I, like most people is a nation, am addicted to caffeine. Our paper money should have a slogan like in coffee we trust. We love to suck down Red Bull, Monster, and Rock Star In mass quantities. I try to be frugal, but energy drinks are one of the leaks in my financial ideals. For some reason I’m really careful about looking at the unit price on most things at the grocery store, but when it comes to liquid energy or courage—I never seem to care that much about getting the best deal. I will if what I’m looking for happens to be on sale and if it is I’ll buy more, but if it’s not, it never discourages me—I’ll pay the little extra happiness tax. I’m frugal, not a miser.
I once read a book on investing that contained great ideas on saving money. The book was by Andrew Tobias, The Only Guide To Investing That You’ll Ever Need. It was a great book. Not only did it talk about P/E ratio’s, indexes, options, mutual funds and EFT’s but It had great money saving tips. One tip was buy commodities, but not the type of commodities you see in the financial section of the Wall Street Journal. He didn’t recommend that his reader’s buy corn or pork futures. He meant stock up on things like mouthwash. When you buy stuff in bulk it usually comes at a discounted price per unit. So if you bought a case of Cepacol that would last you a couple years or so, in the long run it would be cheaper than buying a 750 ml bottle every month.
This is how I purchase beer and energy drinks, albeit I’m cutting down on both. I do this with a anything I can really. The hard part is storing it. Tobias suggests underneath your kitchen table or under your bed. I keep after shave, razor’s, and body wash stored in some odd places, but I don’t care. With Register Rewards and coupons I picked up jour bottles of after shave for $1.80. I don’t clip coupons, but some of my coworkers do. They know all the tricks for register rewards and look at sites like crazycouponlady.com. I don’t have time for that, but Pro Glide razors can be purchased for pennies on the dollar.
I generally buy soy milk , not because I give a damn about animal rights, but because it spoils much more slowly. In the long run it saves me money. Almond milk is even better because you can buy boxes of it at Costco for really cheap and it doesn’t have to be refrigerated until after you open it. A twelve ounce box of Honey Nut Cheerios comes with a price tag of $3.50 at the grocery store, but 2.1 lbs. is $6.39 at Costco. A dozen Durex condom’s is $15.99 at your local drugstore. At Costco you can pick a Durex pleasure pack for $9.99 and it contains 4 times as many condoms. If you don’t have a use for condoms you can Google internet magazine subscriptions and pick up a two year subscription of Playboy for less than ten bucks.
I haven’t looked into buying lotion in bulk.
I really do enjoy the articles.
There are a myriad of things you can do to save money, but this is one of my favorites, probably because I figured it out on my own. I’m going to let you in on a little secret, well a couple. When I was in high school, I had a really good economics teacher. If you’ve known me for any length of time you’ve probably heard me talk about him. He got me really excited about Individual Retirement Accounts. I was intrigued with the idea of compounding interest. If you start young enough, like at 21 or so and just set aside $50.00 a week you can retire a millionaire by the time you reach 65. You can even stop at 27. There are a lot of naysayers these days. Everyone’s so anti Wall Street, the sky is falling—but don’t pay attention to them because you’ll be sorry. In the Automatic millionaire, the author suggests that you give up that cup of Starbucks every day to find the money to invest in your IRA or 401K. This is also a great idea, but I found a better one.
The economist, Milton Friedman once said there is no such thing as a free lunch. I’m a big fan of Friedman’s ideas, but I can assure you there is a such thing as a free cup of coffee.
Starbucks has exploitable policy. If you order a caramel frap-a lotta calories they make it on the spot. They steam the milk and brew the espresso to order. If you try to watch calories like me, however the five calories in a regular cup o’ joe is a lot more appetizing. It’s also cheaper. I think it’s less than two bucks for a tall coffee. Here’s my tip. If you go in the morning—they will offer a couple different brews,
one bold, perhaps a French Roast and one mild roast, most likely Pike Place. Demand goes down throughout the day since most people like to drink coffee in the morning. I like to brew my own coffee in the morning, but I found that when I go into Starbuck’s in the afternoon they tend to run out of drip coffee. They also have a policy if they are out of what you ask for—it’s on the house. More often than not, when I ask for a cup of coffee at 3:00 p.m., I don’t have to pay for it.
