How to cut your expenses? (Part 2)
4. Smoking
High five to myself - I'm not smoking anymore. I quit smoking five days less than four months ago. But before that I smoked a package of cigarettes a day. If you're living in England then the €3/package doesn't sound like much, but €90 a month or €1080 a year isn't a little at all.
Stop smoking and save €1080 a year.
5. Food
We all need to eat and that's understandable. However, it is possible to cut down spending on food quite a bit. Buy in bigger amounts, more at a time, etc, etc. And if you were spending €50 on food before, you could easily turn it to €30/month instead. Save €20/week, €80/month or €960 a year.
Eat cheaper and save €960 a year.
6. Phone
I don't know the calling prices where you are living, neither do I know how much you talk. But I pay something like 10 euros a month right now, it's a min fee package. And I use only half of it. So by changing the package I could save €5/month or €60/year.
Choose a new package and save €60 a year.
7. Lottery
You thought you could win something, right? Well, maybe you can, but I personally haven't won ANYTHING for the past year. And I have been playing every week, spending €1.28 a time. That's €5.12 a month or €71.68 a year.
Stop wasting your money on lottery and save €71.68 a year.
True, actually depending on a person, there's really a lot of things you are doing right now that are costing you money. Things that maybe you wouldn't actually have to spend money on. But if I look at the list above and think how much I personally might be able to save, if I didn't stop drinking coffee and beer and...so on, but I did cut down just a bit, I'd be able to save €200 from coffee, €600 from beer, €60 from phone, €70 from lottery, €120 from food. That's a total of €1050 a year which is about €87.5 a month. If you were smoking and driving as well...make your own calculations.
Saving €1050 wouldn't really do very much for you. But if you have debts and you spent that money each month/year to pay them off, it doesn't sound that bad anymore, does it?
In the beginning of the article I asked if you really *should* save money from these things. The answer in my opinion is ... almost yes. What I mean by that is that you could cut the unnecessary expenses, but like you saw in my case - coffee, beer, they are NOT unnecessary expenses. Yes, I can down down on them just a bit, like I did in my calculation. But you shouldn't cut it all. Why? Because our lives are not meant for just working and counting money. You should also be able to do other things - even if that's just going out for a coffee in the morning to read a news paper in a cafeteria. Or meeting up with your friends in a bar. Social life is more important than money. As this is also what motivates you to earn more, motivates you to try to work better and so on. If you didn't have anything, no social life, no girlfriend, no...nothing, what would you be working for at all? For the banks to pay off your debts? I don't think so. Or if you are, it's time to think about your life a bit and make some corrections.
