Location, Location, Location: Saving Money From the Best Location

I use a dry cleaner, on an obscure corner in the town next to mine. It’s on my way home from work and a about a mile further from the one down the street from me, in the new shopping mall, with the new awnings and pretty sign. My dry cleaner is not a brand name; it’s a small “mom and pop shop”. On average each month I take in 10 shirts 3 pairs of pants, periodically a jacket or coat. I pay $1.00 per shirt, $2.00 per paints and $3-6 for coat/jacket. This week I dropped off the 10 shirts and 3 pairs of pants and paid $14.40. This amount includes a 10% discount that I get for paying for my dry cleaning up front, I asked the owner about the discount over a year ago and always take advantage of it.

Now the store closest to me, a little nicer, much newer, a franchise charges $1.90 per shirt, $2.75 for pants and no discount (as of yet) on prepayment. So my usual 10 shirts and 3 pair of pants would cost me $12.85 more a month. Now according to the DebtFREE of Windows™ investment strategy calculator, if I take that $12.85 and save it every month for 20 years in a interest bearing account earning approximately 8% annual return I would have $7,569. So using my older not so shiny dry cleaners equates to a $31.54 asset increase each month.

So does location matter? In this case it does!

Let’s take another example of a hot dog, macaroni and cheese and applesauce lunch for the kids. If I buy a package of hot dogs, 8 buns, Macaroni and Cheese and applesauce at the discount store closest to me, I’d pay under $5 to feed 4 people, if I go to the next closest grocery store I would pay 172%, yes one hundred and seventy-two percent more.

So maybe the actual location doesn’t really matter, but the location you choose to spend your money at can make big differences in your budget. I only listed two areas of spending; dry cleaning and food. If I equate this spending difference for the lunch for 4 on my $500 a month food budget...this would mean that by shopping at the location that is friendlier to my wallet I can get an additional $800 in food each month, just by only buying items on sale, using generic food items when available, buy the store brand instead of name brand, etc.

What about movies, if I see this week’s blockbuster at the theater closest to my home I’ll spend $2.50 more per ticket then if I go to the one in the town over. DVD prices can be greatly reduced from location to location a recent DVD purchase at a big name store located at a Mall was $3 more than the same movie at the local discount store.

Picking the location on where your money goes is up to you, spend the next month really comparing the prices you are paying and what those same items sale for at the place a block closer or further away or the store on the way home from work.  Little things, small changes can make $7,000 worth of difference in the long run.