How I Plan to Stop Giving My Money Away

There are so many ways to waste our money that I thought I might compile a nice little list and maybe take it a step further by coming up with ways to avoid these. For the longest time I thought I was penny savvy, frugal, and even cheap at times... little did I know I have been blowing half my income out the window! After thinking about it just a little, man, that's a ton of cash! I realize I need to come up with a plan to stop giving my money away!

The one that has the biggest impact on my health would be smoking... I've been smoking for longer than a person my age would ever admit. I spend about 6.50$ on a single pack of cigarettes, and go through about 3 packs in about four days. At this rate I figure I smoke about 5$ a day, and 35$ each week, and about 1,825$ each year! That's the same amount I pay on my house for three whole months! That means if I only quit smoking I could pay off my house ten months early! In order for me to change this I am going to have to quit! Me being a smoker needs to change for more reasons than I can even begin to list. My Plan... I am going to have to wean myself off of the Nicotine slowly. Every four days I will lower my smoking allowance by one cigarette. After 80 days, and 20 drops of allowance I will have become a non smoker!

The next horribly wasteful thing I personally enjoy is my energy drinks. I have issues with sleep and those issues leave me tired all of the time. Each morning I typically buy, and chug 2-3 Java Monster's. That means that they cost me just as much as the smokes do! That's another 1,825$ plus smokes means between the two I am wasting about 3,650$ each year! In order to quit drinking these I need to do it nice and slowly, for the next week I will only buy one each day, and the following week I will No longer buy them at all. (Beware you can go through Caffeine withdraws, and those are not nice)

I also feel I spend too much cash on gas, I feel so strong on this that I am already looking for a newer car. I currently drive a truck, and yeah I love it, but it is the biggest gas hog I have ever been in. I know every person out there is upset with the high price of gas, but for me to put 20$ in my tank every three days and to keep running low... is just plain sad. I would understand if I worked far away, or drove all the time but I do not, I work less than 15 miles away and only drive to and from work. So it's either a new bike or a newer car. I would like to be in the newer car in the next 2 months, maybe sooner.

Aside from gas, being at the office as long as I am also is starting to put a damper on my budget. I've found that as my nights get longer I seem to be hitting the vending machine more and more often. Be it a soda, chips, a bag of peanuts or an Ice Cream bar... I am currently spending about 15$ every week in vending machine junk. The only two ways that come to mind to fix this is to either stop eating all together or to start packing a larger lunch and start drinking more water. A lot of people don't realize that when you drink more water you feel fuller, but it's actually that your body was likely dehydrating and once you gave it the water it wanted it quit craving random salty treats! Vending Machines are the most challenging things for me when I work more hours, usually on a forty hour week I can restrain myself, but on a 65-75 hour week... there is no telling how many trips to the big mean vending machine I might make...

The last and sometimes most frustrating of all of it... I hate that I have to pay interest. I waste (as of right now...) about 260$ each month in interest on my home loan. Every day I stop and think is there anything I can do to get this black cloud to quit following me around so much... The answer is no. Short of winning the lotto I am not going to be able to just pay it off. I do not make that much. However when it comes to doing all I can to start to pay it off as fast as I can... That I can do. If I were to manage to correct all of the things I have mentioned above and if I were to put it all right on the house note I would be able to have my home all the way paid off in as little as two and a half more years! One Day soon I want to have it all paid off, I want to be completely out of debt and be able to live comfortably with just me, my kids and a couple goldfish!

All in all I am sure that if we all take a step back and look at our finances we might find that there are other paths that might be a little bumpier up the hill but a really pretty ride back down the other side...