Sometimes It Takes Money to Save Money

Unless you’ve been living in a cave all of your life, you’ve probably heard the old line “It takes money to make money.” There’s a lot of truth to that statement, especially as it would pertain to business. But there is also another principle that’s similar and that’s “Sometimes it takes money to save money.”

In business, your profit margin is determined by how much money goes in and how much goes out. If you have more money coming in than going out, that’s your profit. If more is going out than coming in, you better make some changes or start looking for another job, because it’s just a matter of time before the doors close for good. It’s a pretty basic concept to comprehend, even if some in our government don’t. I guess that’s why we have the federal budget deficit.


It’s even more important in hard economic times to cut back on expenses, since you may not have as much money coming in. Some businesses do that by laying off, reducing inventory to basic levels, delaying equipment or other purchases. Some will even reduce employee benefits or cut back on hours. They may even try to find ways to streamline processes or operate more efficiently. After all, inefficiency is waste.

I’ve realized, though, in my own business related experiences, that sometimes in order to save money, you need to spend some cash up front. Now, in my little tiny business, I really only employ myself. So my operations are pretty small and even amounts like $50 a month makes a difference in my bottom line, since my business only supports myself. Now find a number of things that are $50 in savings and then you will really have some significant savings.

On my websites, I have a number of features. Among them are slide shows and music players. I was using an online service that was charging me a monthly fee for those features. For the same amount I was being charged a month, I bought software that allowed me to create my own flash slide shows and I also found software available to make my own music players that allowed me to play mp3 files I upload to my site. Sure I had to put some money down, up front, but after I took the embed code out of the websites that used the aforementioned service and replaced it with my own, I immediately canceled the service.

So now I save money every month by not having to pay for that service. I’ve also done that with Internet connections. Each Internet account was allowed a certain amount of bandwidth each month, as Internet accounts usually do. I was constantly going over my bandwidth allowance and the amount they were charging for exceeding that allowance was ridiculous. So I forked out money for another wireless modem. The amount of money I was spending for that extra connection was actually less than the amount I was paying for exceeding my bandwidth allowance for the other connections I had. But I had to fork out money first to do that. Remember though, I now save money every month because of that and it paid for itself in two months. After that, it was all savings, every month.

The thing that spurred me on was the downturn in the economy. As the economy got worse and my profit margin shrank, necessity forced me to look to see where I could try to save money. That led to a creative process that allowed me to find one thing after another. I ended up saving hundreds of dollars a month. For a person who has a small business that only supports himself, $500 or more a month in savings makes a big difference. I think if you had the opportunity to come out $500 or more a month ahead, you’d would probably go for it yourself.

So think about what your expenses are. What are the things that you are paying for now that could be substituted with something cheaper, in the long run? Do you have to make an investment up front to do it? You may want to give it some consideration. This could apply to your own personal finances as well. I think some will be intimidated by the fact that there may have to be some purchase involved before they see the actual savings. But sometimes, in this crazy world we live in, that’s what has to be done. Sometimes it takes money to save money.

Sometimes It Takes Money to Save Money