Frugal living is an absolute necessity in today’s economy. With unemployment skyrocketing and wages falling, many people need to find ways to cut back. It is better to cut back now on your own terms than to wait for financial disaster to strike.
If you look hard enough, virtually everyone can cut back on their spending in painless ways that do add up to real savings. This is how it should be done, for few people can make drastic, wholesale changes to their lifestyle.
Let’s take a look at a typical day and see how one can cut back on some spending. Many of us wake up to a cup of coffee every day to get us started. This is fine if you are making the coffee at home, which doesn’t cost that much. However, if you go to a Starbucks or other gourmet coffee house, you could easily spend $4 for a cup of coffee. That alone could add to over $1,100 in just one year.
Lunch can be another time where excessive spending can sneak up on you. It is hard to resist when co-workers ask you to go out to lunch, especially if you have been working hard all morning. This can be quite a financial trap, for it is easy to spend $10 per person on lunch and tip. This could amount to $2,900 per year if done every day. By contrast, you could brown bag your lunch and spend maybe $4 per day to make your lunch and take it in to work with you. This would result in a savings of $1,732 over the course of a year.
Another area you can live more frugally is in your entertainment expenses. Take for examples, movies. With tickets at $10 each, a family of four could easily spend $60 or $70 to see movie, if you includes the tickets and popcorn and sodas.
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