A Penny Saved

All of us make assumptions in life. Sometimes it’s in big things (career, friends, religion, politics, race, world views, etc.), and sometimes it’s in little things (”I thought you took out the garbage last night!”). Sometimes we need to challenge our assumptions to make sure they are still right for us, or if they were ever right to begin with. This includes our financial assumptions.

For example, I just recently had to change one of my little assumptions regarding finances and grocery shopping. My three little girls love chocolate milk. Okay, so do I. So in order to save money, we bought low fat white milk and just added chocolate powder. I thought this would be cheaper than just buying chocolate milk. Well, I sat down the other week and actually priced it out. We were spending more money by buying milk and mixing in powder than we would have just buying the chocolate milk! So now we buy the chocolate milk - it tastes better, saves time, and is cheaper. I can have my craving and some change left over.

With this lesson in mind, I plan on reviewing some other financial assumptions I have made to see if they are really correct. What about you - do you need to review some assumptions?