This post has been written by Mike from Green Panda Treehouse. He is a financial planner and runs several finance blogs within his online company.
I must admit it right away: I’m not frugal. I actually hate to save my pennies. I do however, totally understand people who pursue their quest to live frugally and strive to cut their expenses. Most of the time, they are doing it because they don’t have any other choices. I’m more the type of guy that will concentrate on making more money (through my online company for example) than trying desperately to cut into my lifestyle. What I really can’t deal with, is the feeling of frustration. I hate to feel that I am preventing myself from something nice just for the sake of saving money.
However, I also have a hard time when I feel that I am wasting money for nothing. This is when I tend to become more frugal and start thinking about reorganizing my spending habits instead of cutting into them. It’s like a company that make a decision to become more productive instead of cutting their expenses.
Recently, I have thought about how I could save money at work without cutting my expenses. Here’s how a non-frugal guy was able to save money:
#1 Talk to frugal people
I work downtown in a major city. I also made a conscious decision to drive to work since I wanted to live in a community away from the city (I really enjoy having a lot of land and space to move about!). Therefore, each morning, I have to pay $10,50 for parking (plus gas obviously!). I have been doing this for some time without really finding a better way to come to work. The bus would be cheaper but would take me forever to go back and forth from work. This is why it wasn’t a possibility for me (I told you I didn’t want to penalize my lifestyle, right?).
However, I have discovered that you can get a lot of tricks by talking with frugal colleagues at work. Here’s what I have learned;
- My frugal assistant told me about a free parking spot nearby work. It is about 5 minutes walk from the office and it’s always empty early in the morning (I come in early since I go to the gym before work).
- My frugal commercial director taught me that putting supreme gasoline in your car will help you save money on the long distance. In fact, since I do a lot of highway, superior quality gasoline is consumed much slower than regular gas.
- There is a frugal cashier who doesn’t brown bag her supper but just brings fruits and veggies. We get paid an extra $7.50 at work when we stay for the late shift to compensate for the fact that we have to eat twice at work (for lunch and supper). At 6pm, you only feel like having fast food so you pay more than $10 and you are in a deficit every week. Instead, just bringing a few things to munch on with a bowl of cereal once home will do just fine for supper and you will save money while reducing the extra fattening foods too!
#2 Working 4 days a week
For those who go to work by car, working 4 days a week is a blessing. You cut down significantly on your car expenses (parking, gas and ultimately car maintenance). I was able to make a deal to reduce my pay check by 12% and work 12% less hours.
You can also try to cram your 37 – 40 hours of work in 4 days but this may be too harsh. I have found that you are not only savings on your travel expenses but you are also becoming more productive, less stressed and benefit from an additional day of “vacation” per week to start a side line and rapidly make up for your 12% income lost. I have been working 4 days a week for the past 11 months and I really enjoy every week!
#3 Discuss work related expenses
As a financial planner, I work with clients all the time. So if I want to go out to eat in a restaurant, I make sure I go with a client and have my boss pay the expenses ;-). This is a nice way to cut out the brown bag routine without having to break my son’s piggy bank ;-)
Do you have any other tricks frugally challenged people like me?
As I said before, I hate cutting back on my lifestyle to save money. However, I enjoy I doing things differently to save money. I find this way of being frugal more motivating ;-). Do you have any other “money productive” tricks like these?
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“putting supreme gasoline in your car will help you save money on the long distance. In fact, since I do a lot of highway, superior quality gasoline is consumed much slower than regular gas.”
Have you checked this out? It seems to contradict what I have read elsewhere over and over again. My understanding is that if your owners manual says using regular gas then you are gaining nothing by paying for the higher octanes.
I know that is true in my own car. Not sure about yours but I would highly recommend you track your mileage for a few weeks using regular and supreme.
Not sure about the savings with a car doing normal driving, but we’ve tested the theory ourselves when towing our camping trailer with our SUV. We get better mileage with the higher octane gas which equalled the higher cost of the gas, so it was a break even thing. The reason we continued to do it was that our SUV was an older model and the high octane gas meant it didn’t ping when pulling on hills with a heavy load.
Who says you can’t “do something nice” and save money or not spend gads of it at the same time?
Great post – thanks for sharing. The new CIBC switch campaign has actually got some pretty good saving incentives!
MTHIRTY has just shared a widget with you on behalf of CIBC
I tell young people all the time find what suits you do those things and try not to worry about the rest.
Big ticket items that cost big cash and can be looked at.
Lower cost housing.
I have a frugal friend who did not want to compromise on this so he bought himself a bigger house has two roomates who are rarely home, together the two of them pay his mortgage and he lives and offices from home so he is the one there almost all the time enjoying the house.
Lower cost transportation.
I have a frugal philosophy on this one find the car you love to drive! Buy it two years old with enough warranty on it where it looks fairly new drive it until it dies save cash and do it again.
Others say share transportation to cut cost. This is up to you if you want the hassles of the riders or other drivers for your car.
Don’t drink bottled water if you choose to do so find a way to fill your own containers.
Find ways to purchase consumables for your home and home office for pennies on the dollar.(Shampoo can be purchased one time in a gallon or more from a place like sally’s and refill your smaller bottles) (I haven’t bought shampoo, soap, toothpaste, printer ink, paper , dish soap etc.. in six years , I do deals and barter and coupons for everything!)
Save enough cash for Emergency, Vacations,Retirement and if you have them childrens college.
Spend your money on those you love.
I used to drive, now I pay $55 a month for bus pass :)
Most of the time, the bus is good, but sometimes.. .man it sucks waiting. At least the $55 is pre-tax!
“Most of the time, they are doing it because they don’t have any other choices. ” While I don’t think we’ll find any statistics to support or refute this, I have to disagree. Frugality is a life choice. You’re just saving some money when you keep your lifestyle at full speed but cut corners. We frugalistas have opted out of the race, living simply, enjoying and taking good care of what we have, separating wants from needs and going for quality over quantity. The list goes on: it’s a whole other way of living. For me, it’s debt-free and very peaceful, enabling me to help others.
If you really want to make the leap, take a week or two off without travel, spending, internet, phone, or tv. Unplug completely and get to know yourself at rest. A whole other world will open up.
If you just want to save money, forbid yourself from any spending for a month, besides mandatory bills. Eat your pantry. Watch yourself squirm and use the time to really assess your choices. ;-)
Being frugal is good, but also finding ways to make make your money work harder for you is also smart. For instance my business helps people break up a large mortgage or car payment into biweekly payments.
Smart Payment Plan
Work from home if your job suits and your employer allows it.
I’ve been doing it since Februray 2009 and have saved thousands. My husband’s old truck (1997) finally gave up that winter so I said, “I’ll work from home and you can drive my car until you find a replacement”. By the time he found his “new” (2004) replacement in May I’d gotten used to working from home and saving a ton.
Initially I figured I’d just save the $40/wk I spent on gas. I’ve always packed a lunch, but once I worked from home I no longer added a soup from the cafeteria, no more coffee in the morning and again in the afternoon. No vending machines. Now there are no stops for errands or a couple of groceries on the way home – the trips that always turned into way more than the items I meant to get. No more drycleaning, no need to update/replace work clothes. Hair cuts every 12 weeks instead of 8. Now we do groceries and gas every Saturday with a fixed list we’ve built all week and based on the sale flyers. It’s true I miss the social interaction of the office, but I’m far more productive and because I only leave the house on weekends it’s cut down on all those opportunities for unplanned spending. Because I can work in my jeans and Tshirt most days, my work clothing has hardly been worn in the past 18 months. It’s all classic stuff that doesn’t become dated, so if I do need to go to the office for a meeting (or wedding shower, team event, training course, etc) I have clothes to wear, but they’ll last indefinitely at this rate.
To this day he still drives my car 4/5 of the time because it’s more fuel efficient, and takes his SUV every Wednesday to give it a midweek run. We use it on weekends to pull the camping trailer, do groceries, shuttle kids to sports, pick up materials for garden or renovation projects, or load up the bike rack and head off on a family outing. We only have the truck because it’s needed to pull the trailer, other than than we could get by with just the car (I’d give up the camping and therefore the truck but got outvoted my my family…). It’s a bit of a gas hog so it doesn’t make a good everyday commuter vehicle, whereas my little Civic is more efficient and frankly they run forever so I’d rather we run up the mileage on it.
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