051 - How To Save Hundreds A Month Without Giving Up The Things You Love (pt 1)

Saving money isn’t about giving up the things you love. It’s about finding creative and cheaper ways to get the same result.

 Applying this concept to may different expenses can snowball into hundreds of dollars each month. 

 Start small with the easy wins. And once you see your results, you’ll be trying to find other ways to stack more savings. 

Info packed article comparing food prices across different grocery stores.

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Transcript

Welcome to Roaming Returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing so that you don't have to wait til retirement to live your passions. 

Saving money isn’t about giving up the things you love. It’s about finding creative and cheaper ways to get the same result. That way you can invest the money difference. 

Stacking cheaper alternatives really adds up each month. So start with the easy wins. And once you see that magic, you'll be jonesing to add more.
In an effort to not blow you guys' brains up with all the juicy information we have coming, we're going to break this episode into two different parts that are 45 minutes apiece. Tim, what are you doing? I'm in a ditty. All right, guys.
We are back with the third installment of this money saving hyper focus thing that we're on. Well, it's like I understand there's not a lot of tickers and things like that. But like if you implement that, what we've been discussing, you'll actually have more money for tickers.
So I think we already gave you that portfolio that Tim was talking about. So I updated the portfolio that's coming out soon ish. But it'll be soon because we have other podcast ideas.
Like I mean, the portfolio is updated, but like I don't know when we're going to do it over the podcast. It'll be soon. All right.
So today's whole point is if you don't want to do the credit card point cash back, you don't want to do the tax return and you don't want to switch buying renting or you're already doing all of those things. This is another episode for ways to save money. But we're going to focus on it from the perspective of not actually withholding yourself.
So like not cutting stuff out, but reducing spending by doing things more intentionally or in better ways, potentially. Well, if you're a nomad like us, you will understand the intentional living is like a lifestyle. If you're not a nomad, you just jammed us because we're cool.
If you make an informed decision about each and everything, like if I'm going to go to the grocery store, I have a list. I'm just going to buy what I intend to buy, not just shop willy nilly. Intentional living is a way to reduce clutter, reduce stress, reduce waste.
It's an awesome way to live, but it's a lifestyle. But if you're looking for ways to save money, it's also a way to save money. And I'm telling you, everything that we've went over, once you start seeing your bank account and your brokerage account start to climb in dollars, you're going to be like, oh my God, this is working.
You're going to become addicted to it. It's just it's ripping the bandaid off, getting started. Once you actually start to see the results that you're reaping, oh my goodness, you're going to be like, this is awesome.
Yeah. So if it's painful to do the big stuff, start with a couple of small things and let that snowball compound. And don't do what most people do, where they do a crazy overhaul and then it's something they can't maintain over time.
It's better to start small with things that are actually, you can be disciplined and continue to do. Like investing, saving money you need to be consistent with. Like it's not like a one time thing.
So start small, start easy. Like when you change your diet, you don't just go from eating meat to being a vegetarian because if you do that, you're going to go back to eating meat within like six months. Quitting smoking is the other big one.
Like if you're trying to stop quitting smoking, how many people can actually quit cold turkey? It's not really a thing for most people. I went from smoking cigarettes to vaping to num nums. So the whole point of this is find something that's easy or find the thing that's like, wow, that's going to make the biggest difference in my life.
So listen to the whole list, mentally take some notes on what you think you should focus on first if you're intending to save more money and start there. And then as you get some results, you'll get more excited and then you'll want to find more ways to actually save more money. Speaking of num nums, hold on.
Hold on. Here we go. Here we go.
Let me pop the tin. And so question, how much money are you saving doing that? First of all, it doesn't stink. It doesn't make me disgusted.
It's less expensive. The average cost of a pack of cigarettes is like six dollars. My num nums are $2.50 and the num nums last probably three times as long.
So I'm probably saving anywhere between $20 and $30 a week. And from a user experience standpoint, do you like them better? Yes. They don't fuck up my lungs.
They don't fuck up my gums. They don't fuck up my teeth or my breath. And they taste good, right? You got that cinnamon.
It is like a dessert. Versus like, I don't even know what you want to call it. Burnt ass.
I don't know. It tastes like rubber. What's funny is like, what's funny? Because now, like when Tim smells people smoking, he's like, oh, my God, the fact that I couldn't even smell how bad I smelled and how they smelled when I was smoking.
He's like that. I can smell someone smoking within a three mile radius. It's ridiculous.
I'm somebody smoking within. Kiki, is somebody smoking within a three mile radius? Stop them, Kiki. All right.
So that's just I don't even think we have that on the list, but you're not giving up the nicotine. You're not giving up the love of the mouth sensual thing for Tim. Tim still is a joy.
And he's actually increased enjoyment by switching over to the on brand. And a huge plus of the num nums is I can take them anywhere, whereas you can only smoke like in a four foot section in like three or four different designated places. Oh, yeah.
That's difficult to even in the airport. It's like a plane. When I vaped, I was like, I'd like to vape.
But I actually literally had to go to the smoker's lounge to vape. And it was horrible. So then I just got num nums.
Oh, amusement parks for the other one. He's like, I can't even vape here. He's like, this doesn't even affect anybody.
Yeah. So that's just all right. So we've kind of broken these down into categories.
So we're going to start with the living cost thing. We did just discuss your living situation, intentional living. So downsizing might sound bad.
But if you actually look up the statistics, the average person spends 90% of their time in 10% of their house. So the question comes to you is, do I really need all of this space that I'm paying to maintain, putting energy to maintain, and all those things? I think new houses are $262 a square foot or something. So it's like, do you really need all that space? So if you just ask yourself that question and you realize you don't, like Tim and I are so much more happy when we're basically contained to one room.
We have everything we need in front of us. We don't have to worry about the rest of the freaking house. We would be ideal.
We were just talking to somebody that was complaining about how much their rent is. And I was like, dude, there's studios available across the street for half of what you're paying. You're saying that the rent isn't available.
Is it that the rent's not available? Or is it that you are so set on a specific square footage for whatever reason? The reason that the bigger places rent, I have no empirical evidence for this. It's just a hunch. And my hunches are generally OK.
The reason that, like, say, I don't know, 2,000 square foot places that you rent are so expensive versus like an 800 square foot place is not because of the difference in square feet. It's because they know people are goldfish and they have a bunch of shit coming with them. So they can only move to bigger places.
So the market's all going to be the 2,000 square foot places so they can jack the rent up. If you can downsize just a little bit and then move into like a 1,000 square foot place, it's going to be probably 30 to 40 percent cheaper than the 2,000 square foot place. And it has nothing to do with it.
It's just because they know that the supply and demand, they can raise the price of the higher the higher square footage places. Yeah, I mean, and it is everybody's imperative to, like, get bigger and attain more stuff. Well, is that really intentional? Is it necessary? I can't even tell you how many times I've gone through the closet.
I'm like, I didn't even remember I had some of the stuff I had. So it's like, why am I paying to store this thing? And that's not even at a storage rental. It's in your closet.
Yeah, if you have a storage rental, you have too much shit. And I know like 50 percent of Americans have storage rentals, but you have too much shit. Well, there are the caveat people who have it because they have a business and they need to rotate certain stuff.
That's a different story. We're talking about the people who really like, why do you have a storage unit? What happens is they buy a $400,000 house with a two car garage. The cars are never in the garage.
They put a bunch of shit in the garage. And then once the garage is full, then they have to get a storage unit. So they have more space to store.
But the thing is, again, we're not necessarily telling you to get rid of stuff, but look through your stuff. If it's no longer serving, you're actually doing an injustice to somebody else who would love to have that thing. And you might actually be able to make money by getting rid of it.
I can't even tell you how many books talk about if you go through your home and you actually appraise everything that you own, if you're willing to part with the majority of it or start from scratch, you might be able to actually find your entire investing nest egg in the stuff that you currently own to retire today. The average person has $300,000 or 300,000 items in their house. If you just sold every item for a dollar, that's $300,000.
And what were we talking about with the investing thing? $300,000 at the 10% gives you $30,000 a year, which is just whatever, 2,500 a month or something. It's a lot. And if you invest it in a slightly better interest rate, you very conceivably could have $3,000 a month right there.
So I'm just saying it's changing perspectives. It's getting more intentional. And we would prefer to retire sooner than later.
So if you need to potentially give up some... And I'm a tool junkie, like hands down. So if I need to get rid of some of this stuff right now and maybe make friends with somebody who has all the tools that I need or rent them when I need them to retire now, and then I can buy what I want from those proceeds on that monthly basis, I think that's a better option for me. You guys do what you want.
We're just giving you ideas right here. Ideas. So we have a space downsizing.
Now the next two aren't completely feasible for everybody, but they are an option. If you are a remote worker, these may very well... If you look at your taxes, one of the big easy ways to reduce your spending or reduce your expenses is to move to a location that has less taxes. South Dakota, Florida, Texas.
I mean, if you want to stay in the Northeast, an option would be Pennsylvania. I don't like it, but because they don't actually have tax on food. I was going to say, figure out... So if your budget is grocery store heavy, just move to a state that has a lower tax or no tax on food.
Yeah. Pennsylvania doesn't have any actual tax on unprepared food. So if you go to the grocery store, zero tax.
But if you're, say, you're retired and you're living off of your pension or your 401k... Dividends. Move to a state that doesn't tax those. Yeah, doesn't tax dividends, doesn't tax... South Dakota doesn't tax them.
Yeah. And there are other states. South Dakota is not someplace you find savvy.
I think Florida does too. Florida does too. I think Texas as well.
There's some other states, but you do have to look at some of the other stuff. Like some of the states that have very low taxes have really high either taxes or costs on other stuff. Like Wyoming was one of the ones we were considering becoming nomadic and being part of until I realized that the car registration costs were like, oh my God, through the nose, like insane cost of money.
I don't understand how. There's like 4,000 cars in Wyoming. I don't get it either.
But South Dakota is the state that we settled on personally because it just fit the bill for everything. And because we're going to be nomadic, we don't really care about the cold winters there because we won't be there. So again, do some research.
If you're a nomadic person, then you don't actually have to go to the office. And you say you live in San Francisco or New York. I mean, an option would be to move to a suburb of that area because the cost of living is ridiculous in New York and ridiculous in Los Angeles and ridiculous in San Francisco.
Oh, and then most of those big cities have public transit, which we were going to get into next in the car section. But I was just doing the research. Like when we go down to DC, we don't drive into DC.
We go to one of the metro end terminals, like Shady Grove is the highest one that's closest to us. We'll park there. It's like five bucks for the day.
And then we'll get a daily metro pass. And we'll just fly, like scoot in, do whatever we want. It's completely unlimited.
I think it's like $9. If you live in a city like that, you might need to reevaluate your car ownership. Yeah.
It might not actually be worth it for your situation if you're not driving more than just to and from work. Now, it might be a little more cumbersome when it comes to grocery store stuff, but that doesn't mean you can't make friends with somebody who has a car or you just frequent shops more often. So your bags are less when you're coming home.
We just did the numbers for DC. DC's monthly unlimited is $192. If your car insurance is $160 a month, your car payment's $200 to $300 a month, your gas is, I don't know, $100 a month, your oil maintenance, whatever, parking, parking's insane in DC.
I mean, you do the math. That might be a better option. You can save hundreds of dollars.
Hundreds of dollars a month. You just get rid of the car and get like an e-bike. Like my cousin, yeah, my cousin lived in New York City and she got rid of her car because it just didn't make sense for her.
And then when she moved to Texas, which, you know, bigger, everything's further apart, she got a car again. So it's depending on your life situation at the current time. We need to rethink some of these things.
In the general, like this is not like most of this stuff is like I understand we're a finance podcast, but like I really believe that most of this stuff should be thought about outside of finance. Life relates to finance. So it's all intertwined.
So I mean, these are still things that we can't isolate because it's not serving the audience. The next one is declutter and declutter. What that does more than save you money is it frees up bandwidth in your brain.
It makes your house healthier. It makes you happier. So like there's a lot of different components of decluttering that actually don't pertain to investing.
Again, we talked about it. If you have a whole bunch of stuff you don't use and you can make money off of it, why wouldn't you get rid of it? Tim's rule of thumb is if I haven't used something in a year, it's gone. Now, not everybody can do that.
And it is very hard to get rid of stuff because it's more imprinted. The memory, that's a big issue of mine. Plus, I like tools.
But see what Carm helped me with is like if I like say I had a shirt that I like, oh, I loved like 10 years ago. She'll just take a picture of it and store it on the cloud. And then I can get rid of the shirt and still have the memory of the picture on the cloud.
Yeah. So if it doesn't fit anymore, but he loves the shirt. It's like, why are you keeping the shirt? Either frame it, stick it on the wall.
Or she has a friend that takes everything. Oh, I love it. I don't want the house anymore.
I just give it to her friend and I can go over there and visit anytime. And be like, oh, I remember when I got that. Do the yard sale to do all that stuff.
When if we sell if I focus on the condo, we sell for the proceeds. I'm going to get a crap ton of money from that. It doesn't make sense to me to nickel and dime and try to put stuff on Facebook marketplace because it takes time to do the listings.
It'll pay for a city permit for the yard sale. And then people come and they nickel and dime you. You have to set up like to me, that's too much of a hassle.
I'd rather just give it to somebody who knows a bajillion people and she can give them amazing gifts. So like if you're the person who wants ideas to give gifts to people without spending money, go hit your friends up for crap they're not using. You'd be surprised that like little knickknacks that are gold gems for some people and you're just like, eh, not a big deal.
I can't even tell you some of the stuff I've had. And she's like, oh, my God, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. And I'm like, oh, and when you see that they're that excited about something you don't care about, you want to give it to them because it makes you feel good.
So it's this interesting thing. I don't like putting stuff in landfills if it's something that's still usable. So that's why I'm doing it that route.
But like downsizing, again, decluttering, you actually do save more money because then again, you can downsize your space because you really don't need all of that. And I really like multipurpose items. Like if you had a couch that flipped up and had storage space and then you could flip it up into the wall and turn it into a bookshelf or something, you know what I mean? Like Murphy beds totally tickle my fancy.
Well, I can tell you from personal experience, once I got rid of most of my stuff, I felt so much better. So I'm just saying it's like it's healthier and it's freeing. Like there's something free about not having cinder blocks, as her dad would say.
Well, you'll be surprised at the subconscious bandwidth that every item in your house is actually sucking energy from you. So if you have energy issues, you might want to consider getting rid of some stuff. You'd be surprised how much actual mental clarity and energy comes back to you.
It's bizarre, but it actually is a thing. Okay, now over to the car. Now the first point we have here, I actually looked up a cost of a new car versus a used car and it was a Toyota Camry.
So the difference between a Camry that's new and the Camry that's used was about $18,000. Like you literally could almost buy a whole other Camry for the difference in the price between new and... At least when I bought certified used. In the last episode, we were talking about like when you buy new, I think, and you drive it off the lot, the vehicle loses about 30% of its value.
Like it's kind of crazy. So it's like, do you really need a brand new vehicle? I know some people are real finicky and OCD about that. That's fine.
But if you're one of the people that you're not and you just didn't know this tidbit, like there's a huge way to save a crap ton of money. And the less amount of money you have on a loan, the less interest you're paying a month and the less interest you pay in the long term. And then with a new car versus a used car, your insurance actually goes down with the used because they need to insure less.
At 3.4% every year that your car ages is your insurance. So for example, if it was a six-year difference, it'd be $141 a month to $123 a month. And it doesn't seem like a lot, but add that up over time.
And then as it depreciates... 18 times 10 is $180, so that's $220 around there. And then you can take advantage of multi-car discounts. If you don't have the second vehicle, you can actually go in with somebody you're living with.
That point we just brought up, I think it's a big point that I think people should actually focus on when they're trying to save money. $141 a month versus $123 a month does not seem that significant. It's only $18.
But if you take that times 12, it becomes more significant. It's a 220... Hold on. I'm doing a math.
$216. See, now that seems more significant. Then you do that over five years? $1,080.
If you apply that to ATM fees, you apply that to credit card late fees, you apply that to all these things we bring up, it might not seem significant until you actually extrapolate it out to a year or two years. And you're like, holy crap, I'm saving a shit ton of money. And I read this book.
I think it was about habits, but it had a really good concept that this biking team sucked, like royally sucked. And they were like, okay, we're going to evaluate every single thing that makes an impact on improving our biking output. And instead of focusing on one big thing, they focused on all these tiny things over time.
And as they stacked up, they literally were crushing and winning in competitions. It was like shaving down weight, making sure that the tires were lubed and that the brakes were in good check and that hydration, higher sleep quality. It was like all these things that you wouldn't necessarily correlate with better biking output made a huge impact.
So it's like all these little things in finance, if they're easier to do and they're thoughtless or you can automate them, you're instantaneously saving money without putting any bandwidth into it. I'm saying like 18 here, 18 here, 14 there, 12 there, 16 here. You'll be amazed.
All the little things will actually add up to a big amount. And then if you extrapolate that big amount out over a year, you're going to blow yourself away. Like, oh, my God, I'm saving like $10,000.
We're actually going to get to that when we go to the finance section. So let's tie up here with the car thing. And we talked about the public transportation.
Another thing you can do to actually save money for your vehicles is to like learn about maintenance, like oil changes, tire inflations, that kind of stuff, changing your filters. They're pretty simple. You'd be surprised at the amount of fuel efficiency that that saves.
The other big, big one, driving conservatively versus like lead footing things. We learned this- Driving the van. Driving while we were driving.
I was doing like 45, 50 miles an hour and our gas efficiency went up like five or six miles per gallon. Yeah, and that's huge in an older vehicle. So that was like 33% increase in gas efficiency.
Like you don't hear about an old V8- 99 V8. 99 V8, 1500, big van, getting 22 miles per gallon. You do not.
That is unheard of. And it was just, and another aspect, I know like you're all, I'm saving money and it's better for the vehicle, but you actually can enjoy the drive because you can look around and you can observe and- Yeah, like we actually prefer not taking highways. I mean, it does get stressful like on highways because people are all doing like 80 and you're like, whoa, especially those big semis.
Well, and that's the thing too. If you have a hybrid, you'll notice that you actually start using and consuming gas once you get above the 55 mile an hour mark. Like there really is something.
I think MythBusters did an episode where they've figured out that 55 miles an hour is like the sweet spot. And then to even further blow your mind sock off, her mom drives like a crazy person and she was doing what she was doing and we basically got to the same locations within like five minutes of each other and we were driving 45, 50 miles an hour. Her mom was doing the stop, go, stop, go, speeding around.
Like stressful driving, rage road, road rage, all that stuff. And she was all stressed out. So like that goes to like my belief is people are in a hurry to go nowhere because the turtle gets to the same location as the hare.
Like that, I mean, it's an Aesop fable, but the turtle won. All right. So popping off from car stuff.
The next one's a mind sock blower. So your phone bill, and this is actually something we're in the process of converting because I am so sick of how expensive Verizon is. I was shocked when I like the average phone bill per phone per person is 141 a month.
That is just retarded. Absolutely freaking retarded. And I have four people on my phone right now because I have my mom and my brother on as well as Tim and I. I used to have five of my other brother popped off when he got married and whatnot.
If you do an individual phone, they charge you more per month per individual. The more people you add onto your plan. So one of the ways you could save money is possibly pulling you and your friends into a multi whatever plan and then hooking up different bank accounts to it to pay all in one or Venmoing automatically or something along those lines.
I know Verizon gives you discount if you auto pay. Again, 141 a month. Just let that sink in.
141. When I know they have like, what is it? Chime and Mint Mobile and shit like that. So Mint is for AT&T.
If you do like the Verizon service because they do have a lot more coverage. Vision is actually owned by Verizon. I don't even understand.
They use the same towers that Verizon uses. You're getting basically the same service that you're getting through your Verizon phone plan with $25 a month. No added fees like it is.
It's a flat fee. It's ridiculous. What's crazy about that is if you actually want the wide band, which is now an option, you can upgrade to their higher package, which is still only $45 a month.
141. Versus 25. I mean, come on.
And because it's Verizon, you're going to be able to use the same phone if you have a Verizon phone versus an unlocked phone. Like it's a no-brainer. That seems significant.
141 to 25. It's not like the 141 to 123. Yeah.
And that's a month. That is a month. But here's the thing, though.
Part of the issue I'm going through right now is it is a fucking pain in the ass to transfer, to port your phone number, to get all your apps moved over. But then again, there's a lot of people who upgrade their phone every year. For $1,200, we'll figure it out.
That's what I'm saying. I haven't done this because we're always using old phones. And I was just like cringing because I just bought another phone for $200.
My phone's from like 2006. That was absolutely painful for me. But I am going to upgrade because mine is just like it doesn't work.
It freezes. It's like it's a knockoff. It's just retarded.
So I am going to get a Samsung because I do prefer. And then the next one is the internet. And here's again, people are overpaying.
It's $75 a month. Well, I actually think that's pretty average. We're paying $59, I think.
And that was because I'm paying a little bit more and not doing that thing where I discount hop because I just wanted a consistent fee. I set it. Forget it.
I just didn't feel like dealing with it. But where most people get raped on their internet is paying to rent the router from the actual provider. If you buy your own, you save, I don't know, $5, $10 maybe a month.
Like that adds up over time. Again, adds up. So I'm saying like you're just seeing all these little things where like we're already in hundreds of dollars.
Because to me, internet is one of those weird essentials. But the problem I have with it is I think 78 to 80% of people use their smartphone as their internet thing. So they don't actually need.
Yeah, but they pop over onto the Wi-Fi. So they are using their house internet. I think a lot of people do actually because they'll turn it off.
But I'm saying like internet to me is an essential because it allows you to do everything else. It allows you to research. It allows you to, you know, figure out your bank accounts.
You have access. So even if you're 75 and then you said we pay 52 or something like that, it's still $23 a month. Well, but again, it depends on their usage.
They have five people in the house actually using the bandwidth. Like you're going to have a problem. That's why if I go over to my parents house, like when dad's juicing the TV at like 5K streaming on his boomer tube boomers.
My dad watches so many hours. TV is just insane. My brother was like freaking out over the amount of usage of my dad with his TV crap.
So he actually had to upgrade the internet because it was just like throttling everybody else's stuff. Tim and I only have two people and like we're not gaming. We're not doing crazy stuff.
So we have like a 50 I think megabyte per second upload download and it's absolutely fine. That's like through Verizon Fios, which whatever we're going to switch over to Starlink when we get in the van, which is going to be a little more money, but it'll be worth it to have the internet in National Forest. So again, intentional living.
That is a choice we're making for the convenience factor. So we can actually afford the 20 or $30 extra a month because we actually have done the car insurance. We've done the eating out versus cooking.
We've done the oil change, doing our own oil changes. So we've saved money to actually that we could then turn into. And that is the key.
It's more intentional spending. It's not necessarily budgeting because budgeting sounds limiting, but it's intentional spending. You cut back on the stuff you really don't care about so that you can spend higher on the things that really bring positive benefit into your life.
Okay. Here's another one. Blow your mind sock.
Oh, we're not eating it. Sorry. Never mind.
Keep your mind sock on. What did we say in the last episode? People spend like $1,000 a year on streaming subscriptions? It's about $1,000 a year on streaming. Or just subscriptions in general.
So like streaming. Most people have Netflix, Hulu. Apple, Amazon Prime.
Paramount. Disney. This and that.
If you are not watching an ass load of TV every day. I think the average person watches two hours a day. I find that kind of low.
Okay. So maybe it's gone up since I've read some stuff. But if you can just focus on one streaming service a month.
Because there's not new stuff coming out constantly anyway. Except for Netflix. I was at your parents' house yesterday watching Netflix.
Netflix is trash. Yeah, I know. That's why we don't have it anymore.
Trash. I just watch it whenever I feel like it over at my parents' house. So what you can do is you can rotate your subscriptions.
I think what they do is they rotate too. I think all the streaming people are like in Kahoots saying, okay, we had Seinfeld. We're going to take it off and then say someone like Amazon Prime will pick up Seinfeld.
So I think they do that on purpose so that you actually have to have eight or nine different. If you want to completely have access to everything. It's a bullshit.
So what you can do is you can instead of paying $80 a month or say $100 a month for all of them. Just pay for one and pay $15 a month and then put that one on pause for say May and then pick up like, I don't know, Hulu in June and then pick up Disney in July. And that way if you stagger it, you don't pay the full $80 a month because it's like, are you really using it? Here's an idea.
If it's summertime, you should be outside. So you should just cancel or put them all on pause. I mean, you could totally do that too.
You could put them on pause during the summer. I didn't even think about that because if you're out doing a lot of basketball or walking in the park, hiking because it's nice out. You could honestly just put that stuff on pause.
Now here's the mind sock blower. Now take your mind sock off. This is insane.
I mean, I kind of suspected there was a gap, but I didn't know it was this much. It costs on average per person $16 per meal. Whereas if you eat out, whereas it only costs $4 if you can make the same meal at home.
So you're saving $12 per the same meal per person just by making it yourself as opposed to paying for it in a restaurant. That actually equates to over $13,000 for the year. So you're still eating.
You're still eating food. Eating the same food, the same meal. You just have a little bit of extra luxury taken or whatever you want to call it.
Okay. So then if you can't, like say you can't, oh, I can't possibly be torn away from, I don't know, Longhorn. I have to go to Longhorn.
Do not, and I repeat, do not use DoorDash or Uber Eats. They make so much money off you and the companies are horrible to their employees. Just go pick the stuff up yourself.
I mean, seriously, the pandemic did an amazing thing for curbside pickup. You can put the orders in now. You don't even have to show up and wait.
Yeah. You don't even have to go inside. You literally pull into a parking space and be like, I'm here.
Text them I'm here and they bring your food out to you. Yeah. And you're saving, I don't know, $10, $12, $15.
I don't know how much Uber Eats. And you don't have to tip. You don't have to do that.
So it's like if you eat at places that are closer and you just pick up. Same thing for Instacart. Don't use Instacart because you're not getting the same quality food that you would get if you went to the grocery store.
And we did it and we can tell you that the prices are ridiculous. They charge so much for... That's why they don't put the receipts in the bag. It's ridiculous.
But again, your choice. You're paying probably 40% more for an apple than you would if you went to the store. But even if you like doing that, if you skip one of those and do it yourself every now and then, you're going to save however much money every time you do that.
So it's, again, it comes down to numbers game, your energy levels, this and this and that. I didn't even put that one in. We might do that one at the end here or save it for another episode.
I just had a brilliant thought. So he said $13,000 for the year, switching to cooking your own stuff. I mean, and then you can still splurge going out to eat every now and then.
If you do the math, that's like what, $12,000, $25,000, $1,050, something like that. A month. Per month.
That's pretty freaking crazy. I know when we weren't paying attention and we were eating out a lot because we were working crazy hours, we were spending like $900 a month in food. $1,083 per month just cooking your food at home.
That's what I'm saying. Ours was pretty close for two people. It was like $900 a month.
Do you know what you can make? You can make $100 per year just doing the basic, the 10%. Obviously, you make more if you follow our thing. But if you just do the basic index one, that's $100 a year you're making on stuff that you're actually not spending.
And that adds up and compounds and rolls. Just FYI. Over time.
And then the other really big one is if you work, if you put the effort in to bring in your own lunch to work, you save eating out. That's a quick little thing. The secret to that is say on Sunday night, you're just chilling.
Just make your dinners for the week. Put them in containers in the fridge and make your lunch for the week. And then you literally don't have to cook the rest of the week and you already have your pre-made food.
Okay, Tim, how does that work for you, Mr. I don't eat leftovers? I'm sane for that. I'm not from here. So I know there's those of you out there who are like Tim who have that problem.
So then it does become difficult. And then the convenience that creeps in. So if that's one of your bigger pain points, don't do that one and find some of these other ones.
How I mitigate that is I'll do peanut butter and jelly. It's a simple meal to make. All right.
Where there's food, there are drinks. And we've talked about coffee ad nauseum, but we're going to do it yet again. This one, I don't, I don't understand it.
Maybe someone can explain to us why you're willing to pay $5 for a cup of coffee on average at like Starbucks when you homebrew for $0.26. It's only $0.26 if you make the same cup of coffee at home. Explain it to me. Again, I don't know.
If you literally have a coffee maker, you just turn it on when you first wake up, do your shower, your shave, your shitting, whatever you do in the morning, and your coffee's made. I don't understand why you would have to leave early to go to Dunkin Donuts to get coffee on your way to work. When you could save time and a shit ton of money.
Yeah, that comes out to be $125 a month. Again, there's another over $100 right there. Now, if you're the kind of person who likes it because of some kind of weird froth milk, I don't know, figure out how to do it yourself.
YouTube literally can teach you anything. If you learn to froth your own stuff, I don't know, go take a part-time job at Starbucks and figure out how the heck they do it and then do it yourself. Like whatever you need to do, if you do it for other reasons, then by all means, again, keep this one.
Well, this is like I can tell you this is a sore spot for me because of people I've actually tried to help. One of their expenditures is they have a coffee budget and I'm like, dude, you guys are idiots. You're spending so much money on your coffee budget, quote, unquote, that you could be putting into your investment accounts that I don't want.
Well, and this is if you just drink one a day, $125 for the month. And then there's the people who don't do coffee, but they do the energy drink thing. Again, it's a very compatible thing.
If you buy your energy drinks in bulk from a wholesaler versus going to the local convenience store and buying one every day, it's kind of the same concept. Well, I was just like when we went to Grocery Outlast, I saw they have a four-pack of Monster for like $3. I'm like, that's really good because when I see it at Sheetz, it's like $3 or $4 just per can at Sheetz.
So you're actually getting four times as much buying at the grocery store, the discount grocery store than you are at the convenience store. Yep, absolutely. And then we did some numbers for like beer drinkers and Tim did margaritas for some reason.
Well, that's what came up. It was easy research. Yeah.
And then we did wine. So for beer, beer is $0.83 if you're buying it like by the case at the distributor versus getting a $4.19 beer from a bar. That's a big jump.
Again. Three something. Margarita, $2.56 to make it at home, $9.46 to buy at a bar.
For wine, this one kind of blew my mind because I used to waitress and I don't remember it being this bad. $12 on average for a glass of wine out at a restaurant, $12. You can get the same bottle for $0.33 or $33.
$33 and there's five glasses in that. So that would be, I didn't do this math because I don't know why, 33 divided by five is $6.06. So you're paying half if you're drinking at home. And it's more fun to drink at home.
You don't have to worry about Uber. You don't have to worry about DUIs. You can be loud and obnoxious and your neighbors can hate you.
We didn't even put that in. Like you could actually save in fines and penalties and all sorts of litigation costs if you drink at home because then you don't have to pay for Uber. You don't have to whatever.
So what I used to do with my girlfriends and stuff, like we'd have once a week, one person would host whoever's cooking and bring it over crap. And then we would rotate houses each week. So you're not completely omitting the social factor.
I guess it's the bars, the social factor. I don't understand. You're having better quality.
And then again, if one of your subscriptions, if you're like the guy crowd and you're into the sports thing, you could get one of your subscriptions through the TV, split it amongst the four of you or however many friends you got coming over. Have one person bring beer, have other people potluck it. Like there's your nachos, there's your whatever.
You're saving money and you're actually getting better quality of interaction. And if you're soloing and your only interaction is with the bar folk, like that's a completely different story. But if you're the other kind of person, you're saving so much more and especially in like future prosperity because of the legal component when there's alcohol involved.
And that's a big one. And there's a lot of health journals that actually there's this myth that drinking about a glass of wine a day is good and it's not. And if you have kids, you have spouses.
So it's like if you're with somebody and you have kids, if it's women's night on Thursdays and men's night on, I don't know, Tuesdays, you can rotate who has the kids so that the kids aren't at the house at the actual like gatherings taking place and somebody and then so you don't put the burden on the same wife every week. You can rotate whose wife or whose whatever is taking care of the kids and vice versa for the husbands. So it's like you can get very creative from a communal standpoint, save a lot of money, get a ton of benefits.
And actually you're teaching your children then these good habits and these good traits where you can still have fun in economical ways. It's financially responsible fun. Yeah.
And like what's the man cave? Like so awesome. You can play video games. You can do whatever.
My man caves a bicycle on the road. Yeah. Tim's the outlier.
But you get the point. Like the next one's a huge like I know I've been guilty of this multiple times and I know pretty much everyone's guilty of the next one. I have never bought a bottle of water.
Karma's the exception to the rule. I did the math. It just doesn't make sense.
A bottle of water costs on average $9.60 for a gallon. And most Americans spend on average damn near $1,500 a year on bottled water. Let that sink in there for you.
$1,460 a year in bottled water. What we do is we actually have an Alexa Pure and it's like $180 to set it up. But then it like filters out everything and it's really good water.
And I don't like cleaning those little water bottles with the stupid straws and the real narrow necks and stuff. So I have an actual half gallon aluminum double walled so it's like insulated and you can put big ice cubes in it if you really want to. And I literally walk around.
It's got like a little handle. People make fun of me for drinking out of that. But you know what? How much money am I saving? $1,460 a year.
And if you do the expensive Alexa Pure, it's $180. So you're saving $1,280 or whatever around there. And if you do the – there's a smaller Alexa Pure.
It comes in a pitcher form that you stick in the fridge like the old of… The Britas, kind of like the Britas. It's the same like the – and it filters out the same components that the Alexa Pure except for the viruses and bacteria. They have one of those for $25.
So you literally – you can save over $1,400 just by having a pitcher in your fridge. And we really like the Alexa Pure over like the Britas and all those other things because if you look into what they filter out, it is like hands down so much chemicals like pesticides, all sorts of different stuff. And I will tell you, most people don't like water because they can taste the crap that's in the water.
Tim didn't even realize that water wasn't gross until we got an Alexa Pure. So that's why he was addicted to soda. He was addicted to some of these other things.
And since he had so many addictions and we've switched his like num-nums out or his tobacco out, we found another soda alternative. It's called Bobelo. I know we've mentioned it in other episodes, but it's these little packets kind of like those Gatorade powders.
But you buy them online, but they're actually healthy. They're sweetened with stevia. They have a whole bunch of electrolytes and nutrients and amino acids.
Some of them, they have amino acids and a lot of them have like iron and magnesium in them, which I'm low in. And they all have like a lot – a shit ton of vitamin Bs. And they taste fantastic.
Like they don't have that gross aftertaste that soda has. So you get a little bit of fizz. You don't get as much fizz as you would with a Coke, but you get some fizz.
It's a different kind of fizz because that was the other thing we noticed that he has a problem with because he would just drink unflavored seltzer water because he just liked the bubbles, which blows my mind a little bit. So the Bobelo is a different kind of carbonation. It's a sodium bicarbonate, which is like the Alka-Seltzer bubbles as opposed to like the – it's technically toxic because it's your waste product when you're breathing, carbon dioxide of the regular carbonated beverage.
And I feel so much better when I – now that I cut all that crap out and I just drink Bobelo and there's water. All that. And you'd think that healthy stuff is actually more expensive, but guess what? It's actually cheaper if you buy it online in bulk.
In bulk? They just have packages of 12 – 14 or 32. Well, how much do you get in a case of soda? 12? Oh, you get 12 and a half case and – How many come in a bag of Bobelo? 32. That's my point.
In bulk. You're buying like 32 packets, so you don't – No, they have 30 packs of pop too. Okay.
But the 30 pack of pop is like, I don't know, $12 or $13, something like that. Yeah. It's – you save a little bit with the Bobelo, but like the health component.
You are saving on your health. You're not consuming a shit ton of sugar. Your teeth are better.
You're not as lethargic. Your body is better. So like – and I actually do have a referral link that I should put down there if you want to try it out.
I think it's like 15% off you get if you use our referral link. If you want to try it out, it's awesome. We'll put it down in the show notes.
They do have sampler packs. They have a multitude of flavors. They have like blue raspberry, apple, peach mango.
Peach mango is my absolute fave. They have a pina colada one. They have an apple or a berry one.
What the hell is that other one? Berry, they have a watermelon. They have – Pomegranate? They have like a pomegranate – yeah, they have a watermelon one. And what they do, like the reason they were created is the guy was out hiking and he saw a bunch of water bottles on that trail.
He said, well, fuck this. And he just created a company where you can reuse the water bottles with the Bobelo packet. So you don't have to throw them on the ground.
But we were going to say it might not be as cheap as buying soda in bulk at a retailer. But if you're going out and you're buying soda at a restaurant or like Chipotle or something, it's like almost $4 for a freaking soda. It's one thing I noticed like yeah, when we go to Chipotle, like Chipotle drinks like $3.50. So if you just take a Bobelo packet, which is nice because they're super convenient.
They're super convenient. Yeah, you just get a water cup and you can actually make your own like seltzer stuff there. I just did that the other day.
I needed a burrito. I took my Bobelo packet with the water cup and just made Bobelo while I was eating. Yeah, so you don't pay for a drink.
There's saving money. I didn't even put that in here for like other ways to save. Don't buy drinks when you go out to eat.
You save like $4 a pop. Just bring water. Bring a water bottle.
But with your Alexa Pure water bottle from the fridge, you can save so much. So much. And the water just tastes so much better.
You're not drinking it like garbage. Now, the next category, I don't know. So we're still in the food category.
Why people have applied such a stigma. I can understand when I was little, my parents used to go to discount grocers and it was garbage. It was like a day old food or like almost expired meat and shit like that.
Not anymore. Like the discount grocers now is literally just damaged. Like say you get a box of cereal and it's crushed.
They don't sell it at the grocery stores. They'll take it to a discount grocer. So it's the exact same box of cereal.
It just has some aesthetic damage. Cosmetic defects, something, something. So they're not like they used to be.
All we do is shop at Aldi and grocery outlet because the prices are like 30 to 50% cheaper. Like it's crazy. He found an article like we'll post it in the show notes because it's like it is absolutely insane.
They went around and actually did comparisons and they beat Walmart out. Hands down. So Aldi is actually owned by I think Trader Joe and they're just the bare bones version.
So it's the same concept. You just don't pay for the convenience of like people who take your carts back. Aldi has you put a quarter in to get a cart and then you get your quarter back when you take your cart back.
So it's ingenious how they do that. They have these self-checkout things. Self-checkout.
You bring your own bags, which is better for the environment anyways. Yeah. And honestly, it's so much easier.
Like those plastic ones break all the time. We love having our actual like reusable grocery bags. I bought them on Amazon.
They're just like heavy duty totes. They're fantastic. And then what I've also figured out shopping at these discount grocers is there's something called like – if you've done Amazon, you're familiar with the private labeling.
What they do is like they'll take say Trix, the box of Trix with the stupid rabbit on it and they'll actually put it in a private label bag. So it's exactly the same as the Trix box. It's called something like the silly rabbit or some shit like that.
So it's literally Trix, but it's like probably 60% cheaper than Trix. So that's what they do when they private label. So a lot of the store brand items are the exact same stuff as the stuff that has the brand label.
It's just in a different bag, in different packaging. And I actually prefer – like we're on the cereal aisle. I actually prefer the big bag of cereal because it has a zip tie – a Ziploc tab on it.
So you literally just zip it up when you're done as opposed to the box of cereal. You have to roll the plastic down and it can sometimes go stale. The cereal doesn't go stale in the Ziploc bag.
Now I will say that some stuff is not always cheaper at Audi and things. Like what did we find at Wegmans that's oddly enough cheaper? Like their hummus is actually in bulk way cheaper at Wegmans. Their peanut butter is actually better.
Peanut butter is a lot cheaper, yeah. And it's better for you. I think eggs were comparable, something like that.
But like it is annoying, but you do – if you do decide you want to cut here, you will probably want to create like a spreadsheet or a note list or something to figure out what stores you need to go to for what. It's a little annoying. But if you are trying to do that, like it doesn't make sense to spend three times the amount for the same thing at a different – like just for the convenience of that one thing.
Unless it is for you. If time is your problem, then that's absolutely fine too. But if you just switch over to Audi for most of your purchases for grocery store, like you're going to save – You'll save hundreds of dollars a month.
And they have really quality products. Like their meat is astounding. And their meat is really – it's hormone-free, grass-fed as opposed – you can – like it's very difficult to find the supermarkets that are the – what are the main names of supermarkets? I find the other thing that acts or tabulates or adds up for people's grocery bills is like those easy to grab things in the checkout line, like where they're like $3 for a candy bar or – Well, that's why I like – The soda.
Tell them about the soda thing, Tim. When I used to – I worked – I stocked the shelves at Coke, I don't know, six, seven years ago. And like you'd be amazed that you legitimately – what they'll do is they'll take the 20-ounce things that they put up by the register and they mark them up.
They're like $2. We literally take it out of the packs that are like the 12-packs. And they charge.
They mark them up for those individual purchases right at the end cap. You could get the six-pack of the same bottle – same bottles for about the same price that you could get if you just grab the individual one at the register. Yeah, six instead of one.
That's the moral of that story. I was like, wow, you guys are kind of dickish. So if it's a singular treat that you don't buy like very frequently, that's one thing.
But if you're doing that every time you go to the grocery store, it might be better to do the whole bulk because it's like that's another big one. And I can tell you from my time at Coke, this is a complete sidebar that if you drink Diet Coke, you're killing yourself. Just because they actually – we actually had a course when we started there about how we're not supposed to talk to the customers about the diet and the caffeine-free and the would open up the company to litigation if we give them the wrong information.
That's how fucked up those drinks are. That's absolutely scary. And the other one would be like if you limit the amount of times you go to the grocery store, you're less likely to have those impulse buys.
This one is big for us. Maybe not going while you're hungry. A huge one that has nothing to do with anything is what she just said.
Make sure you eat before you go to the grocery store. Yeah, that way you're not hungry and everything looks good. So you want to put everything in your cart.
We've noticed that makes a big difference for us. A huge difference. When I'm hungry shopping, I'm just like, oh, my God, that looks good.
Oh, my God, I must have that. I must have that. When I'm full, I'm like, I don't – we already have that at home.
We have something similar to that at home, so we don't need that. So if you do things like that where you limit the number of times, you just have less exposure and then if you eat before you go, you don't have those hangry cravings where you're illogically doing stuff. And then buying in bulk.
If you know you're going to use toilet paper, you might as well buy toilet paper in bulk because you just get bulk discount prices. Some people can do this with soda. When Tim tends to buy bulk, he tends to eat it all in the very front.
The tricky part about the bulk is the majority of the bulk stores are either Costco or Sam's Club and then you actually have to pay for a membership. Or you can find a friend. That's what I do with my cousin every time I need something.
I do know that if you're doing toilet paper, you can go to Walmart and get like not the same amount of bulk but you can get similar bulk of toilet paper and paper towels and shit like that at Walmart. But the bulk part, like if you already have a Sam's Club or a Costco membership, you know what we're talking about. So you should be visiting there for like stuff like tampons.
Why would you ever buy a box of tampons? Well, if we're going to talk about feminine products, I didn't have that on here. But like I was on the Depo shot for like 11 years, which is not healthy. I do not recommend it, which is why my brain, like I literally was a crazy person.
But when I came off of that, I didn't have a period the whole time I was on it. And then when I came off, I had to figure something out and I fucking despise tampons. I despise pads.
And I was like, there has to be a better way. I did some research. I found the Diva Cup.
Literally, you buy one thing for 30 bucks and you use it till you basically go into menopause. The difference between the cost of tampons and all that other stuff. I don't know.
That was something that I decided to go with because to me, that's just a no-brainer. I was prone to the toxic shock syndrome nonsense because I'm retarded. I have no comment.
No comment on this. So there's one for you guys, ladies. All right.
So we just noticed this episode is getting a little long. So we're going to crop it off here and we're just going to do it as a two-parter. That way we don't have an hour and a half episode.
So we're going to do a 45 and a 45. So we're going to drop two episodes for you this week. If we talked about anything in this episode that's going to be a huge win for you, let us know in the link in the show notes.
How much do you think you can save?