"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery." - Charles Dickens

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A Day of Waste

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Have you ever thought about how much money people waste in a given day? Today, I tried to keep track of all of the waste that I witnessed and I was rather surprised, given our economy, how cavalierly people will still waste their financial resources. It made me think back to a time, about 15 years ago, when I was far less frugal, and I was pleased that I have come so far with my financial approach to my life. Indeed, I realized that rather than trying not to waste money, I am at a point in my financial life in which I can actually consistently find ways to spend less while enjoying more.

But back to my original question – have you ever thought about how much money people waste in a given day? That is what I spent today wondering, so I tried to keep track of all of the waste that I witnessed, and here is what I found:

7:12am: I made my Saturday morning trip to the grocery store. Before I had even traveled the three miles to the grocery store, I saw not one, but two, motorists who had been pulled over by the side of the road and were receiving tickets. The minimum ticket on that particular street is about $128. There are also stop lights on that particular street every 2 to 3 miles. Apart from being dangerous and a tremendous waste of gasoline, speeding was not going to get those drivers down the road any faster because they would always be detained by the stop lights. Rather, speeding can only get them ticketed – a tremendous waste.

7:19am As I walked into the grocery store, two people were standing in line to use the ATM while a third fellow used it. There is a two dollar charge at the ATM, a charge that those users might have avoided if they had gone to their own bank or made their purchase at the grocery store using their cash cards (and requesting cash back). That is a $2 waste per person that will be repeated over and over throughout the day.

7:59am I checked out at the grocery store. The three people in line ahead of me had no coupons, even though our local paper had a $5 coupon for our grocery store earlier this week. Shopping without coupons is a huge waste and one that will be repeated throughout the day.
8:06am As I walked out of the grocery store, a young man was using the change coverter at the front of the store. He will feed his loose change into the machine and can then exchange his receipt for cash at the customer service desk. The machine retains an 8% commission. Whatever happened to rolling money?

I dropped my son off at our local youth sports facility so that he could cover a shift working in our concession stand. A parent failed to show up. My son received $10 per hour and the parent who failed to appear for concession duty had to pay $75 for the missed three hour shift. I also know of a local school that charges $15 for each hour that its parents fail to appear for volunteer service – up to 20 hours per year. If you belong to an organization that will fine you for failing to appear for service hours, and you don’t want to perform service hours, why do you join the organization?

12:30pm My younger son finished his baseball game. As we prepared to leave, we heard several kids demand that they be taken out for lunch. The four families who were in hearing range of us agreed to go out to eat. That amounts to 19 people at an estimated cost of $10 per person, spread over 4 families. We ate at home for a cost of about $6 – one homemade pizza with salad for three people and leftovers for a fourth.

2:45pm I washed my car. My son washed my car. A neighbor then hired him to wash his car for $15. My son saw the value of demonstrating a good work ethic. My neighbor has a son the same age as mine so why was he paying my son to wash his car?

3:53pm A neighbor mentioned that she had planned to go out earlier in the day but was already too tired to do so. As a result, she explained, she would have to pay a fine at the library ($1 per day per DVD and she had 6 DVDs that would not be checked in until Monday – two days from now), plus she would probably have to pay a credit card bill by phone because she had missed today’s mail (a $25 charge she explained). She asked me if I knew of any ways to get out of paying the fines and I explained that it was very easy – don’t procrastinate.

5:08pm I went for a walk. A neighbor had already put out his trash (odd since today is Saturday and trash day is Monday) and I found several compact discs and a few DVDs that work just fine sitting in a box, free for the taking. They could easily have been sold for a few dollars on eBay. For that matter, our subdivision garage sale day is only 3 weeks away.

5:49pm I found 27 cents (two dimes, one nickel and two pennies) lying on the sidewalk. Who was careless enough to leave them there?

6:37pm I took one of sons to an ice-cream parlor since he had a free ice cream coupon. He called two of his friends who also received the very same coupons today but they had already lost their coupons (in about 6 hours time).

I think you get the picture. Every day, people throw away money as a result of carelessness, disorganization, procrastination and impatience. How much money have you seen wasted today? Where do you see people wasting money? Where have you wasted money?

A Life Without Debt: Saving For The Fun Of It

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It sounds like a no-brainer, but a big part of what keeps us out of debt is simply not spending too much money. Whether it’s on splurge items or our regular budget items like utilities, clothing, etc. we are always careful never to spend more than we have. However, just like everyone else, we tend to get complacent and allow some of our spending to become automatic. We got cell phones a few years ago and never really thought about changing the plans. We got cable and never really thought about going back to rabbit ears. We started buying a certain brand of ketchup and never really thought about switching to something cheaper. We just accepted those prices and payments, and many others, as part of the wallpaper of our lives. Complacency happens, even to debt free people.

However, as we’ve journeyed along we’ve learned to challenge that complacency and to shake things up on a regular basis. We regularly go through our budget looking for things we can cut out or down. Then we experiment with that until we find the place where it starts to make us uncomfortable, and then we stop. Most recently we looked at those cell phones. We looked at the actual phones that we had, as well as the plans. We discovered that we really weren’t using the features of the phones anymore. Features like Internet access and email were must have’s when we got the phones, but since I now work from home and my spouse has a phone provided by work, we just weren’t using them anymore. So we knew we could downgrade phones. My spouse was also using very few of his minutes and I don’t talk that much, either, so we knew we could reduce the plan, as well. We looked around and decided to go with a basic, pre-paid phone for me and nothing for him, saving us about $100/month. We weren’t having any trouble paying for the pricier phones and plans, they just weren’t necessary. We’ll try it this way for a while and see how it goes. If we discover that we need more minutes or different phones, we can always switch again.

We’ve done this with cable, reducing from a big package to smaller and smaller packages until we had cancelled it entirely without missing it. We could afford it, but it wasn’t necessary and we weren’t getting the value out of it. We’ve cut down (or out) on certain foods and beverages that we thought we couldn’t live without, but after experimenting with the cuts we found that we don’t miss them. We’ve done it with eating out, entertainment, and even our beloved travel (that one came back into the budget in a hurry). We’ve done this with just about everything we spend money on at one time or another. Sometimes the cuts have been permanent and other times we’ve decided that we really liked whatever it was we cut and we wanted it back. Sometimes we decide we want the item back but not all of it, so we decide on a reduced price alternative or a cheaper package of features.

We view it as a game now. What can we cut next? It’s not about living a life of deprivation. If we cut something and we wish we hadn’t, we simply get it back. No big deal. And it’s not about cutting out of desperation. When you cut out of desperation, you often don’t want to do it and resent it. We cut things because we want to. It’s a challenge and it teaches us to appreciate what we have. It’s about learning what is necessary and what is not. It’s about reminding ourselves to not take any aspect of our spending for granted.

When spending becomes mindless and we start to assume that, “that’s just the way things are,” we’re headed for trouble. I can’t count how many people I’ve spoken to about debt and when they really started trying to get a handle on their budget they were surprised by how much unnecessary spending was going on. So many things had simply become automatic and unquestioned that they had added up to big trouble. Cutting for the fun of it is a way for us to stay ahead of that sort of mindless spending and to keep our budget in top form.