Hey everyone, welcome back to the blog. Today I wanted to chat with y’all about some money saving tips and tricks that I have implemented over the years, while working on a limited budget. These tips have really helped me to button down and make the most of my financial situation. Now, I know that some of these tips may seem a bit out there or even obvious to some, but believe me, wish I would have learned them sooner because I could have saved myself so much stress and money – so let’s jump into the tips shall we?
Tip #1 I will share is a very simple one and that is Meal Planning & Meal Prep. Now part of this also includes a little bit of knowledge, well a mistake we all make sometimes, and that is to never go to the store hungry. You will always buy way more than you need. For me, personally, I plan my Meals on a weekly basis. I plan lunch as well as dinners because I rarely eat breakfast these days. After I’ve planned my meals I then create my shopping list and check for coupons or items on sale, my local Grocery Store usually has weekly as well as monthly deals. This allows you to get your list and then go to the store ensuring that you don’t spend more than you need too.
Tip #2 Unplug all electronics when not in use. Now I know some of you are asking ‘Matt what difference does this make?’. Well a bigger difference than you would think actually. Even if you are not using these things when they are plugged in, they are still pulling small amounts of electricity. I will say that you won’t see an immediate difference, but if you do it for long enough you will. For example in my home I started doing this and after 3 months I slowly started to see my bill go down a few dollars at a time. After doing this for almost 5 years I am saving just about $25 dollars a month on my electric bill. It’s a small savings but in this day and age you save when and where you can – so try it and see for yourselves.
Tip #3 I Have for you is that if you can borrow, don’t buy! I am so guilty of this over the years. I bought a brand new chainsaw to clean up some property that I was living on, moved a few months later and sold the chain saw. Now, I could have just asked my sister to borrow hers and saved that money, because in the end when I re-sold my chainsaw, i couldn’t get anywhere near what i paid for it back. In fact I had to sell it for $100 less. I was not thinking long-term finances. Really it came down to me just being very inpatient as well as impulsive. This is just one of many examples of practical purchases that can be avoided. The same goes for buying books or audio books. Check your local libraries because more often than not they have what you are looking for and you can read it as many times as you want without having to buy it.
The Fourth and final tip that I will share with you is Ditch Your Cable. I myself was paying almost $135 for my cable bill which was the cheapest package and that didn’t even include internet fees. I ended up buying a Amazon Fire Stick Which was a one time $16 dollar fee and I now subscribe to Hulu + Live TV. Which costs $50 and then Netflix which I split with my Sister bringing my total to $55 Dollars a month. Also the other big thing with this is that if I decided to downgrade my Hulu package or cancel the subscription it literally costs me nothing! If you were to try and cancel your cable subscription before your agreed contract is up they would generally charge you a hefty fee for doing so.
Well hope that you all enjoyed my top tips and tricks for saving money and cutting costs. Now keep in mind these are just things that I have found that work for me. I have several more tips that I can share with all of you, so if you like this post drop me a comment to let me know what you think and if you would like to hear more of my tips that I use. I also want to hear from all of you, what are some things you use to save money?? Drop your tips in the comments below.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a wonderful week.
-Matthew-
