14 Ways to Save Money

Today we have an excerpt from Trent Hamm's free ebook Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance On Just One Page (summary here). In the book he lists 100 ways to reduce your spending and save more money. I've selected 14 of those tips and listed them below, along with my comments for each. Enjoy.

3. Turn a critical eye to your “collections.” Most people collect something - what do you collect? Is it something that consistently brings you joy? Or is it something that you just do out of habit at this point? Does the collection itself have value? Could you perhaps “trim the fat” from this collection by getting rid of duplicates or getting rid of the items you no longer use? Also, could you perhaps cut down on your spending on that hobby? Focus on trimming the things you don't feel strongly about - if you dig into things that bother you, you're going to eventually relapse.

Collections can either be money makers (coins or stamps) or money drains, but most likely they are the latter. I had several collections when I was younger and they all cost me in both time and energy. But they were fun and I never got carried away with them. That said, I've seen people get totally obsessed and spend a fortune on various collections that would never have much value and that they'd tire of soon.

5. Make your own gifts instead of buying stuff from the store. You can make food mixes, candles, bread, cookies, soap, and all kinds of other things at home quite easily and inexpensively. These make spectacular gifts for others because they involve your homemade touch, plus quite often they're consumable, meaning they don't wind up filling someone's closet with junk. Even better - include a personal handwritten note with the gift. This will make it even more special than anything you could possibly buy down at the mall, plus it saves you money.

We do this a lot with cards. The kids make birthday and special occasion cards that we send to family members, and we include a letter from us as well. With cards at $4 a pop or so, this can save a ton of money throughout a year.

12. Clean out your closet. Go through your closets and try to get rid of some of the stuff in there. You can have a yard sale with it, take it to a consignment shop, or even donate it for the tax deduction - all of which turn old stuff you don't want to use any more into money in your pocket. Not only that, it's often a psychological load off your mind to clean out your closets.

We do this in the spring and fall, taking out the stuff we didn't wear during the last season. Then we make a donation to the Salvation Army as much of our stuff is still in good shape. That said, we are giving away less and less as the years wear on since we're getting better at not buying new stuff and simply wearing the older items until they wear out.

13. Buy games that have a lot of replay value - and don't acquire new ones until you've mastered what you have. My video game buying habits have changed quite a bit since my “game of the week” days. Now, I focus on games that can be played over and over and over again, and I focus on mastering the games that I buy. Good targets include puzzle games and long, involved quest games - they maximize the value of your gaming dollar.

We have about 15 video games in our collection. We play one of them (FIFA09) about 80% of the time. Funny, it was one we got for free from a friend. Too bad we didn't find it sooner. ;-)

36. Give a gift of a service instead of an item. For new parents, give an evening of babysitting as a gift. If you know pet owners, offer to take care of their pets when they travel. Offer up some lawn care as a gift to a new homeowner. These are always spectacular gifts for anyone - I know that, as a parent of a toddler and an infant, I love receiving a babysitting gift, probably more than any “stuff” I might receive.

Great, great idea! We've traded babysitting nights with others (informally), but never given a night as a gift.

39. Reevaluate the stuff in the rooms in your house. Go into a room and go through every single item in it. Do you really need that item? Are you happy that it's there, or would you be just fine if it were not? If you can find stuff to get rid of, get rid of it - it just creates clutter and it might have some value to others. You also improve the perceived value of your house - and you're likely to get a lot of cleaning done in the process. It's a frugal win-win-win.

Similar to tip #12, but this time with general items. We don't have much extra stuff, but I'm sure even we could find some things that need to go.

43. Go for reliability and fuel efficiency when buying a car. A reliable and fuel efficient car will save you thousands over the long haul. Let's say you drive a vehicle for 80,000 miles. If you choose a 25 miles per gallon car over a 15 miles per gallon car, you save 2,133 gallons of gas. At $3 a gallon, that's $6,400 in savings right there. Reliability can pay the same dividends. Do the research - it will pay off for you.

I go for reliability (thank you, Consumer Reports, you've never let me down) as well as function. In my car, we wanted four-wheel drive for those rough Michigan winters. So we got a small SUV that was very reliable. For my wife's car, she wanted something smaller, so we got a very reliable car with great fuel efficiency. Oh, and we tend to keep our cars for several years -- well past 80k miles.

54. Learn how to dress minimally. Buy clothes that mix and match well and you'll not need nearly as many clothes. If you have five pants, seven shirts, and seven ties that all go together, you have almost an endless wardrobe right there just by mixing and matching. This is exactly what I do in
order to minimize clothes buying and still look professional - I just mix and remix what I wear by using utilitarian clothes options to
begin with.

Ha! I'm the king of this! ;-)

59. Look for a cheaper place to live. The cost of living in Iowa is surprisingly low, enough so that I'm quite happy to give up the cultural opportunities of other places to enjoy Iowa all year around. When I want to enjoy the cultural opportunities of another place, I'll travel there - after all, I can afford it. Take a serious look about moving to a less expensive area - if you can find work there, then a move can definitely put you in better financial shape.

Oh no, now he's treading on thin ice...

70. Pack food before you go on a road trip. Have everyone pack a sack lunch for the trip. That way, instead of stopping in the middle of the trip, driving around looking for a place to eat, spending a bunch of time there, and then paying a hefty bill, you can just eat on the road or, better yet, stop at a nice park and stretch for a bit. Plus, you'll save a lot of money and a fair amount of time this way.

My wife does this when we take long car trips and we save a fortune on snacks. We still stop for meals along the way (for fun, it is a vacation after all), but at least we don't need to stop for both food AND snacks.

74. Hit the library - hard. Don't look at a library as just a place to get old books. Look at it as a free place to do all sorts of things. I've used it to learn a foreign language, meet people, use the Internet anonymously, check out movies and CDs, grab local free newspapers, and keep up on community events. Best of all, it doesn't cost a dime.

We get books, DVDs, magazines, videos, etc. from the library. It's not really free since we do pay taxes for it, but I get what he's saying (and agree with it 100%). Why spend hundreds on books and so on when you can get them all at the library? And with today's technology, I can order from any library in our system and have a book sent to my library. Very cool and very useful.

83. Drive a different route to work. This is an especially powerful tip if you find yourself “automatically” stopping for something on the way into work or the way home. Get rid of that constant drain by selecting a different route that doesn't go by the temptation, even if the new route is a bit longer. You'll still be time ahead (because you're not stopping) and you'll definitely be money ahead.

I don't stop for extras on my way to work, but I like this tip simply because it's a cheap way to add some spice to life. Recently, an intersection I use to go to work has been undergoing some construction, and I've been forced to take a different route. It takes me about two minutes longer than my regular way, but it's been "fun" to "explore" a bit when driving to work. (I know, it doesn't take much to please me. Just give me a box and some rocks for Christmas and I'll be fine.) ;-)

85. Don't overspend on hygiene products. For most people, inexpensive hygiene products do the trick - for example, I just buy whichever toothpaste is the cheapest, and the same goes with deodorant and the like. The key is to use this stuff regularly and consistently - bathe daily, keep yourself clean, and you'll be just fine. No need to buy a $40 facial scrub if you actually scrub your face properly.

We hardly ever buy personal hygiene products at a grocery store. We buy at Walmart, Costco, or one of the drugstores on the major deals they offer, and on many items we buy the generic brand. Doing this saves a TON of money.

97. Connect your entertainment center and/or computer setup to a true smart power strip. A device like the SmartStrip LCG4 basically cuts power to all devices on the strip depending on the status of the first item on the strip. So, if you have your workstation hooked up to this, every time you power down your workstation, your monitor powers down, your printer powers down, your scanner powers down, and so on. You can do the same thing with your entertainment console - when you turn off the television, the cable/satellite box also goes off, as does the video game console, the VCR, the DVD player, and so on. This can save you a lot of electricity and significantly trim your power bill.

Need to do this. Good tip IMO.

Well, that's it for my coverage of this free ebook. If you want a copy for yourself, download it here.

Comments

[Andy]

Regarding the drive to work, another option for some of us would be to start taking the bus, carpooling, or riding a bike. It's hard to stop for that morning latte if you don't control the commute schedule or you don't have hands free to carry it. Besides that, there's the obvious advantage of saving on fuel, maintenance, and parking.

I enjoy my morning bus ride and my evening bike home.

[Jim]

#97. I have one of those smartstrips myself for our computer setup. I figured that I'm saving $18 a year in electricity so it will pay for itself in about 18 months.

The key benefit is that your appliances won't 'leech' power in standby mode. A lot of electronics still draw 5-10W even when they are off in standby.

You can get the same impact by using a power strip and making sure to flip the off switch on the switch every day. But for myself and others, it easy to forget so having it done automatic will save you in the log run.

[Jonathan]

I live in Iowa. It is pretty cheap here, despite the property taxes. And contrary to popular belief, it isn't that bad if you can grow a thick skin in January-February.

[Rosa]

Iowa is beautiful...if you can get a job. I grew up in Northwest Iowa and half my graduating class ended up in Minneapolis.

It does explain all the car/driving tips on that list, though - living in the city costs more in mortgage/insurance but some years it's evened out by cheap/free entertainment, bike commuting, and cheapass vacations to visit the nature we miss in our daily lives.

[ParatrooperJJ]

You probably don't want to power off your cable box. The newer digital ones have to reload data every time they are unplugged. Takes around 5 - 10 min. each time.

[PMK]

"You probably don't want to power off your cable box. The newer digital ones have to reload data every time they are unplugged. Takes around 5 - 10 min. each time."

this is true - a major PITA.

[Amber]

#36 is great...especially giving the gift of babysitting. It is my absolute favorite gift right now...particularly if the gift is to take our daughter overnight!

I also live in Iowa and like it. It will depend of course on what one's interests are. I enjoy travel during my time off, and since the cost of living is low I have much more money available for long distance travel vacations. To me this is a worthwhile trade off. For city entertainment one can take weekend trips to Chicago or Minnesota.