The Secret To Controlling Your Everyday Expenses

If you’re like most people, you reluctantly integrate all-too-real budget limitations on major purchases, like a house or car. Yes, that place on Hillview Drive with the French windows giving on to the gently sloping lawn in the back would be your ideal new abode, but nearly $200,000 over the top of the price range you had fixed in your mind is simply too much. Yes, you would have preferred the brand-new Ford Bronco you saw at that dealership’s lot on your way to work over the second-hand Jeep Cherokee that you ended up buying, but you needed those $19,000 you saved by buying the Jeep instead for other things, like rent and your daughter’s college tuition. And so it goes.

In these times of runaway inflation, however, we are only beginning to realize the nibbling away at our disposable income represented by everyday expenses (groceries, toothpaste, razors, gas, your daily Starbucks latte); by relatively minor but regularly recurring subscription or service charges (Netflix, Amazon Prime, monthly cable, your electricity and heating bills, cell phone plans, insurance premiums) and, last but not least, by those still relatively minor but more occasional discretionary purchases (clothes, cosmetics, shoes and other accessories, restaurants, bars, movies, tickets to sporting events) you treat yourself to from time to time. We rarely take a comprehensive view of how…