Drink Savings
Last weekend I spent close to $40 on alcohol. That is a little out of the norm for me, but it does happen once and while. I began thinking that I was dumping a great deal of money down my throat for no other purpose than to be social. I then thought of other drinks that I have on occasion such as, coffee, milk shakes, pop, milk etc. This stuff can really and up $$$ wise and some if it is not exactly healthy either. My plan is to only drink tap water (cheapest), milk and I don’t want to cut out my diet Dr. Pepper because I love it. It is difficult to estimate my savings if I only drink water, milk and diet DP for a year but based on some spending habits I have looked at it could be upwards of around $2,000. I am going to be conservative and use $1,500.
I am not going to push this on the rest of the family as it is a personal choice I am making and I don’t feel it would be fair for me to ask them to make the sacrifice. After a beer or two tonight I will begin fresh tomorrow morning.
Estimated yearly savings: $1,500
Total yearly savings for implemented strategies: $2,040
Total savings missed for strategies not implemented: $240
Difference: $1,800
Gym Savings
This weekend I looked at the pros and cons of switching fitness clubs to save some cash. The difference between my two choices is about $20/month. I chose not to save the money because of convenience. My current gym is a five minute indoor walk from my employer and that makes it very easy to workout before or after work. On days off, the difference in locations is about 8 blocks. My current club is also cleaner and not as busy as the alternative. This was a no-brainer for me although it is costing me an additional $240 a year. Now I just have to make more consistent use of my membership!
Estimated yearly savings: $240
Total yearly savings for implemented strategies: $540
Total savings missed for strategies not implemented: $240
Difference: $300
Web Hosting Savings
In July 2009 I decided to begin blogging about our goal to pay off our mortgage. I looked at blogs that I enjoyed to see who they were using as a web host. Million Dollar Journey is one of my favorite blogs and I figured I could not go wrong using the same hosting service. I purchased my domain and a VPS to host my blog. I was new to blogging, websites, and virtual private servers and thus I ran into some difficulties. I was relying on the technical support guys more that I thought I should be. Everything seemed so complicated. After taking a better look at my needs I realized that I was paying for services and features that I wasn’t using and decided to move my blog.
Over the last couple of days I have moved my blog to Go Daddy and greatly reduced my costs. Their hosting service better suits my current needs, knowledge and traffic levels. This change worked out to significant savings for us.
Estimated yearly savings: $540
Total yearly savings for implemented strategies: $540
Total savings missed for strategies not implemented: $0
Money Saving Strategies
With our focus on paying down our current mortgage debt in 2010 we are going to look at our wants versus needs and find some strategies to save money. Some will be easy to implement, some will be harder, and some will not suit us at all.
We are going to estimate what each strategy saves us over a year and post running totals what we have saved. We are also going to post a running total of what we could have saved, but didn’t, because we chose not to implement a strategy.
We look forward to sharing our small savings with you and are hoping that the sum of them will add up to a large savings over the year.
Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.