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Saving money can be fun.
taeric
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
So, preparing to drop down to a single income family, my wife and I have been looking at easy ways to save money. Amusingly, we are finding this to be almost like a game. We have managed to buy so many things at the grocery store for mere quarters that are normally marked as high as 5 bucks due to the game that is coupon clipping. (I think we've actually made money on some trips.)
This got me wondering a couple of things. First, why don't more people do this? It seems that if more people were doing coupons, there would be less incentive for the companies to actually do them. So, I'm hoping they do not stop, but I can't help but wonder why they are even doing it in the first place? Which is my second curiosity, why offer such ridiculous coupons?
It also got me looking at other places we spend so much and has me seriously considering prepaid cell phones. Since I can deprive myself of the data plan and such on a phone anyway, what are the major downsides to the prepaid route? It looks like I typically only use upwards of 300 minutes a month. That costs me upwards of $70 a month. I think I saw a prepaid plan that is about $100 for 1000 minutes. What are the downsides, and why don't more people use these plans? Or.... conversely, are more people using this than I realize?
Outside of that, I can't help but feel that I should have devoted more money to the number crunching aspect of D&D back in the day. This feels exactly like that.
My initial hunch is that this is almost like a middle class trap. So many people feel like coupon clipping or prepaid plans are "beneath" them and don't want to be seen partaking. I want to blame media marketing, but I don't know if this is just my being reactionary.
This got me wondering a couple of things. First, why don't more people do this? It seems that if more people were doing coupons, there would be less incentive for the companies to actually do them. So, I'm hoping they do not stop, but I can't help but wonder why they are even doing it in the first place? Which is my second curiosity, why offer such ridiculous coupons?
It also got me looking at other places we spend so much and has me seriously considering prepaid cell phones. Since I can deprive myself of the data plan and such on a phone anyway, what are the major downsides to the prepaid route? It looks like I typically only use upwards of 300 minutes a month. That costs me upwards of $70 a month. I think I saw a prepaid plan that is about $100 for 1000 minutes. What are the downsides, and why don't more people use these plans? Or.... conversely, are more people using this than I realize?
Outside of that, I can't help but feel that I should have devoted more money to the number crunching aspect of D&D back in the day. This feels exactly like that.
My initial hunch is that this is almost like a middle class trap. So many people feel like coupon clipping or prepaid plans are "beneath" them and don't want to be seen partaking. I want to blame media marketing, but I don't know if this is just my being reactionary.
taeric on
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And learn to like water, i did it just for health reasons but it saves you a lot of money.
And, the marketing is exactly what I blame for folks not using prepaid plans. They are a boatload cheaper, but are rarely marketed.
And I second DW on the drinking water. A good Brita pitcher can save you tons of money (if you water tastes good out of the tap, you don't even need the Brita part) - and get a sturdy, reusable water bottle for when you're on the go; bottled water is a ridiculous thing to pay money for.
And thirded on the water thing.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
And prepaid is the way to go for mobile service. Over the past 2 years, I've spent an average of $8 per month on my cell.
Other quick money saving tip, get those recurring bills down:
Cancel cable/satellite. If you need TV, over the air HD is quite good these days.
Call you phone/internet provider and ask to speak with the cancellation department. Haggle until your bill is at least $10 off.
Call the garbage people and haggle for $5 off per month.
Cancel anything that involves monthly charges: gym memberships, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.
Go down to one car.
Commute on a scooter/motorcycle.
This stuff adds up fast.
people still have landlines?
that was the easiest expense ever to lose
I think that would fall back down to my hate of marketing, as I feel the only reason so many folks drink sodas as much as they do is because it is so easy to get and they are marketed so well. I can't help but feel .... fanatical, though.
I guess I was hoping to get to motivation on some of this. It seems to me that simply paying attention can help save a ton of money. What prompted those here that are doing so in these ways? Just as telling, for those of us that still don't save as much money as they think they could, why not? My guilty pleasure is still that I want internet at home. We did drop cable and dsl. Found a solution that is $30 a month for all the internet I could use.
The catch there, is that if we had known how much we could save with coupons, we would have been doing them even on dual incomes. It is insane how much you can save with them.
But observe, you chose not to. Therefore it worked.
Touché
My question still stands, why don't more people do this? Is main media marketing that effective that it blinds so many of us to what would be a very efficient way to buy food and supplies?
Going by what he's posted, he wasn't aware that it was worth it.
It's not a matter of "Hey, I could save a shitton of money, but I just don't want to" as it was "Holy shit, I can save that much? Why wasn't I doing this before?"
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
[econspeak]
Because the marginal cost of many such goods is very little. The fixed cost accounts for most of the cost of a mobile plan, for instance.
This has two implications. First, the average cost of a good decreases with each additional good sold, so there are increasing returns to scale. This tends to give companies market power, so companies can set prices.
Second, at the margin, companies can still make a profit on hilariously cheap goods.
So, to maximise profit, companies do their best to use whatever market power they have to practice price discrimination. This involves companies not advertising cheaper offers. Consider an orange, at Walmart. Suppose the marginal cost of that orange is a cent; Walmart still makes a profit if you walk in with your coupon and buy it for two cents. But Walmart would really prefer it if most people, who might be willing to buy an orange for a dollar, bought it at a dollar. Or more. The more the better!
Therefore it sets the store price at a dollar, or higher. Then, to identify the people who want oranges but are only willing to pay two cents for them, it makes coupons available... but with difficulty. You gotta hunt for them. By doing so you're identifying yourself as someone who's willing to bargain-hunt, that you won't buy it for a dollar... so Walmart concedes and sells it to you for two cents. It makes a profit anyway.
[/econspeak]
It doesn't matter for me because I need a phone without a camera, but it might be an issue for you.
In the end, we're saving around $200 a month. This is in addition to the enormous freezer we bought for $100 from a Sears outlet store that costs $30/year to operate, and lets us save over $100 a month by buying in bulk.
You should also see if you have a bulk bread store nearby. We got all kinds of lovely bread and loaves for $40. We can get the kind of bread that costs $3 at the store for $1 per loaf. There's also the $1 packs of bagels and English muffins.
It also rounds up, so every call is 10c during a normal day. That adds up quickly if you have business to conduct or you have to call agencies with answering machines but you really have to talk to an actual person.
I bought a prepaid cell phone for my mother and this is indeed the case for a lot of companies. I found T-Mobile to not have all that crap (besides the rounding minutes up part).
If it's anything like the way ISPs operate, they have to pay a peering fee if you're not near one of their towers so you can still connect to their network.
We considered the buying in bulk route. Amusingly, we are getting better prices by the coupon shopping than we could get at some place like costco. (Markedly better prices. I think we were paying about 40 cents a box of cereal.) I'm wanting to get to the point where I'm always making my own bread. Flour goes on sale quite often and is the more expensive ingredient for bread. (Well, not counting having a decent oven....) Not there yet, though.
For the internet, we went with clear.com. So far, they are awesome. I am amused by the fact that their "roaming" internet option is cheaper than most cell companies data plans. I'm curious how long that will last. That meant we were able to drop comcast entirely. (We get the local channels just fine, and I may splurge for a netflix account...)
Other than those categories and the phone. I'm unsure what areas to really look at. We did the big ones and are not buying a new car. We picked up a used jetta wagon we were able to pay cash for. Plan on keeping that running as long as we can and then most likely buying used again.
It looks like clear.com hasn't made it out to the exurbs of Atlanta yet. We have a few DSL providers in Winder, so comcast has incentive to keep the quality up here.
I disagree with Netflix, if you rent movies at all (which is far cheaper than buying movies) you will save far far more by going with Netflix than you would by renting at a local video store. Plus, just do instant viewing and you have a huge back catalog that you can watch at any time without wasting the gas to go browse the shelves at Blockbuster.
Yeah, I can't push clear on everyone just yet, as I realize I'm VERY fortunate to have it as an option. (Up in Sandy Springs, we actually get full signal, to boot.)
For the other options. As I said, we chose to buy a used car with cash. And I take marta every day. Monthly commuting cost is about 35 dollars due to work paying part of the marta pass. Something else I consider myself fortunate for, as I live and work about 1.5 to 2 miles from each station. Still, I have others in similar situations that insist on driving every day. Even if the company is paying for parking, the gas and upkeep costs do eventually add up.
If you have a high income/hour, it's generally more worth your time and effort to earn more income than to save by bargain hunting (I say this as a general statement of economics, not as personal advice...). It's also likely to be less convenient to delay purchases until an appropriate discount appears. Many people are willing to pay for convenience.
Besides this, market discrimination doesn't solely apply through price. It also applies through minor quality changes. The products for which coupons will be made available will be often a little worse* but a lot cheaper; this again encourages market segmentation. But it also means that, yes, most people will be spending dramatically more on slightly better* goods.
* the changes can be real, like ingredient swaps in food, using cheaper ingredients, etc. Or they can be pretty superficial, like changing the coloring of the wrapping. It depends.
Also, this is a dynamic equilibrium. If a lot of people discovered that it was possible to buy cookies cheap by waiting until stock clearance near closing time on Fridays, and decided to do so, the shops will just respond by not making the cookies so cheap. So at any given point in time, you're usually observing bargain opportunities which most people don't know about; if more people knew about them, the opportunities would be removed.
I partly disagree on the gym part too.
Having a gym is a big plus, and for some a necessity. Some gyms are rip offs, but if you shop around you can find good deals. This is of course if you actually use the gym.
Now, this was also five or so years ago... the quality of phone may be better now, and worth the savings.
Same point, though... I pay $40/mo for unlimited text/picmsg and something like 1000 anytime minutes. It's overkill, but it's cheap. Prepaid was running me between $25 and $35 a month, depending on the month... so I figure the extra $5-$15 isn't so much a sacrifice for not having to replace the phone every six months.
True - the prepaid thing really depends on your regular usage. If you use your phone every day, the savings probably won't be worth it.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Is there a way to get coupons online?
I've occaisionally taken advantage of advertised specials, and I'm sure a saved buying 10 lbs of potatoes for $2 or whatever. The main thing I learned there is that it takes us forever to work though 10 lbs of potatoes.
I did subscribe to the grocery game for awhile, it was kindof a pain to keep on top of as I'd need all the papers I could get locally and would have to time shopping around double and triple coupon days. It was good to be told where to clip and when to shop, but it just didn't fit with how I shop.
Yeah, seriously, I would like to be saving more money than I am. I can't really scooter to work or cancel my TV/internets though (I don't have many other expenses than that and utilities). Where are you getting these coupons from? Online or in your local paper or from the store itself?
I forgot about that! We are using Mint and taking it a little further. I whipped up some basic spreadsheets to itemize our grocery bills so we could see where we were spending most of our money. So, we could see that we spend roughly a quarter of our bill on meets. And then you get to see just how much of the bill goes to things like paper towels and such.
I take really short showers. Don't let my water heater work too hard. My roommate offsets this by taking long girl-showers, so I'm not sure how effective it is.
Turn on AC only if you're in the house (I forget this a lot, but I'm sure its a good idea).
Don't throw away change! By looking under my bed, around my desk, in my car and around the living room, I found $70 in change (went to bank to cash in).
If you fancy you're a photographer, take a look at setting yourself up at a microstock site. I haven't gotten much return-wise yet (and its totally selling out) but its probably a good way to make money while enjoying a hobby.
Walking everywhere is a good idea too.
Ive heard this is actually a bad idea - especially during the summer. The justification being that the AC spends a lot less energy maintaining 77 degrees than getting it back down to 77 (just throwing out a number) from the 87 it rose to while you were out.
Don't know how true this is, but it seemed to make a sort of logic to it.
This is only true if your abode is perfectly insulated, which is isn't. Come home, strip your clothes off and sit around in your underwear while the AC brings it down. It's simple math, really -- it doesn't "work hard," it's either "on" or "off." If it's on for 40 minutes when you get home, and would have been on for 45 minutes during the course of a hot day, then it's cheaper by 5 minutes to just turn it on when you get home.
People don't use coupons more because it takes time to price compare. If Tide has a coupon for $2 off, but the generic store brand is $3 cheaper, then the coupon is useless if you're already buying the store brand. And does the place double coupons? Do I need to check out with a person, or can I use the coupon at a self-checkout?
If you have time to hunt through coupons and keep an eye on what you buy, then they can definitely save you money. But that time is worth something, and in many cases it's honestly cheaper to simply go without or always buy the generics.
The places that I shop at typically don't have coupons, but I pay attention to the prices between stores and buy the goods at the cheaper store. So cheese is really cheap at Trader Joes but chicken is really cheap at Wegmans.
I do agree that saving money can be fun, although I personally find it more fun if you set a savings goal. It doesn't (and shouldn't) be "I get to buy something!" but rather a nice round number. Get to $1000, then to $5000, and so on, and it's far more worthwhile to see you actually having money. Of course, it's nice to have some sort of goal so you're not just living on ramen with the idea of saving towards some nebulous number.