Freeing Up Cash

As I wrote before, several of the ways we have simplified our lives have had to do with money. I thought today I would share some simple ways we have freed up additional cash.

Notice I didn’t say “ways that we save money”. In order to “save money” at the grocery store, for example, you actually have to take the money you would have spent and save it. Most people don’t save their savings from when they buy things on sale. The money never sees the savings account. I think a more accurate way to describe it is “freeing up cash”.

Here is a list of ways that we have freed up cash for other things that are more important. Most of them aren’t really all that significant on their own, but over a year they add up. In order to show the profound impact these choices can make, I’m also going to show how much these choices add up to over ten years and twenty years.

Cutting David’s hair myself:
$299/year, $2,990/ten years, $5,980/twenty years

Changing our car insurance to a flat payment rather than installments:
$10/year, $100/ten years, $200/twenty years

Canceling long distance service and using long distance phone cards from Costco (3 cents/minute):
$300/year, $3,000/ten years, $6,000/twenty years

Adding a little extra water to our grape juice when I make it:
$9/year, $90/ten years, $180/twenty years

Only getting the Sunday paper rather than every day:
$50/year, $500/ten years, $1,000/twenty years

Basic cable rather than full cable:
$432/year, $4,320/ten years, $8,640/twenty years

Not buying new cars and keeping the cars we do have a lot longer. This results in lower insurance payments, not paying depreciation on a new car when we drive it off the lot, not paying for all of the fees we would incur every time we purchase a different car (new or not), not making monthly payments, etc. (This is a rough estimate since this is a lot harder to calculate and I’m doing this off the top of my head with just a calculator.):
$6,000/year, $60,000/ten years, $120,000/twenty years

Using two printers for our business. We use one with high quality ink for important things (photo restoration projects, business letters, invoices, etc.). During our busy season we can be printing hundreds of pages of drafts a day and we use an inexpensive printer and cheap ink cartridges for that:
$400/year, $4,000/ten years, $8,000/twenty years

Those are just a few things that came to me off the top of my head. I didn’t write anything about grocery shopping, clothes, etc. There are lots of other ways that we cut costs. But just the ones above add up to these totals:

$7,500/year
$75,000/ten years
$150,000/twenty years

I think most people can make similar changes in their own lifestyle without a lot of extra effort and I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to free up $150,000 over the next twenty years.

Here’s to freeing up cash for the most important things!