How Other People Spend and Save Money

Here's some wonderful links that show how other people spend (and save!) their hard-earned money:

• Over at Get Rich Slowly, JD Roth outlines how he spends and saves money in this post. When I read the post, I was thinking I could have written it! Everything from conscious spending to reducing our exposure to advertising to walking more to save gas and improve health are things that we currently do to save money.


• Trent over at The Simple Dollar posted this question from a reader along with his answer and, again, it just goes to show that people who are really focused on getting out of debt pretty much come to the same conclusions. In fact, the day before I read this post, I was thinking the exact same thing that he wrote in the first line of his answer "the biggest switch in getting away from materialism was to start focusing on what I had instead of what I didn't have." It just so happened that my birthday was a few days ago. Hubby asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I gave it some thought, and I honestly couldn't think of a single thing I wanted. I have a wonderful place to stay, plenty of delicious food, every need taken care of, enough money for my meager bills, and most important, I have the hubby with me. Thinking of everything I do have (along with staying out of the malls, not being around friends/co-workers who make materialism a daily contest, and, most importantly, not having any place to store any new things that I buy) makes me very content.


• My favorite traveling family, The Family on Bikes, recently posted this insightful article How to Afford Long Term Family Travel, on their blog. Like we have found out, when you do something so far from the norm of: work, buy a house, buy a car, work some more, collect even more material goods, pay your credit cards, and go back and work some more, the first question people have is "how can you afford it???". We get that question all the time. For us, we are two adults with very few needs, but when you are talking about a family of four complete with two growing teenagers, it becomes an even more incredible feat to afford such a grand adventure. This post outlines one creative way a family can make such a thing happen.


• Then I came across this article on How to Prepare if You Think You Might Lose Your Job. This is yet another article that really hit home with me. Late last fall, I could see the writing on the wall. With very little warning, my main client more or less went belly up. We basically did half of what we recommended in this article, namely, we assessed our situation, looked at our monthly outflow of cash, started cutting back on every single expense, and instead of positioning myself for another job, came to the conclusion that we could hop off this hamster wheel and hop right back on another one or we could make a drastic change. We chose the drastic change option.


• Finally, I thought this was a useful post to share: 100 Best Money Moves from CNN. Many of the things they suggest are good ideas. There are a few, however, that were downright dumb. You don't NEED a smartphone or an iPad, plus you know my stance on credit cards so it just makes sense to use the money moves that work best for your situation.

Happy reading!