Saving on Grocery Spending
January 22nd, 2008
As I was reading through my RSS feeds this morning I ran across a post on Blogging Away Debt where Tricia was describing how she is trying to save the family some money on the grocery bill. This got me thinking about my spending habits in this area and even though my wife and I split the cost of food over the course of a month it inevitably adds up very quickly.
The ideal way to save money on groceries is to know what you are going to eat over the course of a month, pick recipes that have the same ingredients and then buy in bulk. Although this is probably the best way to save money on food costs its not necessarily the most fun.
In my particular case I have a different approach to grocery shopping than Tricia does. We decide what we’re going to have during the course of the day or at a maximum a couple days in advance and then we buy the groceries on the way home. Now this might not be the most efficient way to buy food it but because we decide our dinner menu with very little lead time it prevents us from buying food that we don’t end up eating.
The net result from our approach maybe that we spend more money on food by going every day but I believe that we end up spending less in the long run by not throwing out food. Wasted food is no different than if you threw your money away. With all of this said we still keep some staples stocked it was just a matter of reducing the amount of wasted food and money while keeping the menu/eating habits the same. If it came down to a necessity we could always revert to a planned menu and buy in bulk (hopefully not throwing anything out).
Posted in Saving Ideas, Sites/Articles | 2 Comments
The Cost of Pet Ownership
September 19th, 2007
My parents recently got a cat from the animal shelter and he’s the cutest thing I’ve seen in a very long time. They’re undoubtedly saving this animal from being put down (especially since he was abandoned) but with something as simple as this comes a cost. Having a pet puts some responsibility on your shoulders and some costs. Most people don’t realize that they’ll have to pay for the animals food and veterinary needs, and if they realize this they don’t realize just how much a vet can cost.
Pet ownership comes with a lot of benefits, animals in our lives make us smile, give us energy and often they can help us get our dose of exercise. The positives of owning a pet such as a cat or a dog are many but they also come with a cost. Say it costs you $20 a month to feed your pet and an additional $200 a year for basic vet fees. Very quickly this pet is a $420 a year animal and more often than naught this is small approximation. Animals have other hidden costs that we forget about (leashes, toys, cat litter, etc.).
The final cost of pet ownership that you need to weigh before you actually get one is the time element. Cats for example are pretty self-sufficient but still need some attention; you need to feed them daily and you need to make sure they have a clean litter box or you might find a surprise waiting for you one day. Dogs need to be walked on a regular basis, which can be great for both the owner and pet but it takes time, which has value.
One last point that I need to mention is the impact to vacations – if you own a pet and you plan on taking a vacation where you can’t take the pet you need to find a way to ensure the animal is being looked after while you’re away, which can cost more money and potential headaches. Owning a pet isn’t like a gadget or toy that you can simply leave for weeks on end it’s a life that needs care.
I’ve had a pet for years, most of my life in fact, and I’ll continue to have one. But I fully realize that this little creature sharing my living space is alive and needs care no different than a child. Anyone considering getting a pet should keep this in mind when getting a pet; the financial impact can be significant even if the emotional benefits are considerable.
Posted in Saving Ideas, Commentary | 1 Comment
Controlling ATM Fees
September 18th, 2007
ATM Fees have been in the news lately and the Blogosphere (at least the PF one) has been reacting. The Bank of America has raised their ATM fees to $3 which I have to agree is a bit on the excessive side. So why is the reaction so negative? Well first off I think that the other banks out there will follow suit on this and they’ll all be charging this amount soon.
Why is this such a big deal?
Well if you’re like me you look at your bank statement and notice all of the little dings associated with bank fees and ATM fees. It’s one of those hidden costs that no one really thinks about when they’re taking money out of the bank machine. When we step up to an ATM and pull money out it’s because we need it then and there now rather than using another form of paying for our purchases (debit or credit).
How do we control ATM fees?
Very simply either use credit cards, wisely, which can be problematic in it’s own right or we need to learn to control these fees. The simplest way to control them is to carry cash around with you. If you take out some cash when you’re at your bank you can reduce your reliance on other bank’s ATMs. If you know you’re going to need money take some out rather than scramble last minute to find an ATM only to realize later you just paid $3 to take out $20!
Saving money with Cash
I’m sure that there will be people out there that disagree with me when it comes to relying on cash but it can save you some money. If you can reduce the ATM fees that appear on your statements by say 10 ATM fees per month you’ve just saved $15-30 depending on the bank you use. As with most small amounts you can easily neglect this money but if you take it over the longer term it all of a sudden makes a considerable difference. That $15/mo over the course of a year translates to $180 and at $30/mo its $360. Where you might ignore $15 or $30 as a convenience fee the $180 to $360 all of a sudden doesn’t seem that small. By controlling your ATM use you can reduce your debt. If you happen to use an ATM a significant amount this can save you a lot of money.
Carrying cash around brings with it it’s own problems in that people no longer feel safe having $200 in their wallet. Chances are you don’t need quite that much and if you do need the money carry one credit card for the larger purchases. Both cash and credit cards require some self control to ensure you don’t overspend but they’re a much better than paying the banks an excessive fee for a convenience.
I’ve always seen ATM fees as excessive, even at $1 per use I think is a bit much since by volume of use alone the banks are profiting at less than this per transaction. Banks make money hand over fist yet they insist they need to increase fees on basic services. The worst part of this whole equation is the fact that this is going to impact everyone especially people for whom $3 can make a difference when it comes to basic expenses such as food and shelter.
Posted in Saving Ideas, Commentary, Debt | 5 Comments
Asking for Discounts
September 15th, 2007
I ran across a post on I’ve Paid Twice For This where she mentions asking for a discounted price and gives a couple examples. This really got me thinking because our society is so conditioned to accept things at face value that we simply don’t ask questions anymore. Personally I think this has a lot to do with fear of rejection and fear of standing out but that is a topic for a completely different type of Blog.
Asking for a discount doesn’t hurt and about the only thing that can happen is positive so why don’t we do it? Normally I don’t ask for discounts; but whenever my purchase gets a little more expensive I don’t hesitate. Take hotel rooms for example if you stay in a hotel room once a month and pay $150 for it, that’s a lot of money. Asking for a discount can very easily get you 10% off that price which translates to $15. Over the course of the year that’s $180, which is more than a full stay!
Getting over the fear of asking for something where the answer might be no is something that a lot of people have difficulty with. We’re too used to following along and accepting the price for something as is. Discounts exist all over the place as sale prices, volume discounts, promotional prices, and discretional discounts. If you’re asking for a discount at a hotel chances are the clerk has the authority to give you a discount without any need for an approval.
If you can get 10% off the purchase price of your items you can save a great deal of money over the long run. It might only be a couple dollars here and there but when you add all of them up it makes a difference.
Many people go out of their way to find sale prices but are too afraid to ask in the store, next time you’re about to buy something, get out of your comfort zone and ask if they have any discounts, you might need to be creative with your reasoning why but very often the competition will have a better price… threaten to take your business elsewhere. If it doesn’t work then you loose nothing.
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Sunday Saving Tip – Shopping Around
June 10th, 2007
When you decide you want an item at the store do you typically find the best price in the first store you’re in? Probably not, in our day and age finding the right item isn’t necessarily hard but finding the right item at the right price is. Personally I’ve never liked shopping around, but then again I’m often guilty of the impulse buy. Shopping around is very much the complete opposite to the impulse buy because it means that you’re taking the effort to find the right product at the right price.
Shopping around becomes really noticeable when you buy more expensive items such as cars but even the tires on the car are worth shopping around for. The reason I mention the tires is because that was one of the best examples of the power of shopping around that I ever witnessed. I needed to put new tires on my car so I did a little research and found a brand and model I liked and a list of people who could put the tire on my car. The first phone call yielded a guy who had the tire and could put it on my car for X$(sorry don’t remember the exact price). I wasn’t thrilled with the price but I almost took it. Something in the back of my mind said call a few more places and I did. What it turned out had happened is the Goodyear plant was on strike so the tires I was looking for were scarce and the first guy I called knew this and was marking the price up. Shopping around would have saved me more than 50$ per tire and the last place also did free alignments.
The biggest item with shopping around is it requires effort and I’m sure that the phrase shopping around paints a very clear mental picture for some people: getting into the car and driving from one store to the next till I get a good deal. With so much information on the internet easily available all we have to do is do a little research and make a few phone calls and I think you might be surprised how much you can save.
Now with this said I do believe that shopping around is best when it comes to bigger ticket items. If you’re going to shop around and spend an hour getting the best price for your computer speakers that cost 15$ but will cost more than that in gas to get them it’s really not worth it.
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Sunday Saving Tip – Bring your lunch!
June 3rd, 2007
The topic of this week’s saving tip is probably one of the oldest ones out there and its also one of the ones that I find people generally ignore. I know that bringing my lunch to work and before that to school was something I generally tried to avoid. I always enjoyed the social aspect of going out for lunch and then the luxury aspect of having someone bring me my food freshly cooked. This one item is also a part of how I managed to get into debt early on and once you look at the numbers it becomes clear why brining your lunch is such a great saving tip.
I think this saving tip is best illustrated with an example: Say you’re like a lot of people out there any you eat out for lunch during the work week. Now being a money conscious individual you try to eat in the food court or fast food joint close to the office. Well for arguments sake lets say you’re only spending about $10 on your food (with any drink and tax that was included). I’m sure some people will argue that $10 on lunch is a lot and that they don’t ever spend it and I’m sure this is true but I’ve been finding keeping lunch under $10 is doable but it somehow always gets pretty close to it.
Before digressing to a tangent about the cost of fast food lets get back to our example; that $10/day on food over the course of the week translates to $50. Now the average worker in North America works about 50 weeks out of the year, which brings our daily lunch cost up to $2500! And this is with a $10 a day lunch, imagine if you sat down at a restaurant every day and had a $25 lunch which is what I did in my youth; the cost of those lunches over the course of the year were over $6000!!
I’m guessing at this point I’ve either got your attention or you’re about to argue that bringing in your lunch from home still costs money and you’d be completely right about that. Feeding yourself is going to cost money no matter what. But if you bring your lunch from home and its leftovers from the night before the cost of the extra food is probably only a couple dollars if that. You’re still saving thousands per year.
Unfortunately brown bagging it isn’t very glamorous and often means you’re tied to your desk. But the cost savings are huge and the spending on food very quickly adds up. When you get into a pattern of buying lunch and you’re out of cash what to most people turn to? Yup their credit cards. This is where the trouble with something as simple as lunch can start and I know this is what happened to me. I still like to eat out for lunch but I don’t do it every day.
Technorati Tags: saving tip, spending, bringing lunch
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Sunday Saving Tip – Planning Your Spending
May 27th, 2007
This is the first post in a series that I’ve been planning on putting up on the site for a little while now and I’ve finally managed to get around to it. The whole premise is to throw out an idea for a saving tip weekly and give some examples and details as to why I think this is a good idea. Now of course some of the tips I’ve got planned out really won’t apply to everyone and in some cases might be a reflection on how I would have done something a little differently. The goal behind these ideas and tips is to maybe provide some of the readers with ideas how they might be able to save some money and a the very least get their minds going so they come up with their own ideas.
Now onto the first saving tip that I wanted to write about, planning your spending. This is a bit of a no brainer when it comes to anyone who is active with their personal finances and careful with their money but I think it should be reiterated. Also I’m not talking about budgeting, its more specific than that, I’m referring to planning your spending before you’re about to go do it. The classic example for this would be the shopping list when you go to the grocery store.
Planning your spending will reduce the chance you’ll make an impulse buy. I’ve witnessed this personally when we’ve gone grocery shopping both with and without lists. When we get into the store with the list in hand we really just go for the items that we’re looking for. Occasionally a snack food makes it into the cart but the overall effect is we buy what we need and get out of the store quickly. On the times that we’ve gone in without a list all sorts of things make it into the shopping cart that might not be there otherwise. Half formed ideas of what we want to eat during the week translate into over spending.
Planning out your spending also gives you the ability to see where your money is going and to continue using the grocery shopping as an example, you’ll start realizing that you already got 3 types of Caesar salad dressing at home and won’t need to buy another one. Its just a matter of reducing the spending to what you need rather than what you might need.
As a nice side effect planning out shopping lists I found the impulse buys decreased. Now there’s nothing wrong with the odd impulse buy here and there for something like a magazine or a coke but when you’re buying these types of things all the time the costs add up incredibly quickly and the worst part is it might be hard to notice the cost of these items collectively. It’s just a dollar is what you tell your brain, but when you tell yourself the same thing 50 times its no longer just a dollar but its now $50. I guess this is more of a mental exercise that I found helps me reduce the incidental spending during the week and help reduce unnecessary purchases (especially of items we already had).
Technorati Tags: saving tip, spending, shopping lists
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The Devil is in the Details
April 30th, 2007
I’m sure that most of you are familiar with that saying, it’s one of the things that I’ve noticed in the past couple weeks is that it isn’t the big tasks that take up the most time but the little small ones. When it comes to work making sure that the details are worked out is what takes up the most time and these things are the little tweaks.
When it comes to personal finances I don’t think this differs very much. We can get an idea of where our money is at and how we’re budgeting it but we don’t bother with the little details. I think this is where a lot of people’s budgets break down and I know it’s where mine has in the past. To give you an idea how quickly a budget can break down in the details is imagine that you planned to spend $100 for food in a week and you thought you could make it work. Unfortunately you forgot to pack your lunch 2 days in the week (something that can happen when you’re busy) and you buy lunch at the food court twice for $5. Now if you’re not hurting for money you won’t notice the $10 that just left your wallet but the problem is that little detail that you overlooked was 10% of your budget.
The real devil in the details comes up not with the bigger items such as eating out but in how much we spend on groceries. The brands, sales and quantities of products can change our shopping amount drastically. Add these little changes over time, include the unnecessary little expenses and this is where the details can make or break our budgets.
I’ve always been blown away by how much money gets spent not in the $20 chunks but in the $1-2 variety. You don’t think about the small ones nearly as much as you would the big ones. As an experiment try to track all of your spending over the course of a month. First off unless you’re already frugal and good with your money this exercise is a challenge, but when you see the results you might be surprised.
The last time I tracked every penny I spent I was shocked by where my money went and I think its about time to start that experiment again. I challenge my readers to try it for a month, are you as good as you think you are at controlling your spending? Once you’ve had a chance to do this and you stick with tracking your money you can budget more accurately by keeping the details of your spending in mind.
Technorati Tags: money, spending, personal finance, budget, budgeting
Posted in Budgeting and Planning, Saving Ideas, Commentary | 1 Comment
Happy Valentines Day
February 14th, 2007
I know, I know it’s a Hallmark holiday but I’ve got to say it’s always nice to make sure those around you know you care about them. It’s pretty sad that we need a special day to do this but in all reality some people might not say anything otherwise. Remember the best way to save some money on a day like today is to make Valentines special by taking the effort to do something creative and personal. Instead of buying a $5 card make one or instead of going out to some fancy dinner stay in and make a special meal at home!
Remember to tell those that are special to you that you love them!
Posted in News/Misc, Saving Ideas | No Comments
Reduced Car Insurance Costs
December 21st, 2006
I have to say I’m quite impressed by the drop in my insurance that I was able to arrange. My car insurance was extremely high even for the region that I live in. I was paying $475 per month because of some stuff on my driving record in the past. I’m not entirely innocent on that front but not entirely at fault either. The net result is I’ve been paying really high insurance for close to three years. But this is changing starting now!
I managed to get my monthly rate dropped to $328 per month for a savings of almost $150 a month. This is definitely going to make my life a whole hell of a lot easier once my lower pay starts kicking in. When I was considering my new salary I was using the higher value to calculate if I would be able to pay all my bills and I was so this should allow me to pay down my debt a bit more and save some money for the wedding as well.
I’m definitely happy I was able to get the car insurance dropped by as much as I did. When was the last time you had your car insurance rates re-evaluated?
Technorati Tags: car insurance, insurance, cost reduction, bills
Posted in Saving Ideas, Monthly Planning | 3 Comments
