Editor Cara Newman is following the advice and tips of various articles posted on Young Money to show how well they really work. These first posts follow the techniques presented in Save $1000 by Black Friday. Follow along to see how much she saves, and what impact it has on her life.

So far I have saved $503.28.With only three more weeks until Black Friday I have to pick up my pace if I want to reach $1000 by then.

Before I started this I thought that I would have to make big sacrifices. I thought that I would really feel the impact of saving $1000. But, so far, I haven’t felt a thing. It’s been a lot easier than I thought. But, on the other hand, I haven’t reached my goal so maybe I shouldn’t start patting myself on the back quite yet.

Not sure where to cut corners next, I decided to go through and look at my budget. Like everybody else I have categories like mortgage and rent. Now my mortgage is fixed. There is nothing I can do about that. But some of my other monthly bills weren’t as fixed as I thought. So I went to Billshrink.com. In just a few minutes I had entered just a little bit of information about where I live and my phone usage. Then, a few seconds later, they came back with a better phone plan for me. It turns out that by switching my phone plan. I could be saving $480 a year. This comes out to $40 a month. Since this is the first week in November I will add that on today.

I have also been keeping track of bank fees this month. I looked up my bank records from last year (October 2007) and noticed that I spent $28 in unnecessary bank fees that month alone. This past October, I spent $2.50. That’s a savings of $25.50—money I would have just been throwing away.

This week I saved $2.69 in change. I also saved $24 by bringing my lunch everyday.

Finally, I decided not to go grocery shopping this week. Usually I spend around $200 for a little over a week of groceries for me and my husband. But, I decided to eat every single thing in our house before we bought anything else. That means the cans of green beans that have been sitting in the back of the cabinet and the ramen noodles that were all but forgotten on the top shelf. We might not have had the best meals, but it did force us to get creative. However, I did spend $50 on fresh fruit and vegetables, leaving me with a savings of $150.

And I still had fun this week. I went to see the Bad Brains play at the 9:30 Club in D.C. But since I haven’t been touching my “miscellaneous fund,” it didn’t affect my budget at all. And life is about balance, if you can’t have fun once in a while then what’s the point?

Savings this week: $242.19

Total savings: $745.47

Impact: I’m a little sick of eating soup and noodles, but so far so good.