For 2012- Part 2: The Money Saving Challenge

I plan on continuing the Money Saving Challenge for next year. But before I do, I promised that I would tell you what we have been able to save this year. Being retired, the way we save is a little bit different from the way someone with a job and income would save.  They would put away into savings, stocks or any other savings vehicle, a certain portion of their income a month. As retirees on a fixed income, our savings consists of not spending the amount of money that we could in our yearly budget.  It also includes any income generated from investments. For us this year, it also included a small consulting job that DH spent a few hours on.  It also includes any rebate or survey checks that we did. So by doing all of those things, we were able to keep in our savings $31,117. that we could have spent in 2011. I am very happy about that since investment income is hard to earn these days.   It used to be a rule of thumb  that you could easily spend 4% of your investment income a year and have it last. That is no longer the case. Interest on savings accounts is a pittance. The stock market has been a roller coaster and a crap shoot over the past few years.  The more money we can keep instead of spending, the more we earn. With inflation pushing up our expenses, the more we can keep for future years, the happier I am.  

Now I know that many of you can't save that much money. Some of you probably don't have incomes that large. You have to remember that I am working with a lifetime of working and saving. There is just DH and I so our expenses will be less than a family with children and our savings will be more. Some of you can't save because you have debt and so you are trying to pay that off. I admire you for doing that. Pay off the debt and then start saving your nest egg.  I don't want you to be discouraged. Everyone can save according to their means. We have no debt or mortgage on our home so our expenses will be less than a lot of you. We have already put our children through college, so we don't have to worry about that any more. Yes, I have that blasted credit card bill but we pay that off every month. I hate seeing that bill come in so except for the Netflix bill,  gasoline and the really necessary online shopping, I will be using all cash. 

So on that note,  I will be continuing the Money Saving Challenge for 2012. What that means is that I will be keeping every dollar that I can in our pocket instead of handing it over to a corporation or  business for their profit.  My mantra is that no one will take care of you but you. 

This year I will strive to post the Money Saving Challenge at least twice a week if not more. I will let you know what I am doing and how I am saving.  I will let you know about my successes and my failures.  Yes, I have failures too.  I am hoping by doing this, I will keep myself accountable and that you will learn just a few tips that will help you along your path to financial freedom.

So as other years, I am asking any of you who would like to join me to leave a comment and let me know.  I will be putting up a list on my sidebar of those who would like to participate. If you have a blog, let me know and I will put up a list of those also so that people can learn from you too. There are no rules about how many times you have to post your money saving. Do it at your own pace as time allows. The more who join, the more content there is to share and the more we can save with your tips along our journey together.

Part  3 tomorrow............