A Penny Saved

The old adage, “A penny saved, is a penny earned,” coined (no pun intended) by Benjamin Franklin, means that by reducing your spending, you are increasing your income. It is a truth, to be sure. If you don’t spend the money in the first place, you don’t have to earn it again, to replace it.

There are so many ways to do this that it actually makes my head hurt that more people don’t do more to reduce their spending, when it is so easy. These folks certainly complain about the lack of money and how everything has spiraled out of their control, when in fact, they have let their spending spiral out of control and aren’t willing to do anything about it!

How many people do you know who don’t turn off lights when they leave a room? How many people let the shower run long before they jump into it and actually bathe, or leave the water running while they brush their teeth? You can probably name a few in your own home. It’s all money, literally, going down the drain.

If you are out of control in spending and think, “What the heck, we’re so far in the hole, what’s one more dollar here and there gonna make?” and then go out and spend more money so you feel better; you need to get a grip. Spending more money is not going to get you out of debt. You need to start saving and make it a habit.

An excellent start, is to pay yourself first. It doesn’t have to be much; just doing it is a great leap in the right direction; and most importantly, the beginning of a good habit.

Most of us have a checking account and a savings account. These accounts are usually attached to each other and you can transfer money back and forth at any given time; and for most folks, they can even do it on-line via home computer. If you happen to have this computer in front of you, which is likely the case since you are reading this on-line, go to your bank account right now, and transfer just $5 from your checking account to your savings account. Most of us can afford that much and won’t even miss it. Do it right now!

Okay, you now have $5 sitting in savings that will earn interest; maybe not much on such a small scale, but it will earn interest. Now, if you do this every week, at the end of the month you will have $20 in your savings account. If you do this every month for a year, you will have amassed $240.00 and it didn’t even hurt.

The second way to get spending under control is to not spend the money in the first place; and there are many ways to do that.

Consider this; do you go out to lunch every day at work? Odds are you are spending at least $5.00 for your lunch. Instead of eating out, make your own lunch, or better still, toss the leftovers from the previous night’s dinner in a container and eat that; you just saved $5 and gave yourself a nice little raise.

Each day, after not spending that $5 on lunch, go to your computer and move that $5 into your savings account; do that 5 days a week, and by golly, that adds up to $20 a week, which in turn, is $100 a month, and makes a total of $1200 a year. It adds up pretty quickly, doesn’t it?

A really easy and benign way to not spend money is to not consume as much, e.g. using electricity and water. Turn out that light and don’t let the water run.

If you are like us, you pay a pretty healthy water bill. We have good water where we live and the city thinks very highly of this water and as a result, charge a fortune for it. As soon as the tap is on, we’re spending money, so we make the most of it. We paid for that water and we’re going to use as much of it as we can before it goes down the drain.

Look out your window; see all those plants on your balcony or just outside the front door, or the plants on the shelf in your living room… they need water. Now, remember all that water that went down the shower drain this morning; a whole lot of it while you were just getting the temperature right to step in. Get yourself a nice little bucket or container and put it under the tap when you start the water running, and capture it. It’s clean, and it’s good for watering your plants. Why let it go down the drain? If it goes down the drain you will have to draw more water later to pour on your plants. You paid for the water; use it!

Did you know, you can also flush your toilet with a bucket of water? Take said bucket of water that you rescued from going down the drain, and instead of whipping around and whapping that flush handle, pour that bucket of water, all at once (not slowly), into the bowl of the toilet. Poof, the swirling action starts and down the drain it goes. You just saved money by not flushing the toilet using the tank water.

It’s not much, but you do this at least once a day and after awhile, you’re talking real money and it didn’t even take that much time; just effort.

Do you wash your dishes by hand instead of putting them in the dishwasher? Well save that rinse water and pour it on a bush in your yard or on your garden; don’t let it run down the drain. If you do use a dishwasher, make sure it is full before you turn it on; and then, don’t let it go through the electric dry cycle. Instead, just prop the door open and let the dishes dry on their own. By doing this, you’ve saved electricity and water, but you’ve also put a nice amount of moisture in the air.

If you look around your house, you will find many a way to cut down on using electricity and water. Let’s move on to the laundry.

Another old saw goes “It takes money to make money.” One way to put this nifty little adage to work is to hang up your laundry to dry. We do this all year around. We put up a nice clothes line outside, and found a dandy of a clothes line to set up in the spare room, during the winter. Obviously, you are going to have to spend some money to do this, and it doesn’t have to be big money either. In the long run, you are going to save some serious money by not running the dryer. Even if you don’t like some of your clothing hung on the line, at least do it with the sheets, dish towels, socks and so forth. We dry everything on the line, save what needs to go to the dry cleaners. We haven’t used the dryer in so long, I can’t tell you if it even works anymore. I do use the top as a work surface, so it’s good for something.

Any one of the above methods isn’t going to result in you becoming a millionaire, but they will leave more money for getting those bills paid and getting out of debt, or increasing your savings.

Here’s another adage that covers the whole lot of the above drivel I’ve been spewing, “If you find yourself in a hole; stop digging! That’s the crux of it right there. If you’re not in a hole and you do the above, you will quickly find yourself atop a large pile.

If you think I’m living in dreamland here, think again. Not many years back, due to life and its twists and turns, ‘J’ and I were in that hole; and we stopped digging. It’s a long story, as good as anyone else’s, but in the end, like many other folks, that hole could have gotten a lot bigger and deeper.

At the end of 5-years, not only did we not have any debt, we had over $30,000.00 in the bank. That’s a ‘no shitter’ folks.

So, take a look around you and get to work. Use that elbow grease and a little time… it costs you nothing, and it will save you a lot.

To read a bit more about saving money by not eating out, follow this link. This lady has a good handle on the subject. http://www.notjustbeans.com/articles/stop-eating-into-debt.html