OK. This is pretty basic stuff. Follow the logic and reap the rewards!
- Take your lunch to work. The average city lunch in
Australia
- On that note – drink water from the tap! Buying water is the stupidest thing in the world to do if you live in a western country. Bad for the environment and your hip pocket. May as well pay for the air you breathe. Don’t gasp, won’t be long before some brainiac starts selling air and some knuckleheads will buy it.
- And don’t buy take away coffee. Make it yourself. How hard is it? $3 a cup minimum to buy, and some jokers out there are having three bought cups a day. $10 on coffee? Spare me! I’ll take a mug of instant that I bring in myself thanks. Even one coffee a day is $3. $15 a week. Add it to the $50 - $65 already!
- Right, now get off the booze. New research has shown that alcohol is a class one carcinogen – that is, it gives you cancer as well as a hang-over. Yay. It is also a great source of empty calories, and increases your appetite as well so you eat snacks that you wouldn’t eat otherwise. Double weight gain. What great stuff….a bottle of wine a day will set you back $10 - $20, and many couples will share a bottle between every night easily. But if your favourite drink is beer or mixed drinks, work it out, I reckon you’ll be surprised if you are a drinker, just how much you actually spend. Let’s be conservative and say $10 a day averaged out to take into account the weekends and the ones at a pub/club/bar/lunch out with the girls, so, $70 a week. Add it to the total - $65 plus $70 = $135.
There you go. Four really easy things to do to save around $135 a week of your net salary (that is, after you have paid your taxes!). How much is that a year? About seven grand!! In cash!!
What could you do with seven thousand dollars extra in your pocket every year? Pay it off your mortgage? Go on a holiday? Get rid of a credit card debt?
This very simple exercise shows how a lot of people who cry poor, and class themselves as good old Aussie battlers are just whining consumptives with poor spending habits who could do with a good dose of financial introspection.
Add quitting smoking, not buying takeaway (it’s crap anyway), catching the bus to work, having one car not two if that is relevant, cancelling an unused gym membership (come on, be honest…) and the savings are significantly increased.
The next step is to put that otherwise wasted cash somewhere you can actually see it grow. Every week you don’t buy a coffee put $15 in that account. Don’t buy lunch, put $50 in there. You see how it goes, and you’ll soon see some serious saving results. It is just getting into the new habit, and out of the old ones.
For one, I will not be suckered anymore by the rubbish “lifestyle” that is chasing my money every minute of every day. They are my hard earned dollars, and I will consciously decide where they go, and reap the financial rewards of my conscious consumption!
Here endeth the lesson.
