This entry is part 6 of 18 in the series Emergency Fund

Emergency Fund

This means looking at the details of your finances and budget after you’ve looked at the big picture, and set your goals while making the more drastic changes needed to loosen up your funds

A review of some examples of drastic changes you can make after you closely examine your big financial picture

    *Move
    *Declare bankruptcy if debt-ridden with no way out
    *Make the significant other get a job
    *Jingle mail your house keys and walk away from the mortgage
    *Get rid of the second car
    *Get rid of the first car and buy a paid-in-full vehicle
    *Have a big garage sale and sell your crap (don’t scoff, I made two grand once…keep your food stores, water filters and maybe the rain barrels and some tools–but you don’t need a lot of crap…seriously).
    *Sell all the televisions in the house. This means you need no more cable or satellite! Or just keep one and go down to basic. Keep the computers.

Scary, isn’t it? It’s Halloween, a good time for scary things, so suck it up and do something. You need to free up some cash.

Once you’ve freed up all the cash you can, there’s still more.

The small lens is living a frugal, simple lifestyle. It’s the little details that can save you a lot of money. I think people who reuse zip lock bags are nuts. Why spend money on the things in the first place? We throw away so many useful containers you can use to store leftovers, it’s ridiculous.

The number one thing you can do to plug small money leaks is to know every penny you spend. Every penny. Keep track of how much you spend at the convenient store, for that cup of coffee and Mickey Ds, for crap at Wal-Mart and add it up.

Every little bit of crap you buy, you need to weigh if you really need it. If you can possibly do without it–do so.

My pet peeve? Spending money on crap to store more crap. You know what I mean. All those fancy containers, even chests of drawers. They are just crap to store more crap. Get rid of your crap and you won’t need them.

Looking at your budget through the small lens is counting and minding your pennies. A penny saved is a penny earned. Utilities are a significant expense and probably what you should tackle first. How can you get those winter heating bills down? Include all your connection fees such as cell phones, cable, Internet in your utilities.

Food is another significant expense and deserves its own post–cut down on food waste and eat at home from staple foods rather than processed or prepared foods, you’ll cut your food bill in half and be healthier while eating butter and real sugar too. Eating a decent dessert is so much better than all the sneaky corn syrup you get guzzling processed foods.

Plug those small money leaks and you can easily sock away another ten percent.


Series Navigation«Understand credit before you burn yoursDrastic downsizing»

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