How Are You Saving Money These Days?
By: Nancy | July 31, 2008 | Category: Money
Has your credit card been seeing less daylight lately? According to a new study on how Americans are handling their money in the current economic downturn, 37 percent of people surveyed said they're cutting down on how often they use their credit cards. They're either going to a cash or debit card basis or are just plain spending less.
The same survey says that 57 percent of respondents are being more careful about dining out and 46 percent are shopping more at discount superstores.
Some people I know are even going back to the old fashioned, pre-credit card era practice of envelope budgeting. It's low-tech wonderful. After working out their weekly and monthly budgets to find out exactly what their expenses are (and finding "leaks" in their budget—expenses that they weren't really aware were adding up) they take out cash and divvy it up into envelopes for each expense—insurance, rent or mortgage, food, utilities, etc. And when that money's gone at the end of the month, it's gone. No borrowing from another envelope and going into debt.
There are so many other ways you can save by auditing your lifestyle:
- What are your phone habits? Are there cheaper plans that meet your calling needs better?
- Do you really need the higher tier of cable channels...do you need cable at all?
- When you go grocery shopping, are you making a list before you go, sticking to it and shopping on a full stomach or do all the displays and smells get you to fill your cart with things you hadn't planned to buy?
- Once you've paid off your car, are you setting aside some money every month to help pay for your next vehicle so your car loan will be smaller? If you're shopping for a car right now, are you armed with the info you need to get the best deal?
I could write a 10,000 word blog entry on all the ways to save. But my bosses nudge me nicely when I go over Gov Gab's 300ish word limit. And I'm over it now. We don't have any limits on blog comments though. So please help me out and share what you're doing differently these days to save more and spend less.
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There are also plenty of sites that have "quick and easy" recipes that have 5 ingredients or less. And if you have left overs - bring them to work the next day.
Comment Permalink | Post a New CommentI would love to hear from other readers what frugal or money saving websites they read. Thanks for the great and timely topic!
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Comment Permalink | Post a New CommentSo, I've been bringing my lunch to work everyday and eating breakfast at home like a quick bowl of cereal. Lunch is just a sandwich...nothing fancy. I've been doing good with that so far. We've also allotted ourselves an allowance of specific $$ every paycheck. We take it out in cash and that's it. If we spend it before the paycheck ends...tough luck. Anything left over, though, we stash away in our own little special place where we don't see it. The goal is that sometime down the road we can always open up that stash and go out and buy something we each want without feeling guilty. That makes it to our advantage to not spend as much each paycheck and really try to save as much as possible for our own selfish reasons...that's what it's really all about anyway, right :)
With TV, phone, and internet we've typically had separate companies for each. The "all in one" packages are nice, but for things we had (which really was basic packages with a few extra channels, DVR, and some HD content) it's always been about $10 cheaper to deal with 3 companies than just one. Now we're at two companies and we're still saving about $10 a month over the previous setup. Every little bit helps.
For the car, we own one of them after 2 years. We were fortunate to sell our house and have enough in the loan to pay off the car completely. All the other bills are typically regular payment plans which work out nicely.
Of course, when it comes to renting videos, we use to use the "popular DVD-mail delivery service" (you know which one I mean). But that was costing us $10/month and we'd only get one or two b/c we just kept putting off watching them. Now, we use the $1 DVD options at the store (the other one in the big red box) and it's better for us b/c it's $1/day and we only get one when we know we have time to watch it. Last month we spent $5 on movies and watch 5 movies...compared to 2 movies for $10.
Again, every little bit you can save helps overall. Sorry it's a long comment...but I had to test your comment word count limit :)
Comment Permalink | Post a New CommentI am loving everybody's tips. Let's keep going with more :)
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Comment Permalink | Post a New CommentIf you just have to have the latest book by your favorite author, try selling it on Amazon.com after you've finished it. Or look there first before you pay full retail.
Comment Permalink | Post a New CommentI recently bought several articles of clothing on sale, then got to take another 25% off, didn't have to pay shipping (I was buying online, obviously) because I used my store credit card, and took another $10 off through a discount card the store had sent me.
Of course, this only works if you pay off that store credit card bill at the end of the month!
Comment Permalink | Post a New CommentOne trick I do is just using a rebate style credit card that gives cash back. I have one that gives 5% back on gasoline purchases, 2% on travel, food and some other items, and 1% on anything that doesn't fall into a higher discount category. The 5% gas discount giving me the equivalent of 20 cents off per gallon. If gas goes higher, so does the discount per gallon.
I pay the credit card off in full each month. In just the past few of months, I've received cash rebate checks of over $100.
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