If you're a regular reader of financial websites, you've probably seen plenty of articles urging you to cut "unnecessary" expenses from your personal budget. And in many cases, if you read further, you learn that the unnecessary expenses the authors have in mind are luxuries, like coffeehouse lattes.
Some money-saving tips are obvious, like flying coach, cutting back on eating out, or ditching expensive bad habits like smoking. Some ways are uncommon enough to be impractical for consistent savings like choosing cheaper hotels on vacation or buying a used car rather than a new one - great advice, but it's not going to help keep your monthly expenses in check.
On January 1, Berkeley, California rang in the New Year by putting a new rule in place requiring all cafés and restaurants to start charging 25 cents for disposable cups. The cups, in addition to lids, utensils, straws, and clamshells, must also now be certified compostable.
One of the biggest challenges in personal finance is figuring out ways to spend less money - and one of the best ways to accomplish that is to cut down on your monthly expenses. Even though some of our regular bills might seem small and insignificant on their own, their cumulative effect can be enormous - and become a huge drain on our resources.