Probably my biggest waste of money is on food. There is no doubt that there is a lot of waste for me in this area. Especially where lunch is concerned.
I average spending about $11.00 a day on lunch or roughly $220 a month. That is just on lunch. This is completely ridiculous. In all honesty, it is a bit embarrassing for me to admit that I do this! So how am I going to deal with this monumental waste? By planning ahead.
I have a rough budget that I follow, and yes I factored in this current cost. What is going to happen is the following. First, each Sunday I will sit down and plan out what I am going to eat each day for lunch. Seriously, I am writing down a list for Monday-Friday. One of those day will be a day where I eat out. The reason for this is social/networking. The current job I have is through networking and staying in contact with old coworkers and friends. Next, I will take that list to the grocery store and buy what I need. Finally, I will post on here about it on Saturday as a way of accountability to see if I stuck to my budget. For the moment, I am scheduling $30.00 for lunch money through the week.
This is part of the battle. Identifying where my week areas are and fixing them one at a time. I know there are plenty more, but this is the next step. Once this is under control, I will improve another area. Keep in mind, I am still paying down debt so every improvement is speeding that process along.
-Kevin
2 Comments
Don’t push it too hard. Just cutting out one day a week for a while is a good start, really. If your bank has an online system where you can automatically transfer money to another account on a regular basis, try setting up a weekly transfer of $10 to at least reward yourself in some sense.
Good thoughts. I am actually looking at opening up an ING account for both savings and interest checking.
I don’t think trying to tackle this one week at a time will be too hard on me. I haven’t pushed anything too much and this will be the easiest for me to tackle I think. Plus, I believe planning ahead is my biggest downfall and this will be a good measure of how well I am doing.