Hustle Hoarding: Presidential Cheapskate

Five dollars.

It’s so many things to so many different people. It can be the amount of tax on a purchase, it is the average cost of a meal at a fast food place, and it is the amount that we’ll have to start placing into vending machines in the airport for a 20oz soda in about ten years, not to mention a gallon of gas.

Five dollars.

When I think about what I do with this seemingly insignificant amount of money, I cringe. I ate lunch yesterday @ Burger King, the total being $3.21. Since I use the Keep the Change program w/ Bank of America, they round that up to $4, so in my mind, it’s basically five dollars. When I go to eat at a restaurant, this miniature Abraham Lincoln in my pocket represents so much more to a waiter or waitress. My night of splurging is their livelihood, and some of them definitely know the value of that particular dead president.

Five dollars.

We know what five dollars is, but let’s take a look at what it isn’t. A regular ticket at a movie theatre. An appropriate contribution to church for a 45 year-old Wall Street broker. The cost to wash your car at a full-service location. A parking space in a downtown area. Five dollars is a lot of things to a lot of people, but in these examples it just doesn’t cut the mustard. So why is Da Hustler so stuck on this one denomination of money?

Quite simply: because it holds power.

You can change your life five dollars at a time, every day. When I started thinking about the power of Abe, I realize it was time to use it for my benefit. The simplest way I could think of was just to save it. Don’t spend it. Hoard it. It works for you a lot better when it is close to you, and you can’t be close to something that you are always giving away.

Da Hustler is doing just that – save my five dollars – and you can too! Just think about what you spend this money on every day: sure you have to eat, but do you absolutely need to eat those meals that cost, well, five dollars? You can eat healthier and simpler by using the dollar menu at a lot of places, and getting water as your beverage. Now you’ve just cut $2.00 or more from the cost of your meal, and you’re nearly halfway to the goal. What else can you cut? Morning coffee? Jelly doughnut? An unhealthy midday snack? That pack of cigarettes? Take a look at what you spend your money on each day, and I bet there is something that you can do without.

Voila! You’ve just saved your five dollars! Now what are you going to do with it? Well, unless or until you have built-up enough discipline to place yourself on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly savings plan, I recommend you place this five dollar savings in a jar, piggy bank, or transfer it to a savings account daily. Da Hustler does this, and I’ve found that it forces you to really examine what you spend your money on, plus gets you in the habit of saving your own money more regularly. The caveat is that you cannot touch the money that you save! You have to basically forget that it is there. Let’s look at the savings that you can realize after a whole year of this:

$5 day ~ $150/month

$150 x 12 = $1800/year

Not too bad, but even this doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of people to save on a regular basis. Let’s do what hustlers do and make this even more attractive: keep the same formula for saving, but add an extra five dollars the next month to your daily savings plan, and another five the month after that. Not only will you have to save more money, but you may have to also make more as well! But of course, that’s what hustlers do! Now here is the earnings with the revised example:

Month 1: $150 saved

Month 2: $300 saved that month

Month 3: $450 saved that month

Month 6: $900 saved that month

Month 12: $1800 saved that month

Over the course of the entire year, you would have saved $11,700! That’s a small car! (can you say Kia, Civic or Scion?) Not only will you save a boatload of money, but by the end of a year’s time you will be in a totally different mindset, because you would have forced yourself to find ways to make more money to save! Can you imagine being able to save $60/day? That means you would make a whole lot more than that to be able to put back that much and be comfortable. And one thing Da Hustler knows about money: the more you have, the more you really don’t want to spend it. This is why you rarely see millionaires going on extravagant shopping sprees; when you know you have the ability to purchase or do something, the appeal is that much less. Make this kind of thinking your goal, and you’ll be amazed at how much your life can change.

Five dollars at a time.

Hustle Hoarding: Top 10 Reasons to Cut Cable

I love this hoarding tip, because it is so easy, yet so few people do it because they feel they cannot live without this time-wasting luxury.

Dude, cut the cable.

Do you really need all those channels? Can you possible watch them all? Here’s Da Hustler’s reasoning: you buy unlimited internet access because you want to go on the net anytime, without having to wait for dial-up. You don’t pay per site, and you don’t pay for the length of time you are on the internet (but Comcast and others are using deceptive practices to seemingly penalize you for downloading too much — which is a whole different topic altogether). The same goes for your home phone service: nowadays, Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services such as Vonage charge you a low flat rate for unlimited calls to the U.S., Canada, and sometimes other countries — many times lower than the phone companies themselves! No more paying per call or per minute.

Right now we are just waiting for the whole cellular phone industry to catch up to this new way of thinking. Greed and contracts make it to tempting to convert to the Metro PCS way of doing business, but it will be coming soon, to a city near you.

With all of this knowledge, why do you continue to pay for “packages,” “bundles,” and all the other crap that they try to include to make it seem like you are getting a deal? You’re not!! No human can possibly watch every single channel of cable television, and you can’t even TiVo all of them either. You are paying for something you can’t use: when you leave the room, go check your mail, go to work, go to the bathroom, go workout, power goes out, hurricane blows away your house, etc., the bill still keeps on coming.

And in the case of the hurricane, a bill will still generate even if you have no mailbox. But nice try!

I know some of you have to have your ESPN (yeah!) and Lifetime TV for women (barf!), but really examine how much you spend on these services per year: a $50 cable/satellite bill is worth $600 per year for something that is intangible. Something that is temporary. Something that used to always be free! Take a look at some common excuses, and see if you fall into any of these categories:

Stop making the cable and satellite companies rich, and take back your life and finances by making this smart and simple change. I can almost promise you that you will not miss a thing.

Hustle Hoarding: How To Pimp Restaurants & Burn Calories

This tip is very practical, and you can use it every time you go out to eat. It’s not flamboyant or extravagant, but it can be overlooked because of the natural greed that humans have. Especially Americans.

You’re thirsty. You and some friends go out to eat at a local restaurant, and you decide to eat there. Or maybe you just want to have some ‘me’ time and you take in a lunch solo at the local Chick-Fil-A while kicking back reading the paper or enjoying some people watching while in the food court. No matter what you order, however, DO NOT get the large size of anything. Sure, you pay a couple of dollars more for the convenience of not having to get up as often, but that is another reason why Americans are so FAT.

Yes I said it.

Americans are largely fat and lazy due to the insatiable need for convenience. A king size drink satisfies the desire to have everything you want at your fingertips, while seemingly preventing the need to refresh a beverage more often. Or does it?

Think about it like this: a bigger drink comes in a bigger cup. The larger the cup, the more beverage it can hold right? Conversely, the more ice it can hold as well. So you may get a couple of more drops in the cup, but you also have more ice in it, which almost negates the benefit of a larger size! You are essentially buying the illusion that you are getting more for your money, but nine times out of ten you are paying for more styrofoam, plastic and paper.

Yum.

The small drink w/ no ice = the big drink w/ ice.

Instead, just get the smaller size drink whenever possible. Not only is it cheaper, but most places have FREE REFILLS! So stop spending your hard earned money just for convenience, and get your lazy but up and get a refill! Not only do you burn more calories, but you may find that you will drink less if you order less. The same can be said for food as well. Order the smaller size meal, and get accustomed to eating smaller portions to save more dough. Better yet, prepare some healthy snacks ahead of time so you spend less on meals to begin with! Your body will thank you, and so will your wallet.

Oh, and water is not only more healthy, but it’s free.