I have always been a saver. I love money! All kinds of money: green, red, purple, brown, coins, bills; it’s doesn’t much matter to me. Growing up in Europe gave me ample opportunity to collect foreign money and I love looking at the coins and bills I have collected from countries that don’t even exist anymore. But I also love collecting American money as well. There’s nothing quite like a nice pile of cold, hard cash. My husband and I are on a massive savings plan. We try to save a full 50% of our income right now for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, we are self-employed in a pretty volatile industry: home remodeling/building. We never really know when or what our income will be. We budget and project and plan, but still, stuff happens: like oh say the market just vanishes. So we need to have money set aside in case the unthinkable does happen and we are left with no income for a while.
The other reason we’re saving though, is more fun: we’re finally going to build our passive house this fall. We’ve been hard at work on the design and hope to be able price it out soon. I’m sure we’ll have a lot of work to do after we figure out how much the sucker is going to cost. As home-builders, we’re pretty knowledgeable about what houses cost. And unfortunately, things cost what they cost. Just because we’re builders does NOT mean we’ll be able to get it all for free. Sadly. 🙁 When we finally get the house priced out we’ll be faced with some tough decisions, I’m sure. At this point, we’re dreaming big! (Not size-wise, but quality-wise.) And we’re going to need a big down payment to be able to pull it all off.
Saving 50% of our income is a pretty big deal for us. I started thinking about how we do it and decided it would make a great blog series! I need some new motivation to keep me going every once in a while. So, this is a series (at least 10 part series) on the Top 10 Ways I Save CASH: Lots of Cash.
Welcome to PART 1
The first thing I do to save money right now is to STAY OUT OF STORES. I know, right? It’s a pretty defining concept. But I’ve found that even the discount, the thrift stores, and the yard sales add up BIG TIME.
It’s nothing for me to drop $50 at Goodwill on stuff I DON’T REALLY NEED. But it’s hard for me to say NO when the item costs under $3. It’s so cheap! I’m saving big money over retail prices, right? But 20 items time $3 each = I’m up to $60. $60 is a big deal to me right now. So the best way for me to not spend it, is to not know about. And that means not setting foot in the store to begin with and sticking to a good plan when I do step foot in the stores. This does not mean that I never go, but having a plan, focusing on what I need and sticking to that plan helps me save for the times I do head to Goodwill or yard sales.
Stay tuned for Part 2 next week! I’d love to hear from you! How do you save?
Linking up: Frugal Tuesday; Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways; Works for Me Wednesday; Taking a Timeout Thursday; Frugal Friday;
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