Recently got out of a long term live-in spouse relationship. It's sad on a lot of fronts, however, looking on the bright side it has freed me up to go back to my more intense frugal ways.
Allow me to tell a bit of my story.
After assessing my last year of credit card statements, I carefully categorized everything. I found myself with an enormous "Misc" column consisting of restaurants, social drinks, random purchases of Canadian Tire sale items I might as well get now cause it's on sale and I will use it eventually...
My statements were totaling upwards of $2K per month. What was I thinking!? After mortgage payment, utilities, groceries, gas, cell phone, internet, and other necessary or semi-necessary regular expenses I was only saving single digit percentages of my Salary. I didn't work out the numbers but I was probably going to be ready for retirement in... NEVER.
I'm proud to say that I completed an entire month and credit card statement session of close to $300 down from over $2000!!!
How did I do it?
1. Had to turn down the regular drinks after volleyball and other sports I play three nights a week.
2. Eating less by means of reasonable portion sizes. Example: A pack of 4 large boneless chicken breasts lasted 6 meals or more instead of 4. I have an extremely fast metabolism but I still am only human and don't need that much food.
3. Stopped looking through the weekly flyers of sale items and didn't go to a store unless I had a specific item I needed and only bought that item. No other browsing.
4. Social weekends consisted of house parties with BYOB instead of expensive outings to clubs/pubs/bars. If we were heading to the bar, I would be sure to top off my tank before departure ;)
Anyway, I'm proud and wanted to share :)
I'm already working hard on a repeat of last month.
