Money

People that are trying to lose weight are told to keep a food journal. Makes sense, keep track of everything that you put in your mouth and soon you'll find out how many calories you're eating and at what time of the day. While taking a late afternoon nap in Jamaica (saved up and paid for) I had the TV on and was flipping through the channels. I stopped on Oprah, it was about her "Debt Diet". A radio personality was giving his testimony about the kind of debt he was in, and his plan on getting out. One trick he mentioned was keeping a debt diary. All he did was keep a small pad of paper and pen with him. Everytime he made a purchase, he wrote what he bought and how much it cost him. At the end of the day, he could go back and see just how much he spent. I think it's an awesome idea!

Do you really know how much you spend? Yeah it's one thing to have a balanced check book, but that doesn't tell you what you're spending your money on. Try it, you'll be amazed at some of the stupid purchases you make on impulse. It might even help you to stop those impulse purchases...are you really going to want to write down that you spent $4 on a cup of coffee??? Or how about a $3 magazine and $1 candy bar.???

Nathan and I have tried this before. We found out that Nathan spends a lot of money on gas station purchases (things like candy bars, waters, diet sodas, snacks). He also spends money going out to eat for lunch and on occasion buying breakfast for his fellow co-workers. This is when I decided that I was going to make him breakfast at home and just freeze them so that all he has to do at 4am is pop it in the microwave for 45 seconds. I make waffles in bulk, popovers, bacon/egg/cheese biscuits, things of that nature. I also make his lunches for him. Sometimes it's leftovers from dinner the night before, or sometimes I make him something special for lunch. Candy bars are sooo delicious and sooo bad for you so I make homemade granola bars. Saves on money and calories!

What do I spend my money on? The biggest expense is our bills. I recently just looked at our cell phone bill. It was $120. I was looking at how many minutes we use, less than 200! HOLY CRAP, am I really paying that much money for 200 minutes! I simply went online and changed my plan for less minutes. It's going to save us around $40. I encourage you to take a look at your cell phone bill too.
Another bill that is expensive is our cable/net. Once you sign up for cable/net, they give you an awesome deal, then 6 months later they increase it, then 2 months later they increase that...why should you pay that?!? We've called and complained about the increase and they actually lowered it. Then a couple months later they increase it again, so we do the whole routine again and they lower it back down. Guess what, they just increased it back up to $100. We use our internet like it's going out of style, but for cable...it's usually on PBS, nick jr, or the military channel. We can do without cable. So we call them back up again and this time they won't lower it...so we tell them to go ahead and cancel our cable. This throws them off and they have to ask us literally 7 times if we are sure we want to cancel the cable. YES WE DO, WE'RE TIRED OF PLAYING GAMES WITH YOU! That's $60 saved! Go with netflix. $10 beats the price of cable and their tricks!

I hope you give the notepad tip a try. Do it for 1 week, just to give you an idea of what you're really spending your money on. Take my tip, and look at your bills. If you think you're paying too much, get them on the phone and have them lower it. It never hurts to call and ask. The worst they can say is, no, i'm sorry have a good day.