Trimming Expenses

After my friend Brian's post about trimming expenses, I've been thinking about my own complete lack of doing so. It's a bit of a problem, potentially.

I've been eating out a lot more than usual, lately. I've been driving more than usual, too, partially as a result of eating out more. I'll need to make repairs to my car pretty soon, and I'm not sure how much those will be yet. Speaking of repairs, I also repaired my file server, to an extent. I bought a couple 2TB hard drives for $99.99 each. I was able to save most of my files, and all of my important files, so that was good. Still, $200.

I'm also thinking of buying things that I really don't need at all. For example, I want to buy another digital camera. Why? Because I keep one in the car to take pictures of personalized license plates. Why does that mean I need two? Because I never have one with me when the cats are doing cute things, and taking videos of cute cats is the quickest way to youtube stardom! I fully recognize that this is not the best investment, but I'll probably end up doing it before too long.

Then there's utilities. The hot weather of late has skyrocketed my power bill along with everyone else's. I've also tried watering my lawn to get some grass seed to grow. That didn't really work, but I'm sure my next water bill will be higher than I've ever seen it. I also bought that new grass seed, some starter fertilizer, and a small spreader at The Home Depot using gift cards. And for the little remaining grass I have combined with the small amount of new grass that came up, I'll need a new lawnmower soon. I'd like a nice quiet electric one, which apparently means $300 or so. I'd also like to avoid the battery problems people have reported, which means $200 or so instead, but having to use an extension cord. So far, I'm leaning toward this cordless 36V mower. We'll see.

Finally, I've been donating (or pledging to donate) more to charity. If that isn't a stupid use of money, I don't know what is! Seriously, though, I'm going to try eating at home more often again. When I do, it tends to be really cheap. Hopefully the fall brings more reasonableness to my power bill, and whatever lawn mower I buy is reliable and durable. You all can hope that I don't buy that extra camera so that you're not flooded with videos of my cats. And you can also thank me for keeping the economy going these past few months!

Get 10% off at Home Depot: Part II

I don't think I need to feel bad about gaming the system, or anything like that, when I bought a gift card for bonus rewards. So far, I've used my gift card twice and still have $30.64 left. I'm assuming that gift cards are accounted for in-house, so my small purchases with the gift card will save Home Depot a bit of money on the credit card transaction fees. There was the initial transaction fee when I bought the card, but after that each purchase should save them $0.25 or so.

More than that, having the gift card in my wallet encourages me to shop at Home Depot for things I might not normally go there for. The more you bring someone in, the more likely they are to buy something they didn't really want.... Even more important, this has gotten me to write two whole posts on this now, so I've advertised for them to... what, two or three people? ;)

Also, in addition to Chase's Rewards Plus program, Bank of America has their Add It Up program. It seems to offer similar deals on the big stores, but has its own collection of smaller merchants. One that was heavily featured when I just now looked at it was 50% off match.com. I'm sure the fine print makes it hard to use, but that's definitely not available through Chase. Check your banking institution or credit card supplier, and let me know if you find any good deals!