Numbers and Budgets

3.82, 3.67, 729, 5.49, 112,  614, 2500, 25, 1000, 2350, 2400

What's in a number and what do those have to do with budgeting?  I read that a typical household can cut over $1000 a month just by recording on a spreadsheet every penny spent per day for a month and cutting out the non-essentials.

Long ago, I realized that much of my business is done at the local coffee house, I personally frequent our local Starbucks just down the street.  They have a rewards card that gives free drinks after a certain number of swipes, and I get one every couple weeks; I never seem to get them as my kids get the mail first. Now before I hear the "Wow, that's a lot of money you spend there."  The reward I signed up for is free refills. I get a "Tall in a Vente" cup on Monday and pay $1.55.  Free refills are good for 24 hrs, so as long as I swipe the card a couple minutes earlier than the previous day, I get it filled (to the Vente level, room for cream) for, you guessed it....free, additionally each swipe is considered a purchase, so when my kid goes to cash in a free drink card, he gets a $7 foofoo drink.  They LOSE money on me!

$3.82 is the average patron's cost per drink; 3.67 is the average times per week at a given Starbucks. costing on average, $729 annually. Starbucks views each customer as a $750 value asset!   Fast food stats are similar, with the average customer visiting 112 times and spending on average $5.49 or $614 a year. The Auto Club AAA reports the average driver if combining trips could save around 2500 miles a year and at 20mpg would save $1000 ($4 gallon) when you add in actual cost of a car of .30-.52 cents per mile, it can easily cost well over.  Those couple things add up to over $2350.

A vice of sorts?  Anyone drink bottled water, typically cost more than gas?  Can of Coke, can of beer, glass of wine..guilty as charged. there's a $100 While a pack of cigarettes is only around $5 here in CA, I was stunned to find out a pack is almost $12 in NY. 20 years of that, is a paid off house in rural America  Cable/Internet/magazine or paper subscriptions, easily another $100.  Fixed income? Do you really need to live in one of the most expensive cities if housing is half the cost just 50 miles away?

If you meet certain criteria; heart beat, over 100lbs etc, you can donate blood/plasma at the local blood bank and make $200 a month or $2400 a year.  Need a quick $100?  Have a yard sale, someone will pay for that 70's shag wig,, stuffed animal or crock pot rarely used. If you didn't use it last month, most likely you don't need it..unless seasonal.  What you don't use you don't miss.  Anyway you get the idea; many ways to save/create extra income.

Q- How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

A-One-but it has to want to change

"That guy- you either know him or you are him" new series at the church I attend, this week we covered a couple points that you give people what they need not what they want and yes, they may use anger or guilt to manipulate so you keep enabling them, and sometimes unknowingly disabling God by coming to their rescue. Don't work harder on someone else's problems than they are willing to do themselves; So stay out of God's way and stop rescuing people from their consequences and bad choices or you'll help prolong the enabling codependent symptoms...Galatians 6:7 "People reap what they sew. Don't mock God cause you continue to mess up."

Remember the story of a butterfly we all learned in Kindergarten-We may want to intervene and help a butterfly out of the cocoon, and while helping it gives it an initial ease to life, it dies quickly since it was not able to endure the struggle to escape the hardship of the cocoon; the wings never get to develop, it can't escape it birthplace and it eventually succumbs.