March 9
2018
Saving for Big-Ticket Items
When you need to save for a big-ticket item, like a trip to London, or a really cool new camera, or something equally cool that you wouldn’t normally get a loan for like a new car, how do you save the money for it? I do all sorts of things, whatever it takes really, if the goal is truly important to me, so I will share some ideas below.
The very first thing I would do is to set up a separate account to put the money into so you can be motivated by the act of saving and watching the account balance grow. Once you’ve done that, try any or all of these ideas to help you meet your goal.
- Save all pocket change, roll, and deposit. I saved pennies in one 16.9 oz Ice Mountain water bottle and nickels and dimes in another. I am told if you fill one with just dimes, it will hold about $100. We deposited over $130 in rolled coins to start our account this way, though admittedly, it was mostly quarters and we had been saving them a long time.
- Choose NOT to do something, then transfer the money you would have spent on the thing you chose NOT to do, into the account for the big-ticket item. In our case, this was going to a cabin in a state park over New Year’s weekend.
- Cook at home instead of eating out. Watch your food budget get lower and save the difference. Note that you pay extra for convenience foods, so make as much from scratch as you can, or buy extra to stock up when you find a good sale price on something you use.
- If you really want to eat out, use a 2 for 1 coupon and save the difference, or if you are eating out alone get the second meal to take for lunch or eat for dinner later in the week.
- Make your own iced tea, coffee, hot tea or whatever your beverage of choice is. Save the money you would have spent and put it into the big ticket account.
- Give up paying for drinks if and when you go out to eat. We all need to drink more water. This can save anywhere from a dollar to several dollars per person, and let’s not even think about buying alcohol out, get it from the liquor store and drink at home you will save so much this way.
- Save all overtime pay or freelancing money in the big-ticket account.
- If you pay off a debt, take the amount you used to pay toward that debt and save it for the big ticket item or pay that amount extra toward the next debt so it gets paid off earlier and when the debts are paid, ALL the money formerly used to pay these debts can go toward the big-ticket item. Dave Ramsey calls this the debt snowball.
