Modest Lifestyle Savings Have a Big Long Term Impact

[Moolah22]

I should try that out before it's too late to start saving

[kork13]

5. Stop eating out at restaurants, make dinner at home instead. For the $10 or $20 you are spending eating out, you could easily have twice as much food if you cook it at home.

This is one of my favorite "money saving" practices, quite simply because I really enjoy cooking. I can make most any meal for less than $2 per serving, and most nights I make 4-8 servings of the meal for 2 adults & 1 infant... which means we can have leftover meals for lunches just about every day, or for as a last-minute dinner on busy nights. We almost never need to go out for lunch or dinner, and when we do, it's more of an enjoyable "treat" because it's so infrequent (maybe 2-3 times in a month). Saves us a bundle of money, and it's unquestionably more healthy for us.

[james.hendrickson]

Saving money isn't all that difficult if you adopt some modest lifestyle changes. Here are five of them, with the long-term results spelled out.

1. Switch to free bank accounts. Fee bearing bank checking and savings accounts typically charge 7 bucks a month. On an annual basis, these fees total up to $84 dollars. Switch to a free account and save.

2. If you are paying health club dues and you haven't been in a while, cancel the membership.

3. Cancel any recurring magazine or newspaper subscriptions. Do the same if you have on-line entertainment, networking, dating or content subscriptions. Find workarounds to get what you need without paying for it.

4. Instead of getting a cup o' joe in the morning at the coffee shop, brew your own coffee at home. It is much more cost effective.

5. Stop eating out at restaurants, make dinner at home instead. For the $10 or $20 you are spending eating out, you could easily have twice as much food if you cook it at home.

Most people don't get this, but the long-term benefits of saving are impressive. For example, if you saved 10 bucks a week and got 5% interest on your savings, you'd have the following:

In 1 year: $532.96
In 5 years: $2,952.26
In 10 years: $6,742.58
In 20 years: $17,865.55

If you saved 25 bucks per week, and got 5% interest on your savings, you'd have:

In 1 year: $1,332.39
In 5 years: $7,380.65
In 10 years: $16,856.46
In 20 years: $44,641.38

If you saved 50 bucks per week at the same interest rate, the figures are:

In 1 year: $2,664.78
In 5 years: $14,761.39
In 10 years: $33,712.91
In 20 years: $89,282.76

So the bottom line is even modest lifestyle adjustments to improve your savings can have a big long term impact on your bottom line.