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I talk a lot about my whys, but a lot of those whys require funds. Travel, Charity, Pay Off Law School Loans. I always tried to earn more money to try to reach these goals, and yes, this will help, but I learned over the last year or so that learning how to spend less money is even more important. When you start to minimize your lifestyle, you learn quickly that your monthly income can go a lot farther if cut out all the things you really don’t need in life. You start to be conscious of the amount of money you spent on clothes each month now that it isn’t going out of your account and how much you can save if you don’t need that nicer phone or newer car, or bigger house. Here are some of the steps I took to minimize my spending.
The first small step I took was to drastically cut down on the number of times I ate out each week. For me, this had a twofold savings. Since I was convinced I was going to eat healthy and at home, each weekend I would go out and spend money on groceries. Then during the week, I would not feel like cooking, so I would pick up fast food, or food to go, or schedule dinner plans with a friend. By the weekend I had eaten out most evenings and wasted the food I had purchased as well. The amount of money I threw away in food was what finally woke me up and made me realize how much money I was wasting every month in food stuffs. I think this was the first time I realized that I could make a huge difference in my life not by finding ways to make more but finding ways to spend less. I started to cut down on the times I went out and this lead to me using the food that I purchased. I also started to use food delivery companies (i.e. Farm Fresh to You, Hello Fresh, Arbonne, and Primal Pastures)* to cut down on the splurge purchases at the grocery story. You would think that paying for the convenience of food being delivered would increase my grocery bill, but it reduced mine, because I was no longer throwing the chips and dip or freezer meals or ice cream into my cart. Not only was I saving money, I was also saving calories and eating cleaner!
The second step was to drastically cut down on shopping. I was a totally shopaholic. I love clothes, even if I live in pants, tank tops, and sandals. I had tank tops for every occasion in every color in every size I had ever been. In my initial purge I must have donated a good 50 tank tops, which where then drastically reduced a couple more times over this process. I also had every kitchen gadget you could think of, even though I have a tiny kitchen with hardly any storage space! I had mostly converted to online shopping, but that did not stop my overconsumption of all things. Amazon packages would be delivered to work at least twice a week and yes, sometimes it was the daily necessities I still buy today, but most of the time it was just an impulse buy that caught my eye or something I thought I needed in the moment, then just sat in the box or on a table somewhere in my house for months, if not years. Once I cut down on my shopping I suddenly had money to spend on trips and concerts and events, instead of putting these things on credit cards. You can read more about my tips and rules for shopping less on my blog all about Not Letting Extra Items End Up In Your Cart.
The third major change I made was to begin the process of reducing my debt. Most of my debt was from my student loans. So, the first thing I did was re-finance my student loans. This not only reduced my interest rate, it allowed me to remove my parents as co-signors, and put all my loans in one easy to pay location. To make it even easier, SoFi, the company I refinanced with, gave me a .25 interest rate reduction if I sign up for automatic payments. So now I don’t even have to think about it, every month the money is withdrawn on the same day and I don’t have to pay different companies on different days, which makes my budgeting and spending tracking so much easier. I decided to go with a shorter loan period and ended up paying basically the same each month but will be finished paying off my loan 7 years earlier (remember I have basically a house mortgage in school loans)! It is amazing how even a small interest rate reduction (mine weren’t that high to start with) can make a huge difference in paying off your loans.
That brings me to the last thing I changed. I started a budget that I didn’t just make and look at a couple times then forgot about. I really took the time to figure out where my money was going and how I could best reach all my goals. I used the program Mint, which you can use on your computer or as an app. You can put in all your information and it pulls everything into the app and organizes it by category. You can also put in specific goals and decide where extra monthly income will go. It was a life saver for someone like we who really didn’t want to go through and write all that information down from my accounts. Once I had all this information, I knew the journey through minimalism that I had begun would help me reach my goals, and it was so great to have everything laid out for me and know I had a budget I could stick to. Also, once you have it on paper, you can really start to see where small little changes start to add up and it is great motivation to keep going.
After I took the above steps (Reduced Eating Out and Food Waste, Reduced Shopping, Re-Financed Loans, and Created a Budget), I was able to see how minimalism was going to help me to accomplish all my whys. It was no longer a vague I want to do this, but no plan to get there. I now had a plan and that plan involved fully embracing a clean eating and a minimalism lifestyle. That was when my Journey to Personal and Lifestyle Redesign officially begun!
*Discounts for affiliate links:
Farm Fresh to You – $10 Off Your First 4 Boxes – Code: EATFRESH
Hello Fresh – $30 Off
Arbonne – Ask me how to get 40% Off
SoFi – $100 Cash Bonus
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