Ways to Save Money

Here are some great ways Decrease your spending!

1. Eating out. I have listed this one first because if you have been a reader of this blog, you know our family loves to eat out. When you can use the restaurant.com site to save you money while eating out. Limit you eating out to once a week at the most and try to scale back to 2 twice a month. Busy schedules require planning.


2. Pack your lunches: you will spend about $5-$10 a day on a lunch. That is $25-$50 a week in lunches. If you ate out for 52 weeks a year at $30 a week that would be $1560 a year. Brown bag it and save some of that money.


3. Shop at thirft stores. You can find some great things at thrift stores. I shop thrift stores and then turn around and sale them on ebay to make a profit. Great way to make money. See my post here on how I found a great toaster oven that I wanted at a thrift store for only $4.75. .


4. Live below your means. This is a hard one. Keeping up with the Jones is a disease. As a rule in our house, if it is over $25-$30 bucks, we wait a day and think about it. No impulse buying. This helps with living below your means.


5. Rebate sites. Just today I bought something on line and logged into my cashbaq account and before going to the site that I purchased from. If you link through a rebate site, you will start earning cashback on each online purchase. This adds up. Plus there are coupons that you can use sometimes to get % off or Free shipping. Click here to read more about cashbaq.com or click on this link to go straight and sign up. It is FREE and you get $5 for just signing up. Can't beat that.


6. Insurance. Check your insurance rates each year. You can raise the deductable, drop the full coverage, make sure you have your home and your cars on the same policy for discounts and make sure if you have a student driver their grades are up to get the good driver discount. Mark your calendars each year to review your policies.


7. Coffee. Can you believe this is a great are to save money? It is. Buying coffee everyday can be $2-5 a cup according to what you like. Get up a little earlier, slurge on a good coffee beans and make your own. You might have to upgrade on your coffee maker but it is worth it. I use Gevalia coffee and right now your can get a deluxe Coffeemaker & Gevalia Travel Mug & Stainless Steel Coffee Scoop plus two pounds of coffee, all for only $29.95 plus $5.95 shipping and handling. If you don't like the coffee, it is easy to cancel. All you have todo is call the 1-800 number provided and talk to an automated person. Click here if you need to upgrade your coffee maker and want to try Gevalia Or you can go to Bed Bath and Beyond when you get one of the 20% coupons in the mail and get a good coffee maker. If you get 3 cups of coffee a week for 52 weeks at $3 a cup you will be spending $780 a year in coffee. You can make it for a lot less than that.


8. Call your credit card companies. Rates have went up and sometimes you don't even know it. Call them and make sure your rate has not been affected. If you are carrying a balance check out the offers for 0% interest on your transfers for a time period and try to get it paid off. But for certain, check with your CC company and see if they can lower your rate.


9. Stock Pile: Yes, you have room. Believe me if I can stock pile anyone can. When you see a sale on something that you use regularly and you can combine it with coupons and or rebates, buy a lot of the item for later use. I currently have a years supply of toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo and deoderant stock piled that I paid 25 cents each or less. Food, I keep a 3 month supply only due to the shelf date. This is a big savings.


10. Use cloths in the kitchen. Use cloth napkins & dishtowels. Stop buying the papertowels and paper napkins. Papertowels are expensive and you can use a dishtowel just as easy. I keep a small bucket under my sink and throw my dirty cloths in it. Once a week, they get washed with my other towels and washcloths. If you have a towel that you are no longer using as a bath towel, cut it up and use it in the kitchen as dish rags or cleaning towels. You can buy a yard of festive fabric (cotton) and make some great napkins in no time. Save save save in your pocket and in our landfields.

Tomorrow, I will be posting about ways to save with your car. There are 5 great ways to save on the road. Check back