Many people do not understand the importance of having a savings account with a month or two built up in savings. The reasons most personal finance gurus give are generally sort of cliché and simply common sense. However, the prospect of placing an unexpected car repair on your credit card is not the only reason. Around a year or two ago, gasoline was up in the $3.00-$4.00 range. Most Americans, particularly younger people, had never experienced such a shock to their budgets. Unexpected economic hiccups can severely cramp your style. Our family lives in one of the most spread out cities in America with little or no public transportation. Eliminating driving just isn’t an option. How will you deal with $100.00 more a month in gasoline expenses or the prospect of having your electric or natural gas bill double? The prices of these items are controlled by economic forces that are completely out of our hands.

How do you start an emergency fund if your budget is already tight? The best answer is that you’re going to have to get rid of a bill. Our family did not have cable for two years when my husband and I first got married. We had a budget reception package that cost around $7.00 a month that had 15 channels. You may not know this but most cable providers offer this service as a matter of complying with the law. Most states require monopoly cable providers to offer a reception/budget package to be good citizens. The cable companies almost never advertise the availability of this package. There are many other areas to change that really don’t make much of a difference in your quality of life: reducing the number of times you eat in restaurants, renting DVDs instead of buying them, drinking sodas or coffee, magazine subscriptions, and on and on.  These don’t have to be things that you eliminate forever. Eliminate something for a year and save $1,500 for an emergency fund. You won’t be sorry. You’ll put yourself in the position of not having to pay interest to a credit card company and you’ll learn something about yourself as well.

When I did some research I found that few personal finance experts consider cars to be a budget buster. In fact, looking at vehicles and their expenses even momentarily reveals a number of places for your money to disappear. I’ll categorize them:

Ownership: Did you borrow for your car? Unless you have a 0.00% APR deal, borrowing money for a car is costing you interest. This interest is compounding while you’re paying the loan. Your $20,000 car will probably cost you about $24,000-$26,000 using the average interest rate for a new car. Consider driving a car that you can afford to buy in cash or consider putting a lot of cash down for your next one.

Operation: Are you driving around with low air pressure in your tires? Low tires reduce your gas mileage by a bunch. Is your air filter dirty? Air filters help with your mileage as well. After reading an article advising women about car maintenance, I learned that older cars sometimes need fuel injectors cleaned as well. Clean fuel injectors can help gas mileage.  To summarize, keeping your car in good shape helps it to run efficiently and economically.

Storage or Parking: If you live in a large city, you likely pay for parking at home, at the office, or sometimes both. Consider using public transportation if you can during the week and use your vehicle only on the weekends. You’ll save the gasoline money and the parking money.

Insurance: If you have a decent amount of money in savings and drive an older car that has no loan, consider self-insuring the physical damage coverage for your car (”Comprehensive and Collision”). This may be scary, but if you have enough cash to buy another car and your car isn’t worth much to begin with, it might be a smart idea. Another insurance mistake is not insuring your home and auto insurance with the same insurance carrier. There are almost always discounts for putting them together and insurers covet the home and auto combination.

I know all the little things that can eat at your pocketbook, and the reason I know is because I have done them all. Yes, I admit it, I’ve done everything I listed and paid the price. I’m still not perfect, but I have learned to avoid these little fees that add up over the year. Some of the fees are actually a bit larger, and can cause your APR to increase, your payment to increase, or have some other fee imposed on your account.

Most of the items are small, and don’t seem like they would impact your budget in a negative way if they just occur once a week or a couple of times a month. Most of us don’t think about the number of occurrences that happen because the fee is small, or the amount is minuscule compared to other items in our budget. All the little things add up, and can make an impact on your budget.

Late Credit Card Payment – I know that we’re not supposed to have these except for emergencies, but life does happen and we end up with a credit card. Mailing the credit card payment in late will cost you an average of $25.90 each month for a total of $310.80 for an entire year.

DVD Late Rental Fee – Redbox has a late fee of $1.00 per day and Blockbuster Stores have a restocking fee of $1.25 if the movie is returned within 30 days of rental. Cost for one late movie a week for an entire year, $52.

ATM Fees – This is my favorite fee since it’s been around for so long. Many banks have done away with ATM fees if you use their ATMs, but if you’re in an area where your bank’s ATM is not accessible you’ll need to access cash at a cost. Average cost of an ATM fee $1.64, if accessed just once a week that is $85.28 for an entire year.

Gasoline – Send your kids on the bus. You’re paying for the gasoline the school district purchases for the bus anyway in your property taxes. Sending our kids on the bus saves us about $40 a year.

Bouncing a check – Oh, the dreaded check bounce. We all know that if one check bounces it sends our poor little checking account into a downward spiral as the checks keep coming in and bouncing away. Bounce one check a month for an average of $28.95 each time and that’s $347.40 a year.

Those were just five little ways to watch your pocketbook be slowly drained over the year. The sad thing is, that those aren’t the only ways for it to happen. Pay close attention to everything you do, including the tiny little library fees that you pay each month because after all, it’s only $3 in late fees this month. For the five little things above, the small price is $835.48.

Sometimes I have a tendency to forget about future frugal purchases that I need to make and focus only on the present. I am on autopilot when keeping an eye out for a good price on meat, onions, bell peppers, and parsley to name a few, but I sometimes forget about my future needs.

What goes through the mind of a normal person when they see a sale on something they don’t need right now is, “Oh I don’t really need that right now, so I’ll pass”. What goes through the mind of a frugal person when they see the same sale, “Oh, I can use that at my daughter’s birthday party in six months”. The big difference is that the frugal person is anticipating their needs sometimes months in advance while the average person is thinking only about the present.

I will admit that at first my husband needed to be sold on the purchasing of items for our future needs (stockpiling). He was worried that he would one day come home and find dozens of packages of toilet paper or some other item that I had purchased as a “great deal” taking our house over. I have managed to mainly purchase items that I know my family will use in a two to six month period so that it doesn’t become overwhelming. My husband has always been on board with the idea of living frugally, he is still a bit confused about taking advantage of a frugal opportunity now so that we save later.

Sometimes a good opportunity presents itself when produce is at a really good price because it’s in season, and there simply isn’t enough time to consume all of the produce before it expires. Freezing fresh produce has helped me change my mindset about being frugal. In the past, I would purchase two or three onions every couple of weeks no matter the price because I knew I would need them over that two week period. Now I purchase the onions I still need for that two week period, but if onions take a nosedive in price I stock up and immediately chop these up and freeze them for future use. While purchasing onions at the lowest price possible isn’t going to dramatically decrease your budget, it is this small change in thinking about your purchases where you will eventually see the savings.