You might not be a millionaire, but your paycheck dollars will extend a little bit farther.
There are gremlins that live in your wallet. When you are sleeping, they crawl out and whisper in your ear, telling you all the useless things on which you need to spend your money. It’s very easy to listen to these gremlins, but if you can learn to tune them out and take note of all the frivolities on which you spend your money, you’ll be surprised by how far that dollar can go.
1. Coffee
Depending on where you live and what you like to order, coffee can range from $2-$5 daily. That’s a lot of money considering that you need your fix daily. Let’s be generous and say you only spend $3 a day for coffee. You buy that coffee 5 days a week for 50 weeks a year. If you replace that corner store/overpriced Starbucks coffee with a coffeepot at home you will save quite a bundle.
Yearly savings: $750
2. Gym Memberships
If you actually use your membership and are in the habit of working out regularly, don’t quit. The regular workouts are benefiting you. However, if you are like most people with gym memberships, yours might be going unused. According to this extremely sketchy news source, 4 our of 5 gym memberships go unused after the first few days of the new year. According to StatisticsBrain.com the average gym membership costs $55 a month.
Yearly savings: $660 (or 153 cups of coffee from Starbucks)
3. New clothes and other fashionable impulse buys
You have a bad day at work and need a pick-me-up, so you shoot over to the mall just to browse. Two hours later, you walk out with a new pair of shoes ($36) and a cute wallet ($23). You do this once a month (spending an average of $59 on clothes/accessories). If this behavior continues every month for a year, how much are you throwing away yearly on impulse buys?
Yearly savings if you don’t buy impulsively: $708 (or a full 12 months of gym memberships)
4. Drinks
I had trouble finding statistics about alcohol spending, so I’ll make up a generous hypothetical for you. It’s Friday night and you decide to go out with a few co-workers to a local bar. You spend $10 to get in the door and $12 on a cocktail. You then have three beers (at $6 a pop), and call it a night at 1am.
This equals $40 for a night out. I’m being extremely generous here and assuming you only do this once a month and only have four drinks. Chances are you drink more often than this, but again, I’m being generous. Cut down and your drinking and you’ll save a lot.
Yearly savings: $480 (or 8 impulsive shopping trips)
5. Buying lunch instead of bringing it
If you’ve ever worked in a major city, you know the average meal can cost about $8.00 on a good day. Sometimes, you can save a couple of bucks if you spend your money on something small or healthy (or you could starve).
Or, you could brown bag it everyday and save a ridiculous amount of money.
Yearly savings: $2,000 (or 50 nights out) if you’re buying an expensive lunch everyday
6. Water bottles
Not only will bringing your own water bottle save you a ton of money, it will also save the planet. The average person uses 167 water bottles annually. If the average water bottle costs an estimated $1.45 a bottle, then by bringing your own reusable bottle, you’re saving a ton of plastic and money.
Yearly savings: 242.15 (or 30 lunch breaks).
7. Fast food splurges
Don’t splurge on fast food. It’s bad for your heart. It’s bad for your health. It’s bad for your wallet. Just don’t do it. And definitely don’t spend 6.27 doing it twice a week.
Yearly savings: 652.08 (and quite a few inches around your waist)
8. Boozy brunch
The average consumer in America spends $181 a month on going out to eat. Obviously, this number varies quite a bit from city to city. You should spend the occasional hard-earned buck on a nice meal, but should you be going out to brunch every weekend. It’s not just a waste of money, it’s a waste of a perfectly good day. Don’t do this to your wallet.
Yearly savings: $2,172 (or a year’s worth of water bottles, fast food splurges, drinks, AND impulse buys, with enough left over to get $30 cups of coffee.)
And you were wondering why you never have any money.
[Featured Image Credit: Andy Smith via Flickr]