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Do you remember Cori’s comment about saving $5,000 on a salary of $22,000 that she left on Yazmin’s book review two weeks ago?

Um, more details please! Cori emailed me on how one little sticky note saved her big time. Here is her story.

So my little post-it note that I carted around with me while living on $22k/year just laid out the details of exactly how much I could spend each day on certain things (not including the rent/bills), just the stuff where you have choices. So if I wanted to get a shirt dry-cleaned, I had to save up a weeks worth of daily dry-cleaning $.I didn’t allow myself to go over budget and I kept all the leftover money in a savings account.

It took a lot of discipline, a lot of bus rides (over cab rides), and a lot of saying “no” to things like mani/pedis/sushi/drinks out, etc. But I managed to make it happen. A little cheesy, but to my 23-year old mind, it worked for me at the time. San Francisco is an expensive place to live, but I was happy living on less there. And you just get creative with your entertainment options.

And with my $5k I saved I took a month off work and went to Costa Rica and took a yoga teacher training course. Thankfully now, I own my own event planning company and no longer have to survive on $22k/year, but the lessons I learned were invaluable.

I had my original post-it stashed in my desk, but one of my kids got off with it. But here’s my best relocation of what it said…

Cori’s Daily Spending

Food: $10
Dry Cleaning: $2
Transportation: $3
Entertainment: $2
Drugstore Stuff(shampoo, makeup): $1
House Stuff (cleaning supplies): $1

Cori, the simplicity of your system and your dedication to it is inspiring!!! Thank you for sharing how you saved money. I hope it helps someone else. Got an interesting success or failure story? Email me at julia@bargainbabe.com and the best will appear on the blog.

Tagged: Budget, budget, easy budgeting, post it, save money, saving, simple budgeting on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 · 2 Comments »