Pepsi Story

The other day my local deli was running a special of $2.00 for a two-litre Pepsi. Even for a supermarket this is an extremely good price.

After paying for my bread, milk, and Pepsi and returning to the car, I realised they charged me $3.00 for the Pepsi. Sure an extra dollar is not a lot of money, but it was still my money. What do you think a lot of people would have done in this situation? They probably would not have worried about it and gone home.

But to be a true budget extraordinaire this situation provides a great opportunity to improve your budgeting skills. So I went back and challenged the one-dollar overcharge. They admitted they made a mistake and refunded my extra dollar. Not a big deal you might think!
But everyday we are presented with opportunities to save money. This can be by choosing the cheaper soft drink; finding a better price on our utility costs. Asking for a discount or getting a less expensive brand of anything. Think if we could just save one extra dollar a day, each day for the whole year. All of a sudden you are not thinking about one dollar a day. You are now thinking about $365 a year.

Don't look at it like it's saving a dollar; look at it like its saving $365 dollars a year. Imagine each dollar you save going right into a bank account. Each day you add another dollar. Plus of course you get interest.

Let's say someone starts doing this when they are 30. They receive 6.5 percent interest a year. They do this until they are 70. Now they are looking at an amount of $68,077. This is just for one dollar a day!

Imagine if you could squeeze $5.00 a day out of your budget. All of a sudden you are talking about $318,956.

So the next time someone says something like it's only a small amount, why bother? You will know better.