Chasing the Bull

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I spend a good deal of time reading personal finance and investing blogs. It is always interesting to get read the opinions of so many intelligent people, even if I disagree with some of the things that are posted.

I ran across an interesting challenge at Aching Debts. The concept is simple; list 5 things big or small that bust your budget, then tag 3 other people and invite them to join the challenge. Since this blog is so new, I really do not expect to get invited to participate, so I thought I would invite myself (Anyone is invited to participate, by the way).

Without any further ado, here are the 5 things that always “bust” my budget.

5. Diet Coke - No matter how hard I try to slow down or quit, I still buy 4 to 6 12-packs of diet coke a week. Every month I leave this out of the budget thinking that I will be able to quit this week. So far, no luck.

4. Fast Food - My wife is great about preparing a good lunch and dinner for me. Breakfast, however, is my responsibility. As such, I would say about 7 times a month, I wake up late and I am forced to stop at Burger King, or starve. I am such a slacker sometimes.

3. Snacks - Do you see a theme here? I think food completely runs my life. Maybe I should think about this some more.

2. Dogs - I have two wonderful dogs; a Scotty and a Silky. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but they are so expensive. Both dogs are sensitive to whey protein, so we have to buy really expensive food so they don’t scratch themselves all night. The Scotty eats like she will never get another meal and the Silky has to have a few teeth pulled every couple years (he refuses to let us brush his teeth and won’t chew a bone).

1. Books - I love to read. Currently, I am reading about 5 books, which I will probably have completed next weekend. I always joke with my wife and say that when I retire, I am going to open a used book store, then lock myself in and read 12 hours a day.

The rules of the challenge are that now I have to tag 3 people to carry on the challenge. Here are the people I’ve decided to tag:

Hank @ MyInvesting Blog
LPKitten @ The Debt Defier
Saving Money Bug

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Since I am new to the blogging world, I thought I would start off by posting ways in which my wife and I save money. This post was inspired by a similar post on Million Dollar Journey.

Included below are 25 ways that I save money:

1. I eat at home whenever possible. My wife is the most amazing cook, so it is safe to say, I would rather eat at home than spend $25 on something I may or may not enjoy.
2. I take leftovers from the night before to work for lunch. Again, pretty easy to do with my wife’s cooking.
3. I switched from premium cable to basic cable and bundled cable phone and internet together. This reduced my monthly bill from $150 to $101, or $588 per year.
4. Since my phone line is now a cable phone, I get unlimited long distance calling within the US. As a result, I reduced our cell phone plan to 700 minutes a month. This reduced our monthly bill from $129 to $89, or $480 per year.
5. It gets pretty cold during the winter months where I live. Last year, we just cranked up the heater and as a result, our gas bill was about $350 per month for the 4 winter months. This year, I bought a space heater from QVC to use in whatever room we were in at the time. The heater cost me $50 and reduced my gas bill to approximately $140 per month. This results in an overall savings of $790.
6. I signed up with Duke Power’s fixed price biling program. Since I have a 2 year history with Duke, they could estimate what my monthly bill averages out to over the course of a year. I agreed to pay this average over the course of the next year with no settlement at the end. My bill was $140 per month. My new cost is $117 a month, or a savings of $276 per year.
7. I track all of my spending with Microsoft Money. It truly puts my spending right out in the open so I can see where my money goes.
8. I wear my clothes out before buying new threads. I have never cared about fashion so this is pretty easy for me as well.
9. My wife and I TiVo everything and watch it when we get free time. How does this save us money? By the time we get done watching all the programs available on TiVo, we have no time to go to the movies. Plus this saves us money on a baby-sitter!
10. I either go to the library to get my reading material, or I buy it on eBay. You would be surprised at how much you can save by reading books for free.
11. I run the dishwasher only when it is completely full. Even then, I try and stop it when it gets to the drying cycle. The air can dry your dishes all by itself!
12. I turn out every light that is not being used. I saw an episode of MythBusters where they proved without a doubt that turning off lights saves more money than leaving them on if you plan on being out of the room for more than 10 seconds.
13. I turn off my computer every night. Research has shown that this alone could save you $30 a month, or $360 a year.
14. I do not smoke or drink too much alcohol. I do drink entirely too many diet sodas, but I buy whatever is on sale that week. If I could stop drinking them all together I could save $520 a year ($10 per week times 52 weeks).
15. I pay 95% of my bills online. This saves about $10 a month (on stamps), or $120 a year, not to mention the time it saves NOT to have to write a check.
16. I drive a diesel car that gets 50 miles per gallon (Jetta TDI). Even though the engine cost about $1000 more, I have more than made my money back with that purchase. Gas prices are terrible and only getting worse!
17. I wash clothes every 7 days. This ensures each load is maxed out.
18. During the spring and summer months, we open up the house and use the attic fan instead of the A/C. This saves us a ton of money, even though I do not know how to quantify it.
19. I always buy generic over brand name products. I used to work in a grocery store and I can assure you that some private label products are actually made by brand name companies. Most private label products are extras made by the big boys.
20. I clip coupons for products we use out of the Sunday newspaper.
21. We signed up for the basic insurance plan at work instead of the premium plan. This makes fiscal sense, because we do not go to the doctor’s office very often. The premium plan has a slightly lower deductible ($10), yet the bi-weekly premium is about $50 more.
22. I buy quality products that are well made. These products will last longer and provide much better results.
23. I do not have any magazine subscriptions. Why should I? Everything you could possibly want to know is available on the internet for free.
24. I sell unwanted items on eBay so that I can buy wanted items for free (an exchange is almost free anyway).
25. I transferred all of my remaining credit card debt to a 0% card for the next 12 months. I should be able to pay them off in the next month or two.

Well there you have it. My list of 25 ways that I save money! I have found a few other blogs that have discussed ways they save money. I have included a few below:

The Finance Journey
LivingDeb
Value For Your Life
Tips and Ideas
Chalk Horse
How I Save Money
Tales of Abundance
Every Day U
The Family CEO
The Insider
Debt Free 4Ever
Thrifty Mommy

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