BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

More Balancing of Budgeting

It's getting very tricky to not spend more than I make these days.  I'm determined to do it though.  One of the ways I'm doing it is by trying to cut down my food budget.

I've gotten really into super low cost eats.  Now, I'm trying to stay relatively healthy while keeping my food items at a minimal expense.  One of the ways this is possible is by choosing nutrient rich foods that pack a lot of punch but cost less money per calorie.

Tofu is one of these foods.  Rice, and grains.  Noodles.  Tortillas. Beans.  Etc. etc.

Lately my cats have really been zapping my expenses.  So far a quarter of my paycheck every month has gone to at least one of them for some kind of vet thing or another.  My mom wasn't able to really take the cats to the vet when she was sick so I'm kind of making up for lost vet appointments.  The next one is at the end of this month and then that will be it for cat vets for a while... Hopefully.  But it's ok because I love them and they're worth every penny.

Somehow I have to pay the tax bill by the end of next month.  My plan is to try and trade up enough money through stocks to cover that bill through trades.

So, ok, I don't REALLY have to balance my budgets... I could technically go for a while spending in excess of twice my monthly income and still be completely fine.  But, to me, that's a bad way to live.  Digging into savings reserves is just not responsible in my opinion.  I always want to be making more money than I'm spending.  Every single month.  For the rest of my life.  I just want to die with a whole big pile of cash in the bank and then have people fight over it for decades.  I feel like that's the way you're supposed to do it.  Not leave your heirs with like 50 bucks and a million dollars of debt.  You should just leave a whole mountain of cash for the next generation.  I mean, to each their own.  But I want a mountain of cash and like almost no physical belongings to my name.

Or at least... A mountain of cash and a modest amount of things.

Ok, maybe that's a bit much.  But here's my general rule of thumb... I feel like you should have twice the amount of gold in your vault that you have in physical things.  So what I do is tally up the brand new replacement value worth of everything you own.... You should have twice that in cash.  Now that amount is minus your debt.  So if you have let's say 100 thousand dollars of physical things that you own, if you were to replace everything brand new from scratch... You should have 200 thousand dollars in the bank in cash.  If you have 20 thousand dollars in debt, that would count as a physical item.  So you'd now need 240k in the bank... Because you have 100k in physical things plus 20k in debt which counts as a physical thing.

Again, anyone can live how they please... but that's my goal.  To have twice the cash in the bank of what I physically own at brand new replacement value for everything I own.  I'm calling it the tip of the iceberg financial plan.  What you see of my physical belongings... house/car/things I own... etc. etc.  That's just the tip of the iceberg of my true net worth.  The rest is in investments of various kinds and in cash.

I feel like I'm pretty much the reverse lifestyle of everyone else on the planet that I know.  Well, not everyone I know... but a good amount of people I know.  Tip of the iceberg for mostly everyone is... Physical items they own are the tip of the iceberg... 10 bucks to their name in the bank living paycheck to paycheck...  And twice the amount of physical items value in debt up to their eyeballs.

Again... To each their own.  I'd rather own everything paid in full and also know I have copious amounts of cash in the bank to replace any one of those items should they unexpectedly fail, and they surely will because everything eventually fails.  I don't want to have to figure out a way to finance something that I need...

One of the things that really gets me is when people book vacations while they have debt.  Do what you want... but if you've booked a cruise... And you have a 10 thousand dollar balance already on your credit card... I feel like you should definitely reconsider that.  Maybe just visit the spa for a rub down once a month instead.  Unless you got some ASTRONOMICAL deal on that cruise that you just COULDN'T pass up... really though?  Save your money and pay down some of your debt.

I know... it sucks.  But trust me.  It really is a good idea!

Soo every month, I try to save money and just keep socking money away.  Spend less, save more.  Always saving.  Month after month.  Year after year.  You can never save too much is my motto.  You never know what kind of things life will throw at you.

Anyways, back to saving money... My other plan is to just basically stay home a lot more and try to figure out other things to cut out that cost money.  I'm already not going out anymore to write, I just stay at home and work on books and music here.  I haven't had a lot of time to work on those things lately because I've just had lots of estate things to do for my mom's estate.  But as I start to finish those things I'll be able to dedicate more time to working on books and music again.

Which is fine by me, because being creative at home helps to balance budgets a ton.

So back to the food things... One of my favorite budget friendly things in the food department is souping it up for lunch...

Now I love these little soups that you buy and then put into a container with hot water and bam... Instant lunch.  The problem?  Most of them are super salty.  They are also just not nutritional at all.  The solution?  Thai Kitchen rice noodles.  Most of the other soups... Especially the Ramen noodle ones are SUPER terrible for you.  Ok, so maybe the Thai Kitchen ones aren't fantastic for you... but they only run about 20 percent of your daily sodium value as opposed to like 80 percent for ramen noodles.

These are the noodles I'm talking about:

http://www.thaikitchen.com/Products/Instant-Rice-Noodle-Soups

They generally run about a dollar or maybe a dollar and a quarter or so.  Just eating these noodles alone though doesn't really fill me up.  SO I add other stuff...

What else?  Well... What I do to add to the nutrition value is I buy frozen mixed veggies.  They contain no additional salts or additives.  Just bagged (preferably organic) frozen mixed veggies.  I toss those in the soup after I add hot water.  Let it sit with the lid on in my Pyrex container and then presto.  I also like to add some kind of additional protein.  One thing you can do is cook up some chicken in a crock pot and then freeze small amounts of it.  Take out a small bit of frozen chicken and add it to your soup.  Or, you can dice up tofu as is and then freeze that with some of the veggies and just take a pre sorted pre frozen container of half veggies and half tofu with you to work.  Add hot water with the veggies, tofu and soup?

There ya go.  And all that is under 2 dollars a meal.  Or you can just microwave it all together.

I like to put the tofu/chicken... Or whatever else I put in it... in hot water first.  You can microwave it if it doesn't cook enough... Then add the noodles and seasoning mix and let it sit for a couple minutes.

Or you could go out for lunch and spend 10 or 15 or 20 bucks going out to eat with your coworkers...

I do this maybe once a month when I work on a Saturday.  It's fun every now and again...

But honestly?  I'm happy to just sit at my desk and work while slurping on my 2 dollar soup knowing that at the end of the month I'll have a nice little bit of extra cash in my pocket to use in case of emergency or in case I have to suddenly replace something or fix something that failed or broke.

So there you have it... Soups are a SOUP-er way to save money.