I’m going to save $72,500 in the next ten years. Without going to work.

A bunch of people have commented or contacted me since I revealed the state of my finances. Some are people who are in financial trouble and others are people who are making plenty of money and yet it still seems at the end of each month that they have nothing left in the bank.

You know I have a new boyfriend — Mr. Money Mustache. He’s changed the way I look at money in a lot of ways.

Now while I love him, he’s a little hard core for some people. And his ideas apply best to people who are making a decent enough living to survive fairly comfortably. If you are making a poverty level income, he’s not going to help you retire early.

But all of his suggestions will help you, no matter what amount of money you are making.

And one thing I never thought about was how he thinks of money not in the short term, but in ten year increments.

Like if you made a change, and stopped spending money in a certain area, how much money would that make you in ten years?

I have been thinking a lot about that.

Because one of my secret goals has been to make enough money so that I could pay someone to clean my house.

Weekly.

And here in CT with the size of my house, it would cost me at least $150 to have the whole house cleaned. At least. But I’m being conservative.

So let’s stick with $150 to be safe.

$150 x 52 weeks = $7,800.

$7,800 x 10 years = $78,000.

HOLY SHIT.

That’s a great down payment on a house.

Or it could be the balance on a mortgage.

It’s years and years of vacations.

Or four years of college. For a couple kids if they go to a state school.

And that doesn’t count interest or whatever you might accumulate if you invested that money.

I no longer have dreams of a cleaning lady.

Not when I think of it like that.

No, I don’t like to clean my house.

But I shouldn’t be doing it all by myself anyway.

The entire family should be doing it since they are all contributing to the mess.

Some more than others.

Okay. So maybe you don’t have a cleaning person.

But maybe there are things you do have that you could get rid of. Or things you could start doing that would save you money.

Things that could not only save you, but earn you a shitload of money over the next ten years.

Things like these:

1. Coupons

There are coupons for some really shitty stuff out there. And if you have ever watched Extreme Couponing, you may believe that’s only what there are coupons for. But there are coupons for lots of other things where, when you use them in combination with things that are on sale, you can save a lot of money. Things that aren’t potato chips and fruit snacks and candy and soda.

At my local grocery store this week, Suave Professionals Shampoo is on sale for $1.50/bottle and there is a coupon in this past week’s flyer for $3 off 2 bottles. So they end up being free.

You are allowed to use up to 4 of the same coupons per transaction in my local store. So you could get 8 bottles of shampoo/conditioner for nothing! Bic Razors are also on sale for $2.99, and there is a $3 off coupon in last week’s paper. So those are free also!

These are the kinds of things that we use a lot of and that don’t go bad and aren’t bad for you. And I’m not a shampoo or razor snob, so these brands are fine for me.

Now these are great deals, and you don’t always have deals that good every week, but if you use coupons on a regular basis, you could save quite a bit of money.

Right there, with just those two deals, if you had 4 coupons for both the razors and the shampoo and bought 4 pacs of razors and 8 bottles of shampoo/conditioner, you would save at least $30. You can easily save $50 a month using coupons. Easily.

But how do you get multiple coupons without spending a lot of money on newpapers?

You think outside of the box and you get creative.

People love my dad. Papa. Everyone loves Papa.

And he loves to talk to people. My dad will talk to anyone.

So I asked him if he’d talk to his local grocery store. Which, he did, because he loves me. And no one is going to say no to a cute, 70-year-old grandpa.

So now every Monday, he gets all the leftover coupons from all the Sunday papers that weren’t bought. Because the store just tosses then in the dumpster anyway. And this is what he got for me yesterday:

That’s a lot of fucking coupons.

It’s also a lot of potential savings.

Or earnings, if you want to look at it that way.

Don’t have time to match up coupons with what’s on sale? Neither do I.

That’s why I love Coupon Mom.

Every Sunday she publishes a list of sale items that are matched up with coupons. For pretty much every store in the country. Every Sunday I go to her site, see which things I could use, print off the list, and find my coupons.

It takes maybe an hour for me to do this, and I save at least $100/week.

At least.

That’s $400 a month.

So let’s do the math.

$400 x 12 = $4800.

$4800 x 10 = $48,000.

That’s a lot of money.

2. Getting rid of cable

I used to not really pay attention to our cable bill.

We had Showtime and HBO and one other movie channel that I can’t recall.

When we really started to have money trouble, I called and cancelled those premium channels.

I was shocked to learn that our monthly bill was still $85!

What the hell?

But I was a Bravo and Food Network addict. I needed cable. I wouldn’t survive without it.

What would I do without the Real Housewives and Andy Cohen and Ina and Chopped? I’d never survive!

Eventually, I had to accept reality. And get rid of the reality TV.

You know what? I don’t miss it at all, really. I am much more productive without it.

And I might even be happier.

We do have Netflix. You can watch just about every show in existence on there.

And believe it or not, I’m contemplating getting rid of that and surviving solely on DVDs.

But for now, we will keep Netflix. We pay $15/month.

So we have saved $70/month by switching from cable to Netflix.

$70 x 12 = $840/year.

$840 x 10 = $8,400!

For Theresa Giudice?

No thanks. I’ll keep my money.

3. Second hand clothing

When I had Number 4, I was pretty psyched to finally have a little girl to dress up.

I spent a stupid amount of money on new clothes. I bought a shitload of adorable, brand-new dresses for her.

I learned early that a 9 month old learning to crawl gets really fucking annoyed trying to do it wearing a dress.

So most of those 9 month dresses never even made it off the plastic hangers.

By the time Number 4 started walking, she absolutely refused to wear a dress. With three older brothers, she wanted to wear the same stuff they were wearing.

So all the 2T and 3T dresses went unworn also.

My dreams of the perfectly dressed and accessorized little girl went out the window.

Which was fine. Because I realized how much money I had wasted.

Then our money troubles began, and there was no money to buy new clothes, even if I had wanted to.

And that’s when I started letting all my friends know that I could use any clothes they were getting rid of.

And other than a couple pairs of pajamas, and new sneakers, I haven’t bought new clothes in two years.

I haven’t even bought used clothes. All the younger kids’ clothes have been given to us. Or they’ve gotten new things as gifts from relatives.

All of our dance shoes and cleats were given to us by friends. I mean, who wears out tap shoes and baseball or soccer cleats when the kids are little? The kids grow out of them before they even make it to the next season. You don’t need to buy that stuff new!

The older kids are responsible for buying their own stuff. And I have a few adult friends that have given me their hand me downs, too. A lot of Number 2’s wardrobe used to belong to my friends’ husbands. And most of whatever else he needs he gets at Goodwill and Savers.

So lets say you spend $100/season per kids on new clothes… what if you cut that back to $50? Or what if you stopped buying new clothes altogether? What if you only bought second hand stuff? Your kids wouldn’t mind. My kids are totally psyched to get “new” clothes from anyone.

And how many different outfits do they need? What are we teaching our kids, and our girls, especially, when we buy them fourteen different bathing suits and dozens and dozens of outfits?

I don’t know about you, but my girls wear the same five things anyway. The boys are even worse…They want to wear the same sweatshirt every day of the week. I pretty much have to pull those things off of their backs.

So let’s say your clothing budget is on the really conservative side. Let’s say you cut back from $100 to $50 per kid per season. That’s a savings of $200/year per kid (which is still a generous amount of clothing, in my book).

That’s a savings of $200/kid per year.

Which works out to $2000 per kid in 10 years. In my house, that works out to $14,000.

There’s another year of college paid for.

4. The Library

We have a book fair going on right now at the kids’ preschool. And all the elementary schools have book fairs, too. Usually twice a year. In addition to the book fairs are the book orders that come home, for some of the kids, once a month.

These can be hard to resist. But really, how many books do your kids need? I mean, I LOVE books for the kids. But I feel the same way about books as I do clothes. The kids enjoy a used book as much as a new one. Tag sales are great places to find books at a seriously bargain price.

Or you can get them from the library for free (as long as you remember to return them on time).

I used to drop $25/kid/book fair easily. At two fairs a year, plus monthly book orders, I bet I spent at least $100/year/kid on new books.

Now for this, I should cut the time down to 5 years. Because there aren’t many book fairs in middle school and high school.

So let’s say you forego the book fair and book orders for K – 4th grade.

5 years x $100 = $500/kid

Now that’s not thousands and thousands of dollars in savings, but it’s a good amount of spending money for freshman year of college.

Or, for me, with 5 kids in preschool and elementary school right now, that’s another $2500 saved. That’s enough for our family to go on vacation.

Good reason to go to the library.

5. Haircuts

Santa gave me a pair of clippers for Christmas. And now, rather than my husband and the boys getting haircuts every other month, I can do it.

The average cost of a haircut for them is $15.

$15 x 4 dudes = $60

That works out to $30/month for haircuts.

$30 x 12 = $360/year

$360 x 10 = $3600! For haircuts!

The $35 investment for some clippers is clearly worth it.

All of these things might not be on your list.

But I bet there are other things you could stop doing that would make  you money.

Do you buy coffee every day? Buy lunch from the deli? Have a gym membership you never use? Do you pay someone to cut your grass? What is one thing you could live without?

Pick something, and get rid of it.

You can thank me in ten years.

 

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