I love what I call "I get it" moments. And they happen all the time when it comes money and budgeting. Why go out to eat for a pizza at a restaurant when you make one at home for half the cost? Why get convenience store cup of coffee on your way to work, when you make your own and pour into a travel mug?
I was talking to a coworker in the break room this week and he shared with me his "I get it" moment on the cost of his soda consumption.
Here's his story. Oh, and it's from Tom Joyce, he covers everything politics for the our organization.
From Tom:
When you actually do the math, the results can be pretty startling. I prided myself on my frugality when it came to eating at work. No restaurant take-out for me. Every day, I dutifully brown-bag it.
And about twice a day, for lunch and for a late-afternoon snack, I would go back to the break room and buy a bottle of soda from the vending machine at $1.25 a pop. (Pun sort of intended.) I knew that if I sat down and added up what I was spending on the sodas, it would probably come out to a lot. But I never bothered. A buck twenty-five? That's nothing, right?
Until one day I actually did sit down and do the math. And by even a conservative estimate, I was spending more than $500 a year on nothing but those bottles of soda!
I thought about what I could have done with that money over the years (fast cars, dates with supermodels, etc.) and felt like kicking myself. Hard.
The thing is, I like a drink with my lunch. So instead of buying soda, I went to the grocery store and got a container of powdered lemonade mix. It tasted kind of artificial to me. But with a dollop of lemon juice, it tasted just fine.
The lemonade mix and the lemon juice last me weeks. And together, they cost less than $5 - which is what I was paying in two days for soda.
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