Newly Parents | Newlyweds To First Time Parents…and Everything in Between

Here A Penny, Save A Penny

// November 2nd, 2009 // Money

It seems that we’ve spent our entire marriage saving for something. When we first got engaged we were furiously saving for a wedding in six months. After we got married we began saving for a house for two years. In 23 months we had saved enough for a down payment on our first house and we just celebrated one year in the house. After we bought the house we had to replenish out nest egg because every dime went into the house. Now we are saving for a baby. We’re saving for the known as well as the unknown. The known being baby furniture and nursery items, the unknown being the hospital bills. Regardless of the status of your relationship you’re likely to be saving for something and unless you have a great job where you can just walk in and ask for a raise then saving money is hard work. Here’s a trick that we have learned.

If you’re saving money you have to have a goal. “I want to save X amount of money by this day.” Of course you have to plan and budget your money accordingly each month. Money coming in (paycheck) vs. money going out (bills, groceries, entertainment, etc). If you’re lucky you have some money left at the end of the month. That’s savings. I’m not going to go into the details of planning and budgeting, but let’s say that you have budgeted everything out and you have $200 a month to save. Now that you have a budget and know what you can save, take a look at your budget and see if there is anything else you can squeeze out of a category. In our personal example, we looked at our restaurant category. We enjoy going out to eat on the weekends, maybe once during the week, and we had budgeted for that. When we took a closer look at our restaurant bills though, we found we could be saving a lot more by adjusting one simple thing. Here’s what we did:

I’ve always ordered water with my meal but he always wanted a Dr. Pepper.  Typically a restaurant Dr. Pepper runs about $2 bucks. He also realized that sometimes at work he would buy a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine for $1.25. So when we sat down to think about it we realized he was drinking about 8 Dr. Peppers a week. For the sake of math, let’s say he averaged $1.50 per Dr. Pepper throughout the week. $1.50 x 8 = $12. He was spending $12 on drinks each week. Doesn’t sound like much? In a month, that’s $48 he was spending on Dr. Pepper. That money could pay a bill! Cell phone bill, insurance for a car, water/sewer bill to name a few. So he switched to water. He only drinks water at work and when we go out to eat out he always order a water.

If he stayed away from ordering Dr. Pepper for a year, we would save about $624! (52 weeks in a year)

So to recap, we had already budgeted to save $200 a month. That would be $2400. Just by cutting out one simple thing like Dr. Pepper, we went from $2400 in savings to over $3,000! If both you and your spouse are soda drinkers like he was and you both give it up (You don’t have to give it up forever, just while you are saving) you could possibly double your savings. $624 x 2 = $1248 saved from a stinkin’ soda! Is a Dr. Pepper really worth $1,000 a year? It wasn’t to us!

Saving money isn’t so much about how much money you have coming in (although it certainly makes it easier) but more about how you can commit to adjusting your way of life to achieve your goal. The funny thing is once you get into the habit then what you gave up becomes a non issue. You don’t even think about it anymore, it’s just becomes part of your routine.

Be on the look out for your own personal “Dr.Pepper” and take the steps to get rid of it. Remind yourself why you’re doing and what your goal is to help you stay on track and share it with your spouse. Help each other stay on track!

Look for more stories down the road. Dr. Pepper isn’t the only thing we gave up to make it to our goals. If you have any of your own stories we would love to hear them!

We hope this helps!