How much have you saved?

[11522914]

Does buying a 2nd hand car count ?
I bought a Bimmer with only 20K miles for $25K and looks almost brand new. The brand new price was $46K, so I saved $21K.

Our last trip to Lake Como in Italy, I went with my cousin, who is an airline employee, so DW and I saved $3,000 using her guest travel pass.

I exchanged our timeshare for a 3 Bedroom Oceanfront Penthouse resort on the highest floor. The exchange cost around $300 for 8 days 7 nights, the room rate was $2800 a night or $19,600 (for 7 nights). So, I guess I saved $19,300.

The beauty of calculating your savings is you determine the rules. Great job on saving !!

Here are my rules and how I calculate savings using your examples.

On the car I would not calculate any savings at all unless I negotiated the price down to 25k. For example, I bought a used Camry last year. It was listed for 12.3k out the door and I negotiated down to 11.8k out the door generating $500 in savings. Although the savings would be significant if I bought a new Camry I do not count that.

On your trip to Italy I would count the $3,000 as savings. Great job !!

On the Penthouse I would not count the entire $2,800 per night unless you would have paid this anyway. For example, I'm looking at booking a resort in CA right now that is $2,000 a night. I would NEVER pay that much to stay one night anywhere. My maximum amount I would pay anywhere is $500 a night and that is pushing it. So since I plan on using rewards points to pay for the 6 nights and I only would pay a maximum of $500 a night, my savings calculation would be 6 nights x $500 = $3,000.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[ivinsfan]

Does buying a 2nd hand car count ?
I bought a Bimmer with only 20K miles for $25K and looks almost brand new. The brand new price was $46K, so I saved $21K.

Our last trip to Lake Como in Italy, I went with my cousin, who is an airline employee, so DW and I saved $3,000 using her guest travel pass.

I exchanged our timeshare for a 3 Bedroom Oceanfront Penthouse resort on the highest floor. The exchange cost around $300 for 8 days 7 nights, the room rate was $2800 a night or $19,600 (for 7 nights). So, I guess I saved $19,300.

This is super fuzzy math common when people calculate savings.



The used car wasn't worth 46K so no you didn't save 21K


Did you calculate all the taxes and mileage fee on that travel pass they can add up. Would you have gone to Italy anyway if not you lost money on that one


Without even getting into your so called rack rate price which you know is a joke your week actually cost the annual fee for the timeshare you traded and, the banking fee for the week, added to the 300.


I know you were being tongue in cheek but this is why I never believe anything anyone tells me about how they "saved" money.

 

[jollystomper]

We are more in spending mode these days, so we do not focus too much on how much we save. Our savings are primarily through the use of Chase and Capital One rewards cards. In 3+ years of retirement we have gotten about $3500 back. Of course we had to spend to get that...


Two other, small things since retiring:

- I do surveys for Guest Opinion Rewards https://www.guestopinionrewards.com/ and they "pay" in Hilton Honors points. Since I am a Honors member and staying at Hilton Brand hotels is always our first choice when traveling, we can add to our Honors point stash.

- I also do survey for a division of my former Megacorp, I got an invitation/application request via LinkedIn, applied, and was accepted. primarily around the branding of products. They pay in reward dollars that can be redeemed for gift cards. In three years I have earned around $400 so far, which I have used to save primarily with purchases from Amazon, Home Depot, and Dicks Sporting Goods.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

We find that unless one is a "Super Coupon User" one has to spend too much on stuff one does not actually need. What I mean is that in order to get the deal one would need to buy something that perhaps they would not normally buy. Not that one would not use the item, just that one would not normally buy it.

Seems too much like hard w*rk when one is retired. We save where obviously possible and try to buy wisely, but I could not tell anyone what we save in any given month. MMDV

 

[ivinsfan]

We find that unless one is a "Super Coupon User" one has to spend too much on stuff one does not actually need. What I mean is that in order to get the deal one would need to buy something that perhaps they would not normally buy. Not that one would not use the item, just that one would not normally buy it.

Seems too much like hard w*rk when one is retired. We save where obviously possible and try to buy wisely, but I could not tell anyone what we save in any given month. MMDV

This isn't true...it's no different then as you say buying wisely..

 

[Another Reader]

I upgraded our Costco membership to executive status this year in order to use their mortgage program. My savings for the year was only $6 since we haven't shopped there too much lately. When I went to downgrade my membership, they refunded the extra I had spent on the Executive Membership automatically since I hadn't realized much savings. I thought that was a very nice feature. You can't really lose then trying out the Executive Membership option.

I have never found Costco's mortgage service to be even remotely competitive with an online discounter like Aim Loan or a good high volume mortgage broker. Same for their new car sales. I can beat them handily every time.

I don't save a huge amount shopping at Costco, but it's worth the fee for their dry cat food, and consistently decent sale prices for toilet paper, paper towels, Ziploc bags, and a few other household items. In a typical year, I usually get back about twice the membership fee in the rebate. With Covid, it wasn't much for 2020 and will be less for 2021.

 

[dixonge]

I thought this thread was going to be about adding cash to savings vs. just spending less.


We saved around $1k/mo for June-Sept. by camping strictly on public lands, $0 fees. Evidently added about $15K to investments as well, YTD.