"A Penny Saved Is a Penny Earned"

Have you ever asked yourself exactly how much money gets thrown away over a set amount of time? I don't mean literally tossing money away, but just throwing it away in ways we don't realize.

For example, we go to a department store and buy a small electronic, say a CD player. We start using it and within a month or three the CD player part of the player stops working, leaving only a radio. We no longer have a CD player so we go buy another one hoping this time we choose a brand that has better longevity. In the end, we have three or four or five CD players turned radio stacking up on us so what do we do with them? They're just taking up space uselessly so we throw them in the trash or send them to a recycling center. In the end, we may as well have thrown the money in the trash to start with.

Another scenario involves going to the grocery store and buying a bottle of pepper. We use the contents from the bottle and pitch the bottle in the trash or send it to the recycler, then buy another bottle. We aren't thinking at the time that the money we spent on that pepper purchased not just the contents, but the packaging as well. If we make sure that bottle goes to the recycling center, we probably justify throwing it out because, after all, the material will be re-used. The problem is, we will never get back the money we spent on that bottle nor will we get back the money we will be spending on a hundred other bottles we will buy to replace the original.

Those are just a couple of examples that are rather small money wasters and may not seem to make a lot of difference. How much difference would it make, though, if the $30 that was spent on a CD player that ended up in the trash three months later was instead used to help a battered mother get to the point of being able to support herself and her family? I see people frequently spend five dollars on a cup of coffee and think nothing of it. For many families I know, including mine, five or six dollars will put a nutritious meal on the table at dinner time, and by nutritious I'm not talking about Hamburger Helper or Ramen noodles. Those products should not even be considered food. I am talking about whole foods like meat and vegetables.

The focus of "Pinching Pennies" is all about reasonable ways to cut back on unnecessary spending while improving the quality of our lives. I will cover here what hasn't already been covered in Landfill Woes, and some of the information will no doubt cross-over.