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 Put Your Budget on a Diet
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- Eat out
less. Eating out can ruin your diet and use
up cash. Restaurants serve larger portions
and, for many, social eating means
overeating. Packing your lunch helps you
control ingredient quality and portion size.
Brown-bagging
meals also helps you pinch pennies. A
sandwich from a restaurant can cost over ten
dollars, while packing a turkey sandwich
with baby carrots, an apple and sandwich
cookies costs little more than three bucks.
- Start a
Diary. A food diary, where dieters record
everything that they eat, proves an
important weight-loss tool. In a recent
study released by Kaiser Permanente,
two-thirds of a study group lost 12 pounds
on average, simply by tracking their food
intake.
Likewise,
writing down every purchase you make will
make you more accountable for your impulse
spending.
- Get moving.
If your evening plans involve a couch, you
might want to get moving. People who
maintain weight loss do so through exercise
-; many successful losers get at least one
hour of cardiovascular exercise each day.
But getting
active doesn't just shed pounds, it also
saves money. Exercise promotes long-term
health, reducing money spent on medical
bills. If you normally go to the movies on
weekends, choose an inexpensive, healthier
activity instead. Seeing a free show or
planning a picnic with friends will keep
your body and your wallet healthy.
When your
wallet's diet pays off, put that money into
savings. Just like eating an extra 100
calories a day can pack on 20 pounds a year,
saving small amounts of money over the
course of the year can significantly
increase your savings account.
One financial
service, SAVE252 (www.save252.com),
allows users to put as little as a dollar a
day toward a savings account or Roth IRA.
Users sign up for the service, which then
transfers a set amount of money from their
checking account into a regular account
every day for the 252 days each year that
the financial markets are open.
A chicken
burrito a day can cost $7.00 and pack 1,000
calories. If you pack your lunch each day
for 600 calories and $3.00, you can save
100,800 calories and $1,008 dollars every
252 days.
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