A new health club opened in my neighborhood recently and I told my wife I wanted to join it. She agreed, providing that I gave up something we were spending elsewhere to pay for the $1,200 annual membership. I don’t want to give up anything fun so I decided to adopt the Congressional approach to budgeting to achieve such savings. It turned out to be a snap.
The first thing I did was claim $150 in credit from a restaurant app I use called Open Table. Each time I use the app to reserve a table it gives me the equivalent of $1 towards a future meal. Since I got the app five years ago I’ve never gotten around to using these, but now seems a propitious time.
Next, I let our discount deals expire with the cable company and the newspaper. Each has a base price it offers subscribers, but if I call and threaten to stop my subscription they give me the discount for new subscribers. So I let each expire for a week and then called to get the new subscriber deal again. Together, that saved me $850.