Using Congressional Budget Rules To (Not) Save Money

A new health club opened in my neighborhood recently and I told my wife I wanted to join it. She agreed, providing that I gave up something we were spending elsewhere to pay for the $1,200 annual membership.  I don’t want to give up anything fun so I decided to adopt the Congressional approach to budgeting to achieve such savings.  It turned out to be a snap. The first thing I did was claim $150 in credit from a restaurant app I use called Open Table.  Each time I use the app to reserve a table it gives me the equivalent of $1 towards a future meal.  Since I got the app five years ago I’ve never gotten around to using these, but now seems a propitious time. Next, I let our discount deals expire with the cable company and the newspaper. Each has a base price it offers subscribers, but if I call and threaten to stop my subscription they give me the discount for new subscribers. So I let each expire for a week and then called to get the new subscriber deal again. Together, that saved me $850. I was still a bit short, but then I got an unexpected $200 check from a friend that owed me for tickets I got us for a visit to Wrigley Field last Summer.  I had written off the money off-my friend was jobless at the time–so it represented a genuine windfall. I presented these “savings” to my wife and she was not at all amused. She agreed to give me credit for this, albeit grudgingly, but that I had to come up with enough savings in 2016 to cover a membership for her as well...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs