By John
You may be one of those people who don’t have any specific target that you need to save money for – like buying a new house, or sending a child to an expensive college, or a costly vacation – but still need to save to make ends meet or simply like the idea of having some extra cash available each month. If so, here is an idea.
How Much?
How much extra cash would you think would amount to a windfall every month? To take the kids for a treat, say, or put into an interest-bearing savings account? $50, or $100? You might think that impossible, but it’s a fair bet that you can save that quite easily if you try.
Loyalty Can Be An Expensive Virtue
Gone are the days when sticking with the same providers of almost any kind of service or products would get you preferential treatment or a better deal or better value. Competition is so fierce among them that they are all willing to embrace you as a customer by offering better deals. Stores may issue loyalty cards, but it’s not because you have been shopping there for years – it’s your future loyalty that they are interested in. So shop around for a store with a more rewarding loyalty card, and drop that one too when a better one springs up! Using all the available coupons and rebates and discounts, and other smart shopping tricks, you should be able to save at least $5 per shopping trip, and if you shop weekly, that’s a sure $20 each month.
Have you really got the best data plan for your cell phone, given your usage patterns? Making maximum use of apps for free texting and calling, and with the wide availability of free wi-fi hotspots, you can almost certainly drop to a lower plan. Let’s say, a saving of a minimum of $5 each month? A family plan can save at least as much again. Not satisfied? Then switch to a provider with better rates.
Dropping some cable TV channels you don’t really watch can raise another $5 or more.
And brand loyalty? Buy generic at up to 50% savings on many products.
Your Habits Are Expensive Too
If you are one of those people who grab a latte at the coffee shop – and probably a bite of breakfast as well – on your way to work, how much is that costing you? Got to come to $7 or $8 each time. If it costs you $3 to make your own breakfast and coffee-to-go, that would be $5 saved. Say you buy out twice a week instead of every day, that will give you a saving of $15 a week or $45 a month.
Are you a smoker? Cigarettes cost between about $5 and $10 depending on the state. If you can’t quit altogether (potential saving $150 – 300 every month if you get through a packet per day) cutting back by a third will save you $50 – 100 each month.
Entertainment
Eating out probably costs you upwards of $40 a time. An easy target. A family trip to the theatre with tickets at $8 each, and the $7 popcorn? Watching a rental movie at home with your own snacks will cost a fraction of that. Save maybe $25.
By my reckoning, successfully using just some of these tips will save you at least $50 – and that’s a conservative figure. So saving $100 a month doesn’t seem so impossible after all, does it?
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