Lazy Savings: How To Make It Work For You

(An original post from Money Is Not Important)

A close friend of mine recently tweeted the following:

“Lowered my cable bill by threatening to cancel. Huzzah! I’m a money saving fool.”

All I could do was reply back with a “ROCK ON”.  It makes me so happy when people realize the value of recurring savings.  Instead of just a one time savings of, say, $20, she will continue to save that money month after month.  All it took was a ten minute phone call to her cable company.

Now, I want you to think of the last time that you tried to save $20.  Was it this easy? Probably not.  And once you put in the work, did it magically happen month after month?  Again, probably not.  Most likely, you made the sacrifice to not go out to eat one night, not buy that Mad Men DVD you’ve been wanting, or you bought a shirt off the sale rack instead of a new arrival.  Don’t get me wrong, you can find some sweet deals on sale racks.  Most often, though, it’s stuff that nobody wanted, and you’re trying to convince yourself that the stretched out neck hole isn’t that noticeable.  You’ll take it home, maybe wear it once, and then decide that you don’t like it.  Your “savings” just turned into expensive closet clutter.

All three of these examples have the same thing in common.  They are sacrifices.  When you start making sacrifices to save money, you can bet that you won’t be able to keep it up very long.  You might be diligent about it for 3 months, but then you’ll get sick of not being able to do anything fun and give up.

Life’s too short for this kind of thing.

We need to search for savings that don’t feel like sacrifices (or too much of one), and also ones that happen over and over again automatically.  If we have fully exhausted every opportunity for this type of savings, then, and only then, should we start making sacrifices.  

I’d like to use the Grocery Game as an example.  Some of you might be familiar with this. Basically, it’s a system that was developed to maximize your savings at the grocery store using coupons and store promotions.  Before I go any further, I just want to remind everyone that coupons are not gifts from grocery stores.  They don’t publish these as a favor to you.  It’s a manipulation tool, and they do it because they MAKE MORE MONEY doing it.  Basically, coupons are just a method of advertising.  For example, they show you the latest and greatest Tide detergent that supposedly has some new fancy ingredient, and then bait you into trying it by knocking $0.50 off the price.  They know that most of the other detergents work just as well as theirs, but Tide smells different.  They want to get you hooked to the scent so that you’ll buy it again next month even when there isn’t a coupon.  Pretty slick, huh?  Keep this in mind next time you’re flipping through the coupon pages.

Okay, back to the grocery game.  I want to applaud anyone that has the diligence to actually do this.  But, unless you really enjoy spending a few hours a week clipping coupons, doing the math, brand hopping every week, and eating almost-expired ground beef, please stop doing this as means to save money.  There are so many other easy ways to save a few bucks!  Also, this is an example of one-time savings.  You put in all this effort to end up saving $30, and then it’s over.  In order to get the same savings next month, you have to do it all over again.  Let’s not forget that in order to save more money with this system, it means that you have to buy more stuff.  You have to be extremely disciplined to play this game and not actually end up spending more money than you would have in the first place.  I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s true.  Call me crazy, but I like the path of least resistance when it comes to slashing the bottom line.  However, I would like to say this… if you’re in a position where you have to make sacrifices and get tremendously creative just to put food on the table, please don’t take offense to this.  You should be saving money any way that you can, and this doesn’t apply to you.

The bottom line is that saving money is a lot like dieting and working out.  If you aren’t able to find healthy foods that you like or some type of exercise that you enjoy, it’s not going to become a habit.  If you don’t find easy ways to save money, you’re going to stop doing it.  End of story.

So what are some ideas for recurring savings?  I’m glad you asked…

1. Negotiate to lower your bills (cable, cell phone, Internet, etc.)
2. Shop at local grocery stores instead of super centers
3. Learn to haggle at car dealerships
4. Ask for a raise at work
5. Pay off credit card debt that carries a high interest rate, or negotiate a lower rate
6. Refinance your mortgage
7. Use a cash back credit card for every day purchases

There are a ton of other ways to do this too.  So, my challenge to you this week is to take a look at your existing expenditures and find ways to squeeze some cash out of them.  If you cancel a service, it doesn’t count (although, if you have a completely useless service like a home phone, please get rid of it).  A solid goal for this exercise is $100 in recurring monthly savings.  I know that may sound like a lot, but it’s definitely possible.  You’ll probably find that once you get going, you’ll actually enjoy making call center reps quiver in their ergonomic chairs.

So, what are some of your ideas for recurring savings?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts!