Hey, guys.
It's Chelsea, from The Financial Diet.
And this week's video is sponsored by Blue Apron.
And today, I want to talk about the small and maybe sometimes
unintuitive changes that we could all make to our budgets
to potentially save us thousands of dollars
over the course of a year.
Often, it is difficult to make these sort of changes
because they may only save us $1 here, a few pennies
there, in any individual choice.
But when we think about how often our choices accumulate
and how much the accumulation of choices
represent huge variations in our budget,
we start to realize that all of the seemingly innocuous
decisions that we're making throughout our day actually
can have a huge cumulative impact.
So I wanted to break down today a few of these simple changes
that you can start implementing to potentially save you
thousands a year.
And I would recommend when you start one or more
of these changes to actively track them.
You can use plenty of different habit tracking apps,
including some that actually show you
the dollars saved with not making or making
an individual choice.
A familiar example of this might be not smoking--
for every week you go without buying cigarettes,
this is how much you're saving.
But you can do that with tons of choices throughout your life.
And we'll link you to some resources
for that in the description.
The point is, once you make these changes,
don't just look at any given day.
Start looking at the patterns they create in your life
and how much they save you.
So without further ado, here are eight small changes
you can make in your life to potentially save you thousands.
Number one is go meatless a few days a week.
A study from the Journal of Hunger and Environmental
Nutrition found that those eating a vegetarian diet
save, on average, $750 a year.
And friend of TFD, Desirae Odjick,
recently documented how she saved $100 a month
just by no longer eating meat.
Now this is not to say that you have
to go completely vegetarian.
But just focusing on a few days or meals a week,
switching up your protein sources
with things like eggs, beans, lentils, plain Greek yogurt,
bulk-aisle natural peanut butter,
and other non-meat protein sources
can be a super easy way to start reducing
the overall cost of your food budget,
while having positive impacts on the environment.
You can also start focusing on getting more affordable cuts
of meat, which will allow you to buy
higher-quality meat without spending
an exorbitant amount of money.
And also perhaps challenge you to be
a slightly more creative cook.
For example, switching out chicken breasts
for chicken thighs, which is, for my money,
the way superior cut of meat anyway.
Cooking with things like pork shoulder or short ribs.
And opting for things like tinned fish.
I just had a bunch of tuna salad today-- was delicious.
And it's pretty easy to pick more ethically-sourced tuna
or even cans of sardines, which I find to be an abomination,
but my husband loves eating with a straight fork.
The point is, even when we do opt for meat,
there are ways to reduce the expense of a piece of meat
and to be more creative with how we prepare it.
But overall, even just a few meals a week,
opting for something that is meat-free
is a great way to help your budget in the long term.
Number two is opting for a balanced meal kit delivery
service instead of takeout.
Takeout is a wonderful occasional indulgence.
But for most of us who have had the experience of dining out
largely removed from our day-to-day life
due to the coronavirus pandemic, it's
easy to become overreliant on delivery or takeout options
as a default. And if you are tipping
like you should, plus often paying
all of those various surcharges, the expense
of getting meals regularly delivered
can quickly spiral out of control.
So if you're wanting to cut back on takeout and delivery
expenses but don't want to have to spend
tons of time meal planning, you should check out Blue Apron.
Blue Apron's meal kit boxes come with everything
you need to cook delicious, balanced meals with none
of the hassle of meal planning or grocery shopping.
You're sent exactly the ingredients
you need for each of the meals you've
selected, in only the exact increments that you need.
TFD's Creative Director, Holly, has been a loyal Blue Apron
customer for nearly five years.
As she puts it, "I was hooked from the get-go.
As someone who loves food, it was a very simple way
to cook delicious, high-quality meals
without the effort of grocery shopping or meal planning.
And while I don't personally subscribe to a specific diet,
I find that even the more 'indulgent' Blue Apron
offerings are well-balanced meals that leave me feeling
satisfied but not gross.
They all have a solid focus on protein
and a significant vegetable component."
Blue Apron meals start at just $7.49 a serving.
So you can get restaurant-quality meals
for a fraction of the cost.
Plus, their new wellness plan offers
balanced, nutritionist-approved recipes
designed for your holistic health,
including 600 calorie or less carb-conscious
dinners, and more, with meals such as miso ginger rice bowls,
provencal-style baked tilapia, and sheet pan chipotle pork
roast.
Click the link in our description
to check out their wellness recipes
and get $80 off your first four deliveries.
Number three is do a 30-day challenge
to cut out one specific indulgence.
In the personal finance world, you
will often hear people touting doing a no-spend challenge,
where for a week, a month, or even a year,
they basically challenge themselves not
to spend on anything non-essential in that time
frame.
And while this can be super helpful
as a reset for many of us and is also the way
many people live without having an option,
for others it's the kind of radical lifestyle adjustment
that can easily backfire.
When you feel like you can't spend money on anything,
you can easily start feeling deprived.
And deprivation can often put us on a terrible cycle.
So instead of cutting out all discretionary spending
for a period of time, focus on eliminating just one indulgence
for a limited window.
To pick one, take a look back at your recent spending.
See which extra category you spend the most on.
And challenge yourself to go a month without it.
And pick something that's legitimately unnecessary.
We're not telling you to stop going to therapy for a month.
But rather to cut out alcohol, online shopping, book buying,
Uber or Lyft rides, et cetera.
And if you need any ideas, we did a video on different things
you can try cutting out of your budget for a month
instead of going on a spending freeze.
We'll link you to that in the description.
Number four is take advantage of your employer-offered health
benefits.
Right now, find out if you have an HSA
available through your employer.
And if you do, take the time this week to opt into it.
"A health savings account, or HSA,
is a tax-advantaged account created for individuals
who are covered under high-deductible health plans
to save for qualified medical expenses that
are over and above an HDHPs coverage limits
and/or exclusions.
Contributions are made into the account
by the individual or individual's employer
and are limited to a maximum amount each year.
The contributions are invested over time
and can be used to pay for qualified medical expenses,
such as medical, dental, and vision care,
as well as prescription drugs.
And with the CARES Act enacted into law in response
to the coronavirus pandemic, HSA funds
can now be used for over-the-counter medications
without a prescription, as well as
certain other health-related products."
When it comes to healthcare, never spend a dollar
more than you actually have to.
And the best way to insure that is
by knowing what your options are.
Number five is cancel any unused streaming
or subscription services.
When we sign up for a free trial of something
and don't actually cancel before the free trial is over,
we're often sucked into the cycle of just getting
used to having this thing and therefore being less
incentivized to get rid of it.
We also, in many cases, may have signed up for something
that we simply forgot we did.
But if you're finding yourself with subscriptions
that you didn't have before but now
feel that you can't do without, there's
actually a name for this.
It's called the endowment effect,
which is "a circumstance in which an individual places
a higher value on an object they already
own than the value they would place on that same object
if they did not own it.
This type of behavior is typically
triggered with items that have an emotional or symbolic
significance to the individual.
However, it can also occur merely
because the individual possesses the object in question."
By simply having something available at our fingertips,
we tend to overvalue it, even if we don't really
use it that much.
So if you're only going to watch one particular show
on a streaming service, for example,
it may be cheaper to just individually buy
that show on a platform like YouTube or Amazon
than to actually buy the entire streaming service just
to watch it.
And it can feel like there's so many
things we want to stay current on when it comes
to the zeitgeist in movies and TV because quite frankly,
what the hell else we have to do these days?
But chances are, you're not going
to get around to watching all the stuff that everyone's
talking about.
And there's probably a more thoughtful way
to access the movies and television that you actually
want, without opting into a ton of different services.
Like me, the comrade who still uses her friend's dad's DIRECTV
login so I can access A&E.com's streaming service.
Listen, I pay for YouTube TV, but it doesn't
have all the shows I want.
I can only pay for so many streaming services.
And lastly, don't forget that for certain of these streaming
services, you can always choose to opt in when your show is on
and opt out when it's off-season.
Number six is prioritizing a zero-cost personal goal.
Anything that is time-consuming, enjoyable, and free
is going to be an automatic money saver.
Because it just soaks up a lot of free time
that you would otherwise use in ways
that might encourage you to spend money.
So set a personal goal that is not
tied to money, like reading a certain number of library
books in a given year.
A few other zero-cost personal goals--
getting to a certain level on Duolingo;
using the craft supplies you bought yourself but never got
around to doing anything with; rearranging your furniture
and home decor; creating a gallery wall
of things you already own and have been meaning
to put on your wall, like greeting cards, or magazine
cutouts, or photos of you and your friends;
easing into a running routine with apps like Couch to 5k;
partaking in an ongoing board game
tournament with your partner or roommates;
using some of the workout equipment
that has been gathering dust in your home;
et cetera, et cetera.
Number seven is use a savings account
with a round up feature.
The "round up" savings function was popularized
with apps like Digit and Qapital,
which allow you to round up purchases to the nearest dollar
and to save the spare change.
And Qapital also allows you to set rules for your savings
account so that you can trigger a transfer to savings when
you do something like spend on a guilty pleasure.
And more and more traditional banks
are offering features like this to allow you to possibly save
money more and more.
And automatically turning your worst spending
habits into somewhat good choices.
As we've said many times on TFD, one
of the best ways that you can ensure that you're
saving more and reaching your goals faster
is by automating as much as you can
and making the process of putting money aside painless.
You of course, should still be actually saving money.
And we do still recommend doing that by automatic transfer
from your paychecks or deposits.
But there's no reason you can't also
be doing that with your card, possibly,
because chances are in the moment you won't actually
notice it.
But you will notice it as it accumulates,
as we talked about at the opening of this video.
Number eight-- have a recipe arsenal for food
that's about to go bad.
One study purchased in the American Journal
of Agricultural Economics found that
the average American household wastes just
under 32% of its food.
So say you have a food budget of $100 a week.
That's $5,200 a year.
And if you're wasting 32% of it, that
means you may be throwing out $1,664 worth of food
every single year.
And this is not to shame any one individual.
We all know that the majority of food waste
does come from restaurants.
But cutting down on your own waste
can help save money, which is another way services
like Blue Apron can come in.
Because they send you exactly what you need to make the meal
and nothing more.
So to combat your food waste, have a recipe arsenal on hand
that can help you find uses for all of that
produce that's about to turn, pantry items
that you've been meaning to get rid of,
and various other things in your fridge that you know
are still good but likely won't be
if you wait a couple more days.
But especially the produce, because nothing
makes you feel worse about yourself than having
to throw away a bunch of untouched produce.
Here are just a few great clean out the pantry
meal ideas anyone can use--
hearty soups that use any kind of leftover vegetables
and proteins, banana bread and other quick breads,
granola mix/bars with leftover nuts,
dried fruits, grains, et cetera, smoothies, freezable breakfast
sandwiches or burritos, fried rice and stir fries,
slow cooker chilis, skillets and casseroles, et cetera.
No matter where you're going to start
with finding extra room in your budget,
the biggest thing is to start making those little changes
that can seem kind of pointless on the surface
but add up to big things in the long term.
Good financial habits start by thinking beyond today.
And don't forget to check the link
in our description to learn more about Blue Apron's new wellness
recipes and to get $80 off your first four boxes. (QUIETLY)
$80.
And as always, guys, thank you for watching.
And don't forget to click the subscribe and join buttons
and to come back every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday
for new and awesome videos.
Bye-bye.