Generally speaking I have been pretty good the last 5 years in managing my expenses. Some months I do better than others and some months I splurge. I came up with a “game” I would play with my co-worker when I worked for the State of RI. There was no name for the game and there could be no winner, we just made the loser feel guilty for not following the rules.
The object of the game was to spend as little money as possible. I arbitrarily chose $50 per week as a budget and that was the max amount we could spend. Most of our expenses were counted in the $50. For example, if we bought lunch it would come out of our $50, if we bought a beer it would come out of our $50, if we bought clothes it would come out of our $50.
The expenses that wouldn’t come out of the $50 are things like medical expenses, gas, and any money we spent at a grocery store. The reason for not including the grocery stores was because if we are making our lunches, we would be spending less money in the long run. We were underpaid and very early on came to the realistic conclusion we could not live on our own comfortably making $42,000 a year, luckily we were both still living at home.
The end result of the game was to A) Get us in the mindset of what was a necessity vs a want B) Force us to save C) Make it a competition so we wouldn’t be doing it alone.
In my one and a half years working there, we did this for about 7-9 months and overall it was a success. I was able to save over $10, 000 in that time period and it allowed me to buy my duplex.
It taught us things that we would have never thought of. For example, instead of going to the vending machine and buying 1 energy bar for $2, we would buy a box of them for $5. Instead of buying lunch everyday, we brought our lunches, this saved us about $6-12 per day. Instead of going to Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts for a coffee we would either make it ourselves at home or go to Cumberland Farms and buy a large coffee for $1. These expenses might seem small but added together, they become large purchases that are very easily avoidable.
I won’t lie, we did not succeed every week. Sometimes we went over a few dollars, or even a few hundred over but the important thing is that we kept at it.
In the last year I have gotten away from this because it is hard to stick with but I will once again be playing the game.
TLDR:
Small purchases add up. Learn the difference between a need and a want. Try to get a “budget buddy” to help you along the path.
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