Here is a frugal idea that will both help you save money and help you build a college education fund.
School lunches when you buy them at the school can be pretty inexpensive. The are usually subsidized by the government and well-balanced. This is very true if your school participates in the National School Lunch Program. That said, I can still usually pack a very nutritious lunch for my school-aged son that is much less expensive that the cost of buying the lunch. I also like being able to control what food is available to him and working with him to make and create good lunch choices.
At our school, lunch costa $1.75 to buy, plus additional money for any extras, such as cookies, fruit or yogurt. As i said, it is a bargain. But, since I usually prepare his lunch, I use that figure to calculate savings earned for packing him a lunch. Obviously, there is some cost to preparing the lunch, but since this comes out of our grocery budget, I just stick with the $1.75 to calculate. In four weeks of preparing lunch, the amount saved is roughly $35. We can then take that $35 and put it toward his college savings fund.
You can use this idea in other ways as well. For example, if you have a certain amount that you earmark for school activities, sports, entertainment or other kid-related expenses, you can either cut back and use some of that money for college savings or simple match that amount and deposit the match into your college savings fund.
Think about other ways that you could save, such as taking a movie out from the library instead of buying it. The $20 could then go into the college fund. I’m sure that you could find other ways to use this savings idea. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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