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To really save on food, get back to basics. Eat simple foods such as oatmeal for breakfast, homemade sandwiches wraps or pizzas, if you prefer with a piece of fresh fruit for lunch, and one-pot dinners such as hearty soups, stews, and stir-frys. These are dishes where you can maximize the use of bulk grains and seasonal vegetables, while limiting the portion of expensive meat. But, be mindful of what you buy in bulk. By only what you can use. Five pounds of cheese or a gallon of marinara sauce that goes bad before you use it does not save you money.
For packaged products you do buy from applesauce to tomato sauce , clip coupons if you have a lot of time to devote to the practice. Better yet, learn to cook from scratch. So you really only need a few basic recipes for soup, stew, and stir fry. Then just vary the ingredients seasonally or according to what you can buy cheaply in any given week.
But what about chips, sodas, snacks, and desserts? Pay attention to cleaning labels.
For garments that need to be dry cleaned, you will need to budget for that expense in order to get the most value from these clothes. But well-made, classic garments can last a lifetime. Another approach is to buy essential pieces that are all mix and match, washable garments. Instead, hang them until completely dry.
This also saves utility costs by running the dryer as little as possible. For either of these approaches, you might also consider building a minimalist wardrobe. Now, this is not some magic number of pieces, like 10 or For someone who works at home or lives where the climate is consistent all year long, 10 pieces might work; while someone in a corporate office with a professional dress code or where there are extreme seasonal climate changes, might need a closet with 50 pieces.
The point is, you should only spend money on clothes you need and wear consistently. If you have a closet stuffed with clothes and nothing to wear, because you succumb to trends and impulse buys, consider a revamp to a minimalist style. If you are generally healthy, then stay that way by eating a balanced diet, getting enough exercise, and allocating some of your budget for services that will help you stay healthy. These expenditures might include a fitness class, preventive health measures such as massage or acupuncture, as well as a routine physical checkup with your physician from time-to-time based on your age and activities.
If you have health insurance, be sure to maximize your use of this benefit. These are some behaviors you need to adopt immediately in order to begin to live below your means:. Create a budget using actual numbers mortgage, rent, utilities, food, etc. Especially do not take on debt for essential living expenses other than a home mortgage. You are living above your means. If you have debt, pay it off.
When you get a raise, do not increase your standard of living. Track every penny you spend. Compare actual expenditures to your budget. Negotiate fees or cancel services. Reduce expenses or get a second job, or both. Finally, here are some additional tips for living below your means. Be satisfied with what you have. Choose to be happy where you are.
Act like you have no money. When tempted to spend impulsively, simply remind yourself you have no money. Remove cash and credit cards from your wallet. Plan all shopping or spending trips in advance and take only the money you need. If you are using a debit card, make a list, buy only what is on it, return home, and remove the card from your wallet again. Pay special attention to impulsive behaviors: Instead of buying something, check whether it makes more sense to borrow it from a neighbor, rent the item, or repurpose something you already have.
Or just wait a day and re-think the purchase. Look for ways to grow your income. Ask for a raise. Get some training that will get you a better paying job. Get a second job. Or a third one. If all of this seems overwhelming, start small. Start by reducing expenses by one thing. This means spending only half 50 percent of your take home pay on essential living expenses.
Put 30 percent in savings. Extras include entertainment anything from going out to the movies, to staying home with Netflix or iTunes, concerts, magazine subscriptions, computer games, etc. Internet service may be an essential technology expenditure for your household. Once you get there, stay small.
If you receive a raise or bonus at work, save it and continue to live on the same budget. Most people who get to this point find it gets easier and easier to not spend money. They prefer the sense of security and satisfaction that living below your means brings.
They being to realize, they are slowing getting rich. Use gift cards to save money. Save money on auto insurance. Save more money with coupons in less time. Carole Cancler is a Seattle, Washington native and granddaughter of immigrant farmers. Her career crisscrossed the food and technology industries, via degrees in Food Science and Computer Programming. Carole transferred her corporate skills to entrepreneurial ventures as a food product manufacturer, website developer, and business development consultant.
Carole also writes food preservation articles for Mother Earth News. Outside of work, Carole volunteers on fundraising activities for service organizations and has tutored adorable elementary and middle school students. Raised in the fifties and sixties by Midwestern parents, Carole was imbued with a strong work ethic and prudent values second hand clothes, home-cooked meals, and after school jobs.
She transfers these pragmatic, though sentient, ideals to the pages of the website she owns and operates at Greater Seattle on the Cheap. I have been stuck in this rut for a very long time and know others that are as well — in several cities in California. We have been downsizing and have found ways to eliminate what we thought were necessary items. Also, we saved money by paying for our auto insurance premiums annually, instead of monthly.
When we do go out for a meal, we do not order alcoholic drinks. Alcohol in restaurants is pricey, and sometimes can exceed the cost of the meal. I agree with Lisa. Realistically, when you make that kind of money not sure how you live without a credit card and pay off all in less than 30 days? Descent housing, car payments and or maintenance and car insurance is not much savings that can be done in that area if you live alone and need reliable transportation because you drive a lot.
We work because we have to.
Average car ownership in the U. Still other cities and towns have walkable neighborhoods with good stores and services that reduce the need for routine car trips. She'd like some guidance. If you are generally healthy, then stay that way by eating a balanced diet, getting enough exercise, and allocating some of your budget for services that will help you stay healthy. A maintenance budget between one and five percent of the value of your home, set aside annually, is a reasonable estimate. They being to realize, they are slowing getting rich.
Early retirement gives us the flexibility to choose how we spend our time, whether that entails sitting on the beach drinking margaritas or it leads to new work that provides meaning and fulfillment. Lots of us dream of leaving the workplace in our forties or fifties instead of sticking it out until age 65 — but we keep working to support the lifestyles to which we've become accustomed.
We like our iPhones and Playstations and Priuses, so we surrender to the idea that we'll have fifty-year careers. Still, there are a surprising number of folks who manage to retire young. These folks aren't lucky lottery winners, and most didn't have high-paying careers. In general, those who manage to retire early have opted to live with less when they're younger so they can obtain financial freedom before they're too old to enjoy it.
Early retirement is a fantastic goal, but it can be tough to achieve. Three major obstacles stand in your way:. In short, early retirees have less time to make money, and that money has to last them longer. Even if you stay healthy and the economy cooperates, that's asking a lot. That's not to say you shouldn't plan to retire early — it's a laudable goal, one that I encourage here at Get Rich Slowly — but if you're serious about doing so, you need to be diligent.
You need to have a plan. And you need to understand the numbers. And it reinforces something we already knew: Financial Health Pulse divides people into three tiers of financial health. The full report is huge — it's an page PDF! The document does a great job of presenting the info, separating it into four major sections spend, save, borrow, plan , then comparing how people in each financial health tier differ in their approaches. Here, for instance, are the results for the survey question about saving rate:.
In the nearly thirteen years I've been writing Get Rich Slowly, I've seen reports like this over and over and over again. It's a constant refrain: But why don't they save? There's a tendency in some circles to blame outside forces for our national inability to save. Incomes are low and expenses are high. I'm not going to say that stagnating wages don't play a part in the problem, but I dont think they're a primary factor. In fact, if you look at a chart of the U. This data comes from the Federal Reserve and the U. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
See those grey shaded areas in the chart above? When the economy is bad, people tend to save more. When the economy is booming — the mid s, the late s, the mid s, now — people save less. I think the problem with the American saving rate is complex.
There are many forces working together to depress saving rates in this country. But every retiree, early or late, aspiring or actual, has the same, simple investing imperative: We must preserve and grow our purchasing power in real terms in order to finance decades of future consumption. Let's assume you're forty years old. Here, for instance, is GRS founder J.
This only buys you 44 six-packs of beer in , whereas you were consuming 52 six-packs in Atlantic staffers interviewed American workers from all walks of life. The magazine then collected those interviews into a single, unified website. Here's how one of the project's leaders describes her aims:. So much of my aspiration for this project was to hear from people affected by the realities that business writers so often cover: And we succeeded in finding those types of stories — for example, the three female lawyers who started their own firm, or the coal miner who is adapting to the focus on clean energy.
The Inside Jobs website has a fun layout. Each interview has its own page. From the main index, you can filter stories by subject, or filter workers by industry, age, or other demographic factors. Or, if you're like me, you can simply scroll down and click on any of the worker portraits to read a random interview. I've always been fascinated by the vast variety of work available to people, and how different each job is from every other job. Sure, there's a degree of sameness, but there are tons of differences.
And it's just like Brenda Ueland taught me in a book about writing , of all places: Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say. The mass movements of kingdoms and cultures are built on our backs. Speaking of which, the Inside Jobs project naturally reminds me and many others of the work of journalist Studs Terkel. While tidying up and decommissioning my old Money Boss website, we found a couple of treasures that deserve to be shared here at Get Rich Slowly.
This is one of them. A couple of years ago, I was a guest on the excellent Adulting podcast. Although targeted specifically at young adults, this show has great info for everyone who feels like they need help being a grown-up. I fall into that category, and I'm nearly fifty! In this episode, I spoke with hosts Miranda Marquit and Harlan Landes about taking charge of your life, choosing to control what you can control.
Play in new window Download. When I was younger, I let life happen to me. I wasn't necessarily happy about my situation, but I didn't do anything to change it. I had this idea that I was simply unlucky, that nothing good ever happened to me. In time I came to understand — and this didn't happen overnight — that I was in a lot more control of my situation than I believed I was.
I was just allowing life to happen to me. If you just allow life to happen to you, then you're going to get whatever life happens to dish up. Sometimes that'll be good, but a lot of times it's just going to be indifferent. It's not going to be good or bad. But it's not going to be what you want. What I didn't realize then but I know now is that I am the one responsible for determining my future.
It's not up to god or luck or fate. It's up to me. If I want good things to happen, I have to make them happen. Or, at the very least, I have to take steps to increase the likelihood that they'll occur. I truly believe that becoming proactive is the number-one secret to wealth, freedom, and happiness.
At the same time, you can't control everything. Bad things are going to happen. Bad things happen to everybody.
We can't control when bad things are going to happen or which bad things are going to happen. But what we do have control over is how we react to the things that happen to us. We get to choose our response…. When something crappy happens to us, we can choose if our response is also going to be crappy or whether we're going to find some way to make the most of it, to find some meaning in it. Reinhold Niebuhr's famous serenity prayer captures this idea perfectly: There's a lot of great stuff in this podcast, including one last point I'd like to mention.
It's a new idea to me, one I haven't written about before. In life, there are often default options. If you don't consciously and deliberately choose something different, you get the default. Most people live their lives in default mode. They accept the default without question. My aim for myself — and for you, the readers of Get Rich Slowly — is to both be aware of the defaults and to question them. A lot of times, however, there are better ways to live. As boss of my own life, it's up to me to reject the defaults when they're at odds with who I am or want to become.
It's a GRS tradition! Each year on Halloween, I publish a story about planning for death. Usually these are general articles about estate planning. This year's story is personal. When my best friend died in , one of my biggest regrets was that I hadn't made time to travel with him. Sparky had previously asked me to join him on trips to Burning Man in and southeast Asia in and Mexico in I'd declined each invitation, in part because I was deep in debt but also because I thought there'd be plenty of time to do that sort of thing in the future.
After Sparky died, I resolved to make the most of opportunities like this. Being in a better financial position helped. Having ample savings gives me the flexibility to join friends on short adventures or to explore the U. Yes, I realize that's a fortunate position to be in. In , my cousin Duane asked me to join him for a three-week trip to Turkey. Remembering my vow after Sparky's death and remembering the power of yes , I agreed. That trip to Turkey is one of the highlights of my life so far. I'm glad I did it. It was worth every penny.
Early in , Duane contacted me. We bought books, watched videos, and browsed websites.
We invited Kim to join us. Over the course of several months, our plans crystalized.
We'd fly to Paris, rent a car, then spend three or four weeks driving around France and Spain and Portugal, enjoying festivals, experiencing the grape harvest, and exploring ruins. In June of last year, I sent Duane an email. Do you want me to buy yours? I've been having problems with my throat for a few months, but I thought that was because of indigestion or something.
I have throat cancer. My friend Amy recently wrote with an interesting dilemma. Amy has a high-paying job and has managed to save enough that she could be completely debt-free if she wanted to. And she kind of wants to! But is this the best choice? She's aware that this is a nice problem to have — but it's still a bit of a muddle. She'd like some guidance. I'm wondering if you have any advice for me related to paying off a mortgage vs. I pay both my taxes and insurance out of pocket annually. The past two years, I've made close to a quarter of a million dollars each year, and this year I will likely exceed that amount.
This is a wonderful place to be. With no other debt, I'm contemplating whether I should completely pay off my mortgage in one swoop come November when I get my bonus. I have advice coming from both sides. My accountant warns me against it, as I would have no other write-offs to offset my high income. I would love your advice or the advice of your readers, if this offers an opportunity to share with them.
My stock answer to this question — which I get a lot — has always been: This is a no-lose situation. Deciding whether you should pay off your house is a case where either option is awesome. Mathematically and financially , the best choice is almost always to carry the mortgage.
However , many people receive a huge psychological boost from not having a mortgage. In other words, this is one of those situations where the smart financial decision and the smart psychological decision aren't necessarily the same. Although Amy is asking specifically about the tax implications, let's start by examining the Big Picture. Just so everyone is on the same page, here's a quick look at the pros and cons to paying off your mortgage. There are advantages and disadvantages to both choices.
Are certain advantages more important than others? You make the call. Awesome articles from elsewhere Reddit: The benefits of practicing gratitude Why retirement planning is different for women Social Security scams are a growing threat History is written by the victors: How survivorship bias fools us Why homeownership is riskier and more expensive than most people think How to bullet journal: A complete guide for perfectionists For investors, most financial television is worthless noise Why so Americans feel cheated by their student loans Reflecting on my failure to build a billion-dollar company Find an archive of all past spare change links on Pinboard.
Lola Financial Retreat for Women Next, my friend Melanie Lockert founder of the fantastic Dear Debt blog is back for her third year hosting the Lola Retreat , a weekend financial forum for women only. Here's what she had to say: I've spoken at four previous Camp FI events, always giving a variation of the following talk: Last, but not least, here's something that's an event in another sense.
Here's how Fiology founder David Baughier describes his goals: It's a simple concept, but it's also brilliant. Here's a screenshot of the resources Baughier has pulled together on the subject: Here is a list of all the lessons from Fiology along with links to related GRS material, when appropriate: The foundations of financial independence Lesson 1: What does financial independence mean to me? What does it mean to be retired? Why choose financial independence? How much do I need?
How much to save for retirement , Great online retirement calculators Lesson 4: The milesones of financial independence GRS: The stages of financial freedom Lesson 5: The big three expenses GRS: The best way to spend less Lesson 6: The miracle of compound interest GRS: The power of compounding Lesson 7: Where does all my money go?
You Need a Budget Lesson 8: How to get out of debt Lesson 9: Retirement account basics Lesson Do my habits wreak havoc? Let our values guide our decisions GRS: Conscious spending in action Lesson The risks of financial independence Lesson It pays to be passive GRS: How to invest Lesson The pension dimension Lesson What's best for FI? Is it better to rent or buy? Automatic financial independence GRS: How to use barriers and pre-commitment to do the right things with money Lesson A recipe for financial independence Lesson Kids and money GRS: