7 money saving tips for households
If you’re looking to save money, you’ve probably already thought of many ways to do it. You may already be doing everything you can. But here are some ideas that may or may not have occurred to you.
- Don’t buy new. When you do shop, try garage sales and thrift stores before buying new. Also check Craigslist for items. And Freecycle.com, where you can swap things you no longer need for things other people in your area no longer need.
- If you subscribe to a local newspaper, see if you can’t read it online. For national and world news, all the cable news channels have websites with up to the minute reporting. A number of major newspapers are online, too. If you can’t get everything you want from the local paper online, consider going to just a weekend subscription.
- Dump cable or satellite. You can watch many TV shows online now, or rent DVDs of them very quickly after the end of a season (Netflix makes this extremely affordable). If you love sports, this might not be the right option for you, but movie and TV lovers can often get all they want much more cheaply with Netflix and online instead.
- Use the library! Unless you like to mark up books or can’t find the ones you want, borrow them. If you can’t borrow, buy from used bookstores. If you don’t have any near you, buy used from Amazon.com. Shipping’s often free, and the quality of the book is guaranteed to be as the buyer described it.
- Keep track of your pantry and fridge, and eat everything. Put a dry erase board and marker on your fridge with a magnet. Keep a list of the stuff that’s not going to last forever (like guacamole dip) to remind everyone to snack on that stuff, or fix meals with it, before it goes to waste. It’s so easy to let items go bad just because you forget what all you have on hand.
- Do you really need a long distance plan? You may not even need a landline anymore. If you’ve got long-distance on your cell phone, check into whether dumping your long distance on the landline will save you money. (Depending on your phone provider or the package you have, this may not do you any good, but it’s worth looking into.)
- Re-gift for casual friends. If you have purchases you shouldn’t have made or receive new items you don’t really want, hold onto them (unless you can return them) and re-gift them to people you don’t know well enough to buy something more personal
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