Saturday, December 13, 2008

He Will Teach You To Be Rich

Like everyone, G2 and I are feeling the strains of a shitty economy. We recently decided several things...

* It would be beneficial for me to get some type of paying job. Multiple ideas were thrown out, but complications stem from several factors.
  • Neither of us wants to put G3 in daycare. Besides that, going back to my job as a vet tech would basically clear me about $10 a week after daycare and gas. So not worth it.
  • Gabe's job is not time-specific. Meaning, he does not punch out at 5pm on the dot every day. And he is "on call" every other weekend and 2 weeks a night. So me getting an evening/weekend job is also pretty limited.
  • Something that I could do from home would be ideal, such as babysitting another kid or a legitimate type of work from home job. Legitamate being the key word. Scams are rampant.

* In lieu of getting a "real" job (or until I find one) I need to be more aggressive with eBay and my writing. I have made a small amount of money writing for Helium (about $116 total) but by making myself write at least 1 (or more) articles a day I can certainly up my chances. G2 also suggested entering more contests and submitting to more magazines.

* We also made a list of ways to cut back on the amount of money we spend each week. Since we've made a lot of snippets over the last year, there isn't a whole lot of room, but there's some. We're not quite at the point of completely lowering our standard of living, but yet there are a lot of things we could do to save a buck (or 20, or more). Our main area is food. We spend a ridiculous amount of money on food, even with me CVSing and couponing and all that. We buy expensive, top of the line ingredients. We almost always buy fresh vs frozen. We throw a lot of leftovers away. And, twice to three times a week we buy food from a restaurant. Tuesday nights are "take out night", Thursday night is "G2's Night Out" and its pretty likely that at some point over any given weekend we will eat a meal out. I also do something social involving eating out about 1-2 times a month as well.

So, we've come up with our list, and while G2 is not willing to give up his weekly night out (as well as me not wanting to give out my random Girls' Night Out) we have agreed that take-out can be more sporadic and that we need to STICK to the grocery list, buy generic where it really doesn't matter (such as our toddler son's snacks...I know, we're terrible. Gourmet cheese for us, store-brand crackers for G3.) There are also a few other household things on the list (but we do pretty well in that dept.) as well as changing our cell and satellite packages to cheaper ones.

ANYHOW, the point of this post (you knew I'd get here eventually) is that when I sat down to make our list, I first googled "ways to save money". And I came across a GREAT blog, that I have read almost all of in my spare time over the last few days, and plan to add to the list of blogs I read regularly. Check out http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/. Its written by a 20-something Indian guy and is geared towards younger, college educated people, but its full of great advice, challenges and ways to--you got it--become rich. The really generalized theme is that instead of focusing on the economy and the world at large, focus on how much money YOU can save.

My husband has a ton of personal finance books, most of which can put me to sleep simply by looking at the cover. This blog is actually entertaining and a "good read"...as well as full of important and smart advice. I highly advise everyone to check it out!!

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