1. Try reducing your "designer" coffee consumption to potentially save $1,000. In other words, buying a coffee grinder and grinding your own coffee can really reduce costs.
Calculation:
- Lets say you are purchasing your coffee from Starbucks at $4 per cup once a day and you do that as a quick pick-me-up 7 days a week. You are spending $28 / week on coffee, or $112 a month. Take that $112 and multiply it by 12 months in a year and you get $1,344 that you spend each year on your caffeine habit...
- Buying a coffee grinder, coffee pot, and a french press at a moderate price point will cost $150, give or take. Assuming you use up 2 pounds of coffee beans a month (which I think is on the high end, for ~$25/month) you spend $300 in a year. After the first year, you could save up to $1000 when you compare your $300 coffee bean expense to the $1300 designer coffee... In other words, you'd be so close to buying a Small Chloe Faye bag...
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| Photo Credit: Chloe |
- Non-cold turkey option: Do a blended approach of making some coffee on some days and not on other days.
2. Limit the number of days you eat lunch at the company cafeteria each week to save $600!
I have trouble sticking to this rule. Let's face it, it's just so easy to head over to the cafeteria especially if you're feeling lazy the night before, especially for lunch. Dinner I'm fairly consistent but lunch...I'm really trying to follow my own advice on this one.
Calculation:
- Lets say the average meal costs $7 (with tax). If you live in NYC this could be more like $8-9. You are spending about $35 per week eating lunch at work. Multiply that by 4 weeks and you get $140/month of eating out. Multiply that by 12 months and you are spending $1,680 per year from eating out...and this calculation is for LUNCH only!
- This ~$1,700 number only gets larger if you never cook. For simplicity's sake, lets assume you eat out every meal at places like Pret / ABP / Hale & Hearty and what not and it costs on average $7/meal. (Of course breakfast will be slightly cheaper, and dinner slightly more - so more like $5 for breakfast and $10 for dinner...but it still averages to about $7/meal). You would be spending $1,680 x 3 on meals...or $5,040. That's basically a Chanel Boy bag.
- Buy your own groceries and learn to cook. It's a life skill! I spend about $50 / week on groceries (this is on the lower side) - I try to buy a mix of frozen and fresh foods. That enables me to make about 3 x 21 meals. I sometimes don't eat breakfast so lets make that more like 16-17 meals. At about $3 / meal, my yearly food costs are around $2,400. ~$5,000 - $2,400 is a savings of about $2,600 a year and you've just gotten yourself a Givenchy Antigona Medium Satchel.
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| Photo Credit: Givenchy |
- Non-cold turkey option: Let yourself eat lunch out, but limit yourself! Say you limit yourself to eating out twice a week at the company cafeteria and you cook the rest of your meals. $7 x 2 = $14 x 4 = $56. Multiply this by 12 and you get a nice savings of $672, which could be used to help you finance a nice pair of Louboutin So Kate pumps.
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| Photo Credit: Barney's New York |
A lot of girls I know like to get pedicures for two reasons. 1. It's relaxing 2. they don't have steady enough hands to paint the polish on neatly. But practice makes perfect!
Calculation:
- Let's assume a $15 manicure (assuming you don't like to ball out and get a gel manicure for $25) and you get that done once a month. That is $180 / year, which may not seem like much but you can get a Kate Spade Cedar Street Maise purse, especially if it's on sale (which a few are right now...) and every penny seriously counts.
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| Photo Credit: Kate Spade |
More tips to come! In the meantime let me know if you have any other tips for saving money!
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