How to Put Your Budget on a Diet Plan

Many Americans struggle to maintain healthy weights and healthy wallets. But many of the strategies used by successful dieters also apply to your budget. Here are tips to drop pounds and cut costs:

Eat out less.  Eating out can ruin your diet and use up cash. Restaurants serve larger portions and, for many, social eating means overeating. Packing your lunch helps you control ingredient quality and portion size.

Brown-bagging meals also helps you pinch pennies. A sandwich from a restaurant can cost over ten dollars, while packing a turkey sandwich with baby carrots, an apple and sandwich cookies costs little more than three bucks.

  

Start a Diary.   A food diary, where dieters record everything that they eat, proves an important weight-loss tool. In a recent study released by Kaiser Permanente, two-thirds of a study group lost 12 pounds on average, simply by tracking their food intake.

Likewise, writing down every purchase you make will make you more accountable for your impulse spending.

Get moving. If your evening plans involve a couch, you might want to get moving. People who maintain weight loss do so t

But getting active doesn't just shed pounds, it also saves money. Exercise promotes long-term health, reducing money spent on medical bills. If you normally go to the movies on weekends, choose an inexpensive, healthier activity instead. Seeing a free show or planning a picnic with friends will keep your body and your wallet healthy.

When your wallet's diet pays off, put that money into savings. Just like eating an extra 100 calories a day can pack on 20 pounds a year, saving small amounts of money over the course of the year can significantly increase your savings account.

One financial service, SAVE252 (www.save252.com), allows users to put as little as a dollar a day toward a savings account or Roth IRA. Users sign up for the service, which then transfers a set amount of money from their checking account into a regular account every day for the 252 days each year that the financial markets are open.

A chicken burrito a day can cost $7.00 and pack 1,000 calories. If you pack your lunch each day for 600 calories and $3.00, you can save 100,800 calories and $1,008 dollars every 252 days.