A-Train Finance

If you can follow along with the message behind that title, then you’re off to a great start. I just wanted to share with you a few ideas for frugality that I’ve come across this month. It has been a very interesting January, with the markets down 7-10% since the 1st. It has also been one of my most frugal months of all time, which for me is a major accomplishment. There were a couple different factors which helped me achieve this, some which may not be feasible for you but they might provide some good ideas.

I was able to eat relatively healthy food fairly cheaply by making it myself and getting it for free from where I work. With a little bit of planning, it really takes the guess work out of it. My meals mostly consisted of organic boneless chicken breast, which I cut into slices or cubes and sauteed in various ways. One of my favorite so far has been using about a cup of white wine (two buck chuck works fine), adding some Italian spices, salt, pepper and lemon juice to a skillet. Let the chicken pieces marinate in the wine mixture for about 5 to 10 minutes, then turn up the heat! Just keep it moving every minute or so and the wine will boil down leaving tender juicy and delicious chicken. When the liquid starts to get low for an extra sweet ‘glaze sauce’ on the chicken I’ll dump some honey into the pan and let the rest boil down. Just boil some pasta and steam some broccoli and you have a nutritious, very delicious meal. I found that I could eat dinner and lunch for about a week for $20-$25 dollars depending on the variants you use.

I also reduced my spending on gasoline by 90% from $400 per month to about $40 dollars per month. The main reason for this is I took a job about 4-5 minutes away from where I live, instead of commuting 80 miles round trip to work every day via the highway. Just the gas required to get there and back was taking up $100 of after-tax income per week. Not only was this move good for my expenses but it was a good move for the environment and the life of my car (which may not be much longer).

I reviewed my cell phone bill with T-Mobile and removed my ‘Blackberry Data Package’. I realized that I rarely used this feature of my phone and it was costing me an extra $25 per month. There are a lot of ways to reduce costs in this area, especially with cable internet or tv service. All you have to do is call up Comcast or your local provider and tell them you’re thinking about switching to Satellite TV. They’ll be able to give you promotional offers to keep you around. Sometimes linking all of your communications such as cell phone, home phone and cable will offer cost savings as well.

I didn’t buy drinks when I went out with friends. Depending, I’ll buy a couple for other people and some for myself throughout the night but by cutting this aspect out, it’s still easy to have a good time with your friends while saving money. There are plenty of ways to enjoy going out without drinking and if you can’t, that may be another issue entirely.

I switched my Roth IRA over to Zecco the discount online broker. Zecco is a pretty awesome discount stock broker that actually gives those with over $2,500 in account equity 10 free trades every month. With Scottrade I was paying $7 dollars per trade in my IRA. Since I don’t make more than 10 trades per month in that account, it’s perfect and I can save up to $70 dollars for me per month. Less money out of my account, means more for retirement-definitely worth checking out.

I made a valiant effort make sure all lights and electronics were off before leaving the apartment. This is harder to do with roommates, but if everyone pitches in you can definitely save some money. We knocked 40% off of our $125 dollar electric bill by trying to stay conscious of our energy usage. Not only is this good for you, but it’s good for the environment.

I went through my collection of finance and investing books and re-read some of the ones I hadn’t reviewed lately. Instead of buying new books, I dug around to find resources online and books within my own collection to occupy some of my free time. A friend recently sent the book ‘The Creature from Jeckyll Island’ to me as a gift, so I look forward to reading that. It’s a book about the US Federal Reserve and why everything that happens, happens. In that light, try swapping books with a friend or relative, as they might just have one you’ve been looking for.

I hope some of these ideas inspire you to try some frugal living of your own. It really is the small things that make the big difference in the end. $10 dollars per day is $3650 per year that can be saved or used for something other than leaving a light on while you’re not home or having a cellphone feature that you don’t use!