It is hard to turn on the television these days and not hear something about saving money, making money or spending money. With the slow economy, cash, or lack thereof is a common topic.
My busy life had pushed me into a, shall we say, fast food way of life. My husband and I would leave for work every day and head right for the fast food restaurant for breakfast. We spent on average, $10.00 each morning. Lunch hour would roll around, and we were off again to spend another $10.00 or more. Before heading back to the office, we would stop off for coffee to the tune of $3.00. There it is $23.00 a day, 5 days a week. Now keep in mind that this is an average. Many days we spent more, depending on where we went for breakfast and lunch.
I decided one day that we were going to take a break from the fast food way of life and see how much money we could save. I made a trip to the store and purchased some simple breakfast foods and some lunch meat and bread for lunch. I even bought some coffee and cream and dusted off the coffee machine at the office. I spent about as much money as I would have spent in one day following my old ways.
For an entire week we had breakfast at home every day, and I made lunch to bring to the office. After lunch, I brewed a pot of coffee and we sat and enjoyed it right in our office.
I realized many perks to this new way of life. First of all we were eating MUCH healthier and because of that we were feeling much better. We also realized how nice it was not to have to trudge out in the winter weather to hunt down our lunch.
However, my favorite realization was what was in the envelope...
Every day, Monday through Friday, after we had our lunch, I would put $23.00 in an envelope. At the end of the week, I had $115.00! I am no mathematician but I quickly figured out that was $460.00 a month! That's $5,520.00 a year. That's a vacation fund, a new used car, a credit card pay off and so on.
Could you find a place to put $5,520.00?
It is hard to turn on the television these days and not hear something about saving money, making money or spending money. With the slow economy, cash, or lack thereof is a common topic.
My busy life had pushed me into a, shall we say, fast food way of life. My husband and I would leave for work every day and head right for the fast food restaurant for breakfast. We spent on average, $10.00 each morning. Lunch hour would roll around, and we were off again to spend another $10.00 or more. Before heading back to the office, we would stop off for coffee to the tune of $3.00. There it is $23.00 a day, 5 days a week. Now keep in mind that this is an average. Many days we spent more, depending on where we went for breakfast and lunch.
I decided one day that we were going to take a break from the fast food way of life and see how much money we could save. I made a trip to the store and purchased some simple breakfast foods and some lunch meat and bread for lunch. I even bought some coffee and cream and dusted off the coffee machine at the office. I spent about as much money as I would have spent in one day following my old ways.
For an entire week we had breakfast at home every day, and I made lunch to bring to the office. After lunch, I brewed a pot of coffee and we sat and enjoyed it right in our office.
I realized many perks to this new way of life. First of all we were eating MUCH healthier and because of that we were feeling much better. We also realized how nice it was not to have to trudge out in the winter weather to hunt down our lunch.
However, my favorite realization was what was in the envelope...
Every day, Monday through Friday, after we had our lunch, I would put $23.00 in an envelope. At the end of the week, I had $115.00! I am no mathematician but I quickly figured out that was $460.00 a month! That's $5,520.00 a year. That's a vacation fund, a new used car, a credit card pay off and so on.
Could you find a place to put $5,520.00?
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