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Easy
Ways to Cut Expenses from Your Budget
- There
is a saying in backpacking that if you watch the ounces,
the pounds will take care of themselves. In the world's
most competitive backpacking and survival event, The Eco-Challege,
I noticed one year that the losing team packed luxury items
like a cheese board, while the winning team removed every
single possible extra ounce of weight they had to carry.
The winners went so far as to cut washing instruction tags
out of their clothes.
This same logic of saving weight can apply to saving money
on food and grocery purchases. If you want to save money
you have to watch the small purchases, i.e. the food expense
equivalent of "cutting the tags out of your shirts."
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Beware
of little expenses;
a small leak will sink a great ship.
Benjamin Franklin
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- Buying a latte
each day at work may not seem like a big expense, but it
may add up to more than you realize. If you spend $3.00
each week day, then over a year's time, this cost adds up
to $780 (52 weeks X 5 days a week X $3.00). If you have
an annual income of $50,000, that morning latte each day
would account for 1.56 percent of your annual income. In
ten years the cost would be $7,800, not including any dividends
and interest you might have made had you invested the money
instead of spending it on coffee.
- The logic from
the latte example also applies to eating out lunch everyday.
If you spend $7.00 for a deli or fast food lunch each week
day, over a year that will cost you $1,820. Alternatively,
a chicken, lettuce and tomato sandwich made from home, an
apple, a slice of cheese and tap water would probably cost
you less than $1.50 a day for lunch, or
$375 a year. Over a year's time this would save you $1,445.
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Economy
is a savings bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars
in return. ~ Josh Billings
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