a weekly menu is the way to go.  I know every night what I'm cooking and before I go to the store, I have a list of exactly what I need.  I buy what's on the list...nothing more and nothing less.  If my wife goes, she will spend 50% more and get half the food.  Another tip - do not go to the store hungry.  Avoid processed foods, too - you pay for the convenience, the quality and nutrition is less, and you can do better by making it yourself.