I am , again, participating in the Indie Challenge hosted by Bootsnall. Just like last year, I’d be posting an article a day, based on the question / challenge of that day.

>>you can join the challenge by clicking here

Nov 14
Cutting Expenses

What do you spend money on weekly that isn’t a necessity? Your daily coffee? Buying lunches at work instead of bringing them? Paying for cabs instead of taking a bus?
QUESTION:
When you are getting ready to travel, and on the road, what do you do to cut back on your expenses? What do you forego to save money to travel? Is there anything you do differently before you travel versus during?
CHALLENGE: Find something that you can save money on, and do it for a week. What did you cut back on? How difficult was it to make this change? How much money did it save you in the week? Over a month and a year, how much would you end up saving?
Now – search online and find out where you can afford a ticket (plane, train, bus) with the money you’ve saved.(If you are having trouble thinking of ways to cut back, check out our post)

I’ve been keeping a very strict sheet with our daily / monthly expenses since early this year. When we are in deep “saving money” mode we don’t go out to coffee shops and instead of buying premium roast coffee beans, we buy per-packaged ground coffee.

In September 2011, Alex caught a nasty cold and that was the trigger to stop smoking. Or smoke only he go goes out with the guys. But not buying cigarettes all the time saved us a lot of money in the long run.

Unfortunately we sin badly when it comes to coffee during our travels. We almost always drink coffee in coffee shops and only sometimes brew it at the accommodation. I find that most rental places have terrible coffee machines – just filters , which I hate – so instead of drinking horrible coffee, we go out. Yes, I have an addiction.

I cook at home all the time. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times we went out to eat while we were not traveling. Once it was this summer when Alex craved pizza and once it was in October when we arrived from Cluj and stopped at Subway to get a salad. My fridge at home would have welcomed me in all it glory…emptiness.

I do take the cab when I carry groceries home (we don’t have a car) but I limit that to maybe once every two weeks. Otherwise, we just buy as much as we can easily carry while we walk back home.

I am a major fan of using the discounts when I shop for clothes. That’s why I hunt down special promotions and have fidelity card at another clothes store which means I get discounts.