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[odessa]

Inspired by the "best grownup money advice" thread and the number of people who talked about making and carrying their own coffee to avoid overspending on lattes and the such, I'm wondering about what people actually do to control expenses, not just what we know we should do.

In the super drastic category, a few years ago I moved to a much cheaper part of the country.  However, I'm about to somewhat reverse that benefit by relocating again (although not to a super expensive area - just more expensive than my current locale.)

I paid off the credit cards (helped considerably by the change in COL), so I'm no longer paying obscene amounts of interest to the credit card companies.

On a more day-to-day ongoing basis, I've trimmed my book and magazine buying considerably.

I'm still struggling with managing my grocery bill and consistently brown bagging.

What do you do?

O.

[dr_dre]

Cut down on restaurant meals. Eat egg dishes for dinner. Find the tipping point where cheap wine turns nasty. Buy new clothes on Ebay. They're probably stolen, but I can live with that.

[magimax]

Let my niece do my pedicures.  For some reason she loves doing it and she does a really good job, considering she's 10 years old.  She might have a career in it!

Use the library for all reading material, although for some reason the magazine I've subscribed to for the last 5 years and cancelled a year ago is still sending me issues for free. 

Get cable for free from the neighbors (ha!)  Just kidding - get it for free from the apartment complex as part of the rental package.

Use plastic grocery sacks for trash sacks.  Wash baggies and re-use.

Recycle all aluminum possible - it's paying really well nowadays.

Forget E-Bay - Shop for basic clothes at Goodwill, especially the one in the "rich" neighborhood.  I've gotten some great deals on "new with tags" pieces. 

Save rain water for plants.  Save run-off tap water from washing veggies, etc, for plants. 

[expatinuk]

I've reduced my grocery bill by 1/2 by having organic fruit and veggies delivered on a weekly basis. Surprising how much crap you impulse buy when you go to the grocery store. Now that I only go to the store about once a month to pick up non food items my bill is significantly smaller. I go to the butcher for meat... that's all they sell... meat... so again I don't impulse buy a DVD, magazine, chocolate cake.... etc.

[claragold]

Re: What do you REALLY do to save money?

I don't buy.

It's amazing how much little stuff that you don't really need you throw away money on. Another tactic to reduce the impulse buying, tell yourself you will wait at least a day or a week to buy whatever you felt like buying at that very moment. You will not buy it later.

Stop using credit cards (I mean, no need to throw them away), but start paying cash for everything and saving before you buy, reverse the dynamics of credit card debt creation.

Set yourself a certain amount of money per month or per week that you spend on little things and once that's gone, you don't buy anything else until the next period.

Go to the park instead of the mall. Walk and bike instead of using paid transportation/fuel. Watch less commercials.

Search the stores that offer discounts, quantity-saving deals, etc.

[cranefly]

Forget cable--you can download movies or just the shows you watch, and it adds up to be much cheaper if you don't watch too much tv!

[harlow]

Cut my own hair. Usually successfully.

[secretweapon]

I stop drinking.  I don't normally drink much, but drinking nothing is still cheaper.

[iomhaigh]

Mostly, I just don't buy things.  I go food shopping regularly, but I only buy what I'm eating over the next few days.  I go to Target once every couple of months (usually when the TP runs out). 

I've actually stopped shopping sales for things like TP, because "ooo!  look!  that's on sale at Target AND I have coupon" meant I would try out some new cleaner that I don't really need, which would bring me into Target, which is like a crackhouse for me.  Now, if I walk by a rack of TP on sale, then I'll usually pick up a 12 pack, but I won't hunt down the sales anymore.  I buy less crap this way.

I only purchase movies & books if I have gift cards from holidays.  If they are things I can use in class, then I use my annual reimbursement account for those.  (I have a pretty broad interpretation of "what I can use in class," but still...)

I only buy new clothes when I actually need them (ie - when the teaching pants become the work pants because they need patching.)  And then, I buy them on sale and usually with a coupon, and I buy clothes that will last a few years.  No more Old Navy cheap-ass cotton crap that disintegrates in two months.   

I buy shoes every five years or so.  Sneakers more frequently.  Work boots are a decade old and still going strong. 

Mostly, I live like I was raised -- buy it used, or buy the display model, or buy it on sale, but only buy it if you need it, and nurse the product you are replacing until it is good and dead and beyond repair.  Example:  my alarm clock, circa 1990, has stopped working if you set it to buzz.  It still works on "radio alarm" though, so while I have contemplated getting a new one, it will probably take a few more years before I do. 

I also stick a few hundred dollars in a savings account from my old job every few months and forget about it.  (Which comes in handy when I have to make a big purchase, like a new transmission.)  I also keep sticking a few hundred in my local savings account and pretend it isn't there.   (It's just a matter of time before the transmission really does go...) 

[clean]

"Envelope System" -- essentially, a written budget!  There is no substitute.

My dad taught me that when I was 14.  His example was that when my parents first married, my dad worked in a grocery store and was paid every week in cash.  He took the money home and put 1/4 of the rent money in an envelope.  At the end of the month, there was rent money.

I use the same (or very similar) system for groceries, spending/fun money, clothes, dry cleaning, hair cuts, my cleaning lady, repair, gifts, and vacations.

Here is what I do on payday (once a month, 9 times a year).

1. take 25% of take home pay and put in a savings account for summer money.  (I didnt opt for the 12 month pay plan, as they do exactly that here... take out 25%, and then dole it out to you over the 3 dry months)

2. send $1000 to another savings account for 'savings'.  (I have no car payment or house payment, so this is replacement money for the car, major house issues, Roth IRA, or big ticket items like a camper Im close to buying)

3. Pay recurring monthly bills like cable, phone, water, insurance...

4. with remainder I look at what
A. I NEED
   food
   perscriptions
   gas
   clothing  **
   Maintenance (something is going to break, I just dont know what or when, so I save $100 every month for that.  When something breaks, it is not an 'emergency')

I write the amounts I need to spend for those items this month.

**  In this case, I dont buy clothes every month.  I usually have to spend a lot on clothes a few times a year, so I just save 1/9th of what I usually spend there.

B.  I now look at what I WANT
   gifts
   vacation
   cleaning lady
   dry cleaning
   hair cut
   'spending money'
   wish list - if there is anything left- back to savings

THEN, I write a check for the total that I need in cash for these envelopes:
food, perscriptions, dry cleaning, hair cut, spending money, and my cleaning lady.

(the rest is transferred to a savings account.  I have a paper that has the totals on it for each category.)

I only use the cash in the envelopes for what the envelope/account is for.  When you run out of money, you are done with that account.  If you shop IN cash WITH a list, then it is not that bad.  I bet that even today, if you could not shop for a week, that there would be enough food in your house to feed you for a week.  It may be the food you dont really like, but it would be food!


How do you know what you spend?  
The first step in a budget is knowing what you spend on things.  Get a little spiral notebook (like the 3x5 kind).  Write down EVERY PURCHASE for 3 months.  Once you know the what and where, you can control it.  

I found that I spend over $400 a year at Circle K - 7-11 stores on big gulps over a year.  I decided that was not the way I wanted to spend my life (example follows).  I now buy the big bottles of the same soda at the grocery store and just fill up one of the many cups I ve acquired from those stores before I leave for work.  Ive not given up ANYTHING except waiting in line at the stores.  Im sure that they miss me, but Ive saved a lot of money.

Finally, I made a change in the 'unit of account'.  I no longer think in Dollars.  I think in Hours!  Take the last paycheck you were paid.  Divide that by how many hours you worked. That is what 1 hour is worth.  

For example, I did this for a secretary. They were 'paid' $12 an hour. They bring home $6.11 an hour.  So after an 8 hour day, they bring home about $50 a day.  So when you go to the store and you spend $100 in groceries, it is not "one hundred dollars"  it is "TWO FULL DAYS OF WORK".  Those $400+ big gulps I had that year would 'cost' them 8 days of their working life to earn that money!  

So  HOW DO I REALLY SAVE MONEY?
1. Budget
2. pay cash
3. think in terms of hours and not dollars

Its what I do.  Its a long post, but it is not a hard process.  I hope that I did it justice trying to keep it short.

for what its worth,

clean

[secretweapon]

Clean, you are amazing.

[aristotelian]

I never purchase sodas or cocktails in restaurants.
Cut down on eating out.
Grow my own vegetables and herbs in the spring and summer.
Netflix ($5/month) instead of cable.
Don't own a cell phone.
Make my own "mueslix" cereal.
Buy yogurt in quart containers and take small portions in tupperware.
Eat leftovers and a piece of fruit for lunch every day.
Don't spend money on clothes except when necessary.
Never EVER purchase new baby clothes.
Make toys for my kid out of unused boxes and household stuff.
Put a cap on gift spending during holiday season. 
Homemade gifts for family that don't need anything.

[zharkov]

Ditto on skipping drinks, sodas, etc. in restaurants.

Mrs. Zharkov cuts my hair; the cost of the electric hair trimmer was something like 20 or 30 dollars, about what two hair cuts cost.

Keeping the heat a bit lower, and saving electricity by keeping lights out when not needed, and replacing incandescent bulbs with florescent (the electric company sells them at a discount).

[random]

Clean has a great system.  I would venture to comment that it's a combination of the envelope system espoused by Dave Ramsey, and the system where you think about how you're spending your life-energy (how much life-energy, or hours of your life, are you spending on that purchase?) advocated by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robins in Your Money or Your Life, possibly my most favorite money book ever.  Even though some of it is a little dated (the investments they recommend, for instance), I highly recommend it to those who want to rethink their relationship to money.

The way to really save money?  Pay yourself first.  In other words, make your savings plan automatic.  Take out the amount for savings first; then decide how you'll spend the rest of it.  Savings can't be touched, so the rest of it has to include some money put aside for large expenses that aren't monthly or recur regularly but can be anticipated (ie replacing an old car, emergency funds etc).

[wanna_writemore]

1. Husband and I each get $25/week for lunches/coffee/vending machines.  This way I don't get annoyed that he spends money on coffee, and he doesn't get annoyed that I like to buy lunch once or twice a week.  We take it out in cash every 2 weeks.  Some couples use a system like this for buying each other presents, hobbies, etc., but we don't.  Neither of us is inclined to spend much.  We also set a spending limit on gifts for our anniversaries/Christmas/etc.

2. We have a fixed grocery budget for 2 weeks.  We usually take out the cash at the beginning of the "budget period."   The advantage of using a 2-week grocery/household budget (inc. cleaning supplies, TP, etc) is that we can buy more one week and then pull meat out of the freezer the next, for example.  It also balances out better when we need to buy cleaning supplies, etc.

3. We've cut down on how often we go shopping. We do grocery/household shopping once on the weekend, and then generally only go to the mall or other stores when we need something.  We do sometimes walk around the mall after we've eaten dinner at a restaurant there, but rarely go into any stores.

4. We put money into our savings regularly and don't consider it for anything but a major expense - big car repair, unexpected tax bill, etc.  We have an ambitious 1-yr savings goal, and I think we're going to make it (we'll see in November).

We still eat out in restaurants too much, but otherwise we've cut back and we're saving money.  When we got married ~2 yrs ago, we had to discuss the budget a lot and figure out how to save.  Now, we still talk about it, but it's more about getting excited about savings progress, not worrying about the timing of the bills.