In an attempt to keep our spending down, I have several things I do to help out. As it is with most people, the ultimate goal is to buy a house (and I would like to do so in the near future) and these are a few things that can help keep money in the bank. Are they going to help us get a house or pay off credit cards just by doing these simple things? No. But every little bit helps out.
Hair clippers. A couple of years ago, I bought some hair clippers. My wife has begrudgingly been nice enough to cut my hair for the past two to three years. It works out great because going to a barber costs around ten dollars. I bought the clippers for twenty dollars. After two homemade haircuts, they have paid for themselves. As long as you like the buzzed look. I do, my wife does not. Back in college, I went with the long hair look. Nothing too crazy, but it covered my ears. It was just one of those things that started with not having a barber I could go to in my college town and by the time I went home, I grew accustom to having the hair so I kept it. By the time I was getting ready to graduate, I was tired of it. So I went with the short hair. I just like the low maintenance short hair brings to the table.
Leaving lunch at work. I say leaving it at work because I have an office space and drawers in which to leave stuff. I buy bread, peanut butter, and jelly. Buying it all at once it costs around seven dollars (jelly is expensive guys!). Over the course of two weeks, you can eat lunch for seventy cents a day. The bread lasts about three weeks before having to go and buy a new loaf, so all in all, I pay about forty six cents for each meal, instead of going out and buying lunch everyday at the cost of three to four dollars. The only question is, how many PB&J sandwiches can one person eat before they get sick of them? As it turns out, a LOT. I do on occasion buy something from the store just for a change of pace, but it is not very often. Once every three weeks maybe. The thing that has really kept this going is having everything at work already. I don't need to remember to grab a lunch bag every morning, it is waiting for me. I have been doing this since last fall, August maybe, and the amount of money we are putting on the credit card has gone down.
Cheap beer. Of course the easier thing would be to not buy as much beer, but who are we kidding? I like beer. I like tasty beer, which usually equates to expensive so I save those for special occasions. You need to splurge every once in a while. What I have found is buying cheaper beer means thirty beers for sixteen dollars not twelve beers for fourteen dollars. Beer is beer and any kind will get you where you need to go. If you aren't too picky, there is no reason why you should be spending more money.
These are just a few small things that I have been trying to do. Again, these aren't going to grow the bank account a ton but I feel better about trying to save money. There are times when you need to spend money on yourself though. You cannot give up on getting out of the house and doing stuff. We went to the movies today (saw 'Lincoln'). For the tickets and food, we ended up spending twenty dollars. This isn't much if you aren't doing once a week. I've been trying to remember the last movie my wife and I went to see together and the only one that comes to mind is 'The Avengers', but I could be wrong.
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