Various Non-Bald Discussions > General Discussion

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

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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.

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