Spending Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Making Sense Of Cents

New car or older car?

Last Updated: December 19, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 18 Comments

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How much money would you have if you didn’t buy a nice car?

I bought a brand new car in 2008, and I constantly think about how I could instead have hardly any school loans and have tons of money saved, if I would have just bought something cheap instead and maybe waited awhile until I got a nice car, or just always drive a beater and save tons of money forever.

I could be saving $400 a month from not having a car payment and a tad in car insurance (my car insurance is extremely cheap because of multi-lines) and I would also be more sane. I’ve had over 16 people hit my car in the past 3 years (never my fault, nearly every time they drive away and someone reports them).

I constantly find dents and scratches and it drives me ABSOLUTELY INSANE. Right now the front and back of my car needs to be replaced because someone else messed it up. Over $5,000 worth of damage that I have just right now AHHH!

Anyways (to stay on topic), I could probably get something older that gets better gas mileage, to make life even easier/better. I could pay off my car and drive it to the ground, sell it and buy something cheap and make a profit, or buy a gas efficient car.

My goal is to pay off my car with my bonus money from work, and if that’s not enough, then pay off most of it and use my tax return money for the rest. I can’t wait until I have no more car payments! Was it worth it paying $400 every month for almost 4 years? I honestly don’t think so.

What do you think? New or Old? How does money play into your decision?

Do you think that a car is more of a luxury and something you don’t need, or is it one of the things in life that you like to splurge on?

Do you bring your lunch to work?

Last Updated: December 19, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 39 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I bring my lunch to work pretty much everyday. It saves a lot of money and I don’t have any close friends who work nearby, so why would I spend money to eat by myself? That wouldn’t be any fun.

However, my food choices usually are disgusting and boring. I might bring leftovers from the night before, or just bring a boring peanut butter and jelly sandwich, ham and cheese, or something boring and similar. Then I’ll bring a fruit (orange, grapes, apple) and chips. This gets SO BORING!

I never go all out and bring something fantastic. This mainly has to do with my laziness and the fact that I never wake up early enough to bring something better.

I’ve been seeing a lot of lunch inspirations on Pinterest that just look amazing! Don’t the pictures above look good? I think I’m going to make a goal for myself to make better lunches. I want to start bringing things that I would pay to eat at cafes such as good sandwiches, deserts and other pretty food items instead of the drab stuff that I usually bring.

Also, bringing my lunch to work saves a ton of money. Instead of going to BreadCo or some other lunch place and spending around $10 on lunch, I can make my food at home and spend probably $1 or $2. Do you bring lunch in order to save money? Or to be more healthy? 90% of the reason why I do it is so that I can save money, and this really shows in my food budget. I probably save a couple thousand a year by bringing my lunch everyday.

Do you bring your lunch to work? What do you usually bring? So many questions for you guys!

Spending, Life and Food Updates… 11/28/2011

Last Updated: December 19, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 7 Comments

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A lot has happened the past couple of days. To start off, I got my newest ATT bill (click here to read my other post) and even though they said they would get rid of the $30 charge, they STILL charged me. So I didn’t feel like talking to them on the phone again, so I just did the online chat. This took FOREVER. Maybe over an hour before I was connected. They took it off because the person said they saw that it was logged to be taken off but that it was a mistake on their end. If only they knew that I am currently searching for a better internet provider.

I don’t know if you remember me telling you a little bit ago that I was accepted onto the animal cruelty task force at an animal shelter, but that’s a no-go now. The BF won’t let me do it because he thinks I’ll be too tired. And I’ve been thinking about it, and he’s right. I’m going to wait until the summer time to start, because my classes will be winding down and I’ll only be taking 2 more classes between the summer and winter semester of 2012.

I went grocery shopping last night and bought $82 worth of stuff which I think is pretty good because I didn’t really buy any groceries last week. I really just needed to bread, fruits and vegetables this week, and then I bought some other little things at the store (I saw a Charlie Brown Christmas tree that I needed). We’ve been pretty decent with our food purchases, THANKFULLY!

Shopping this weekend was a little crazy because we spent waaaaay too much money.

We bought our Christmas tree last night also. We had to buy a fake this year because our little dog likes to drink the tree water from the real trees, and he was getting sick. I’ll post a picture soon! It’s pretty big (8.5 feet), and I’m in love! It almost hits the ceiling. I got a good deal on it too.

How was your week?

Spending, Life and Food Updates… 11/13/2011

Last Updated: December 19, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 11 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Sorry for the lack of posts yesterday. I somehow slept for 14 hours and by time I woke up, I had tons to do. Today is a pretty easy going day though. I have some stuff to do for my classes and I plan on making that Christmas wreath (above) today. Hopefully I actually do that! I’m not the greatest when it comes to doing stuff, so we’ll see how this goes.

Well, last week I signed up for a credit card. I only have 1 other credit card, and it’s boring. There’s no rewards or anything. The new card I have gives me back $300 as a bonus and also 5% on select stuff and 1% back on everything else. So I think this is pretty decent.

I went grocery shopping on Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday, I can’t remember) and spent $81. I bought a lot of stuff. We have made dinner nearly every night this. I went and got sushi on Thursday and it was great! And yesterday we went to a Mexican restaurant, but that was cheap ($19).

Alsooooo, me and the BF went shopping yesterday. I needed some new work clothes since it’s getting colder. I bought a pair of Express slacks, LOFT sweater, AE sweater and a shirt from Target. The BF bought a pair of Nikes and that’s all he liked. We didn’t spend a ton but we still spent money on clothes (that we probably didn’t need) but oh well. We’ve been so frugal with trying to pay off my student loans, that I think we deserved it.

Ok so I finally decided about my MBA problems, that I talked about here and here. I’m just going to graduate in the Fall of 2012 and stick with my MBA with a Finance emphasis, instead of just a General MBA instead of taking the rest of the 6 classes next semester and graduating early. Thanks everyone for your help! I’m taking 4 classes next semester, and either one in the summer and one in the fall of 2012, or just take 2 classes in the Fall. So after this upcoming semester, my MBA will be a breeze!

Anything interesting happen with you! I hope your weekend is going well!

Spending, Life and Food Updates…

Last Updated: December 8, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 17 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

My spending has been under control, THANKFULLY! We still go out on the weekends (as most of you know, this is my budget killer). We’ve been doing really good though. We spend around $50 on drinks over the weekend and that’s it. Which is a big improvement over a couple hundred every weekend. My friends would always have me buy shots and put it on my tab, but they would never return the favor, so now I just close my tab whenever I’m done, so that I’m not tempted to buy everyone drinks anymore. Kind of annoying when you buy a round and everyone takes it, and then no one buys a round back even though they say they will.

We’ve been doing good with food also. I went grocery shopping last week and I spent around $70 or $80, and this week I bought fresh vegetables, fruits, milk and bread for around $15. So I should be good for another week. I have a lot of ground beef again though, what can I make with it besides tacos, chili and pasta? HELP!

We haven’t gone out to eat at all this week. That’s if you don’t include the daily Lion’s Choice that the BF gets. So we are doing pretty good, I’m happy. Our food budget came in pretty low for the month. We have definitely improved ever since I started this blog, because I realized how much less other people spend on food and how much we are wasting.

I’m still completely addicted to Pinterest, and I waste a ton of time on it everyday. I wish I would have never looked at it!

How’s everything going for you?

Do you raise your deductibles to save money?

Last Updated: December 8, 2014 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 9 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Whenever I read articles about saving money, the article almost ALWAYS says to adjust your deductibles for different things, such as car and home insurance.

My auto deductible is at $1,000 and my house is at $1,500 I think (I’m not even sure, this amount may be way off, I should probably check on this). Some people think $1,000 is high, but I’ve never been in an accident where it’s been my fault, so I’ve never had to pay my deductible. I’m not too worried that anything will happen. And raising it from $500 to $1,000 saves around $100 every 6 months.

So what do you do? How high are your deductibles?

Facts About America’s Richest 1%

Last Updated: December 19, 2015 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 9 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Here are the top 5 facts about the 1% of our nation from Yahoo! Finance.

Top 1% owns 40% of the nation’s wealth. 25 years ago, the top 1% owned 33%. The bottom 80% today owns 7%.
Top 1% take home 24% of U.S. income. In 1976, the 1% took home 9%.
Top 1% own half of the country’s stocks, bonds and mutual funds: The bottom 50% of Americans own only 0.5% of these investments.
Top 1% of Americans have only 5% of the U.S. personal debt. The bottom 90% have 73% of total U.S. debt.
Top 1% take in more of U.S. income than at any other time period since the 1920’s.

What are your thoughts on this?

Here’s what Kevin on the comments of the article said:

“It doesn’t bother me so much that 1% are so rich, rather that 50% need to struggle so much.
If we as a nation could enable the working class to have a decent standard of living, making life affordable with the income provided from a decent job, I doubt we’d be as concerned with how much the high enders had.”

And on the other end, here’s what Sleeper Doc said:

“No comments on what it takes to be in the top 1%??? In my case…4 years undergraduate school, 3 years graduate school, 4 years medical school, 3 years residency. My parents were not rich….paid for by joining military. At age 57 I still work 55-70 hours per week. I enjoy what I do (anesthesiologist) so I am willing to make the sacrifice. If you didn’t invest as much time or money as I did in making yourself valuable….that may be part of the difference.”