Why is saving money so hard?

[Belegost]

This thread reaffirms my belief that the solution to saving more money is to make more money

Yes, of course. Everytime I get a raise, I add to my withholdings to that I put 80% of the raise into savings.

As for the food nonsense - it's probably worth reading the opinion of professionals instead of random people on the internet.

For instance the USDA April's food budgets suggest a single person needs around 190/month for a properly balanced diet, and a family of four is around 600. Obviously this will vary some by location, but probably not by more than 10-15%.

 

[Ns1]

https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/200789315-Nutrition

There you go.

This does not say what you think it says. Meaning, this does not say they did a study that shows it cost 300/person to be fed "full nutrition".

A family of 4 can eat perfectly healthy for <$1k/month. Now if they wanted to eat 4 weeks worth of soylent, sure $1200/month it is.

//edit

and post #384 further tears up your argument that it costs $300/person/month

 

[Safeway]

The kicker is how much time you must spend doing that. For some of us it makes more sense to work those hours and make more money. But yes I think people willing to spend time instead of money can come out spending less money.

This is exactly what I was getting at in my post. As a 50-percent equity partner in my firm, it is almost always worth it for me to hire someone to do something opposed to doing it myself. I was a big time DIYer but, now, I prefer to spend any time I have away from work either either my family, cycling training/racing, or both simultaneously. Mowing, remodeling, cleaning, cooking, etc. If I am billing hourly, I would miss out on hundreds of dollars every day by taking a 30 minute lunch. Most of my income comes from licensing fee splits, contingency fees, and brokerage fees, but most of the time, I negotiate a hybrid fee arrangement with both capped hourly fees and gross percentage fees.

Time is my most valuable and limited resource. I spend it doing what's important to me, being with my family and staying healthy.

 

[Kaido]

How to eat a healthy whole foods, plant-based diet on $50 per week:

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/whole-foods-plant-based-fifty-dollars-a-week/

 

[LouieST]

Spending money is always easier than earning money. Whenever I go shopping, I would make a shopping list and carefully consider whether I really need the things on the list. Careful spending can help me save money.

 

[Kaido]

This is exactly what I was getting at in my post. As a 50-percent equity partner in my firm, it is almost always worth it for me to hire someone to do something opposed to doing it myself. I was a big time DIYer but, now, I prefer to spend any time I have away from work either either my family, cycling training/racing, or both simultaneously. Mowing, remodeling, cleaning, cooking, etc. If I am billing hourly, I would miss out on hundreds of dollars every day by taking a 30 minute lunch. Most of my income comes from licensing fee splits, contingency fees, and brokerage fees, but most of the time, I negotiate a hybrid fee arrangement with both capped hourly fees and gross percentage fees.

Time is my most valuable and limited resource. I spend it doing what's important to me, being with my family and staying healthy.

Perspectives definitely change over time & with different circumstances. I used to be all into DIY workstations, DIY Linux servers, etc., then got into the real world where you work 70-80 hours a week & require turnkey, paid-support systems because you simply don't have enough hours in a day to manage everything. Same thing with other stuff like home maintenance or even simple things like car washes...I never understood why you would pay ten bucks for a car wash when you could do it at home for free & have a nice relaxing time out in the sun, but now that my schedule is crunched, it's the only way my car stays clean these days haha. Time & energy have become more important as the days & years have marched on...you can always make more money, but you can't make more time & if your energy is shot, nothing is all that fun...

 

[Kaido]

Spending money is always easier than earning money. Whenever I go shopping, I would make a shopping list and carefully consider whether I really need the things on the list. Careful spending can help me save money.

Honestly, using online shopping (despite impulse purchases on Prime, haha) has helped me save soooo much money. We order a lot of supplies through Amazon, and have tinkered with using local grocery store delivery services like Peapod to get fresh stuff. It's $7 for delivery, which seems crazy high to me given that I don't even tip the pizza guy that much, but I somehow always end up spending at least $20 on crap I don't need when I go to the store myself, so it ends up being a cost savings anyway lol.

 

[Ns1]

How to eat a healthy whole foods, plant-based diet on $50 per week:

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/whole-foods-plant-based-fifty-dollars-a-week/

if it's not soylent it's not healthy

 

[Kaido]

I don't know how some people do it, but for me it is like mission impossible.How do you do to save some money?

It boils down to selecting some goals & using a system. I'd imagine the bulk of people who have trouble saving (or don't save) have no goals & don't have a system in place for doing so. There are so many good tools out there like Smartypig, Mint, Betterment, etc. to help you with finances, saving, and growing your savings...it's just a matter of deciding what you want to do.

I think part of the problem is that there's no set way of doing things, and everyone's situation is different & goals are different. If you're rich, you can simply hire a personal wealth team to grow your savings & give you an interest-gained allowance to live off. I mean, just look at Rich Kids of Instagram:

http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/

I think this pretty much sums it up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBR9xBQWeS4

On the flip side, eventually you're going to die, so you don't want to simply hoard all of your money & never use it. You have to figure out what you want your balance to be. I heard a great concept the other day called "screw it money" - basically if you get fed up with a job or life or whatever, you have enough in savings to move or change careers or whatever & keep yourself afloat for a few months until you settle into something new. That's a pretty nice thing to have, especially if you get fired or laid off or get injured & need something to replace your income until you find another job.

 

[Kaido]

if it's not soylent it's not healthy

I am somewhat allergic to soylent

 

[JSt0rm]

How to eat a healthy whole foods, plant-based diet on $50 per week:

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/whole-foods-plant-based-fifty-dollars-a-week/

From the comments of that article:

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:hmm:

 

[SparkyJJO]

How to eat a healthy whole foods, plant-based diet on $50 per week:

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/whole-foods-plant-based-fifty-dollars-a-week/

Little to no meat = no care. I don't have incisors for shredding lettuce.

if it's not soylent it's not healthy

Soylent is overpriced disgusting crap.

 

[Kaido]

From the comments of that article

I am stuck on midnight server duty & this seriously cracked me up, thanks man :thumbsup:

 

[Red Squirrel]

There are so many diets, and they all contradict each other. One says to cut fats one says to eat more fats, one says to not eat a certain thing the other says to eat a lot of it... screw diets, I just eat whatever I'm hungry for that day.

I do need to cook more though, but it's hard to justify using up that time just for myself.

 

[Wuzup101]

The kicker is how much time you must spend doing that. For some of us it makes more sense to work those hours and make more money. But yes I think people willing to spend time instead of money can come out spending less money.

Yeah of course it takes some time that you could otherwise be devoting to something else (time with your family, working for more $, etc...). That being said, after a bit of time invested in what to buy, and learning to cook with what you have, it's not much more than time spent grocery shopping. It doesn't take special shopping or cooking techniques to feed a family of 4 on $250/week. It's MUCH harder to do it on $125/week than $250/week as in that linked article. $250/week is like $500/week except with normal food instead of $80/lb cheese and $15-20/lb steaks.

We were talking about feeding a family on $1000/month not on the opportunity cost of you trying to save money while shopping. Obviously if you work in a highly paid field it makes sense for you to work more hours (if that is an option) and have someone (who will do it for far less than you are making per hour) do your shopping / cooking for you. That being said, time cooking can be time with your family, and not everyone wants to work extra hours even if that's an available possibility.

 

[JSt0rm]

i was arguing $250 a week for a family of 4 was decent. Yes I spend more because I can. Drinking a $40 bottle of wine right now infact.

 

[Engineer]

Looks like you guys are saving too much and being too frugal for the economy to grow...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/frugality-u-shows-long-shadow-090000947.html

 

[dullard]

You overpay on everything else and now have to settle on driving a Camry. That's sad. I really do feel sorry for you.

I'm a bit puzzled by this. I posted Safeway's numbers but altered them DOWN to reflect his reality but in a much more typical fashion. How do you get how much I pay from that?

For my situation, the Hybrid Camry was the best possible vehicle available at the time for the total cost of driving that I was willing to pay (that includes cost of vehicle, yearly tax, insurance, wear-and-tear, expected repairs, and gas). Nothing else had that level of luxury and still could get me 36+ MPH on the freeway on cruise control. I could have settled on a Prius with fake leather that couldn't cool down in the summer (the saleman hated me taking it on a 30 mile test drive on a 100+°F day with him baking in the sun on the passenger side). I could have gone with a Civic, but the build quality was crap for that year and certainly isn't better than the Camry. I could have paid tens of thousands of dollars more for more horsepower while I'm on cruise control (wow, I'd really notice that ). The deisels just don't justify their much higher driving cost (deisel is very expensive here compared to gasoline, plus lack of good gas stations on my commute). The hybrid Accord wasn't yet available. The Lincoln MKZ Hybrid and similar Ford Fusion Hybrid tempted me, but on that 30 mile test drive, it couldn't top 28 MPG on the interstate despite Ford's mileage claims and I really didn't see the reason to have 3 or 4 independent and repetative buttons to change everything and figured those electronics would likely fail.

Given that I drive 30,000+ miles a year, this was the best balance of comfort for me and cost to drive. Sound system was good enough (easy USB controls and good enough speakers for freeway driving since over the road noise I wouldn't notice better speakers), seats fit well with the right support and tons of motorized seat controls, heated leather seats, dual climate control that heats/cools quickly, bluetooth calling and navigation through my phone, the benefit of dual gas/electric motors for great torque when accelerating from a stop, etc. It drives pretty well on the snow/ice. What else could I really want (other than actively cooled seats)?

 

[Ns1]

Wtf Prius did you look at that can't keep the car cool when the outside temp is 100+

 

[local]

How much do you spend on food for a month for your family?

About $600 give or take $50. It would be less but the babies demand fresh fruits and vegetables as well as eating six times a day.

 

[TheSlamma]

Looks like you guys are saving too much and being too frugal for the economy to grow...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/frugality-u-shows-long-shadow-090000947.html

Credit card debt is still a top 3 debt, so people spend more than they even have and it still doesn't help in this warped version of capitalism that counts on insane profit margins, cheap labor and unsustainable CEO pay.

I don't really buy into the G W Bush go out and buy jewelry philosophy. While I know some goods and services contribute to the economy many things we buy these days don't.

 

[dullard]

Wtf Prius did you look at that can't keep the car cool when the outside temp is 100+

I was looking into the Prius 3 and Prius 4. That pleather (or whatever they call their vinal seats now) was an inferno and the tiny AC couldn't keep up with all that sun shining in all that glass. I've never sweated so much in a car before. I'm not a car person, but I suspect that once you reach the 75+ MPH zone, the tiny engine didn't give as much power to the AC. Jumped right into the hybrid Camry (all black for the model I tested) that same day in the same sun and it was cool as I wanted it to be.

I'll modify a claim I made above. The one luxury that I could want that I didn't get in the Camry was actively cooled seats. I couldn't justify the price to a premium car with those.

 

[Cappuccino]

Only the rich will spend and the poor will save. It's simples.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I was looking into the Prius 3 and Prius 4. That pleather (or whatever they call their vinal seats now) was an inferno and the tiny AC couldn't keep up with all that sun shining in all that glass. I've never sweated so much in a car before. I'm not a car person, but I suspect that once you reach the 75+ MPH zone, the tiny engine didn't give as much power to the AC. Jumped right into the hybrid Camry (all black for the model I tested) that same day in the same sun and it was cool as I wanted it to be.

The AC runs directly off the battery on a Prius.

 

[PricklyPete]

I'm with you. I buy American every chance I can get.

At least we can agree on something. Wife just bought me a Küat bike rack for my birthday for this exact reason.

You can tell me all day long that you can't nourish a family of 4 on $1k a month...but you can very easily and in good health. I am not going to sit here and walk you through it as I am typing this on my phone and I really don't think you give a shit.

One thing that is for sure is that we almost never purchase anything prepared. Partially for health reasons (I prefer to know exactly what is going into my meal) and partially because I consider this family time (preparing dinner with family). Everyone may not agree with me on this, but we get a lot of joy out of this time together. I hope that continues as the kids get older.

I also don't have the same perspective as others do in this thread regarding the value of my time. I spent my time as a consultant trying to always find the extra time to bill customers. In the end, I found this lifestyle wanting. The money was nice, but my satisfaction in life was not. I now rarely work over 40 hours a week and only look to save time where it gives me more time with family or hobbies. Since I consider meal preparation family time... I have no reason to seek out ways of minimizing it.