I recently paid off ALL my debt and since then have been successful at keeping myself out of debt, but I'm just barely breaking even. I depleted my savings in order to become debt free, but if I'm serious about my job hunt and moving, I am going to have to start to rebuild that as quickly as I can. One of the ways I'm going to jump start this is to declare July the month of NO non-food/basic essentials purchases. Every month I look at my credit card statements and see hundreds of dollars that didn't need to be spent. I've always had trouble with creating a budget because a significant portion of my income is overtime and my paycheck fluctuates greatly each pay period.
Hopefully a month of no purchases will help jump start my savings. It would be nice to have more than $0.06 left over in a month (which was what I currently have left in my account after paying my bills).
Any tips for saving money and/or saving on food would be MUCH appreciated! How do you budget savy people survive?!
3 comments:
First, Congrats on getting out of credit card debt!
One thing you can try is to pay yourself first. In other words, give yourself an allowance for purchasing stuff where you don't have to be accountable. The amount should be based on your budget.
Is there a budget plan for any of your utilities. Where I live, most people are on the budget plan for heating becuase no one wants to pay $700.00 heating bill in January.
Coupons rock. Go to Coupons.com and enter your zip code.
For saving, do you have a retirement plan at work? Are investing in an IRA?
I do have a 401k through work, though I don't put much in a month, maybe $150 total. Once I re-establish a safety savings, I plan on kicking that up.
Coupons are definitely a great idea. I currently don't use any, so that's absolutely something I can start doing.
Thankfully living in NYC I don't pay any utilities other than power, but those summer months with AC definitely are rough. I am pretty sure they do the budget plan, so I'll look into that.
Keep the ideas coming!!
I agree - pay yourself first. Secondly, don't go shopping at all. No window shopping, no just looking. Keep grocery shopping to a minimum - once a week max. The less you go the less you spend on frivolous stuff.
Also, during this time only use cash. No credit cards. You will notice really quickly if you have enough to spend or not.
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