Being Foxy – A New Year’s Resolution

A little bit ago I wrote about my Goals for 2013. One of them is being foxy and save up some dinero to purchase a cute LoveHouse (awwww) or a new car in case mine decides to die (noooo!).

The German philosophy to money is to save and then spend and not spend and then pay off debt and so I was fairly nervous about moving to the States without a rainy day fund (and not much of a credit history to open credit cards so no taking advantage of philosophy #2 either.). Well, I’ve lived here for over five years now and have been lucky enough to afford furnishing my apartment, purchasing a cute, used car and even to create a little rainy day fund. And let’s be honest, something I don’t want to skip: plane tickets home gobble up quite a bit of any foreigner’s savings, too.

Somehow though I feel really behind in saving up money for grown-up purchases like real-estate or car down-payments let alone fabulous trips to fabulous places. And while I realize I am FAAAAAAR better off than lots of people in this world (#FirstWorldProblems) I decided to be a little more aggressive with my savings this year and set a formal monthly goal.

I’ve been doing OK so far. As you can see, February didn’t go as planned but zee car didn’t start and needed to be towed (“No Ma’am, it does not sound like the battery is dead, I know from experience what that sounds like! So can you just send the tow truck, please?”). Ah well. No stress. I’m hoping that I can make that up later in the year!

San has a great list of suggestions on how to save money on her blog. And just like her, many of the traditional saving suggestions like “Don’t buy fancy coffee every morning” I also don’t do. I don’t restrict myself to a weekly budget either and am just trying to make foxy moves and cut-out unnecessary spending. OK so Alfi got a new toy from PetSmart but it was his birthday this week!!

The one thing I do love is catching foxy sales. The weekly e-VIC special (one or two items on super sale for one day) from Harris Teeter (our supermarket) is something I look forward to every Friday. And I admit, I get super excited when they have toilet paper for less than $5 on there like this weekend. That’s $10 and 24 rolls of TP into my savings right there. Bam! Yes, I go Bam! over toilet paper deals. Man, I feel old! 🙂

I also try to throw trips to Aldi instead of the regular super market in for kitchen staples (and hello Aldi pro-biotic yogurt 4 pack for ~$1.70 compared to $2.50 for that active sounding brand elsewhere.). I’m really not an intense couponing chick that monitors triple coupon week and buys 3 copies of the Sunday paper (in fact, that scares me) but when one comes up online for something I use anyway, you betcha I’ll try to cash in on that. They usually have pretty awesome printable ones here.

Of course y’all know about Groupon, Living Social etc by now but I almost find I save the most by not purchasing them at all unless I have very specific plans! 😀

So as you can see I don’t have a strict budget but just having a formal goal for me has been the working quite well and hopefully this New Year’s Resolutions Goal will be reached throughout the year! #That-Grown-Up-Thing-Where-You-Set-Financial-Goals