CountingBean

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My take on personal finance has always been pretty one-dimensional. Being a finance major in college, I’ve always thought that the right thing to do would be to save money for retirement in investments (aka, mutual funds, stocks, possibly real estate). This is reinforced by the fact that my work gives annual presentations on how to invest in your retirement plan and the proper “asset allocation”. As a result, our retirement savings is pretty automatic across a wide range of mutual funds and a few carefully chosen stocks.

However, after starting this blog and exploring other personal finance blogs, I’ve learned that my view has been pretty narrow-minded. I have learned that saving and investing that money is just one aspect of personal finance. The other is to decrease expenses and increase income. My husband said that this is just common sense, but I disagree because actively monitoring your expenses is not an inherent behavior. Also, trying to actively increase your income doesn’t come naturally either. These actions has to be consistently and consciously chosen.

I have learned so much about embracing the frugal lifestyle from my fellow bloggers and I’m excited about evaluating our own spending habits to see how we can improve. I started to track our spending in an excel spreadsheet at the beginning of this year. I’m am now just beginning to look at line by line items. For example, I’ve always just taken for granted that hey, if I’m at work and hungry then I should go and buy lunch. I figured since I can afford it then it’s not a big deal. I spend around $3-7 to buy lunch at our cafeteria (depending on what I order). Although I do bring my lunches from home on days when we have leftovers, this is more of the exception and not the rule. After looking at my spreadsheet, I realized that I was spending around $100-150 a month on lunches. That’s a lot of money!

This calls for me to change my normal pattern of behavior, which I think will be difficult to start with. I would like to bring lunch from home to be more the norm, rather than the other way around… This is less convenient because it means planning meals beforehand or making sure to make extra for leftovers. It’s so much easier to go to the cafeteria where I can pick and choose what to eat depending on how I feel that day. But at the same time, I’m not too picky of an eater so this action is totally doable. A lot of bloggers seem to have a garden to reduce produce costs and encourage sustainable living and although I think that’s a bigger project than what I can accommodate at this time, I also think that the idea is worth exploring in the future.

Another expense I’m looking to cut is transportation expense. My husband already takes mass commuting, but I’m a little less disciplined. There’s several carpooling and/or train as options for commuting to work. The train is more convenient since it has several departure times. But the carpooling takes less time since it eliminates the inconvenience of having to get transportation to the train station and having to wait there until the train comes. I believe that these options will save me money on gas (which is so freaking expensive). Another benefit is that it will save on vehicle wear and tear as well.

Since tracking my expenses, I’ve eliminated some of the recurring monthly fees such as the gym (lazy bum that I am… *sigh*) and other subscription services that we no longer use.

I’m sure there are other ideas out there to reduce costs, but I’ll focus on these few for now since they seem easy enough and I can apply those savings towards potential travel plans Something that’s more memorable than a lunch meal or a tank of gas.

Do you have any suggestions on saving money?

And as for increasing my income… well… I’m still thinking about that