Saving vs. Spending

Finding the extra money to save requires a lot of planning. In the past, whenever my husband and I had extra money, we’d apply it toward a large purchase, like a dresser or new laptop. Over the past 8 months, we’ve had to reign in our spending and live more frugally. Some of the ways we’ve done this are reducing our take-out meals. Seriously, I can’t cook. I’m not interested at all, so that leaves simple meals like spaghetti or sandwiches. Good thing we’re not picky eaters.

We don’t travel much since we work from home and we’ve limited our visits to family and friends this past year, basically giving them the excuse that we’re saving for a house. Most of them can sympathize with us knowing that it’s very expensive here in LA. Some additional ways we’ve saved money to maximize our budget are:

• recycling our cans and plastic ourselves: every 3 weeks or so we collect about $25, enough to cover the cost of a hair cut
• Starbucks Gold card: okay, this is a luxury, I know, but I need the caffeine and I save 10% everyday on my drink
• bringing my own cup to Starbucks: another 10 cents off my drink
• biking short distances: I bike to the grocery store or bank, this saves on gas
• using our Wells Rewards card: we use our points toward Shell Gas cards. We’ve only had to purchase gas a few times so far this year
• paying off our credit cards in full each month: since we’ve paid off our credit cards, when we do use them, we pay them off before finance charges accrue. Once we paid off our cards, we realized how many hundreds of dollars we had paid in finance charges, they really add up.

I’ve never been a big spender, so limiting my shopping has been pretty easy for me. My husband has struggled a little more with this since there is always something that he needs. Those big, brown, puppy eyes make it difficult for me to say no, but this year we both know it is more important to save for our goal: purchase a house.