I come away from the article not knowing what he eats three times a day (if three), what he does for exercise or for how long or how often, and what his daily schedule is to see if the guy sleeps 2 hours a night or if he gets a full night’s sleep but has a spare 7.5 hours a day b/c he is retired…

Thanks again JMK, SquawkFox and all the commenters.

Now if it’s not essential we don’t include it in the spending plan. As a result we’ve carved our basic expenses down to ~55% of our take home pay. The rest goes to retirement savings, extra mortgage payments, bianual trips and very occasionally, a totally nonessential purchase. The need for a monster emergency fund disappears when you can lose one salary and really not feel it. If one of us were laid off, we’d simply temporarily stop our retirement savings and extra mortgage payments. We definitely don’t live large like our friends and coworkers. We spend on our priorities, and ruthelessly cut out everything else. When it’s not your priority, you really don’t miss it.

We plan out our essential, basic spending a year in advance. It’s easy to predict and allows you to see very clearly how much “excess” you would have IF you stuck to just the essentials. It’s a lot like the article on this site about getting married for $239 (licence and officiant) and anything more is unecessary and spent purely at your discretion. For the next year you can easily predict your mortgage/rent payments, monthly fixed items (cell, landline, internet, life insurance, property tax, etc). Based on several years of data, we know within a couple of dollars what we spend weekly on groceries and gas, so I put in a plug amount on the spreadsheet. As the year unfolds we replace the planned numbers with the actuals and the running balance updates. The big money saver is that whenever we do anything beyond the essentials, we have to add a row to the list in that week. Boy does that draw attention to any unplanned and therefore nonessential item. Rather than having $x in the plan for restaurants each week, we add the row IF we go to a restaurant. Mentally having given myself a preapproved amount to spend on entertainment, clothes, coffee etc, would just tempt me to do it since it was already planned. This way I know I should have $x of excess left on Friday after the pay arrives and all the week’s charges have been paid (all on the CC). Every Friday I then transfer out everything over ~$1000 and send it to our retirement savings or make an extra mortgage payment. If there is less than expected for the Friday transfer it forces us to face the fact that we consciously chose to go to spend that extra money and retire ____ days later. Since retiring early (without our mortgage of course) are our two big priorities, it sure shines a light on every non-essential purchase.

A single suggestion to increase income:
1. donate/sell your plasma

This year I saved money by switching my car insurance company. The yearly cost to insure my car is now $2500 cheaper. I have insurancehotline.com to thank for that!

Take advantage of discount sites like Wagjag, Livingdeals, etc.

If your employer offers employee discounts, use them! My work offers discount deals on electronics, entertainment, vacations, shopping and it has saved me money over the years.

Don’t know what I am talking about? Cruise over to Wikipedia for a read.

Linux is virus proof so you don’t need MacAfee or Norton or ??? antivirus subscriptions.

Linux generally has lower hardware requirements so that same computer that is slow and frustrating? It might run Linux quite happily and fast.

There are hundreds/thousands of applications in Linux and they are all FREEEEEE! So is the operating system (that replaces Windows). The software is compatible with Windows so you can run Linux, use OpenOffice or LibreOffice or Abiword to make MS Office files if you must. Rather than send out MS Office formats I use native Libre/Open/Abiword file formats and then send out a PDF to friends and family. Everybody can open a PDF. Last I heard there is a program here in Linux-land that allows me to install MS Office inside of Linux but I have not tried it. It is called “PlayOnLinux”.

How do you get started? Do some reading. You’ll find that there is this whole parallel universe of computer users that use Linux and accomplish more than most Windows users can afford to accomplish because the Windows user has to buy expensive software.

Let me aim you at Mint Linux. Go to their website and start reading the tutorials and the forum. Ask questions there. Don’t jump into Linux blindly. It’s not hard but I am trying to minimize your frustration. I was an advanced Windows user but a Linux newbie. Suddenly not knowing all the answers in Linux-land was both frustrating and exhilarating back in ~2000. I was suddenly free from the computer money machine and “virus proof”. All I had to do was get used to it. It’s like moving from Windows to a Mac. Things look slightly different but are not really any harder.

Download open-source software and put it on your Windows computer. Get used to it so when you do the big switch to Linux you have some familiar touchstones. Use Opera or Firefox or Google Chrome for your browser. Use Opera mail or Thunderbird e-mail. Use LibreOffice or Abiword or IBM Symphony or OpenOffice for your office software. Use GIMP of F-Spot for your photoeditor. Watch tutorials on YouTube. Read tutorials on the project websites. I thought switching to open-source software was REALLY easy but some folks are intimidated when their icons change to a different theme of their computers’ colors change. I helped a very intelligent man use Firefox last week for the first time. He was a devout Internet Explorer user and his computer once again got a virus. We opened Firefox and his first question was – how do I get to XYZ website? The bovious answer to me was type the address into the address bar at the top of the screen JUST LIKE Internet Explorer. To him though he was looking at a completely different creature – like the difference between a sportcars and a camel. 5 mins later he was just as content with Firefox as he had been using IE. He just needed somebody to hold his hand for for his first steps.

If people can survive upgrades from WinXP to WinVista to Win7 then they certainly can survive a switch to Linux!

Anyhow once you’ve used the freebies for a month or so in Windows then landing in Linux-land isn’t nearly as scary. You can download Linux Mint KDE and burn it to a DVD and then start your computer so that it reads from the DVD. About 5 mins later you can use Linux without ever changing your Windows computer. You can test your computer’s Wi-Fi, the video, the sound, etc. You can surf the web. With a little knowledge you could go into your Windows files and fix broken things there. When you’re done – reboot, take the CD or DVD out, and then you’re back into Windows. Think of it as Linux-temporary. The big word for it is “Linux LiveCD” or “linux LiveDVD”. Again – Wikipedia is your friend here. Look it up for a more complete explanation.

Anyhow – the savings: No more purchasing upgrades to Windows or Office. Your computer should last longer (not go obsolete b/c it is slow). All the other software you use is free too.

Side benefits: you’ll start questioning why our gov’t and schools don’t use Linux to save money. You’ll find that gov’ts and schools in other countries DO use Linux. You start complaining that you can’t buy TV ala-carte and about fact that the entertainment and movie studios networks are hostile to Linux though they use it. (Netflix currently will play on Linux powered devices but not on Linux computers… This is supposedly going to change soon. It is not because Linux is bad but because Netflix uses Microsoft software in the online player…)

I’m going to estimate that the average family might save between $150 and $200 per year using Linux b/c ANY trip to a computer repair store for Windows virus delousing is going to cost $50 minimum. The annual anti-virus software subscription is going to cost about $30. Any software you buy is going to be $35 per title. Then there is the falling value of your computer as it slows a little each year b/c Windows just gets slower with age for whatever reason. I happily run an EIGHT year old desktop computer at home for e-mail, internet, pictures, etc. It uses Mint Linux KDE 8.0. I have a 700 MHz laptop that runs Mint Linux 10 LXDE that can also do the same functions. YouTube is pretty hard on it though b/c the Linux version of Flash is power hungry so I don’t watch YouTube on it. It does however happily play thousands of songs via RadioParadise and my local music collection.

I have friends who replace their Windows every few years b/c these machines think they are out of date. No, it’s their store bought software that gets clunky.

http://www.kde.org/screenshots/

That shows desktops going all the way back to Version 1.

You can also find screenshots of Mint Linux but the recent versions have adopted a default grey and black theme that is really dreary. You can change it and I do immediately after setting up a computer. The computers I set up are bright and cheerful.

To Kerry – I’d be happy to help you elaborate on this topic in an article sometime. There are plenty of links out there to good tutorials – video and fixed text/pictures.