13 Money saving tips for 2013 | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

Over roughly the past 6 months I have been a lot better about bringing my breakfast and lunch to work, and what a difference it has made. I was probably spending $50 or $60 a week before, now I am around $10.

It really is the small and frequent things that make a huge difference. To help me stay the course I like to roll the savings up on a yearly basis, as they have done here, and then on a 10 year basis while assuming a 5% rate of return. In my lunch example doing that one small thing will allow me to save ~$30,000 over a decade.

If you want to take it a step further to really hammer the point home you can look at the retirement savings needed to support that spending assuming a safe withdrawal rate of 4%, meaning you will live of 4% of your investment and not draw down your capital. Based on this I would have needed $75,000 in savings to support my lunch habit, so in reality I was spending $75,000 a year on lunch.

Gross!

When I need motivation I find the retirement calc really brings it home.