Ramit over at I Will Teach You To Be Rich has started a challenge for November, aiming to get his readers to save $1,000, about £500, in 30 days.
Here’s what Ramit has to say about this ambitious project:
Here’s how it works: Each day in November, I’ll post one suggestion to cut your spending. If you spend time each day working on the day’s post, the vast majority of you will save over $1,000 each month. Even if you don’t, saving $700 is sure better than nothing. I’ll post tips for the first 15 days. For the last 15 days, I’ll turn to I Will Teach You To Be Rich readers to submit your best frugality tips.
Ramit has promised that there will be no stupid frugality tips, this is quite hardcore money saving. I’m trying my best to do the challenge myself, so we’ll see how close I can get to the £500. So far he’s covered the following subjects:
- Pack your own lunches for work – this is something I’ve been doing for a while, although I usually allow myself to eat out at lunchtime once a week as a treat, so I could do a little better at it. I estimate I save around £50 per month by taking my own lunches to work. A good start.
- Turn your thermostat down 3 degrees – again, this is something I have done, although there is a temptation for it to creep up as the temperature drops. I’m really unsure how much I’ve saved doing this, although I can’t imagine it’s more than £10 per month.
- Sell something on eBay – I’ve done this recently, so I don’t have much else left to sell. With a few CDs and DVDs left to sell, I reckon I can make £25 this month from eBay.
- Get your friends involved – this is quite an interesting view to take. By involving your friends in your saving, you’ll increase your discipline and have a greater level of accountibility. This isn’t something I’ve thought of doing before – Ramit estimates you can make savings of between $100 & $500, so we’l put a value of £100 for this saving.
- Optimize your mobile phone bill – I’ve already done this and will save £20 on my phone bill this month.
- Use petrol prices to become your own hedge fund – I’m not sure I quite understand how this is saving money, so I’m going to leave it out for the moment. But it looks like it could be a useful technique for saving money on anything that varies in price a lot.
- Create a “no spending” day once a week – I do this now and again, but not intentionally. Now I just need to plan for it once a week, which should be manageable. I’m not sure it will save a great amount, so I’ll just put it down as £25 per month.
With a mix of tips from both Ramit and his readers, it looks likes it could be a really useful series to follow – you can see that even with these first few tips the savings to be made could be quite substantial, without massive amounts of work.
I’d definitely recommend subscribing to the blog and also emails, which include even more tips.
I’ll be following up on the challenge later in the month to let you know how I’m getting on.
photo credit: g-hat