Tag Archives: saving money

5 Ways To Save Money When Eating At Work

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There are plenty of ways to save money when eating at work, and today I’m going to mention my 5 top ways to do so!

5 Ways To Save Money When Eating At Work:

  1. Pack your lunch!  This is the best way to save money on lunch, but you must be thoughtful.  If you drive to the store every few days to buy the food ingredients to prepare your lunch, you are adding to the cost of lunch because of the extra gas expense!  So ideally, you would go perhaps once a month to go shopping for the food ingredients.  Buying in bulk helps too!
  2. When going to a drive-thru, only buy from the value menu!  A great disappointment of mine is that one of my favorite McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches, the Sausage Egg McMuffin, is not on the value menu!  So to buy one of those, it costs $2.89 at my local McDonalds.  The dollar menu Sausage McMuffin sandwich (which is the same but without the egg) only cost $1.00!  So that one egg on the Sausage Egg McMuffin sandwich costs more than an entire cartoon of eggs, so do I still buy the Sausage Egg McMuffin?  No, I don’t think so!!!  I’ll take the Sausage McMuffin please!!!
  3. For fancier restaurants, consider soup, or soup and salads instead of the regular meal.  I’m often surprised to find that the soups are much cheaper than the other entrees on the menu.  And some soup options are down right delicious!  I’ve had my fill of surprises lately at restaurants like Rocke’s, where their soups are superb!
  4. Keep a cheap meal in your desk drawer!  At work, I typically keep a meal hidden away in my desk drawer.  I like the instant oatmeal (brown sugar is my favorite) packets, and I also keep about 10 ramen noodle packets in my drawer too.  Both are very tasty if they are only eaten once in a while!
  5. If you absolutely have to go out from lunch with a group of friends from work (networking and all), don’t spend a lot of money.  Try drinking a few glasses of water before you go out to lunch.  There is a good chance you won’t be near as hungry after drinking at least two full glasses.

I use all of these techniques when eating both breakfast and lunch on work days!  My only vice is the McDonald’s lattes, that I have 4 days a week, but at least it’s covered by the dividends that my lunch experiment stocks yield.

Did I miss any other ways to save money at lunch?

-MR

How To Save Money By Cost Control

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How to Save Money by Cost Control is a discovery process.  One of my debt free goals was to save money with great passion since I’m part of the Million Dollar Club! 

After I became totally debt free by paying off my mortgage, this past February, I was very excited about being able to sock away an extra $1,500 a month into savings and investments.   I imagined myself every quarter of this year, plopping almost $5,000 into a balanced mutual fund or ETF. 

So how much extra money have I saved up for investing?  nada, nil… nothing at all.  Now, I knew that I would have an adjustment period at the beginning, that would stun my initial investing plan, but I didn’t see it lasting this long! 

I’ve learned that Cost Control, is the new root of my saving problems.  You see, when you have more money in your checkbook, it’s easier to justify getting the more expensive or quicker product. 

Here are examples where my cost control wasn’t in place:

  •  My old Lawnmower (Mean Green) was finally forced out of action (I’ll blog in greater detail about Mean Green some other time).  But instead of looking at Craigslist for one or buying a cheap model from Lowes, I went out and bought a new Toro self-propelled (variable speed) lawnmower! 

    My new lawnmower (called Red) is spectacular!  I love it, but I also spent about $375.00 dollars on it.  To me this seems a bit pricey! 

    In the days when I still had a mortgage, I would have went out and bought a cheaper model, or bought a used lawnmower.  In fact, my boss offered to sell me a cheap used lawnboy as a replacement…  But I declined.
    I’m sure if I put my mind and efforts to it, I could have found a lawnmower for at least half the price.  
      
      

     

  • Car problems.  My wife’s car was experiencing a car problem.  So what did I do?  I call my favorite mechanic and asked him to get it in today and fix it.  My mechanic is great, so that was exactly when he did, but it cost me $450 dollars. Now you might be thinking what is so bad about this?  Well, we have a few friends that are auto mechanics.  We could have waited and had one of our buddies look at the car and fix it for a lot cheaper!  After the fact, my one buddy told me that he could have cleaned the part and that might have made it work.  He said he would have done it for free.  So I paid a premium to get it fixed that day!  It would have taken my friend at least 5 or so days to get to it.     

  • Changing the oil on the car.  I haven’t done this in years!  It’s easy enough to do, but I always convince myself that it’s not work the time and energy (and perhaps it’s not).  Some people may say, yeah but what about the cost of oil disposal…  Well, you can drive your old used oil to any Walmart car service department and they will take it off of your hands for free!  It’s possible to created a paper funnel and pour the oil into a plastic 1 gallon  milk container,  then put the plastic cap on to keep the fumes contained.   I have used the milk jug trick for the oil changes I did performed on my old lawnmower and snow thrower.     

If you stay focused and realize that you are wasting money by doing such as I have above…  You can save money by using more focused cost control! 

Have you every mode impromptu decisions that you knew weren’t the best, but because you had the money to do them, you did them anyway? 

-MR

Less is More On The Road To Accumulating Wealth

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Some think that you have to fake it to make it… and in some ways this is true.

But I think it’s also true that less is more when it comes to accumulating wealth while having an average salary.

Whenever a person moves up in their salary amount, or their rate of pay, they start to think that they have made it. They start to buy more expensive things because they believe that they are supposed to.

But the way to build wealth while on a modest income is by practicing the less is more concept!

The “less is more” concept in a nutshell is that the less you spend, the more you get to save for wealth building activities!

Here are the ways that you get ahead by following the Less is More idea:

  1. Less House!  It’s true, that housing has traditionally been a great way to acquire wealth (excluding the past few years).  But along with a big fancy house, comes big expenses!  With a larger house you will pay
    1. More in Real Estate Taxes (unless you are outside of city limits, or in a state that doesn’t tax Real Estate).
    2. More on your utilities (gas, electric, water, sewage)
    3. More for repairs to your appliances and house (roof shingles, heaters, water pumps, etc).
    4. More on landscaping (after all you have to keep up with the Joneses, if you live in a big house).
    5. More on Cosmetic features (faux paint, fancy decorations, artwork, etc)
    6. House cleaning…
  2. Less Car!  If you buy a decent dependable car instead of a luxury car, you’ll save money instead of spending more!
    1. Insurance will be less for a cheaper dependable car.
    2. Surprisingly, luxury cars break down more than the reliable cars reviewed in Consumer Report Magazine.
    3. Auto Repairs will be more expensive, or auto mechanics will charge you more because they know you can afford it.
    4. It’s more apt to be stolen.
  3. Less on Eating out and Living Large!
    1. Eating out more (especially drinking alcohol), is a quick drain of money!
    2. Buying Football (and other sport) tickets!  Nothing waste money quicker than spending hundreds of dollars for sporting events.
    3. Fancy vacations!  There have been years where my family had to vacationed in backyardsville, so that we could get our finances stable.
  4. Less on Electronics!
    1. Skip the newest smart phone when it comes out (iPhone anyone)!  At first, they are typically overpriced.  Some people toss their current phone and run out to get the newest electronic gizmo!  As someone in the technology field, I understand the temptation!  But if I can do it, then so can you!
    2. Once you buy a product stick with it!  I keep my computer at least 5 years!  Once we buy our newest TV (with credit card reward points money), we’ll keep it until it breaks down.
    3. Don’t stick to brand names!  Believe it or not, an Apple IPod is still just an MP3 player…  I know I can buy an MP3 player for a much cheaper price!

These are just some of the ways that you can apply the Less is More idea to save more money which could then be used for investment, or paying off debt!

Readers, did I miss any other big “Less is More” item?

-MR

Saving By Paying Attention – Conclusion Part 4 of 4

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Thinking money matters through

The “Saving By Paying Attention” series has been about focusing and not making rash decisions.

Too often, smart people don’t take the time to weigh all options when making an important decisions.

By paying attention, I’ve been able to buy a lot of things for free, like routers for my computers, DVDs, etc.  With rebates, you can save substantial amount of money too.  There are some huge coupon savings out there if you know where to look.

Another great tool for buying things at a huge discount is the internet.  Sometimes you can find some great deals on Ebay.com.  I’ve been able to buy old CD/DVDs from ebay for a great price, not to mention the unique, one of a kind items that can be found.  For instance, I’ve been able to buy a firefighter nightlight from my son when he was younger.

Another great site for good prices on products is www.woot.com, I’ve been able to buy merchandise that has been refurbished at great prices.  Both of my kid’s mp3 players were bought online at www.woot.com!

I’ve recently learned of a site called: https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/, but I haven’t researched it enough yet to feel comfortable recommending it.  Still you might want to check it out, mainly they offer free software downloads.

Another great way save money is to go to blogger sites that are offering giveaways.  Every so often, you’ll see a $100 dollar giveaway from the blogger sites!

I know people that use the radio contests to win money to.  In fact, this is how one of my friends won a free house.  Another friend continually calls the sites trying to win money and prizes.  Often time she succeeds!  It’s amazing the opportunities out there to either win money or prizes.

It you concentrate and think outside of the box, there are plenty of money  saving or winning opportunities out there!

-MR

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