Hello ladies (and men if they're reading too),
I'm curious to know what everyone does to help cut daily living expenses. Here's my story: I haven't been dancing for a while (busy with school and needed a mental break from it), and feel like i've finally gotten somewhat good at living very inexpensively. Looking back, it was crazy how much i'd spend every day on stuff like taking cabs instead of subway, ordering takeout (i'd spend approx $40-$50 a day in take-out...maybe the sushi was so expensive?), getting my nails done instead of doing it myself, expensive gyms versus moderate gyms, etc. Nowadays i've been able to live off of 100-150 a week (not including rent) for transportation, food, etc. It feels good to get the budget more under control.
Here's some of the things i've been doing:
-Buying a 2-liter of diet pepsi and filling my smaller bottles with it (each smaller bottle would be 2 dollars each..that would make a full pepsi 2-liter bottle cost approx. $10 dollars if I added it up!).
-bought 16 ounce (tall) travel coffee cups so I could make my coffee or tea at home instead of spending 3 dollars on a cup. Also bought a small jar of instant coffee so whenever I want a coffee fix wherever I am I can make it in the transportable coffee cups and heat it up.
-Make my own salad by saving the cute plastic salad containers from the cafe's I would buy them, and in the morning make my own salad, throw a can of tuna on top (or you can do tofu or chopped chicken), and bring it to work etc. (a rought estimate of costs, cafe-bought would be approx 9.00 versus 4.00 for making it at home, so save approx 5 dollars).
-buy fruit on sale and bring it with me wherever I go. I bought grapefruit 3/2.00 instead of at some bodega in a pricey neighborhood that wanted 3.00 for one grapefruit.
-would buy energy protein bars at CVS or Duane reade for 1.99 whereas the same brand and size would be 4.00 at some convenience stores!! crazy!
All of this seems to add up big time. A year ago with dancing, I wouldn't care about this at all. Saving 5.00 wouldn't mean a thing to me. No wonder I barely saved any money...it's crazy how quickly I burnt the cash. How very dumb, I think when looking back. How can you become fully independent and start building up a nice nest-egg with an attitude like that, burning money like crazy? I feel like i've learned my lesson and hope I don't ever be as careless as I used to be. I was a real fool!
Anyone here have money-saving tips they'd like to share? Thanks so much and let's save our money!![]()



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