Money Obedience

CNN Money recently ran an article called “How to save $8,919.45 a year”. I thought I would alert you to this article since my wife wrote about a similar topic in her recent blog post that she called “How to 'Save' money from being sucked into hidden black holes in your family budget.”. In it, she said that she would try to post some more ways to reduce expenses and fight against “hidden” costs of living life in America on a family budget.

Well, I beat her to the punch by writing this blog entry about the article on CNN Money. It covers some good ideas, like organizing your grocery shopping trip before going to the store, brown bagging lunch and taking it from home to the office, buying generic rather than brand names, paying off credit cards faster to save a bundle, and how families with children can save by pooling baby-sitter services. They did make one suggestion about upgrading your appliances that I thought may bring some energy savings, but it would take quite a few years of energy savings to make the purchase of a new appliance pay for itself. So, personally, I would suggest that you skip buying the fridge for $800 so that you can save $150 in energy expenses each year, unless it is really necessary to replace the appliance now, and you have the money for the new appliance already saved up. (It's really no great savings if you add on credit card interest on top of the cost of the appliance!)

I am sure that my wife will be back with additional money saving ideas shortly. I tell you, she is very conscientious about spending money. For all you know she is already compiling a new list of savings ideas for you.