Tricks for Saving Money

That is a really great plan! Another one that I have started (and is really pretty easy if you try hard the first few weeks) is to NOT spend my change. If I use cash to buy something, I always round it up and give the cashier the next higher dollar amount. Then I bring the change home and put it in a little box...the box is pretty heavy after a few months of doing this and I have a "head start" on the CHRISTmas gift money! ;)

God Bless,
Sheila in Cocoa, FL

That's a good reminder that we all need, to save small amounts toward big bills. I do it on a monthly basis for bills that are due every 3 or 6 months like the newspaper, house insurance, etc. I divide the yearly totals of each by 12, and put that amount aside every month to save. When the bigger bills finally come, the money is there to transfer back to checking, and if there were a true emergency where we had to have the money, it would still be there.

Now if I could just make myself go make a list of all the household appliances that wear out every 10 years or so, and put THAT money aside. Can't afford to put that much aside in reality, but I can work on one or two. I've found that if the money is in my checking account, it's GONE, but if I don't have it there, I can do without a lot of 'wants' that I would otherwise have thought were 'needs'.

We balance our checking account online and have our savings account linked to it so when we log on, both accounts pop up. Our bank allows you to transfer from checking to savings an unlimited number of times (from savings to checking has a monthly limit). So once you make your deposits, get online and move some over to savings before you have a chance to spend it.

We also have the option of setting up an automatic transfer to occur on a certain day of the month, or once a week, or whatever. This way, if payday is the 15th and 30th, you can have an auto transfer of some set amount a few days later. Doesn't sting at all!

We no longer do it this way as my employer started doing direct deposit and allows us to have pay deposited into 2 accts. I have the 1st $400 go straight to checking and whatever is left goes to savings. That way I never wonder exactly what I will get paid. I always get paid $400. I forget all about the extra and it adds up fast.

My husband and I have never had a lot of money. Our whole married lives, we have had to watch and constantly be careful. We were married and started our family very young, and neither of us has a college education, so things have always been somewhat difficult for us financially. We found out quickly that, contrary to the old romantic saying, you definitely can NOT just live on love. However, I know our love for each other has carried us through many hard, hard times in the past 27 years. I hope we get AT LEAST 27 more together!

Considering all that, I thought I would share some of the things that I have done and some that I am still doing to help save money, both while we had children at home and now that they are both out on their own in their own homes. One of our daughters is not married yet, but does live on her own, sharing a house with 2 roommates. Our other daughter is married with her first child. I keep hoping that I have passed some things on to them that I have learned over the years.

First of all, when our children were small, we did not use things like baby wipes for diaper changes. My daughter's pediatrician said to use plain, white warm washcloths at diaper changing time. I washed wash cloths and saved some money doing that. If you can, I would recommend cloth diapers to save some money. My daughters did not do well in cloth, so it was necessary for me to use disposable. However, moms have an advantage now that I did not in that there are many different brands of diapers out there and lots of times store brands are just as good as the expensive name brand diapers are. It's definitely worth a try. You can make a lot of your baby food. I don't necessarily suggest that starting out, but as your baby gets used to eating baby food instead of just bottles, you can incorporate some of your food by blending it or using your food processor. Also, if you can, I would recommend breast feeding over formula. My daughter was not able to do that and I was not either, so I know there are exceptions, but if you can, you will save a ton of money. Also, don't spend a fortune on buying brand new baby clothes! I highly recommend watching garage sales, consignment stores, Goodwill, etc., as well as swapping clothes with friends and family. Babies grow too fast to justify spending so much money on their clothing, and frankly, they don't care where their clothes came from. All they want is to be comfortable and loved.

As our girls got older, we wanted to home school them. We are lucky to live in an area where many people are doing this, and we have a Homeschool Assistance Program, run by accredited teachers, that has a lending library that you can avail yourself to. It was so nice, because we could borrow books for the year. They also have a regular reading library that the kids could go into and check out books for themselves to read at their leisure. They offered classes sometimes by accredited teachers and also offered field trips which were very fun and educational for the kids, as well. They offered all these things plus any help or encouragement and supervision that you might need. It was nice to home school for many reasons. For one, I got to spend a lot of time with my girls. We did not have to buy 'school clothes' every year, though we did have to buy supplies, but the cost was always minimal as many of those supplies carried over from year to year. We did not have to buy school lunches, and we did not have to worry about what our kids were learning or not learning. By the way, both of my girls were on the Dean's list in college and my youngest made the President's list which is for GPAs higher than 4.0. I would say they definitely learned well.

Other every day things I did then, and I still do now, are simple things like hanging laundry out to dry instead of using the dryer. I now have clothes drying racks that I use if I can't get outside to hang things. I still occasionally have to dry some towels or bedding in the dryer, but I never put anything else in there, and I only do that when I absolutely have to. I don't always use a whole cap of soap either, the same with fabric softener. If your clothes are not truly dirty, it takes very little soap to actually get them clean.

I don't run lights and a lot of electrical things during the day. I open blinds so the sun can come in and that provides plenty of light. Our central air conditioning is set on 76 degrees in the summer. If I get a little warm, I can use the ceiling fans which we have in every room in our home except the bathroom. If the temperature outside drops to below 85, I open up the house, and if I'm still a little warm, I run fans. In the winter, we set our thermostat at 60-65 degrees. If we get chilly, we put on a sweater or cover up with a blanket to watch TV in the evenings. I find that those temperatures are actually quite comfortable, especially once you are used to them.

Something my girls and I did while they were growing up and still do today is paper routes to generate a little extra income. It was good for my kids to learn responsibility, and it's still a good thing for my husband and I, as we make a little extra money, plus it gets us some exercise. When it comes to grocery buying, I always watch the weekly ads and try to plan our meals from there. Groceries cost more for the two of us today than it did to feed our family of 4 years ago. However, I would rather pay more for good ingredients and good quality, healthy foods than pay for doctor's bills, because I did not take care of myself or my family properly. So many of our health problems in this country are because we do not feed our bodies properly. That was a hard lesson to learn, but it's so true. You will pay either in groceries or doctor bills. I know which I would rather do. If you can, combine as many trips to the store as possible. It will save you so much money on gas as well as wear and tear on your vehicle. If you live close enough to the store and are buying a small enough amount that you can carry the bags, I would recommend that you just walk there and back.

You can save money in so many more areas even than what I have touched on here. Hair cuts can be done cheaply. Our son in-law cuts my grandson's hair himself. A nice set of clippers can be bought very reasonably and save you lots of money on hair cuts. For the ladies, try using a beauty school if there is one close by. If not, call around and check prices before you go.

Grow your own food! I don't have room for a great big garden, but I do container gardening and that provides us with much produce for the summer. We share with others, and others share their bounty with us. It also gets us out in the sunshine, which we enjoy very much. Growing your own food provides a big savings at the grocery store. Whatever you are able to grow on your own, you don't have go buy. Also, check out your local farmer's market for good deals.

We have two dogs. We are careful to keep up with their annual shots, etc., and they have been very healthy. We do not buy super expensive dog food, but we also do not buy super cheap. We have gone with a name brand, middle of the road pricing dog food, and they do well on it. We have chosen a vet that is reasonably priced in our area. He has been kind to us and our dogs, and he has not been pushy about us doing things to our dogs that are not necessary.

I could on and on about different ways to save money. If you talk to people and read sites like Thrifty Fun and other good web sites about saving money, you will find a wealth of ideas out there. I enjoy reading "My Frugal Life", because I have gotten ideas from reading it as well. I hope these things have been of some help to someone. There are many, many ways to save money if you are only willing to look for them. Happy Saving!

By Robin

I am a terrible saver. Just the other day, at the drive through, I realized just how much lunch was costing me each day. So I made a plan - I will go to the bank each Monday and get 5 $5 bills and put them in a special envelope. Then I go to the grocery store and buy some healthy food (deli turkey, fruit etc.) I take this to work and for each day that I don't eat fast-food I reward myself with $5 (which is a good estimate of what it was costing me to eat out.) I take one of the $5 bills out of the envelope and take it home and put in my "piggy bank."

If there are days that I have to buy lunch, any change left from one of the 5's goes into my piggy bank. Imagine - this small savings adds up - as much as $1300 a year and I'm not missing it. I am also eating healthy at the same time! It's a lot of fun to watch the money add up!

By Robin McDonald

Just this afternoon at the grocery store I almost bought a bakery package of 6 cinnamon rolls for $2.79. But then I noticed the refigerator cinnamon rolls (in the packages like Pillsbury biscuits) were on sale for $1.66 each. So for $3.32 I bought two packages which will make 16 cinnamon rolls.

And that's because I was being lazy! Usually I buy cake mix on sale for $1 a box or less and bake 24 cupcakes (no frosting) which are good with a cup of tea for a snack, or I bake 5-6 dozen cake mix cookies.

This saves us at least $4-$9 weekly for cheap-to-on-sale store-bought cookies. Well, maybe I am lazy! But even I can't figure out how to bake 5 dozen cookies for about $1.20 (including oil and eggs) totally from scratch. And when you count in the time saved using the mix, then it's definitely a deal.

By making my husband's lunch every day and baking instead of buying snacks from the store, I save more than $35 a week than if he bought lunch and we bought snacks. We don't put that money in the bank though. When we figure out how to change our lifestyle so we spend less, we choose to work less so we can have more time rather than more money.

Money saving can really be part of creating a richer life.

The best way of learning to save money has been to do this.

I am a teacher and get paid once a month. When my check arrives, in my checkbook, I subtract the amount I want to save that month, say $300. On the back page of my check register I list how much I "subtracted" so that I can keep up with how much I save each month.

For that month, I try to get by without adding the $300 back in. It's there should I have an emergency but I do my BEST not to touch it.

I know this sounds so simple you might not try it, but believe me! IT WORKS! I was so surprised at how fast I saved money and how it really did not put a strain on my spending, if it's not showing in "my" balance, then I didn't spend it!

It certainly was a good feeling to simply "add" $800 "back" to my account to pay for this laptop that I bought with 6 months no interest/no finance charge! It almost felt like a free computer!

If you do not make long distance phone calls, ask your phone company to remove the long distance service from your phone. I rarely, if ever, make long distance phone calls & one day I looked at my phone bill & noticed I was being charged around $7 a month just to have long distance service on my line. Now I am saving $84 a year. If I need to make a long distance call, I use phone cards. The cheapest place to buy phone cards is at Sam's Club & you can add minutes on the cards. Last time I checked, I think their phone cards equal 3 cents/minute.

This tip is certainly not original with me, but I have claimed it as my "own" ever since I realized how incredible the results are!

We began by saving every bit of our change and rolling in paper wrappers. We made it a habit to bank each week's coin savings in our savings account without fail once a week. On average, that turned out to be between $10 and $12.50 a week. At the end of six months, we had added another $292.55 to our account just in coins.

After several months of seeing how much more was added to our savings account beyond our regular savings amount, we then ventured up to saving all the $1 bills that came our way. Before we even began, we promised each other we would NEVER spend a dollar bill but rather each night put the ones in a zippered bank bag we had. It bowled us over to realize that on average we were banking between $20 and $25 at end's week just in one dollar bills. At the end of six months, we had added ANOTHER $572 to the savings account.

Between the coins and the $1 bills, we added an additional $864.55 to our account and it was really painless! We've never missed those coins or $1 bills, and it is a joy to have "lightened up" our wallets.

Sandie

This subject could cover a whole series of books but since I am a true believer in supplementing my diet with a variety of healthy supplements, I often buy supplements in bulk powder form and put them into a healthy breakfast shake. For instance, calcium citrate in bulk powder form can be purchased from http://www.bulkfoods.com for $6.67 for eighteen ounces and one teaspoon yields 700 mg. calcium. I also wait for the Puritan's Pride http://www.puritanspride.com 3-for-1 sale (going on right now) and stock up on vitamins then.

My Hubby saves all of change & singles year round= then come Nov. 1- he gives them to me for xmas shopping!! Adds up to $800 + dollars, or more!! Some years it was $1,000!! + almost Free money!!
& the stores Love the Change & Singles!!

YOU CAN CERTAINLY PAINLESSLY ADD TO IT BY WRITING A CHECK FOR THE TOTAL GROCERIES AND THEN TURNING IN THE COUPONS. THEY'LL GIVE YOU THE COUPON MONEY IN CASH AND YOU CAN REALLY TELL THE DIFFERANCE. IN 1 YEAR I WAS ABLE TO PAINT MY HOME.
HOPE THIS HELPS

We are on a great debt elimination program. NO MORE Mortgage has been great. We are saving a lot in interest! You would not believe how much you are paying the bankers and credit card companies when you could be keeping that money. Check out their site: http://www.NoDebt4u.org

There are a couple of ways to look at this. You can either bank what your raise is (or even in addition to this idea). I have always been a very poor saver. (Right now I am disabled so haven't been able to do this and miss it terribly.) While I was working and single it was a struggle for me to ever have anything extra. I even worked for a bank! Well, I got paid every 2 weeks. I would always save at least $7 and some odd cents at least every paycheck...if I had a windfall or felt better off that paycheck I would deposit more to my special savings account that I had started. ( A brand new one.) I did this because I intended to never touch that account no matter how tight it got some weeks unless there was some dire emergency. Well, I lucked out and that dire emergency never happened...or even if things got a bit tight, I still left the account alone. The account was drawing the big 1% interest, lol. A couple of different times I needed small loans. So, I had my savings account secured as collateral and they did the loan for 2% over the savings account interest rate. One time I needed $700 for example, so my loan interest was like a big $10..so I repaid like $710. I thought that was great!! I was newly divorced and needed to build a credit rating anyway, and got my money by having a secured loan. Finally after 2 years I moved out of state....that nest egg that I had saved (over $1,500) became the down payment on the trailer we moved into!! When I get my social security disability approved you can bet I will go back to this methodology of saving. Also, I used to buy the 2 dollar bills when they came in the bank and they added up slowly...well over $1,300. It's had to be used for repairs, etc since my husband is the only one working. I also will start saving the 2 dollar bills again ASAP. Get you a nice hiding spot, like a locked sentry box, and put them in there. Good luck every one.

I save all the "unplanned" money that comes in. It's harder now with gas prices up, but aluminum can money, cash rebates on groceries, birthday gifts, and yard sale money all get plunked in my savings. The first year I did this, I also inherited mineral rights to some oil land from my father's estate. It's not a lot, but with everything, I saved $2,000. Came in handy when I broke my ankle. I building it up again. I even started some plum pits in a flower pot that won't be blooming over winter anyway. I hope to sell baby plum trees in the spring and add some cash to my stash! Also, since we have a pasture, I buy a calf every year and raise it to sell. We have a cow to give milk, and my husband feeds the calf grain when he feeds his calves grain. At the end of 2 years, a heifer can be worth over $2,000 and a bull about $850 on the hoof for beef. I don't mind taking money out of my savings to buy a $150-$400 calf when it's going to pay such good interest.

It reminds me of my grad student days. Take advantage of all the student offers you can! Try to furnish your apt. with nice used furniture - even if you have to fix it up a bit - Since minimalism is now a fashion trend, the fact that you don't have a lot can be put to your advantage as a design feature. We used thick foam pads instead of a mattress - and didn't have any window dressings per se. Use your books as a fashion statement - as you will have a lot of them. You could even use piles of them to hold up your lamps, etc. at first! Get nice posters to tack on the walls - use push pins - Make sure you have color coordinated so that it looks pulled together. Make lamps of bottles w/bottle lamp kits you find in hardware stores, and dime store shades....or get them in thrift shops. READ THIS SITE!!! and good luck...

Try craigslist.com and look for yard sales coming up in the next few months. I am getting married in June and we are buying a house, and we found a yardsale where the couple gave us everything from a Christmas tree to linens and glassware, and found a bunch of things on craigslist for free, including an entire bedroom set.

Good luck!

Here is an article that I was looking at earlier today on this site that might have some tips that you can use. Don't worry that everything isn't perfect, you have time to get to that point as you both start making money. Save all you can now. The biggest advice I can give is to resist eating out. Learning how to cook foods you both like will save you a ton of money and will help you when you want to start that family. Cook together and try out different things or replacements for your favorite restaurant meals. Also, go easy on buying stuff. Don't use credit cards, treat it like a challenge to live within the money you have each month.

http://www.thri  f912531.tip.html

When I had my first "grown up" apartment with my future husband, I didn't have money for a coffee table but I had a nice looking wide board left over from some project or another. I put it on top of a couple of milk crates, put a rug on top as decoration, with some candles and such. I remember some of my friends coming over and declaring how nice and grown up everything looked. They didn't even notice the milk crates. Put yourselves into making this first home and it will show, no matter what furnishings you have. Oh, enjoy! I had such a good time at this part of my life and I'm sure you will too.

Jess in Portland