Category Archives: saving

There Are Always Savings Opportunities

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It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a raise at work.  Quite a long while, actually.  While that in itself is less than optimal (read: it sucks), it gets even worse when you consider that things have gotten more expensive across the board.  Just a few examples:

  • Gas prices have gone up quite a bit
  • Food prices have gone up a lot (or they shrink the packages, which means you have to buy more, so the end result is you pay more)
  • Health insurance premiums have skyrocketed
  • Our mortgage was re-financed.  Even though we are putting over $500 more in principle away each month for a modest $150 increase in the payment, it’s still a cash flow issue.

As a result, we’ve tightened in many areas.  Just a few areas we’ve reduced expenses over the past few years or tried to offset in some way:

  • We’ve updated our insurance plan to include an umbrella policy, which actually increased our total coverage while reducing our costs about 15%.  We also increased our deductible amounts for both home and auto.
  • We combined cell phone plans with my in-laws for a family plan, cutting costs for both households.  Later, I dropped off the plan altogether when my work offered to provide a phone.
  • We’ve called every year to get our cable company to continue to give us a discounted rate.
  • We use a Costco American Express credit card for all gas purchases.  This gives us 3% cash back for gasoline purchases.  Considering that price hikes of 5% in a single day are all too common these days, this extra couple of percent barely makes a dent, but every little bit helps.

Every time there is an opportunity to save some money, it seems that it’s further and further since the last opportunity, and that it usually yields less savings.  In all likelihood this likely means that we’ve done a pretty good job at identifying potential cost savings.  You’re usually going to get the greater returns up front as you hit the ‘low hanging fruit’.

Even so, it’s always fun when you find a new opportunity and we recently did.  I’d always heard that Aldi is a great place to shop and save, but we never took advantage of shopping there.  There are two stores, both about 8 miles away, so it’s not like it was just around the corner.  I’d been in one a few times, but pretty much just walked around, looked around, left, and promptly forgot all about it.

Still, I’d heard enough about it and I guess I read one too many blog posts talking about what a great store it is, so I mentioned it to my wife and we decided to check it out.  And, it was well worth it.

Here are some of the things I learned about Aldi:

  • It is a very no-frills store.  Things are stacked up in bulk, similar to Costco.  This means they rarely run out of anything, and I’m guessing means that they minimize the need to have people on the payroll to stock items throughout the day.
  • Their prices on produce are often unbeatable.  My wife does all the shopping for our fruits and vegetables, whereas I would likely not recognize a good deal from a bad deal (at least not as quickly as she can).  She looked through the ad and was amazed at some of the prices.  In many cases, you can get fresh produce for 20-50% less than what you pay at the supermarket.  We’ve bought a variety of different things, including pineapples, oranges, avocados, peppers, and likely other products, and my wife has not complained about the quality of anything.
  • Milk prices are great.  Their milk is a full 70 cents a gallon cheaper than what we pay, and come to find out that the supplier is a company that you typically pay even higher prices for.  In fact, my wife saw the truck pulling away from the store on one trip.  Both kids drink milk, and both my wife and I drink it every day, so this is a big cost savings for our family.
  • Yogurt prices are great, and it tastes awesome.  I get the store brand yogurt which generally runs anywhere from 40-60 cents per cup.  Aldi has theirs available for 39 cents, meaning I’m saving no matter what.  I bought a couple just to see what it was like, and it tastes better than even the national brands.
  • It requires slight tweaks to our budget system.  Groceries are one item that we typically put on our credit card, but Aldi doesn’t take credit cards (another way to minimize costs), so we lose the 1% cash back that we’d otherwise get and we have to front the money instead of floating it a couple of weeks until the credit card is paid.  Minor issues, but still a tweak for a guy like me who has perfected his budget system and is therefore resistant to change.
  • Bagging is do it yourself. They have one person who runs the register, and he/she will simply take the items and place them back in your cart.  Then, you go over to a counter set in the front of the store and you bag it yourself.  That keeps the line moving even more so than you trying to bag it right at the register.  You also want to bring your own bags otherwise they charge you for them.
  • Bring a quarter for your shopping basket.  What’s the one common thing about every grocery store parking lot?  Well, there actually two.  One is that there are cart corrals which annoy you because you think it’s an empty spot until you drive up to it, and second is that there is always a handful of workers out there collecting the baskets and taking them back to the store.  Not so at Aldi, because you have to insert a quarter into the shopping cart to use it (the quarter ‘frees it’ from the other carts it’s attached to).  When you’re done shopping, just push the cart back and once it clicks in place with the other carts, you get your quarter back.  You never see carts all over the lot at Aldi, because even if someone doesn’t want to walk back up and put the cart back, you can bet that there are enterprising customers who would be happy to collect stray carts, and return them to the store to get the quarter(s)
  • They don’t take coupons.  Most brands are not recognized brand names anyways, so there usually aren’t coupons that you could even apply (and I’m thinking that’s why all the brand names are unfamiliar), but even for  the brand name stuff that they do take, you can’t take coupons.  It cuts down on their administrative overhead.

All in all, we are big fans of Aldi.  The distance makes it so that we generally seem to go about every other week, which so far works just fine for us.  And, it shows that there are always opportunities for savings even when you think you’ve done just about everything.  Because, even though we try to meal plan, we clip coupons, we stock up on items, we stack coupons with sale prices, and other tricks to save money at the grocery store, there is still money to be saved on our food bill.

So, even though it’s harder to come by savings (because the fruit isn’t as low hanging), another thing I realized is that it still feels good to come across and take advantage of a savings opportunity.  That part, it never gets old!

Readers, do you shop at Aldi?  What other savings opportunities have you recently found even if you had thought you’d squeezed all the blood out of the savings turnip?

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on Money Beagle. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Pay Yourself First To Save Money And Enjoy Life

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One of the best strategies I’ve heard as method to save money is to pay yourself first. With this approach, you address your savings goals as the first item in your budget, rather than the last.  The principle is that if you address savings as a goal on the bottom of your list (meaning you ‘pay yourself last’), you’ll always find other things to spend the money on and you’ll miss the opportunity to meet or stretch your savings goals.

The money approach.  Say your goal is to save 10% toward retirement.  If you use the ‘pay yourself last’ approach, you’ll address most or all of your budget items before you get to savings.  More often than not, you’ll have less than your stated goal available when you get to the end (and if you still do, then it’s probably time to increase your goals!)  Many times, there won’t be anything left at all, which is how so many people go years and years without saving a single dime for retirement.

By paying yourself first, you put that goal first and foremost at the top of the list. You list the 10% as your top item and work down from there.  The idea is that, by doing this, you will likely find ways to cut spending in other areas so that you can satisfy your savings goal.  It forces you to work a little harder, where the ‘pay yourself last’ approach makes shrugging your shoulders and thinking you can worry about it next year a perfectly acceptable option.

Even though it isn’t.  Not by a long shot.

In some cases, you may truly have such a tight budget that you have to readjust your ‘number one’ goal.  You certainly don’t want to put yourself in a position to lose your house or miss paying a bill.  At that point, the benefits you’d get from that savings goal would be very negatively offset.  But, in many cases, it allows you opportunities to question whether you really are that tight in your budget.  Can you cut a premium cable channel?  Can you eliminate your home phone line and do everything via cell?  Can you limit yourself to one drink at the bar instead of three when you go out? Paying yourself first will put you in a more forced position to ask questions like these, and more importantly, to answer them and apply those answers to your budget.

This is a valuable approach to reaching your savings goals, so why not apply it to other areas where resources are spread thin?  Namely, why not apply it to the one resource that we all have which we’re all faced with the same constraint?

Of course, I’m talking about time.

We all have 24 hours in a day, and only 7 days in a week.  No amount of money or sorcery can buy you anything extra.  How many of us feel ourselves getting stretched thin?

I know I just raised my hand and I’m guessing you either just did or mentally thought about it.

Now, I’m not going to spend the remainder of this article talking about how you can find more time to get things done or to be more productive in your work day.  Nah.  I’m going to talk about how you can apply this principle to give yourself more time which you can enjoy.  That’s a lot more fun to do and it’s a lot more fun to write about.

And, let’s face it, I think many of us could use a little bit more enjoyment out of life.

So, how do you get this extra time?  Simple.  By using the same ‘pay yourself first’ approach which we went over above, you can give yourself time to enjoy life.  I’m sure many of us work, come home, do chores around the house, work on this or that, and if there’s any time left in the day, we might kick back for a few minutes, and that’s our enjoyment time.

How fun is that?  Not very.

It’s important.  The fact is that we need to enjoy ourselves.  The human body and human mind need to experience pleasure on a regular basis.  Otherwise, we get depressed.  It causes us to make poor decisions about what we eat.  We don’t exercise.  Our health can suffer.

So, yes, enjoying yourself is essential for your health.

Therefore, it’s extremely important to ‘pay yourself first’

Time ticks away.  Not only is it important for your health, it’s important to enjoy yourself so that you are getting the most out of your life.  I’ve heard it said many times that, when on their deathbed, people will often wish they spent more time with family, with friends, with their young kids.  Nobody ever says that they wished they had spent more time in the office or cleaning out the basement.

If you have young kids, you need to spend time with them because they will only be this young once.  I look at our kids and they seem to grow every day.  Every once in a while I will just put aside what I’m doing and spend some time playing a game with them or reading books to them.  Even if I have a list of twenty things to do, in ten years nothing on that list or any similar list will be important enough to remember, but there’s a good chance I’ll remember the bond that I built with my kids during these times with them.

Later is there.  Besides, when my kids grow up and move away someday, the list of things that I’ll have to do?  That will still be there even though my kids won’t.  So, while crossing things off a list can make you feel accomplished, it doesn’t matter as much in the long run.

Understand balance.  One of the things that’s important to remember and figure out is how to balance this.  In no way am I advocating skirting all of your responsibilities and living every moment for the moment.  If you go overboard like that, chances are you’ll lose your job or things will start to look so bad around your house and yard that life will become unbearable in new ways.  This is not what I’m suggesting at all.

The key is to find a balance. The financial example I used above had 10% as a target number for retirement savings.  Set a similar percentage of time where you enjoy yourself first.  If you get home at 5:30 and you go to bed at 11:30, that’s six hours.  Dinner and such likely has an obligation there, but if you find the rest filled up with ‘things to do’, set a goal of 15 minutes a day or, maybe a half hour two or three times per week, to do something enjoyable.  Spend time with your family.  Catch a favorite TV show.  Go outside and do something you enjoy.  Exercise.

Making up the difference.  One of the concerns she has is that if you take that time away from ‘getting things done’, you’ll end up leaving things undone or incomplete.  This can cause a certain amount of stress that could negate the good that comes out of your newly taken enjoyment time.  If you get stressed out, chances are you’re just going to drop your time to enjoy life.  So, what do you do instead?

  • Prioritize – Out of all the things you do on a regular basis that take your time, chances are some of the tasks could be eliminated.  If you’re not getting value from something you’re doing regularly, reduce the frequency or eliminate it altogether.
  • Set time limits – One blogger I follow addresses this issue by carrying around a timer for certain tasks.  This causes her to ‘work’ faster and limits her time on some tasks that could otherwise consume massive amounts of time if left open ended.
  • Outsource – If you have a ton of things that have to get done, sometimes paying someone to do one or two of them is a worthwhile approach, especially if it frees up some time for you to enjoy life.  You have to look at the opportunity cost and available money to pay someone, but now and then adding an extra expense can be worth it, so long as you have the money to do so.

I guess this post is about as close as I can get to tying back to the old adage of ‘Time is money’ because for most of us, they are both limited resources that we must make work effectively, and in both, we must find ways to achieve balance.  So, in the end the ‘pay yourself first’ approach is a pretty natural fit if you think about it.

Do you use the ‘pay yourself first’ approach in how you handle money or time?  Do you think there are areas where this would make sense?  Readers, I’d love to hear your stories and thoughts.

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on Money Beagle. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Saving Money with Seasonal Lifestyle Deflation

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This is a guest post from Edward Antrobus. Edward is a construction worker, blogger, tinkerer and a househusband. He writes about frugality and occasionally rants about what he thinks the personal finance community gets wrong.

Recently, I embarked on a quest.  Instead of getting ideas from other personal finance bloggers, I wanted to get the opinions of average people on the topic of frugality. I started asking friends and coworkers one simple question: what is your favorite way of saving money? When I asked Peggy, her answer was cutting back on quality.

At first glance, that seems like a bad thing. Skimping on quality; doesn’t that mean it will break or wear out sooner and have to be replaced more often? That should make things more expensive in the long run. But that’s not what Peggy meant. What she was actually referring to would be lifestyle deflation.

People are pretty familiar with the concept of lifestyle inflation where you let rises in your income get spent with rises in your purchases. When you made $12k per year in college, you lived on ramen. When you graduated and scored a $40k per year job, you upgraded to steak.

Lifestyle deflation would be just the opposite. In the summer time, we work 60+ hours and can make $1000 per week or more. But in the winter, hours get scaled way back and most of us don’t make $1000 in an entire month. While a lot of that summer money gets saved to make it through the winter, lifestyle fluctuates a lot between those seasons as well. In the summer, Peggy likes corned beef sandwiches. In the winter, she’s eating bologna.

If you experience money getting tight, look through your expenses and see what you like having but can live without. Maybe you can switch to a cheaper lunchmeat. If you prefer Starbucks but don’t mind 7-11, drink that for a while. Or better yet, invest in a $10 coffee maker and brew it at home.

A lot of people are going to have stable income throughout the year, but expenses can vary wildly throughout the year. If you have a big family, like I do, Christmas can be an expensive time of the year, even if you give frugal gifts. Between my wife and I, we have to buy 6 birthday or anniversary presents for family members in the month of September. And of course, even keeping the thermostat low, we use a lot of heat in the winter. All told, fall and winter cost a couple thousand dollars more than spring and summer do.

So we cut back on our meat consumption, and what meat we do buy is cheaper cuts. Chicken three times per week and the occasional steak get replaced with hamburger and lots of pasta. New releases at the theater fade off in favor of the discount theater and Redbox.

The beauty of seasonal lifestyle deflation as opposed to living it year round is that you can cut tighter than you might be willing to full time. There’s no way I could give up meat year-round, no matter how expensive it is. But going a week is no problem. There is also no reason to limit it to just times when money is tight. You could decide to have a “No-spend November” or give up meat for lent and accomplish the same thing – extra money in your bank account at the end of the year.

For more posts from the Saving Money Series, check out http://edwardantrobus.com/saving-money-series

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on Money Beagle. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Commonly Overlooked Ways to Save on Utilities

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Everyone knows that to save on utilities it is important to reduce the use of major appliances. However, the common adage of turning off the lights does not always lead to significant enough results to lower utility bills. Because the average household often uses more gas and electricity than they are aware of, it is important to examine how every aspect of a family’s routine can be adjusted to help add up to major savings on utilities.

In order to help anyone who would like to save on their utilities, the following ideas are among some of the most commonly overlooked ways that people can make changes to reduce their usage of electricity and gas.

Wash Laundry on Cold 

Many people mistakenly believe that the majority of energy used during laundry is for running the washing machine. However, most of the energy used during laundry is actually used for heating up the water. Therefore, simply moving the switch to a cold wash can effectively reduce energy bills.

Monitor Appliances 

Many appliances use energy even when they are not being used. In fact, if an appliance is plugged in, then it is most likely drawing energy even when it is not turned on. Many households have appliances that they no longer use. If they are still in working order, consider them for your next garage sale or just move them to a self storage unit in Raleigh for safe keeping.

Install Weather Stripping 

Most of a home’s cool air and heat escape out of the house through tiny cracks and crevices along the seams of windows and doors. Even the smallest of cracks can lead to significant energy loss. Therefore, it is important to make sure that all of these cracks are sealed.

Pay Attention to Windows 

Simply changing the window decorations each season can help to cut out heating and cooling costs. During the summer, the windows should be shaded with heavy curtains or blinds to block out the sun. When winter comes, these can be removed so that the sun can shine through and help to heat up the house.

Take Cool Showers 

Showers are well-known for being a way to save water as they require less than a bath. However, showers can also be used to cut down on gas and electricity by reducing the amount that is needed to heat the water. Therefore, a cool and quick shower can provide an invigorating way to save on utilities.

Around the home, minor changes can be made to reduce the use of gas and electricity. While many of these ideas are often overlooked, they take little effort and can add up to major rewards when the utility bill arrives in the mail. Saving on utilities is as simple as incorporating these ideas into a person’s daily routines.

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on Money Beagle. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Bigger Sizes Aren’t Always Cheaper

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Normally Mrs. Beagle handles the grocery shopping, and she always does a great job. Recently, she couldn’t go during her normal day and time due to schedule conflict resulting from Little Boy Beagle’s attending summer ‘bug’ camp (he loved it, of course!). So, we decided to head out as a family after dinner.

I pretty much try to stay out of the way and keep a handle on the kids (both met with varying success).  I can’t help but keep an eye on prices.

I noticed two examples of what I would consider a price discrepancy between sizes.  And not in the way you’d normally expect.

Carrots – We typically buy a bag of carrots that we then peel and slice.  They’re a lot cheaper than the pre-cut carrots, and I think they taste better, too.  I take them every day in my lunch.  They come in either one pound or three pound bags.  My wife forgot them so she sent me back for them mid-way through the trip.  The bags are in different areas of the vegetable area, and so I had to walk back and forth to check prices.  The one pound bags were 67 cents each, and a three pound bag was $2.33.  I quickly realized that you could buy three one pound bags for $2.01, saving 32 cents over the ‘bigger’ bag.

Shampoo – I use Suave shampoo, as it’s actually one of the few left that don’t have parabens (which aggravate a skin eczema problem I have on one hand).  Since this was for me, I went off to get this myself.  Again, I noticed that they had two sizes.  A 15-ounce bottle for 94 cents (I know, I really get the ‘expensive’ stuff) or a 22.5-ounce ‘family size’ bottle for $1.46.  If you buy the smaller bottle, you’d be paying the equivilent of $1.41 to get to the same number of ounces.  Once again, the smaller size was actually cheaper.

So what’s going on here?

I think the advice has been skewed so much into ‘bigger sizes are cheaper‘ that stores are trying to sneak in bigger prices for bigger sizes, hoping that customers won’t notice.

Granted, these two examples add up to a whopping 37 cents.  Nothing we’re ever going to get rich over.  You can’t even buy a stamp with that any more!

But, if they’re doing it on smaller ticket items, you never know what other items they could be applying reverse economies of scale towards.  In other words, you should keep an eye on unit pricing.  Don’t assume that the bigger sizes will yield you the best unit price.

Do you ever keep an eye on unit pricing when shopping?  Have you ever noticed where bigger sizes equal bigger pricing?

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I Saved $62 Just By Asking

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It never hurts to ask, right?

That’s never more true than with two examples in the past week that have saved me $62.

First stop: The vet

If you haven’t been able to tell, we’ve been getting good use out of our new (to us) camper over the summer.  We’ve taken ‘The Bird’ (as we affectionately have nicknamed it) for two trips over four days, and have one additional one planned later in the month.   In addition, we’re doing a weeklong trip with my in-laws around Labor Day to cap off the summer.

As any cat owner knows, cats generally don’t vacation well.  Dogs, you can take them on a trip and they’ll love it.  Not so much.  Add to this the fact that I have two old cats, both of whom need medicine and special food served to them at set intervals of the day, and leaving them home for more than a couple of days isn’t an option (and even then, we have to rely on the generosity of family or neighbors).  This means we have to board the cats.

I’ve been using the same vet for sixteen years.  I know this because I started going when the sixteen year old cat was a kitten.  They’ve taken care of all of my pets exams, medical issues, and boarding needs for that entire time.

And with all the trips this summer, the boarding costs added up quick.  I also purchase all of the special food that they get, as well as most of the medicine.  Between exams, food, medicine, and boarding, I shudder to add up the costs except to know it’s ‘A Lot’.

So, I sent an e-mail to the office manager asking for a courtesy discount.  I politely outlined the length of time that I’ve been a customer as well as pointing out the services and goods we purchase from them and how they add up to what has to be good revenue for them throughout the year.  I asked for a 5% reduction on everything moving forward.

I knew perfectly well that they were going to say no.

And they did.

But they offered me two free nights of boarding costs for the cats.  We have two more boarding visits left this year, so that’s one night off each one.  They charge $25 per night for the two cats, including their food and special medicine and all that.  This will save me $50.

Actually, I think this works out almost as good as the 5% I asked for, especially if I ask (and I will) again next summer for another discount.

Next stop: The Newspaper

I get the paper delivered to our door.  Well, actually the bottom of our driveway, but you get the point.

The Detroit papers now only do home delivery three times per week as a cost-saving measure.  Along with that, you can’t really get a ‘Sunday only’ option as you could in the past.  You pretty much have to get all three days.

I signed up a couple of years ago at a really good price.  I think it was around $25 for a six month subscription.  Every six months they automatically renew you, and they bump up the price so that the promotional rate gets smaller and smaller.  The increases went up around $10 per six months.

Even with the raises, it was still a pretty good deal considering that the Sunday paper alone was $1.75.  This was recently raised to $2 about a  year ago.  Meaning that anything over $52 for a six month period was ‘costing’ me money, but anything under that was a savings to me (this works if you value the non-Sunday papers at $0, which I do).  So when the price went up to $54 last time, I called and inquired if they would reduce the price.

At that time, they wouldn’t.  I figured an extra $2 on top of the $52 was worth it for the fact that I wouldn’t have to go out every Sunday and get the paper.

So, it worked.

Until the last bill, when they raised it again and it was $66.  This time I called and once again asked for the price to be lowered.

She told me, no, that the ‘regular’ rate was $90 so I was still getting a discount.

Fine, I said, then go ahead and cancel my subscription and refund the money (they charge in advance).  I can just go down the street and get the paper for what amounts to $52 a period.

With a $14 difference, I actually was prepared to do so this time.

Hold on, she said.

Two minutes later, she came back on the line and said that they would do the next six months at $54.  Actually longer, because I just let them extend the subscription to cover the extra $12.  So I have about eight months before I have to deal with it again.

All told, that adds up to $62 in ‘savings’ just by asking.

When was the last time you saved money just by asking? 

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