Saving money is hard, and cutting back on spending is often harder. But having money saved for emergencies, such as job loss or extended illness, is essential to avoid living in debt. The suggestions below can help everyone cut back on daily expenses and save hundreds or thousands of dollars per year, easily!
Bring Lunch to Work
Bringing lunch from home rather than eating out is an easy way to save money. Someone spending $10 a day on lunches at work could be spending over $2,500 a year on lunch! The cost of bringing lunch from home will vary, of course, but most people already have enough food in their homes to make a lunch each day.
Sandwiches or canned soups make for easy lunches, and are inexpensive to purchase. Other lunch options might include leftovers from dinner, wraps, or meal-sized salads. Assuming it costs $3 per day to bring lunch from home, making this one small change could save over $1,700 in one year. As a bonus, homemade food is typically healthier than restaurant fare.
Make Coffee at Home
Many people depend on coffee to get them going in the morning. Besides that, it tastes good. But someone who stopped every morning before work for a large coffee would be spending from $28-$100 per month, depending on the shop and what they ordered. Though $28 may not sound like much, it adds up to over $330 per year. At the high end, $100 per month equates to $1,200 per year.
A much more inexpensive idea is to make the coffee at home and take it in a travel mug. Many homes already have a coffee maker, but for those that don’t, a coffee maker can be picked up for less than $25 at most discount department stores. Not figuring in the cost of the coffee machine, making this one change could save the average person from $270-$1,140 over one year.
Drop the Gym Membership
Exercise is vital to health and well-being, but at what cost? For those paying membership dues at a gym, it can cost, at minimum, $10 per month. If someone were to pay $50 per month for their gym membership, that adds up to $600 per year. If the budget needs a little trimming, this is an easy place to cut back.
Of course, there’s no need to become a couch potato in the interest of saving money. For cardio, running or walking outside in the park is free, a good bicycle can cost a fraction of the cost of a gym membership, and a jump rope can be made out of any old rope that might be laying around the garage.
Weight training is an important component of fitness that can also be practiced at home. Shoveling snow can provide a great upper-body workout, and carrying groceries up and down stairs is great for the lower body. For more ideas, Krista of the website Stumptuous.com provides detailed information on her creative home gym setup in her article “No Weights, No Problem!” She offers suggestions such as performing bicep curls with a bucket full of sand!
By following just one of the suggestions above, everyone can make small changes that lead to big savings. By following all three, the average person could save over $3,000 in one year! This money could be applied to debt, put into a retirement fund, or spent on a family vacation.
Saving money is one of the first steps toward voluntary simplicity, or living simply. For more information, read more of Suite’s personal budget and finance articles.
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