There are a lot of ways to save money, but honestly, we just forget about most of them. We go on living our day-to-day lives and don’t think about the little things that really add up.
Let’s dive into a list of ways to either save or earn money, that may have been forgotten.
1. Renewable payments. Do you ever think about how many automatic renewable payments you have? Maybe that old gym membership, something on your TV service that you no longer use (like that free trial of HBO that you never called to cancel), or magazines that you aren’t even reading anymore. Go through your account and add these up. You could be looking at $50 or more per month.
2. Not earning rewards from your credit cards. My brother in law puts everything on his credit card and then pays it, in full, every month. This way he earns a lot of points.
3. Buying books. You can borrow so many books at the library! We can borrow 27 books per library card at our local library. I do let the kids buy one book from the school book fair, to support the school, but I don’t like them to buy too many otherwise (I was a teacher and have hundreds already!). We just go every week and borrow new books.
4. Renting Movies. This goes along with #3, but we figured out that we are saving almost $20 a month with Netflix. This is because we were renting from Redbox at $2 a night, and sometimes that number was $4 when we forgot to return the movie. If we got a few every weekend, it was adding up to a lot of unexpected costs. We now try to find a new movie on Netflix every weekend to save costs.
5. Gym memberships. We both have one and we use it, but we don’t pay monthly. Once we decided to really go for it, we bought a year membership, saved over $100 each, and we go every night. If you aren’t sure that you would go every night, it might be better to work out at home with one of the apps that you can get for under $5.
6. Your Thermostat. Did you know that if you lower it to 60 degrees at night and keep it at 65-68 degrees during the day (in the wintertime), you could save 20% on your bill? Try it! You might want to invest in a programmable thermostat to do it for you, in case you forget.
7. Clothes Shopping. Shop at the END of the season for the following year. My wife and mother-in-law do this every year. They go shopping in February for winter clothes for the following year. This way, the clothes are marked down (usually around 90% off).
8. Coffee Shops. A cup of coffee, when buying it at a store, can cost you $2-$4 a cup. If you make it at home, you are spending way less depending on size & strength of coffee.
9. Poor Meal Planning. We wasted so much money running to the store in the middle of the week to pick up cheese, which turned into cheese, granola bars, apples, milk, etc. Now we plan for the week with our meal plans (free for you every week) and we are saving a lot of money by only shopping once a week.
10. Electronics. You can just get an energy saving power strip and it will take care of all of this for you. I hope that helped. What ways do you try to save?
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