Save Money. Buy Assets.

If you've been a reader of the Frugal Feline, you've probably already come across my article on why I think gym memberships are a massive waste of money. And, I say that as someone who's had one for most of my life so call me a hypocrite if you must. The truth is, quitting your gym membership just won't work for everyone. But for those who are serious about getting their financial life in order, it's a heck of a good way to free up some time and money very quickly. So in this article I want to talk about how to save money on a…

For the first 8 years of my working life, I was solely focused on making more money. And this came at the cost of thousands of dollars wasted. Many of us are taught personal finance either in the home or in school, but knowledge is not even half the battle. And many times we don't realize that if we don't first put together a good defense, it doesn't matter how many points we put on the board. It took me 8 years to discover that a dollar saved is so much greater than a dollar earned. And that's what this post is all about. Heck, that's…

Before we can really get a hold of our spending, we must first know where our money is going. I'll be the first to admit that knowledge without action in this area in particular is worthless. We can have all the knowledge in the world about what we should be doing with our money. But if we don't take action to implement our knowledge, years will go by without any meaningful investment in our future wealth. Here are the 3 steps I use to track our personal expenses and set ourselves up for a bright financial future. 3 Steps To Track Expenses 1 - Choose a…

Without clothing, we would all just be naked bodies walking around. Consider for a moment how odd that world would be... Well, luckily for us, that is not our reality. Instead, our reality is multi-million dollar facilities all over the world and billions of dollars spent trying to get us to buy a new t-shirt and replace our perfectly fine older ones. Clothing is one of my naughty 3 expenses. And it's one of those categories that we spend much more on than we realize. Let's talk about the real cost of our clothing habit and how we can save money on clothing. Why Clothing Is…

I'll be the first to admit that I'm still a beginner at all this. I've only been tracking my personal expenses for a little over 6 months now. But I remain shocked about how much money we spend on a certain categories. And how, despite the month or excuses, certain categories are the most likely to get out of hand. Each time my wife and I go over our spending (weekly), we notice that Clothing, Eating Out, and Groceries seem to be consistently the highest spending categories for us. These are our naughty 3 expenses. But your naughty 3 expenses will be different than ours. It's…

I'm embarrassed to admit that my wife and I spent $1,300 on groceries and alcohol in October. No, that is not a typo. We spent more than most people's rent on putting food and beverage in our stomachs. Groceries is one of the naughty 3. And it's one of the areas that we've found the greatest opportunity to save money, obviously. Now, let's talk about how to save money on groceries, because Lord knows we can speak to it. $1,300 for 2 People It was ironic that the month that my wife and I decided to start taking our spending seriously was the month that we…

If there was ever a category of item that we felt justified in spending money, books would be it. Our parents begged us to read as kids. We were forced to read as students. And now as adults, if we find ourselves interested in a book, we can have it on our doorstep by 8AM the following day. Thanks, Amazon. Saving money on books is not going to make or break our savings strategy. But it is another example of making a convenience sacrifice for a certain financial future that most people don't have. Let's talk about saving money on books. Saving Money on Books You've…

If you’re anything like me, you’ve kind of just assumed that your only options for having cell coverage was T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint. And, you probably assumed it was just worth getting unlimited data, because that’s what everyone has right? Well, last month I discovered prepaid wireless carriers and realized that I didn't have to spend $124 a month on my cell phone service plan anymore. So I'd like to talk about how to save money on cell phone service. My Story To be completely honest, this is one of the areas I've been most excited about my savings because after setup, I literally forget…

Before this year, I could count on two hands how many times I'd been to a dollar store. But with the prodding of my wife and the introduction of the 99 Cent Only store, I continue to stand amazed at the quality for price ratio. Saving money at the dollar store is one of the easiest hacks to living a more frugal life. Many times, you can buy the same exact brands as you would at Target or Albertsons for a fraction of the cost. Saving Money At The Dollar Store This is another examples of one of those slight changes in behavior that puts more…