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"   Month 4 of my spending diet begins. It&amp;#039;s going pretty well, all told, but I&amp;#039;m now learning that it&amp;#039;s tough to save money if you have no other reason than it&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; for you. (One recent slip-up: the cheese curls I just had to buy from the office vending machine the other day.)  So, what, exactly, am I scrimping for? Enter my big savings goal: Funding a trip to China. I&amp;#039;ve kind of come into this backwards (buy now, find the money for it later), as I&amp;#039;ve already purchased my flight and my visa. I&amp;#039;m used to traveling on the cheap (for starters, I never go any place where I don&amp;#039;t have a host, which cuts down considerably on accommodation costs\u2014thank you, Maggie!). I also got a discount on my airfare using my credit card points, and haven&amp;#039;t spent a cent on tour books (thank you, library card!). Still, I&amp;#039;ve already dropped about $1K, and I haven&amp;#039;t even left for the airport. So how does this change the spending-diet rules?    One Zero bought lunches per week. I&amp;#039;ll be brown-bagging it for the foreseeable future. The bigger pinch (for a New Yorker, anyway): I&amp;#039;ll limit myself to one meal out per week, period. A $50 per week cash allowance for purchases below $10 all incidental purchases. (I foresee my vending-machine dalliances\u2014and weekday happy hours\u2014dwindling.) Credit card for purchases over $10 deemed essential (or close to it). This means I&amp;#039;ll be discontinuing those e-newsletters I get from my fave e-tailers and daily-deal websites (why be tempted?).  I&amp;#039;ll also make time to walk more (rather than taking the subway or pricey cabs), especially now that there&amp;#039;s an inkling of spring in the air. What are your savings goals\u2014and how will you meet them? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/a23144/set-goals-for-saving-money/>