5 Ways to Save Money

Ever wonder where you money goes, when a few days after pay day your broke again?

When we don’t pay attention to the few dollars or just pennies, we end up blowing thousands. We looked at 5 common daily expenses that many of us seem to be in automatic spending mode. See what you can do to save money in these areas. It's easy to fritter away money on little daily expenses. If you fall into these money traps, learn to avoid them and pocket the savings.

Bottled water: It costs up to a $1 for a 20-ounce bottle of water; one day would be $365 a year. Not to mention the cost to our environment. For under $3 you can buy a reusable container for your daily water needs.

Cigarettes:  We won’t even talk about the savings in health insurance, medical costs, etc. when we stop smoking. Let’s just look at the cost of the cigarettes. It has been reported that the average price per pack of cigarettes is $4.50. Those smoking a pack a day will pay over $1,640 a year.  That’s more than I pay for car insurance.

Coffee: A few years ago USA Today ran an article about “Starbuck Millionaire’s”, at first glance it seemed it was about how investing in Starbucks could make you a millionaire, but on the contrary, it was about the million dollars lost by the money spent on daily trips to the establishment. If you buy one cup of coffee on your way to work, by the end of the year at an average of $1.38 per cup (National Coffee Association), you will have spent approximately $360 per year.

Lunch: How often to you eat out for lunch? I did today, at Olive Garden, my meal with an Iced Tea was over $10. If I were to eat out every weekday at $10 a day that would be $2600 annually. But if I chose to eat out twice a week and bring a sack lunch from home the other days, it would only be more than half the cost, only $1,040 a year.

Credit Card Interest: According to Bankrate last fall, the average amount of credit card debt carried by Americans is $6,600 and the average interest rate is approximately 13%. Now if every month you make just the minimum monthly payment it will take 20.8 years to pay off the debt and you will have paid over $11,000 in total payments. This means that you will have paid almost twice the amount you originally purchased making someone else, your Madison Avenue creditors, wealthy. 

Living on credit DOES NOT enhance your lifestyle, it does just the opposite. Last year on the ABC TV magazine show, 20/20, a Harvard professor compared the credit industry to drug dealers. A drug dealer will give you a little free just to get you hooked. A credit card company will entice you to use at a low or zero interest rate just to get you hooked. We, those teaching the Transforming Debt Into Wealth™ debt elimination program, have been saying the very same thing for almost 2 decades.

So if you’re looking to free up a few thousand dollars, any of one of these suggestions will do the trick.

Time after time I meet with families that think the amount of money they make is what is holding them back, it’s not! It’s what they are doing with it that can make all the difference to them and their lifestyle. I’ve just shown you 5 different ways to save money...which one(s) will you do?