10 Easy Ways to Save Money

Like every­one these days we’ve been find­ing ways to save money. There are some­times easy ways we’ve found to help us save money. And we didn’t need to go liv­ing off the grid to do it, they were sim­ple changes.

1. Cook­ing on a Bud­get: When I wrote the post about Cook­ing on a Bud­get I did so because I believe it is the eas­i­est way to save money & the fastest way to spend it when you aren’t pay­ing atten­tion. Food can really eat up more of your money that you think it will. When we didn’t go in with a plan, bud­get, and cook more at home we spent tons of extra money. I swear we spent just as much if not more money BEFORE we had kids as we do now that we are a fam­ily of 6. Before we bought lots of frozen meals, didn’t plan or bud­get, & we ate out more. Chang­ing those habits alone was a mas­sive cost savings.

2. Util­ity Bud­get Plans: We real­ized that we had months were some util­i­ties were higher and oth­ers were very low or nonex­is­tent. We called & found out we could do a bud­get plan. This means we pay the same amount of money EVERY month & we know exactly how much to bud­get. If you aren’t able to do a bud­get plan with the com­pany, then cre­ate your own bud­get plan & stick to it. Fac­tor in pay­ing the same amount every month & pay it.

3. Turn down the ther­mo­stat: OK, I know every­one says to do this, but seri­ously it can add up. We just turned it down by 3 degrees and we are still com­fort­able. No one is freez­ing his or her tushie off & we save money on our bill.

4. Turn off the TV: Not only does the TV use extra energy and that WILL add up on the elec­tric bill increas­ing your util­ity costs but it also is a time sucker. Turn­ing it off a few hours a day gives you more time to do things (like cook at home, read a book, get out­side to enjoy some fresh air) and it saves money.

5. Check out your local libraries: I use to spend SO much money on books. Now I make use of the local libraries & don’t spend a penny. Our libraries also allow you to use your card at a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent pub­lic libraries. It’s great for the kids and cre­at­ing a day out as well. Just make sure you are turn­ing the books back in on time.

6. Drink Water: When you drink water more often you save money on filler drinks like soda/pop and you get to see if you are really hun­gry or if you are eat­ing out of bore­dom sav­ing money on extra food. It also helps you feel bet­ter to rehy­drate & you might lose a few extra pounds that those drinks are adding on.

7. Can­cel any unused mem­ber­ships and extra ser­vices: If you are one of those folks who has a mem­ber­ship that is going to waste to the gym or some other ser­vice then can­cel it. We had a ser­vice that was auto­mat­i­cally billed and it was to have a debit card. But it was an account we don’t use, it’s only a sav­ings, while it was a small fee a month it added up over the course of a year. Can­cel­ing that fee saved money that can now stay in our savings.

8. Dis­tin­guish a need from a want: Prob­a­bly the hard­est thing in our mate­ri­al­is­tic cul­ture. I know I strug­gle with this but tak­ing an extra two min­utes can make a HUGE dif­fer­ence. Ask your­self if you need what you are buy­ing? Do you already have some­thing that would work? Could you wait to buy it and come back a week later? (often you’ll find that you don’t even want it a week later). It helps with impulse want buys to do this, Tar­get & Costco were my places that I had the worse time with. I would see some­thing, think it was a need when really it was a want. For Hubby it’s Home Depot, we all have our weak spots.

9. Shop with a list: We use this when shop­ping for gro­ceries and any­thing else now. It is another tool to dis­tin­guish a need from a want & keep us on track. It only takes a few sec­onds to make a list but it can save hours of worry over a bill or short­age on cash later in the month.

10. Use Cash: A good way to save money because when you have cash, actual paper money in hand, you spend less. Hand­ing over cold hard cash for pur­chases makes us think about the pur­chase more and we are more likely to shop within our means. Debit cards, even though they come out of our bank accounts, don’t have the same out­come for us. I know that for Hubby he didn’t think about the lit­tle pur­chases on that debit card (that add up!) but with cash in hand he does. We also think more about big pur­chases if we are using cash ver­sus credit or even a debit card.

What easy ways do you save money?

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Tagged as: budget, finance, frugal, money, save