Before we dive into the details, I will share with you that by the end of this page you will learn how to save $500 per person in your household. Is it worth reading all the way through?
There are just some things in life that you have to buy whether you want to or not. Plus, not only do you have to buy them once, you have to buy them on a regular basis. These are the staples of life or otherwise known as consumables.
These are what you may consider as the little things in life that are sometimes a necessity and other times are mostly a convenience. They are items that are consistently used in the home, the workplace and for personal uses.
Even if you don’t happen to be the main cook of the house there are consumables for the kitchen you are going to make use of. These can include food wraps, paper towel, and dish soap just to name a few.
For the bathroom as you can guess the toilet paper is going to be the number one consumable item. Then for some the second consumable for this room might be quality air fresheners.
Depending on the line of work you are in the consumables can range anywhere from pencils for the office worker to protective masks and gloves for those who work in high risk environments. High risk environments like those who work in a nuclear industry often create an increased need for consumables like filters, wipes, scalpels and blades.
Personal Care items are not only those that you may use to spruce up your appearance, but can include items again that are used in high risk working environments like first aid kits.
Consumable can vary in the time they need replacing from being a short lived item to ones that have long expires to them. For example, toilet paper is a short lived item, but a first aid kit has a much longer usage date to it.
When you add up all of the consumables that are applicable to your lifestyle it comes with a pretty hefty price tag. This should be enough of an incentive for you to start looking at ways to cut some costs. Okay, I am not suggesting that you look for cheaper alternatives for using toilet paper, or hinting that you should reduce the amount of toothpaste that you use.
Did you know that the average household uses one roll of toilet paper every five days, and the average person uses about 8.6 strips of this consumable each day? So, just on this one commodity say you used a roll of paper a week, that is 52 in a year. Let’s assume the average price is $2. per roll. Your yearly cost is $104. Now that doesn’t seem to be too bad, but let’s say that you have ten consumables that average around the same price per year. Now you are looking at $1,040. It adds up doesn’t it! Plus, this is just for one person. If you are a family of four well then you can do the math.
What I am suggesting is that you start looking for the discounts. When it comes to consumable you can almost always find some discount that is being run on these on a monthly basis. It is going to take a little extra time to do some discount shopping but just check out the flyers for your local stores, Amazon or Ebay and you will surely find some.
Don’t just stop there though, go for the big discounts like the 50%. Then you can consider stock piling some of these but only if they have a long shelf life.
Look for the 50% off or the two for one deals. If you do this consistently then you are now cutting that assumed $1,040. cost down to half. If you really want to play it smart take those savings and chuck it into your savings account, and let this accumulate a little bit of interest. If you are using the right kind of savings account then you may be able to avoid the taxes on the interest.
What you are beginning to practice here is compound savings. You are saving on your consumables, then compounding these savings by earning a little interest on them.