Money saved = money earned.

Since money does not grow on trees don’t expect magic methods in this post to make money. This is how I saved money by spending one whole day on CHANGING my life in the following methods, each yielding savings. I had to take the day off from work today due to personal responsibilities and thought that what better opportunity than this to review my costs? 

Don’t let making money get in the way of saving money or penny-hoarding

The concept of retirement, to me, is financial planning and choice. This is semi-independent of age although some amount of age might be a factor in building up savings. But without planning and making saving/earning a goal I don’t think it is possible to retire ever. Sometimes we get so busy with earning money especially in these big cities (like Boston) where the expenses to live are so high that the costs kind of get away from us and it feels like expenses are just always growing. And they are, too, because we have all heard about inflation which I hope is easing. 

I spent my 20s mostly in school, doing my Ph.D. and all, so I have to be careful about my income vs. outgoing cash as I have only relatively recently started saving substantial money. That is something to think about if you end up in grad school. That it does affect your ability to save and earn compound interest over the years.

Going to grad school, too, is a financial decision, probably more than I realized at the time of making the decision. Most things in life tend to be either financial or health-related decisions whether we like it or not. If we don’t go for walks now, we are making a bad health decision, and so on and so forth. 

If you do go to grad school, definitely start a Roth IRA as early as possible. This is not financial advice given in an official capacity because that would be illegal. 

Anyway, let me list the ways in which I made changes to EARN SAVINGS today and maybe it will help you remember to cut a few expenses as well. 

$120: Changed weekly meal service to save this amount per month

I have a weekly meal service delivered by Factor (owned by Hello Fresh I think) and they make it pretty difficult to choose a meal plan that is not weekly. But the meals are more expensive if you get fewer number of them per delivery. So today I converted my plan to 20 meals per month instead of a weekly plan.

I plan to do this by skipping the other weeks of the month when the bigger delivery is not needed. I also complained to their app to let me do this rather than have to skip weekly meals but I will keep skipping to keep the delivery at 1 shipment a month, which gives more savings per meal and less packaging to recycle or throw out.

$20: Internet savings per month

After arguing with Xfinity online chat. They sneakily increased my bill by $20 starting this month and I told their virtual assistant to cancel my plan. Then they talked about giving me a special plan that has this discount. They better do it or I am leaving.

$10: Canceled Lyft Pink to support penny-hoarding

I used the free trial for a month and canceled on time so they do not charge me. Sometimes Uber is cheaper and sometimes Lyft shared option is better, I don’t want to commit to Lyft Pink and have automatic charges every month.

$100: Power bill savings 

Thankfully I am hopeful that winter is going out. This one is simply happening because it is warmer now and I turned off the heat today. If I let the sun come in when it is sunny and warmer during the day, I basically don’t need the heat on during the spring. So something simple like opening and closing curtains is what I am doing to achieve this. 

And I won’t use the AC much as the summers here are not that bad (so far). I am averaging down to estimate this savings because the bill during the winter is over $100 higher than in the summer so by using heat more efficiently I am hoping the savings is around this value. 

$96: Canceled WordPress site upgrade (year total).

I decided to focus on this blog and cancel my other site’s (podcast) upgraded plan. I am keeping the free plan there and not paying this money.

That added over a year is $3000 saved which I will contribute to my Roth IRA instead! 

It so happens that I saved on rent by negotiating the rent increase this year, savings from that is around $80 per month. I did that earlier this year in January so I will not count it towards today’s savings.

I also fixed something today that was delaying payment from my podcast. It was not much money, something under $20 but now this payment will cover the cost of running the podcast website. So I will save money simply because I earned the same amount as the cost. I won’t count this one as an earning for today but it too is good news. It means that my online hobbies pay for themselves. 

This website, too, pays for itself now. No profit but it does pay for itself in terms of its costs of hosting and running it.

Don’t forget your checks! 

I also cashed a check for my state tax refund that I had not had time to deposit yet. If I had forgotten about it, then that would be money lost as the check would not be valid forever. Just remember things like that too. Don’t be so busy with work that you forget your money here and there!

Be careful about credit cards when penny-hoarding

I also applied for and got a new credit card earlier this month. This card has special benefits for the first year and I had a card from the same company for over 8 years. When you are loyal to the same card you are not getting any new customer benefits like with a new card. So I am going to get rid of the old card and its benefits so I still have the same total number of credit lines.

I don’t want to incur bad debt but I do want more points and benefits of having a new card. So it might be worth considering switching to a new card for that reason but I would be careful about doing this as you also want to close lines of credit that are not serving you well. Credit card debt is the worst type of debt so highly discourage messing with this point if you are not comfortable with it.

Further penny-hoarding (you can laugh about this)

Another penny-hoarding thing I do is I don’t buy napkins and tissue paper. Whenever I am out or have food delivered, there are always extra napkins that get thrown out. Instead of throwing them out, I put them in my bag or kitchen drawer and I have such a napkin collection going now I am good for a long time.

I also don’t buy cookies at the grocery store. In general, I don’t grocery shop often because I have the meal service so I just buy milk, eggs, and basics when I am there or getting groceries delivered. I buy nice fruit bowls and baked goods too that make me happy. So I don’t deprive myself. 

Coming back to normal cookies as opposed to something more delicacy, I eat them at work events so that way I am not overeating cookies and paying for this thing that is bad for my health. I will eat a cookie or two per month or maybe even per week depending on my work schedule but if I am also buying them, then that is a lot of cookies to pay for as well as eat!

Be careful with this though as I have noticed that I eat more unhealthy things when I go to work and this might be another reason to take breaks and take care of your health. Don’t let work interfere with your health, personally and financially. 

Using things you already pay for and buying things off-season

ANOTHER penny-hoarding thing I do is use my building gym. I already pay for it anyway and so might as well use it.  So my weekend plans are to use the gym!!! 

One last point for today is I buy things off-season. I bought a fancy-ish Sherpa coat last week for over 50% off because this boutique in Little Italy selling the coat is on to their spring collections now and I refuse to buy anything spring-style during spring so you gotta snag deals for the winter during spring! It is a really lovely coat that I can now live in it’s like super comfy so I wanted it but I waited as I wasn’t going to pay full price for that thing or ANYTHING!

But I won’t count that $$ towards today’s savings either haha 😂 today’s savings were annoying to snatch out of thin air but I highly recommend sitting down and reviewing where the heck your money is going. 

I also want to add that penny-hoarding is a hobby of mine so I enjoy doing this and most importantly, I enjoy the RESULTS of penny-hoarding so don’t come at me telling me I should enjoy my life. I do actually enjoy my life more than most!!!

What can you do today to save or earn some dollars?