1. Save on eating out

It occurred to us rather early that going out to eat was expensive and a quick win would be to slash this part of our budget. We never thought of it as a waste of money – we very much value going out to restaurants and searching out new ones or grabbing a meal at a favorite one. During our Era of Austerity, however, we decided to limit how many times we would go out to them and put parameters up regarding when we would go out. One of the most important things to us was spending time with friends and family and eating well, so we created a plan to eat well and also spend time with our friends and family.

• We invited people over to our place to have a meal instead of going out to eat. When we went through our marriage conversation, one of the things that came up throughout our conversation was how much we valued spending time with family and friends. For the price of going out to eat once, we realized fairly quickly that was nearly enough for a few dinner parties with friends. We could host a wonderful meal with booze for far less than going out to eat and it would probably be a more fun and intimate experience. And that’s what we did. We would invite friends and family over for a meal (taco night was a favorite) and we’d hang out and eat and drink well. I stole this idea from my parents. Mrs. Moneyaire’s parents are working class immigrants and going out to a restaurant was a luxury. If my parents wanted to spend time with friends they would host wonderful dinner parties or potlucks and we’d all spend a fun evening together eating, playing games and talking. Those nights are some of my best memories as a kid.

Pick and choose

• Going out to eat is an inevitable part of our social lives. Many times, hanging out meant eating out. We decided as a couple to keep eating out at restaurants to social events, i.e., when it involved hanging out with friends or family. We weren’t going to deprive ourselves the opportunity to be with our friends or family and decided we’d forgo dining out by ourselves to save money.

• If Mr. Moneyaire and I decided to eat out without it being a social thing, we would use our credit card rewards to eat out. By doing this our meals were typically free (we would of course tip, or do carry out) or would be pretty cheap, especially because we skipped the drinks and apps. We also would use our gift card rewards when we did eat out with friends.

Drinks, especially booze are very expensive out

• Drinks, especially alcoholic drinks, are super expensive at restaurants. How many times have you gone to a restaurant, seen a bottle of wine you recognize and think, “A single glass of this is what I pay for the whole bottle at Target!!” Alcohol is typically marked up by 200 to 400%. Quite the premium. In our early days we would skip buying drinks when we went out to eat, or we would go out to a restaurant having a special that evening on drinks if we really wanted to enjoy some wine, beer or cocktails. We would find places doing happy hour or half off bottle night etc. and enjoy half priced drinks and apps and invite our friends along too.

2. Stick to the budget

When we first were married, our spending was a bit out of control and at the end of the month, although we’d be able to pay our bills, we didn’t have much leftover for savings. At first, this didn’t really bother us much. After all, we were earning pretty good entry level salaries and we weren’t going into consumer debt with our spending. That same year we were married, just before Christmas, the company we both worked at had layoffs.

It scared us both to see so many smart and hardworking people be let go from their jobs and have difficulty finding new ones. We decided that we needed to create more of a financial cushion and a plan in case one of us got laid off. Our plan ended up being akin to the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early). We decided that we needed to save and invest our money in case one of us was let go from a job and couldn’t find new work easily. We wanted our money to carry us in case we lost a job and couldn’t find work. Ultimately, we came up with a plan to get us to a point that if one of us were let go from a job in our 40s, it would be okay if we never worked a W2 again.

Crunch the numbers

To accomplish this we built out a spreadsheet to crunch the numbers. We figured out how much we would need to save given a conservative return over our given timeline. We realized we’d have to save a lot more than we were currently. To boost our savings, we drew up a budget that would tell us how much we could spend on food, personal care, housing, clothing, entertainment/vacation, cars, gas etc. for the month and ultimately for the year in order to save what we needed to. The budget we created together was really the driving force behind the Era of Austerity. We cut back on nearly every category and pumped up our expected savings budget.

I remember once that I wanted to go for a haircut, but I had already spent down my personal care budget for the month. I checked in with Mr. Moneyaire, and he suggested I wait a couple of weeks to get my haircut the following month. When it came to buying books, I took Mr. Moneyaire to the local library and got him a card to check out books. I know this seems severe and controlling but by keeping to our monthly budget we were able to shovel savings into investments. What helped us stick to our plan was communication and a shared goal.

Invest as you save

An important aspect we built into our budget was that we had budgeted amounts that would go into our Roth IRAs and into our after-tax brokerage account with TD Ameritrade. This part is critical; we didn’t just let our savings build up in our savings or checking account where the interest was basically nothing. We saved and then put our money to work. This was especially helpful to us when the real estate bubble burst and we were able to buy stocks at a discount because we were in a recession. As the recession ended and we went back to a growth period, our invested money grew.

3. Sell your unused stuff

Because of the smaller space (745 sqft) we opted to live in, in the early years of our marriage, we had to be militant about getting rid of stuff we didn’t love or use. We would post things online for sale. The money we would get would go straight into the bank. Selling our stuff also helped us realize how we needed to be more deliberate with what we purchased because what we received for our old stuff was a fraction of what we originally paid for it.

4. Resist the urge to buy things for the home unless they are two of three things: Useful, Beautiful (high quality) or Memorable.

The deals at Tuesday Morning or TJ Maxx are really good. I remember going shopping and being very tempted to buy this spikey gold metal sphere thing that was very well placed among a table of beautiful things at a trendy store. I picked it up and checked out the price. It was $28. I stood there thinking, that this $28 item was kind of ridiculous. It wasn’t anything that would be useful, nor did it mean anything to me, but it was beautiful. I put it back and just thought about what the value of that object and where that sphere would be in 10 years. It’d probably be in the $1 bin of a garage sale I’d be hosting. I walked away from the sphere.

We stayed away from buying the obligatory decorative items to fill space – we barely had any! Instead we focused on only getting things that we either needed or was 2 of 3 things; useful, beautiful or memorable.

For example, we took a trip to Greece, and we happened across a beautiful hand carved olive wood ladle. We needed a ladle and although it was probably more expensive than just buying it at a discount home goods store or an aspirational one, I bought it. Using that ladle to dish out stews and soups always makes me think back to that trip.

5. We bought stuff we needed secondhand when possible

Growing up there was a stigma associated with getting anything used. Grandma and Grandpa Moneyaire worked very very hard to break into the middle class and shunned going to a thrift store unless it was to make a donation. It took a bit of self-convincing but I eventually wandered into a thrift store and saw things I would normally purchase at the mall (the same brands!) just sitting on shelves for a fraction of the price. When we started hosting dinner parties and we needed serving platters, we picked them up at Goodwill and they still are put to good use even now.

6. Cut out stocking up

The food sitting in the pantry or fridge is money just sitting there, losing value every day. The average American household throws about nearly a third of the food brought into the home. We would buy just enough food to get us through the week before grocery shopping again.

We also cut back on stocking up on other household items like cleaning products, linens, towels etc. I distinctly remember fighting our small linen closet to fit the 10 bath towels we had next to the 5 fitted bedsheets. I was frustrated at the small size of our closet. Then it dawned on me… we were only two people in a 1 bedroom apartment. We didn’t need all those linens. 4 towels would probably be plenty as well as just a couple of sheets. One of the traps I fell into was trying to buy things when I saw them on sale. Stock up and save!! Right? The thing was, I didn’t need to do that, and even if I had purchased just two sheets at full price I probably would have saved money by not purchasing the other 3.

Don’t let your stuff dictate your housing

I see it on HGTV all the time: people acquiring so much stuff that they buy bigger homes just for the stuff. We didn’t want to fall into that so I knew we had to pare down and be more conscious of what we did buy. Think of all the space in your home as having value; the 5 sheets I had in my linen closet were taking up valuable space and it would be more cost effective to get rid of a couple of sheets instead of getting a house with a bigger linen closet to store them.