A lot of these are probably common sense to most people here, but I just thought I'd share some of my experiences in the last couple years as to how I've improved on my spending. I used to be pretty irresponsible and lazy about my money, lately I've been trying to be better, and a lot of these things are very easy to do. Just thought I'd share some tips and lessons learned, maybe it will help a few people.
- Pack a lunch - I used to go out for lunch every day and spend all kinds of money. Now I just pack leftovers or something cheap/easy/healthy.
- Watch your portion sizes - Portion sizes are so huge at some restaurants I used to stuff myself or waste a lot of food. These days I try to eat half or split something with the wife. I saved some money and dropped a few lbs.
- Stop paying interest - It's tough to avoid for cars and homes, but get those credit cards paid off. I know it's not always easy and it gets mentioned a lot, but work it into your budget. Switch your cc balance to one with zero interest if you have to, just make sure you pay them off or move them again before they expire or you could end up paying accumulated interest.
- Cut the cord - I looked at my tv watching and realized I was only watching about 10-15 channels but paying for over 200 on DirecTV. The price just kept climbing after the limited time offers expired and I had to do something. I looked into live streaming services and found a couple that had all of the channels I wanted and would cost about $100 less per month. But DirecTV will do anything to keep their customers right now, so they called me the day before it was supposed to be shut off. They asked me what I was paying for me new service, and they ended up bringing my bill down to match it.
- Check your other bills too - I decided I was paying way too much for my cell phone so I shopped around and ended up spending about $40 a month less but for better service. You don't need to pay for 10 gigs of data if you only use 1 or 2. I changed my satellite radio to the cheaper one at the expense of a couple stations I rarely listened to. If you haven't touched your car insurance in a while, compare prices from different providers and check your coverage. Look for any other discounts that may apply. See if you can put that gym membership on hold if you haven't been in a few months instead of just donating your money.
- Make your home more efficient - these types of things are more like investments that will require a little up front cost, but will save some money in the future. You can upgrade your lights to LEDs, install a smart thermostat, redo some weather stripping, etc.
- Take advantage of points - Once I was out of credit card debt and I could easily pay my balance every month I realized I should take advantage of credit card points and sign up bonuses. I'm not spending any more than I was before, I'm just using different payment methods and now I get some cash back or some points toward my next vacation. Easy peasy. If you want to get serious about it, look into r/churning for more info.
- Quit smoking - obviously its probably the worst thing you can do to your health and finances. Everyone has vices, you know what they are. Quit them or get them under control.
- Check your paycheck - I made a post a while back about how I found out I've been being underpaid by $9k per year. I always just assumed other people knew what they were doing and I had made a mistake somewhere. Well apparently that was my mistake, so don't make the same one I did. Always check your paychecks. Compare the gross amount to what you're supposed to be making and make sure it's correct. Check all of the deductions and make sure you know what each one of them is and how they are supposed to be calculated.
- Don't buy anything unless it is on sale - If there is something you want to buy, give it the 24 hour rule. If after a day you decide you still want it, make sure you are getting the best possible deal. If you want to buy big ticket items like appliances or furniture, ask the stores what time of year they have the best sales and wait until then. Don't buy things you don't need just because they're on sale, buy things you do need, but wait until they go on sale.
So I've already budgeted out all of my expenses and made budgets for fun and things like that. So when I do save money on an expense I try to roll it into savings or investing, and and think about how ever dollar I save now will be worth a lot more in the future, and how it all adds up. I see a few $ saved every month much differently now as I start to get closer to retirement.
Submitted July 17, 2018 at 11:07AM by SpartEng76 https://ift.tt/2LdmQ77
