More Financially Conscious

I slipped with my receipt journal. However, after doing it for a month, I became more aware of my financial situation. I noticed things that I would've missed before and I put more effort into reducing the unnecessary expenses with the things I now notice. So what are they?


1. Eating out.
Don't get me wrong, I still eat out a lot. However, my choice of places I go to or the selection of the dish that I order is totally different. If I am eating out, I go to places where I wouldn't use over $8 most of the time. If I end up going to a restaurant with more expensive dishes, then I try to go for an appetizer (since my portion is small) or pick something that is on the cheaper side.

2. Coffee.
Once again, I still go to coffee shops most days out of the week since my apartment is packed with moving boxes (temporarilyy staying here) and I can't focus in this mess. So I go to coffee shops to get my daily work done. This means $$$ on my drinks. So what I started doing is to get drip coffee, which tends to be the cheapest drink at a cafe. I love the sweet lattes, which makes the whole converting process a bit challenging, but regular coffee is better for my health anyways.

3. Clearance section.
Whenever I go grocery shopping or buy necessities, I go to the clearance section first to check if they have the items that I need. Now, this only works when I write down a list of things that I need before going to stores. Otherwise, I will be going through the section and grabbing many things I don't need.

4. Clothes.
Since I'm moving, I went through all my clothes and piled up the clothing items that I don't wear anymore. Then I took them to a second hand clothing store and sold whatever I could and donated the rest. Another thing I do is to go to an actual retail store to buy clothes and check out the clearance section. As you guys know, retail stores are struggling with sales so they have a lot more deals going on and they have different sales than their online stores. Sometimes, the online stores have cheaper deals (which is why I always check before I buy anything), but I usually find cheaper things at an actual store.


I still have a lot of work to do for fixing my financial habits but at this point, I decided that it will be a slow working process. Thank you guys for reading this post and cheers to your efforts for your financial goals.