It is truly amazing when you take the time to look at your bank accounts and go through your statement, how much money you waste and could save each month and each year.

… I’m talking, at times, thousands. Most of it is from subscriptions and services that you don’t use and will never use that automatically goes on your credit card whenever you order something online. PayPal used to be on the side of the consumer but they are now on side of the merchant so if you don’t cancel your subscriptions the right way, you are out of luck on getting money back even for services you are not using so beware.

You may see a charge for $39.00 on your credit card statement like I did for a yearly fee for being a member of Planet Fitness, a membership I never use and I will not be getting that back or the $10.00 I have spent on the membership each month for the past year unless I come into the gym where I opened it (in Palm Springs and I live in LA) or I send them a certified letter asking them to close the membership? WTF? This in intentional on their part. They KNOW how to make a member say, ‘The hell with it, it’s too much work, it’s not that much money anyway.’ But when there are THOUSANDS of members like that, they make a TON of money.

Who has time to do that? To that end that’s $150 dollars waisted for a whole year that should be in a high-interest bearying savings account.

That may not seem like much money but when you add up ALL the subscriptions and services you have you might be shocked at how much money you are literally throwing out the window each year. Mechants LOVE people who waste money and a lot of it comes from not shopping around.

Quite often, we are taking advantage of the situation because it’s available. At the end of the day, it all boils down to our time and what we are willing to spend to do something.

How to Research Before You Buy

In this instance, it may behoove us to at least hire an assistant that we can ask to research and find out information on various things, for example, a tuneup on your car.

You can look on Groupon and find discounts, but this takes your time, but if you have an assistant do it and who does the research online and compare prices, you’re going to save money. 

I would strongly suggest getting an assistant in Kenya or in the Caribbean on Fiverr, where their ideas and concepts, and language are closest to ours. Hiring someone in America is not a bad idea, but you have to find someone who is focused and not trying to work 3000 jobs at once. 

Hire an Assistant

In America, we are a gig economy, and people are trying to make as much money as they can, and you really can’t blame them. Also, look at your spending as far as restaurants, grocery stores, and other things like fast food. If you’re not getting points back for what you’re spending and you’re wasting money on top of it, you will come up short at the end of the year. 

Making money is one thing but training ourselves on how to budget and KEEP that money is something else altogether. 

One great idea is going to the grocery store with cash which is what a friend of mine does. She spends $100 a week on groceries… that’s it.

Organizing Your Time

She has time because she is good at organizing her time, so instead of throwing away those advertising papers she gets in the mail each week, she goes through them looking for bargains and creates her grocery list.  

Now considering you can use your American Express gold card and get four points for every dollar spent at the grocery store, you will also spend a lot more money than $100 a week just grabbing things off the shelves. You get points, but you’re being encouraged to waste money at the same time with a credit card.

So what my friend does is actually pretty smart. She takes $100 in cash with her and adds up what she needs. she makes a list before she goes to the store as she manages to live off $400 a month in groceries.

Conclusion

You have to figure out the best ways for you to save money, and the first thing is, of course, looking at your bank statements and seeing what you’re wasting each month and how much you could be saving.

You can transfer your bank statements to a .csv file in Google Docs and add up the columns where you have expenditures that you don’t need to spend each month …  you’ll be shocked at how much you’re wasting $300 $500 or even $1000 a month on things you don’t need.