10 Days are over: Let´s start saving!

Money spent for X in 10 days:

• Fuel: 76.25$
• Restaurants 37,80$
• Costs for eating at home: 33,86$
• Bakery: 17,75$
• Coffee in Café: 32,75$   (!!!)
• Food in Café: 28,20$  (!!!)

This is the distrtibution of my major costs during the last 10 days.  Many of these costs are unnecessary and I am optimistic to lower my expenses significantly. To my defense I need to add that the current semester break is to blame for some of the high expenses...  To track my savings, I have a counter on the right side of my blog which will show my current savings. My current average daily expenses are 29,15$. For the coming week I want to lower them to 20$. To be more motivated to excell in this exercise, I am going to put a big Piggybank (I am looking for one similar to this: My Piggybank ) on my desk.

My plans for the coming week:

• Buying food for  breakfast, lunch and dinner at Hannaford or Walmart for several days ahead to avoid restaurant visits during weekdays.
• Buying a coffeemachine
• Reducing the "Daily Morning Hazelnut+Almond Large Iced-Coffee" to a "Every Other Day Normal-sized Hazelnut+Almond Iced-Coffee"
• Going to Bakery only ONCE a week.

Week 1: Where do my Dollars go to?

I tracked all my expenses for one week now and have a clearer idea where my dollars go to: The pie chart gives you a first impression, however: It is just one week and I will continue tracking every expense without significant changes for at least another week, before I start cutting down my expenses:

The biggest potential for savings lies in my habit to eat at Pizza stores, Indian and Chinese restaurant.

Driving around is obviously another costy part of my life. During the coming weeks I will try to lower the costs by driving bus and walking to close places.

I see also a lot of potential for savings in my habit to buy coffee and occasionally breakfast at my favourite coffee place, but I am not sure yet to which degree I am willing to buy less coffee here..

Let´s see how my expenses are distributed in my second week, I won´t change my habits for now. In week 3, I will change my habits, try to lower my costs and start a "Savings Counter" to track how much I was able to save with the budget plan.