Release your Inner Tightwad

As I sit here scrupulously analyzing every monthly expense I have, as I periodically do, I wonder how much company I have. How many other people have these periodic financial cleansing periods? How much money is leaking out, that could be put to much better use? I suppose you need a certain fondness for money, and enjoy number crunching in order to really get into this. It's a bit like the game Clue as a real life scavenger hunt. I made such a dent this time in expenses, that it occurred to me, I should make a point to do it at least once a year. So Autumn, I hereby ordain you as my personal financial cleaning season.

If you really want some new ideas for saving money,  talk with folks who are just starting out on their own, or retired folks with limited incomes. Due to necessity, they have a boat load of tricks you can borrow. For example, I like to eat healthy foods, which can be expensive if you are not careful. I knew I had been paying a lot to use a healthy oil butter called Smart Balance. I can afford it, but these things tend to add up and make the overall grocery bill too high. Reading my cousins (first cousin once removed to be exact) Mary's blog (yes, it runs in the family) Marys Blog regarding food, (and to clarify, I really don't know if she has a little or a lot of moola, I just picked this up from her) where she mentioned she would never buy Smart Balance, because of its cost. Instead she simply buys olive oil in bulk, solidifies a portion of it, and uses it as butter. Zing! Yeah, I kinda knew about doing that, I just hadn't done it. Both my mom and my mother in law have been the inspiration for countless ways to ingeniously save money.

An interesting side note and a little off the beaten path: Like a lot of other people, when the book and the movie "The Secret" came out - the name, and the tantalizing promise of getting whatever you want in life, proved to be too much for me to resist, and I did buy the book, (on sale at least). I have to admit, I never did read the book from beginning to end, as a lot of it just wasn't making sense to me. I remember getting stuck on one portion regarding reciting affirmations to manifest what you want in life. The instruction was that if your desire was to get out of debt, that your affirmation had to be something along the lines of seeing money come into your life, and never ever to affirm that you wanted to get out of debt, because if you did, then the "universe" would only hear the word debt, and return only more debt to you. How much stock you want to put into this, is up to you, but I thought I would be remiss, if I didn't at least mention it. I do have a certain amount of belief  that your thoughts can at least direct your destiny in life. My confusion about it, was that I like to eliminate debt, and expenses to free up money for other uses, and in order to do that, you kinda have to think about it. So, just to be safe, I don't think of it as eliminating debt or expenses, I think of it as a means to simply redirect the flow of money in and out of my life every now and then. My philosophy is that it's really not bad to spend money, it is however, not so good to spend money you don't yet have.

The final outcome for this season, is that we will be reclaiming $255 a month to be sure, by switching from Vonage to Magic Jack, reducing the amount we contribute to our health savings plan, removing a monthly fee for a web site we no longer use, and since we have installed a whole house water filter, we can eliminate having spring or filtered water delivered to the house. I am also feverishly working on eliminating DISH TV. We have a 2 year contract that will be up next year, and I believe we can do just fine using hulu, and netflix. I have also been a bit irked by how high the garbage removal bills are. Between recycling and composting, we really don't have that much waste that goes out. Then I read an article   Zero Waste  regarding an idea some businesses have put into practice.   I can't see exactly how the average household could accomplish that, personally. But, I sure would like to reduce or eliminate that bill. And something else I've been noticing, is that the grocery bill seems to keep climbing up. It's time  to make some changes there, and maybe utilize some of those coupon sites.

One year, I discovered I was spending an awful lot of money for books at Amazon, with the result of a lot of books piling up and taking space in my house. Somehow, somewhere along the path in life, I had forgotten about one of my favorite hang outs, the library. So, sorry Amazon, you were convenient, and I love you to death,and I still use you on occasion, but the library is quite fun and less costly to use.


A couple of final notes, and links. My favorite financial authors, speakers, websites:

1.Dave Ramsey FB page
I read Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace book  many years ago.  I was hooked, and followed his advice. I understand now he has greatly expanded, and even has a Financial Peace University.I don't feel too bad about not giving you money directly, as I see you have done quite well, without my contribution.
2.Clark Howard
My mom turned me on to this one. He has a radio show, TV show, and blog. I subscribe to his blog as well on facebook. I like his common sense approach, and he is always on the look out for good deals.
3. Debt Proof Living
I picked up a facebook page, debt free living, from my cousins wife Meredith, that looks good, but I think is more geared toward families with young children.
4. The tightwad gazette
Some real out the box thinking on this site. What intrigues me is the founder has been doing this for a long time, and became quite wealthy from not only being a super saver, but turning her passion into her livelihood.  

One last note. I've been hearing a lot lately about investing in precious metals, gold, silver, that kind of thing. Dave Ramsey actually advises against it. However, I'm thinking a little extra diversity in these strange economic times, might be worth a little risk.  If you have some extra money to invest, you might want to consider looking into diversifying a bit, and seeing if there is anything to this. Just a tidbit to tuck in the back of your mind. 

Until Next Time......

Amy