Money

Save money applying the 80/20 principle - part 2

This is Part 2 in a series on how to apply the 80/20 principle to save money. The full series is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

You are using 20% of your stuff 80% of the time.

Today tips will allow you to control your impulse buy. I know it is very hard for some people but if you try to follow these rules you will save a great amount of money.

Limit unnecessary purchase

Use a 30 days waiting list: I read this tips on TheSimpleDollar blog few months ago and try to follow it as much as possible.

It’s very easy to setup: Every time your think your are doing an unnecessary purchase don’t buy it immediately and write it on your waiting list (I personally use a calendar to do so). Thirty days later review your list (I do this review after 15 days but, whatever, just pick a delay that fits you). If you still need the item buy it, if not just remove it from the list.

Thanks to this list you will cut a bunch of purchases you’d have done in a rush excited by a new product.

Save money on your food groceries

1. First, plan your meals for the week. (I need to do so more often )
   
2. Make a list of food you need before shopping.
3. Stick to it while in the store.

Thanks to your plan you won’t buy too much food that will be trashed if not eat soon enough. Your list will allow you to not forget anything but above all to not buy something unnecessary.

Since you meal are planned you should batch your cooking sessions. First you could buy food in bulk that is less expensive and you will save time. Prepare for example a big amount of soup for the week you will eat every night…

Another great advice is “Never go to buy groceries being hungry or with your children”. Shopping hungry will make you buy too much food and your children will beg you to buy candies, fun and unnecessary stuff.

Save money on your clothes

If your closet is full of shit you are gonna like this advice. I can’t remember where I read it but it’s great. I call it “The backward hangers rule”. The point is to identify all your unnecessary clothes to get rid of them. To do so:

You need to hang all your clothes in your closet as I do.

1. Go right now to your closet and take all of your clothes and hang them all backward. I mean “hangers in the non-natural direction and back of your outfit toward the left side of your closet for instance”.
2. From now every time you will put any of your stuff back in this closet you will hang it forward, “hanger in the natural direction and back of your clothes toward the right side of the closet”.
3. Keep doing step 2 during two or three months. Put an event in your calendar to remind you.
4. After two or three months you will notice all the clothes you never wear are still hanged backward. Remove them from your closet

Benefits:

• You will be morally appeased to have a clean closet.
• You will identify what kind of outfit you wear most of the time. It will be useful next time you go shopping. Why buy this beautiful trench coat while you never wear the one you get last winter?
• You can give clothes you never wear to charities.
• You can organize yard sale and get some money or sell them on eBay.

I hope all these tips are useful. Feel free to add your own in comments sections.

photo credit: kiki99

© 2008 Unbalanced man.