How I'm Trying to Save $$ This Year

I have always been a saver. I remember getting money from my Bat Mitzvah at thirteen years old and thinking, "This will be a great emergency fund!" Yeah, well that emergency fund ran out real quick when I hit college. My second emergency fund that I started when I was still living on my parent's dime ran out last year. Boo, for living in nice condos, owning a dog (By the way, how do homeless people always own dogs? Maybe the dogs make them go broke and then they become homeless? Thoughts for another day), and loving designer purses & wallets.

1. Only buying Starbucks/Dunkin' Donuts if I have a gift certificate or my company is paying for it. I actually read somewhere on her blog that Alyssa from Life of Blyss was doing this and I thought that was a great idea! I wonder how many $4 Chai Tea Lattes have added up in the past years.


2. I will be taking out my credit cards from my wallet after work trips. I've been usually good about paying off my credit cards, but I also like to spoil myself. Last year was the start of not paying off my credit cards in full each month and it makes me want to cry a little bit. So after this work trip, that's it. I'm taking my credit cards out of my wallet. If I don't have the money in my debit account then that money is not getting spent.


3. I will pack my lunch! Repeat, after me, I will pack my lunch and not go out to eat if I have lunch already. I know I'll cheat, so I've told myself I'll only go out to lunch once a week. After all the money I spend on groceries and all the times I take home leftovers, this should be a simple feat to accomplish.


4. Stop partying and drinking so goddamn much! "Let's go out and have one or two drinks!" easily turns into "Give us a round of shots!" My boyfriend and I have pledged to each other not to drink as much and to monitor our going-out spending more. This should be a big savings!


5. Mint.com. It is a great budgeting tool if you use it. So I'm trying to follow all my budgets accurately and use "rollover". Rollover is basically if I go over one budget for that month, then it will roll over into the next month. It is a free app for desktop and mobile and made by Intuit!


6. Lastly, telling all my friends about it. I know this sounds silly and/or annoying, but they can hold me accountable, even if I don't ask for it. I've made a blatant point about telling my work friends about #1, so they know not to tempt me by asking me to go to Starbucks with them!

So hopefully all my techniques will work, I'll try to follow up with this post next month and let you know how I've done! Do you have any money saving tricks you are trying to use this year?