How much money do you save a month and how to save money OTR

$52 worth of brisket & ribs on the smoker over the 4th holiday. Fed six at home, left overs while out in truck Im guessing it may be slightly better than overpriced food from the choke and pukes

 

if you'd just crash with friends/relatives when you're not driving, you'd have more for beer

 

Google Dave Ramsey. Do what he teaches. Get out of debt, stay out of debt. Then put 15% of household income into retirement. Then once House is paid for, you stack everything in retirement.

Really that simple.

 

Stop spending essentially.

If you are given a 1200 mile pay load at .50 a mile (This is strictly an example. Picks up this morning in say Little Rock and delivers into say Carlise PA on Monday Am more or less roughly. Then your gross will stand at $600 dollars, set aside 40% for withholding which is around 350 net roughly

Thursday to Monday Am for yourself you should only need less than 20 dollars a day for your own support, meals, fluids and consumables necessary to stay healthy, clean etc. Call it 100 dollars. That leaves 250.00

Put that 250.00 plus the difference beyond 350 together into savings. Don't touch it for any reason. Keep this up and in 4 weeks you will have 1000 saved. And that is on little 1200 mile week runs at .50 a mile. If nothing else.

When you have a full week with big miles, you put all of that into savings and keep it there no matter what.

This assumes you are a company driver under W2. Remember some of that savings will go into the Tax person to get your state and federal taxes payed in end of January sometime next year.

What you do not use of that 20 dollars per day, put that money into a particular spot. It will accumulate as ready cash. Anything beyond 150 dollars (8 days worth more or less) goes into savings. So you are now already a week ahead on your personal consuming as you work (Or don't work)

This is how it's done. We did it. (In addition to paying a extra 100 to Fed and 75 to state every payroll for the each of us to generate a foundation savings of mid to upper 4 figures each year. There is no reason you cannot stack 12 to 18000 per year into the bank untouched. That is if you did not have any bills to maintain your house, rent, family to feed, utilities to pay etc.

That's the other reason we were successful, we were completely debt free, house paid for, no debt and utitlies were less than 30 a month in a house that we did not come home to for months. The water bill for example was paid once a year at 500. At first of year whatever balance was either applied against the second years water bill or we took it as savings.

When 9-11 happened, we stood in the 12K range of cash on hand savings. 9K was committed to a contractor replacing a storm damaged room in our home. That left 3K. Our payroll people and company were utterly destroyed. We were given two options. Roll on with the medicines on savings not knowing when the payroll will be replaced and caught up or go home on unemployement and wait for the phone call to return to trucking when the payroll people were replaced and back to normal. That took 6 weeks.

The two of us as a team relied on that 3000 dollars using some of it to keep moving on and after 9-11. For us this was the ultimate problem financially and very destructive. The room was rebuilt really well (Insurance did not cover, pre-existing) and ultimately the source of that damage was fixed two decades later with a brand new roof above.

At this point in time we had 4 weeks food and fluids as well as all we needed in everything except fuel. We could even do disinfectant wipes showering if there was no showers around. The only thing we needed from anyone was fuel every 24 to 30 hours and a hotel stay once a month.

 

With all the food recalls as of late. One could save and continue to live if you grow and or raise your own animals. But seriously what's next, will there be a recall on the air we breathe???

 

I want to thank this multiple times.....

 

The beautiful thing about Dave Ramsey: all he does is talk common sense good ole fashion budget advice.

 

I have listened to Dave Ramsey, and there are a couple of things he is dead wrong about. First, he likes to act like a "Big Swinging Dick" when he makes declarative statements. He has repeatedly told some version of this story. "I went into a rental office to rent an apartment, and the management company ran my credit report. They told me I wouldn't qualify because of my credit score. So I told them that I'll just buy the whole building with cash". I'm all for better financial literacy, but telling people to tank their credit is just stupid. The average person will not buy an apartment building with cash, but at some point may have to rent before buying a home.

Dave lays it on thick with the Elmer Gantry routine. He also refuses to condemn multi-level marketing (i.e. AmWay, Mary Kay). IMHO, he is doing his largely Evangelical audience a huge disservice by not telling them to avoid these type of organizations.

 

I tried listening to a few of his shows and quickly realised that if you have heard one, you have heard them all.

"The way you get to being debt free is by paying off all your debt"

 

Never heard Dave say to tank your credit. In fact, he says to cut up your credit cards until you are out of debt to the morons that don't know how to raise their score. He says to never finance anything but your home. He's mostly on point, but got his start by defaulting on large real estate investments. Don't do as I do, do as I say.