I think (know) I've mentioned my new-found frugality here before. While my finances weren't bad, they weren't great, either. I was like a lot of people -- I earn a decent salary, yet I never seemed to have enough money. And this was strange for me -- I was always known as "good with money" in my family. Yet somehow, I found myself shuffling bills around, paying the minimum balances, and otherwise struggling. Sure, everything always got paid, but barely on time.
I blamed it on grad school at first. In fairness to me, my income went down to a quarter of what it had been while I was working full-time, and a certain amount of creative financing was necessary whilst earning circus peanuts. But that was over a year ago. I was earning a very good salary again. Yes, I have a massive student loan debt, but I didn't owe any real credit card debt. So why was I so frickin' poor?
Right around the beginning of this year, I decided to figure out why that was. I tracked my spending and it soon became obvious why I was always struggling -- no budget, no planning, spending on stupid little things and no savings all resulted in me scrambling to pay for the important things like, oh, say, my utility bills.
So, I sat down and wrote myself up a list of rules. These were:
1.) All bills get paid on time, every month. I had the bad habit of paying some bills a day or so after they were due -- not late enough to get in trouble, or have it show up on my credit report, but enough to accrue late fees. No more.
2.) I made a strict, but reasonable weekly budget. So much for food, so much for gas, so much for spending. I also created a spreadsheet and began saving
all my receipts and entering what I spent on the same day I spent it. No matter how small the amount, I get a receipt and I save it until it's entered at the end of the day into my spreadsheet for that month. That way I know where my money's going -- those little $5 expenditures for coffee etc. are easy to forget, but add up quickly.
3.) I began doing my grocery shopping on just one day a week, not seven days a week as was my wont. That was pure, cussed laziness on my part. I've never liked hauling groceries around. But it also meant I wasted a lot of food, and paid more in sales tax.
4.) Pursuant to #3 above, I began clipping coupons in earnest. I've always loved them, but was never systematic about using them before now. The lady I care for once a week gets the Sunday paper and gives me the coupons out of it, bless her, but I also realized you can get them on
eBay as well. That last is very useful, as you can get multiple coupons for items you use all the time. I routinely get coupons for cat food, treats and litter. It might cost me $5 to get 20 $1-off coupons for litter, for example, which means I'm still saving $15. It's not unusual for me to spend less than thirty dollars a week to feed and care for one human and four felines.
5.) I started saving in earnest. Every payday I take 10% of what I earn and stuff it into my ING account. Religiously. Part of my problem was having no safety net. Whenever an unexpected expense came up, such as car repairs, I didn't have the money set aside to take care of it, and I had to do a lot of juggling.
6.) Extra income. I already had a part time job, but I started doing paid blogging to earn a little more. That's worked out quite well -- I don't count on it for regular income, because what I earn depends on what assignments are available, but I've averaged a few hundred dollars a month since I started. I also run ads on my site, but that really hasn't helped at all, since I only get paid when people click on them or use the search box to search the internet and click ads. I've made about $5 on ads in six months. Ah well. People will click or they won't, as they desire. Still, the extra income has been helpful. I save part of it to pay for taxes due on it next year, the rest gets thrown at my student loan.
All of these things have helped tremendously. I just looked it over, and in four months, I've managed to pay nearly
$4,000 on my student loans over and above what I'm supposed to pay!
I can't believe it either! Almost thousand dollars a month, extra! While paying all my other bills! And saving money!
So yes, my adventures in frugality are going very well so far. More updates to come as the situation warrants. Thank you all for tolerating the paid blogging -- it's most definitely helping me get these student loans paid off, and I appreciate that so many people continue to read.
I think I'll go calculate the compound interest on my savings, now :)
Elle
