Penny-pinching, thrift, and budgets

[cjsmith]

A week or two ago I happened to come across a GREAT magazine article on how to save money without going so deep into penny-pinching that you give up. Its main premise was that you can do much more with less effort by attacking the big bills first: look into refinancing your house, shop around for a better rate on your car insurance, etc. (Lots of etc. that I can now no longer remember.) If those aren't enough, THEN penny-pinch.

Just now I googled for that article and can't find it. Oh well. I did find some penny-pincher links along the way:
How to Save Big Without Feeling Deprived
Article in The Oregonian with several Web addresses on stuff like home maintenance, cheap cooking, and frugal stuff for parents

These are all great ideas, but my favorite is still the discipline of tracking where every single penny goes. Payments by credit cards are included, as is every check I write and anything on automatic bill pay. (I'm not as good at this as it sounds. It's still useful. It would be more useful if my records were more complete -- after all, the less "visible" payments are the most insidious.) With a chunk of data in hand, I can look at the categories and compare them. Stuff JUMPS OUT at me. I swear my spreadsheet has little neon signs: "Restaurant Lunches Are Expensive!" It's like getting a budget-wise article custom written for my own life.

Comments

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

And here I was thinking that only men had premature optimization issues.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I enjoy the optimizations of the man I am with. :-)