justsqueakingby.com » Budgeting

My Wife And I are Divorcing……Starbucks

JSB — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:48:25 +0000

Like most people, my wife and I have some habits. One of our more expensive habits was Starbucks. That is, until we decided to divorce the franchise! We seemed to be giving more than we were receiving – a bad situation for any relationship.

Our typical Starbucks bill (give or take a little if I wanted a giant chocolate chip cookie):

1 small Chai Latte:	$3.15
1 large Dark Roast:	$1.92
Total	$5.07

We didn’t go to Starbucks every day, but we went frequently enough for it to be pricey. Especially when you go a couple of times a week, then muliple that number by 52 weeks.

So we adjusted our habit. We didn’t drop the habit of drinking tea or coffee. We just decided that it would be cheaper to do so at home. How much cheaper can it be?

Coffee Filters	$2.00
Coffee	$2.99
Tazo Chai	$3.49
Total	$8.48

Now, instead of spending $5.07 every time we visit Starbucks, we spend $8.48 per month. Let’s say we were going to Starbucks ten times per month or 120 times per year – that would set us back $608.40 per year. If we enjoy our coffee and tea at home, we’re only spending $101.76 per year.

Sticking to our plan to divorce Starbucks will save us $506.64 per year. That’s a separation we can deal with. We can add that extra money to our emergency fund or to our savings for the house.

How about you – is there anything you can do to make some changes that’ll save you money?

Should We Go To A Prepaid Cell Phone Plan To Save Money?

JSB — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:16:39 +0000

So after putting together a budget yesterday morning, my wife and I had a few concerns about some of the items on it. The biggest concern – the cell phone plan that we have. It’s a nationwide plan that we got about 2.5 years ago. The phones work great and the coverage is ok, but we feel it’s a bit too pricey. We generally don’t use more than 30o minutes per month, but we do, at times, send several hundred text messages. So after some discussion, we’ve decided to do check out prepaid phones. There seem to be many options available. Is there anything we should know about these plans?

Getting All My Dollars In A Row

JSB — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:49:05 +0000

I had some extra time today, so I sat down and put together a budget. Never before had I done this. I guess I didn’t see the point in it. As long as my bills were paid on time, I was happy. Entering 2008 I knew that things needed to change.

The tools I used to assemble my budget were Quicken and Excel. I’m pretty proficient with Excel, but I chose to use the monthly budget template put together by Joseph Sangl. This template is very easy to use – it even gives you the percentage you spend on certain categories.

Putting together the budget opened my eyes to a few things. One of them is that my wife and I have a bunch more money left over at the end of the month than I had previously thought. Now we know how much money we can set aside for savings each week and how much we can increase our 401k contributions. I wish I would have taken an active role in my finances earlier. Ah well, I can’t change the past but I can stick to my new plan and start saving now.