Make $100 In Ten Minutes… Right Now!
Author: Nick
Category: Money
Topics: budget, entertainment, food, frugality, goals
This is a basic personal finance exercise you can perform anytime. It helps you gain a better understanding of your spending and savings habits and shows you how simple measures can translate to big money.
The $100 Plan
- Consider these three categories of spending:
Food. This is stuff you eat and drink either at home or out.
Household. From utilities to pots and pans to personal care products, it’s all the things in your home that you don’t eat.
Entertainment. Stuff you buy or do that makes life more enjoyable. - Also consider a fourth category: positive income. This includes paychecks, gifts you receive, and anything else that makes your bank account balance go up.
- In the next ten minutes, find one specific thing in each of the spending categories that you can stop doing or do differently in order to save yourself money between now and the end of the year. For the positive income category, plan a specific way you can make money by December 31st that you wouldn’t otherwise have made. Your spending cuts and extra income should add up to at least $100.
- Optionally, share your $100 plan, either by commenting here, posting in your own blog or journal, or telling a friend. Then revisit your plan next New Year’s Day and see if you accomplished everything on your list. If you did, congratulations on becoming $100 richer in 10 minutes!
So let’s give it a shot. From 11:30pm to 11:40pm, I’m going to come up with my own plan to save or make $100 and type my ideas as I come up with them. Here I go!
My $100 Plan
| Category | My plan | Expected savings ($) |
| Food | Skip the soda. We dine out with our budget-minded friends once every week or so. One simple change I could make to my dining out habits would be to cut the cola that usually adds at least $1.50 to each meal. | 45 |
| Household | Disconnect unneeded electronics. Looking around I can see at least three always-on electronics that are constantly sucking out a tiny bit of power. Why leave a digital clock on when I have my laptop clock right in front of me? | 5 |
| Entertainment | Get the game when the price drops. There’s a videogame coming out later this year I’d really like to pick up on its release day, but I can probably wait six months (and play all the other games I have) and pick it up at half price. | 20 |
| Income | Sell that old TV. We sold one old TV at a yard sale last year for $20. We have another that goes unused and is slightly nicer than the last one. We’ll bring it to a family yard sale this Saturday and see what happens. | 30 |
| Total expected savings | $100 | |
I’m sure I could come up with many other ways of saving or making even more, but this exercise is meant to maximize the ratio of savings to time and effort. Now if only I could come up with a way to make $100 every ten minutes…
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40 Responses »
1.
Dale G.
April 12th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Here’s one we can all love. Find a shorter route to work. I found a route that cuts my round trip by 2.6 miles. I figure my long term cost for operating my car is below the 48.5 cents/mile that the IRS was allowing in Q4 last year. I buy slightly used, take care of them and keep them a long time. But even at 30 cent/mile that alone will save me $125 dollars by the end of the year. And I have 3 categories to go.
2.
Nick
April 12th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
That’s an excellent idea! I managed to do just that when I was commuting from Baltimore to where we live now (got the ride down from 36 miles to about 31). It might be a bit harder for us now living just 1.6 miles from where I work, but that just means I should get a bicycle!
3.
DebtBuster
May 14th, 2008 at 6:05 am
So So many ways to save the old cash $$ .. Um remember to bring ** sandwiches to work, made with all the sandwich making items you bought at the supermarket.. not just leaving them to be picked at at home and spending $10 in the canteen.. EVERY DAY lol
James
4.
Alex
August 31st, 2008 at 9:22 am
This is a post about saving, not making.
5.
Timon Weller
November 10th, 2008 at 10:34 am
1) cold showers, turn the hot water off. Thats about $80 per three months that bill
2) boil water over a fire rather than gas or electric if possible for cuppas…
3) turn off all electric as you leave areas of house, yes this includes at the wall. This can save half the bill…
4) buy bulk…
5) eat less…
that should save at least $200 a month i reckon…
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Cookware Sets
May 30th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Good post. Setting up a blog is the easy part. Making it interesting so people will visit is the hard part. These are good tips. I would also recommend reading other blogs, observing how they’re set up, and making comments on occasion.
7.
Bill
September 30th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Call your car insurance and find a better rate. Probably could save at least $100 a year right there.
Call your internet provider and tell them you’re looking at another company, mine gave me $10 off per month for 6 months, they said call back in 6 months, that’s $120 there.
Check your cell phone provider and see if you’re over paying, probably can save about $100 per year there.
3 easy things, you can probably do all in about 2 or 3 hours if you drag your feet and it’ll save you $320 per year.
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