How to Save $70 per Month on Gas?

A little over a month ago, we posted a blog called 5 Practical Tips for Saving on Gas this Summer. One of the tips we included in that blog post was the concept of putting away $5 bills for the purpose of saving extra money.  But we didn’t just stop there. Because the Cash Store wants to be known for posting responsible blog content, we decided to test this tip out for ourselves and recruited one of our very own team members, yours truly, to hoard $5 bills over the course of a month.

Parameters

During my 4 week test period, I kept about $30-$50 in cash on me at all times and took out extra cash if I ever dipped below the $30 mark. I tried my best not to do any extra spending or to reduce my spending. I simply kept my normal, everyday routine and stashed away every $5 bill that I ran across.

Findings

First of all, I would like to cut to the chase and report that I was able to save $70 in $5 bills within the 4 weeks. Not only was I surprised at the amount of money that I saved, I was more surprised at how much this experiment made me aware of my daily spending habits. Just a week into the experiment, I began to notice that I had a coffee addiction and a mid-afternoon snacking problem. I also began to notice the amount of money I was spending on lunches. Small amounts spent here and there every day really added up over the course of the month. In the end, the best thing I got out of this whole exercise was the realization that I needed to be more disciplined when it came to spending money.

Conclusion

In our original gas saving blog post, we stated that stashing away $5 bills was a good way to save for gas expenses. In that regard, this exercise did work because I was able to save $70 which would be good for a little less than 2 full tanks of gas for my car. In the long run, however, I wouldn’t recommend doing this on a regular basis because the beauty of this exercise was in the novelty of it. My gut feeling tells me that if saving $5 bills was just another part of my daily routine, I would get use to it and simply spend the extra cash. So what’s my final conclusion then? - employ the $5 bill savings plan when you need to save up for a special occasion. This way, you keep alive the novelty aspect of the exercise while enjoying the benefits of having that extra cash.