Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck, I retired accountant turned truck driver, I reduce my debt in a relatively short period of time, debt reduction, to achieve financial freedom takes commitment, confidence, determination how to save money, how to reduce the spending and save more money to reduce your debt, or increase savings first must identify that there is a spending problem, and then find ways to solve this problem. So how you know, if you have a spending problem? Most people will say, Well, you got three or four credit cards charge up to the limit, you probably have a spending problem that maybe not, maybe you came upon hard times, and you lived off your credit cards for a while and had been unable to pay them off or pay them down. Look around your home? Do you have a lot of stuff sitting on the tables? Do you have stuff sitting on the floors, if you seem to have a lot of clutter, that you never throw away, perhaps you're not a hoarder, that maybe you're having a spending problem, maybe you're buying the same thing twice, and don't even realize it, maybe you already have that item that you didn't keep track of it. You're not organized, you don't really know what you have, you forgot that you bought it a few months ago, and you buy it again. So by keeping your stuff organized, your clothes, your knickknacks, your food, everything in your house, everything in your life, you got to organize it. Like for food, put all your canned goods together, put all your box goods together in your refrigerator, keep it organized, because later on, we're going to talk about how to save money when you go to the grocery store. So the more organized you have your life, whether it's your food items, whether it's your clothes, whether it's your poor Chili's in the bathroom, I'm trying to say extra supplies you might have bought because they were on sale. And we're going to talk about that later. And you're taking advantage of sales and you're buying more stuff and balk. Are you keeping it organized? Do you know that you have 30 days worth of toilet paper, or maybe it's 90 days worth of toilet paper. So the next time is on sale, maybe you don't have to buy anymore. That's how you save money. They want you to do is write a challenge for yourself. Only spend money on needs and do not spend any money at all on once. Needs are housing and everything related to it. So whether you rent or buying a home, its house where you live, plus utilities, which includes gas electric water, sewer trash, internet, cable, anything that's connected to that home, that you have pay for on a monthly basis. That's needs transportation, automobile, which includes insurance, gas payment, loan payment, repairs, parking, all those type expenses related to transportation. Even if you take the bus, that's transportation, bus pass, whatever, instead of paying for your bus on a daily basis by a monthly pass is generally cheaper if you ride it on on a regular basis. Food, food is a big place where you can save some money. So if you go out and eat at restaurants four or five times a week, he got to quit doing that. If you're trying to save money, whether it's to pay off debt, or increase your savings, for whatever the reason you need to quit going out to eat often. Maybe once a week, once a month reward yourself and you go to the grocery store and buy food and Learn how to cook. If you don't know how to cook, it's easy to learn. He got you to he got cookbooks, it's not difficult, I can do it. And only buy those items. And the fourth need is clothes, that you only buy clothes that you absolutely need. And this is where being organized will help you. If you have your closet organized. You know how many shirts you have how many blouses you have, how many slacks you have, how many jeans you have, how many pairs of shoes, what type of shoes, brown, black, whatever, for your women is lot more complicated. So if you're organized and know what you already have, and keep it keep it until it either no longer fits, or you wear it out and then get rid of it. If you wear it out is it truly wore out. Or maybe you just lost a button off a shirt. Well, you can put another button on the short shirt fairly inexpensive, you can repair it by sewing a new button on. And if the button doesn't match, you take a button from where you can't see it and move it to where you can see it if that's where it got lost, and put the one that don't match down where you cannot see it. Simple solution, she had a little hole do the same thing. So it up. And you need to be frugal when you buy your clothes. So instead of buying a name brand clothes, at full price, or even on sale, because sometimes sales are not really a sale, you got to know the prices of what you're buying, and a sale and maybe not a sale. And the Buy One Get One maybe is not such a good deal. So you got to be aware of your sale and how much money you're spending at all times. So you repair your clothes, he tried to buy clothes on sale, reduced prices, or you can go to a charitable thrift shop and try to find what you're looking for at a reduced price. He got to say money for whatever reason. And don't be too proud. Going to a thrift store is not that bad. It's an eagle ego thing that you have to get over. If you want to be successful, he wants to have a truly better life without debt, then you have to take steps to minimize your spending. And one way to do it for something that you need is to buy it at a lower prices and going wherever you can to find it at a lower price. So do yourself a challenge, only buy things and knows for Category only pay for things and those four categories, and also is gonna help you to have a budget. If you follow my podcast, you know that if you're tracking all your spending, whether it's on a credit card, your checking account, or by cash, you're tracking your spending, you know how much you're spending in each category, you set yourself up a budget, he can control it, he can see where you're spending your money, and you can control it. You can once you know, you see where it's going, you can then try to control your spending. Because if you have a spending problem, whether it's impulse buying or buying things on sale, even though you don't really need it, how much money have you saved, and fear got something on sale and it's a good deal? Do you really need it? If you don't really need it, you didn't save any money, you wasted money. So well we have to come in with some rules. Put yourself on a rule. The first thing is you're gonna do 30 days, knowing how to pay for things you need, which is in those four categories, housing, transportation, food, clothing, and clothing. You can really cut back on food. We're going to talk about how to save at the grocery store. Transportation. He put yourself on a budget and tried to limit your trips. Tried to put all your trips together. Don't make five trips to get Five things make one trip to get all five things, plan what you're doing, and tried to save money on gasoline, I know price of gas is going up. But if you're wasteful and just driving around, when you don't have to, you're just wasting money. Also housing, he can say a bunch of money by getting rid of cable, I know in my show notes and link, and it says bundle your cable and your internet. As far as I'm concerned, he only should have be paying for internet, he need to use your Nn. Net service to the fullest extent. And then you can do that by streaming all 100% of your TV. How much will you say, if you cut out your cable TV and stream it? Here's a rule of thumb you must follow do not have more than two streaming service at any one time. So give you an example you may be you are a sports fan and you watch football. But you don't watch any baseball in the summertime you watch very little sports. In the summertime. Maybe you occasionally a watch NASCAR or auto racing, but it's on free TV over the air. So what you do is in football season II subscribe to the streaming service where you can watch your football games. But you don't subscribe to a movie channel. And the summer time you get you cut off the subscription for the football. And you subscribe to a movie channel. You watch all the movies during the summer time, when you're home with nothing better to do. And within three to four months, you're probably seen all the movies on their movie channels, then you cancel that subscription. And you do have different streaming service. Your goal is never to have more than two streaming service at any one time and rotate them around. That's important. Very good way to say my name, cell phone. If you have a landline at home, and you got cell phones, everybody in the family get rid of the landline. Why do you have a landline, probably nobody's calling you on it. Get rid of the landline, you'll save some money, cell phone service. Look around every six months, compare your plan to what's out there, you should be able to get 100% data 100% texting, and 100% everything, data texting and voice at a lower price than what you're currently paying, look for services where you can do that. But you cannot change services if you're buying a phone through your current service. So you want to try to buy a cell phone or smartphone and pay cash for it and have it unlocked so that you can subscribe to any service and you can move around every year every couple years to keep your costs down because they always are offering lower price subscriptions for cell phones. And it's generally getting cheaper as we go. So that's cable that cell phone, utilities. Your thermostat if you live in the northern region where it's cold out in the winter, don't set your thermostat on 72 Put it down on 6667 and wear a sweater or sweatshirt to stay warm. And if you're sitting watching TV, have a blanket. Don't pay utilities. There's two things that I never liked paying taxes was the first one and utilities the second one and you can't avoid either or either one of those. So if you're in a winter time, set your heat down low, maybe 6866 You'll save money and the summertime Fe running the AC in the intermediate months when it's nice out open up your windows get some fresh air and don't pay for any heating or cooling. Save some money. And when it gets hot out and you run the AC, don't run it on 72 or 74. Set it on 78 and when if you're not home, there's nobody at home and the afternoon or all day set it up to AD. That's where a programmable thermostat is well worth the money, you go to work and you're gone from 9am in the morning, and the first person gets home about 430. So you program the thermostat at nine o'clock, you let the temperature raise up to 80. And then at about four, you program it to bring it down to degrees, and you let it there. And then late at night, 910 o'clock, after it's dark outside and it's cooling off, then I set my thermostat down to 74 cooled the house down when it's not high rates event of electric. And it's cool out is much easier, the cooler to house now, get it cold. And then when you hit nine o'clock in the morning, you let it raise, it's going to be comfortable in that house till at least two or three o'clock. And if there is nobody there, what does it matter, it really don't matter. That's how you save on your electric rates or using air conditioning. The heat is kinda a little bit different story, he sat it at one temperature and leave it alone. But get it as low as you can stand it you don't want to freeze to death. But you don't want to be sweating, when it's 20 degrees outside. So be reasonable 6668. So good place to set up. And you can save some significant amount of money on your utilities. Home Insurance, well, the only thing you do there is bundling with your auto insurance and you can get a cheaper, cheaper rate, both for your auto and your home. As far as transportation, if you ride the bus or probably transportation by a monthly pass, generally that's going to be cheaper than paying for it every day. And you don't have to search for change or money to have with you every day. As far as automobile, try to plan where you're going and make use of the automobile to the maximum. So if you're on your way to work, go straight to work on the way home, if you have to go and pick something up on your way home from work, stop and pick up those items. Say you stop at the pharmacy to pick up some meds, you go to the grocery store to pick up some groceries. And you may be you have to go to the dry cleaners. Do all that try to do it in as few trips as possible. And shut the car off. Don't let it idle. Even in the wintertime when you're trying to scrape the windows and clean the windows law. Don't start the car until you're ready to go. So no warming up the car because you don't need to do that. And warm up fast enough. And that's just a waste of fuel. Gasoline in this particular case, okay, groceries, how do you can save money going to the grocery store. The first thing you should do is plan all your meals out as much as possible. Do a survey of what you have. Remember earlier I said keep your food organize it look to see what you need to make those meals for the week. Go there once a week, other than to buy bread or milk. For those of you with children. Know what you need all the ingredients for every meal, do an inventory check, make a list of things you need for that particular week. Only buy those things, don't buy anything extra don't buy snacks, don't buy cookies, anything like that. cut all that out of there not only will help you lose weight, and also help you save money that will make your wallet fat and your stomach skinny. So that's what you do. If you come home and you don't feel like cooking, frozen foods are a convenient way to use to save money. But frozen entrees are more expensive than you making it yourself. So maybe you have time on Sunday. You can when you make Sunday dinner, make triple the amount and then package it up Have portion it out and eat what you need for Sunday, take the extra amount and put it in the meals. Like maybe you made enough for three meals, put it enough and each container for one meal. So if there's two of you put enough in one container for two of you to have one meal and freeze it. So when you come home on Wednesday, maybe you're tired and don't feel like cooking, he can pull it out of the freezer, he can thaw it in the microwave, he can heat it up in the microwave or the oven, whatever you want to do. Maybe warm up something else, it's quick and easy. You have a meal ready, and you don't have to buy those expensive frozen entrees, or order a pizza and and have it delivered. Because that's another way to say money is don't get food delivered to your home. Those delivery services are fairly expensive, because the restaurant has to mark up their prices. Because the delivery service has taken I heard 30% of the fee from the restaurant, so the restaurants got a markup to prices for their home delivery. Plus the pay the delivery service. Plus if you leave the driver at tip, it could cost you as much as twice as much as if then just going to a restaurant. So quit using delivery services for food. Also, quit buying drinks. I'm talking about Potter, water, alcohol, coffee at coffee shops, make your own coffee at home, instead of going to a coffee shop. Bottle of water if you drink two or three bottle and it say to bottled waters a day is bad for the environment because the plastic container, plus you're spending a couple dollars a day just for water. Those costs add up quickly. So if you don't like drink and tap water, you're better off buying yourself a water filter, which I have in my home and use that for your drinking water. Fill up your container and take it with you. And you'll in the long run will save a whole lot more money. Alcohol, cut it out cigarettes, cut it out. Get rid of all your bad habits, you're gonna save more money. Maybe you say you can't do it. And maybe you say you don't want to do it. On this town. Yeah, if you don't do it, you'll save a lot of money. Plain and simple. Remember, alcohol cigarettes is a want is not a need. So if you're doing a 30 day challenge, and you're still smoking cigarettes, while you're still drinking alcohol, you're not really making any progress, because you still are bought paying for once. I'll be back in one moment. My my final thoughts. If you want to contact me to request my spreadsheet for the budget, or leave a comment or ask a question, you can send it here's my email, reduce debt, increase well@gmail.com. reduce debt increase wealth is all together no spaces. If you like to ask a question, quick question in the subject. If you'd like to request my monthly budget, budget spreadsheet in the subject matter if you want to leave a response of any kind is put a comment in the subject matter. I will get back to you as soon as possible. If you see a penny laying on the ground, do you stop and pick it up or you just keep on walking? I have always stopped to pick up any money I see laying on the ground. I see that as free money. That also is a mindset. If you stop and pick up a penny and put it in your piggy piggy bank. In my case, I use a mason jar because it's easier to get back out. And then once a month, once a quarter, you take that money, I roll my own quarters, put it that way that every once in a while you take the money and you put one of those machines and you get a voucher and you get em bucks. Put that directly into your savings is not much. But it's gonna help you change your mindset. You're gonna start thinking every penny is important. So when you go to Buy something. If you're looking for a toaster example, maybe it's a $10 Toaster, or a tiny dollar toaster, which one you're gonna buy? First thing is, do you really need the toaster? Do you have a 30 hour 24 Hour Rule? Where you think about it? Do I really need that item? Do I really want that item? Am I gonna use that item? Do I already have one that I forgot? I have. Remember, organization in your home is hope you say money. organization of your food items will help you save money. And it will save you time because you'll quickly look and know what you'll need to buy in you only buy the items you need for one week. And it keeps your spending under control. So if you're gonna take the challenge, only pay for things you need. And do not buy any ones for 30 days. And then write down all the ones in that 30 days that you thought you need it that you're gonna buy, that you put off because you're doing this challenge. And then at the end of 30 days, go back and look at your list. Do you? Did you get by without it? Do you really still need it? Maybe not. That's money, save money that you do not spend as money that you have saved and saving money on a sale. You did not save any money. Because if something's on sale for 50% off, you still spend the other 50% If you bought something you didn't need you wasted your money. Spending is a mindset. Get everything under control. By being organized. By having a budget, knowing what's coming out of your checking account at all times. Knowing where your money is gone. Then try to reduce what you're buying. Tried to do without for a little bit longer. Even if it's one day longer. Put it off. Maybe you'll decide you don't need it. Maybe you'll find out. You don't need it. Then that's money you save because you did not spend it