How To Save Money

The best ways to save money are not the same for everyone.  Finding the right mix of what works best for you is an important part of changing your daily behavior so that you can save money everyday.  Here are a few tips that will help you get started learning how to save money.

1. Cut out the small things.  As we talked about on the home page finding your lattes and cutting them out of your daily life will help you build up money that you can save.
2. Consider switching providers. Cable, phone, and Internet can be very competitive markets depending on were you live.  As such they are always offering special introductory prices.  Some of these offers can be up to 50% of for 12 months.  This is a great way to save hundreds of dollars a month.  But you have to be willing to switch you provider on a regular basis.  You can also cancel your service for a month and then restart it and you should get the new customer deal.
3. Cancel features you don’t need. Again with cable, phone, and Internet there are many features that you don’t really need that cost 5 – 20 dollars a month.  Things like caller-id, premium cable packages, and the higher speed internet.  Slower internet accounts are much more inexpensive and they are just as useful.  It may take a little longer to download the YouTube video but it will still get downloaded and you can learn patients while saving money.
4. Cancel your land line. This is something that can also save you 30 – 60 bucks a month.  If you really need a land line you can cut it down to the lowest service level.  AT&T and Verizon have phone packages that are only about 8 bucks a month.  There are strict restrictions on these lines but they do allow anyone to call you, you to call toll free numbers, and 911 service.  We have this service and it allows us to have the low cost DSL line so we have both for about 30 bucks a month.
5. Payoff high interest debt first. Of course this isn’t a hard fast rule, debt that has tax implications, such as mortgage, you may want to not pay off first.  But in general learning how to save money means learning to get out of debt.
6. Sometimes it takes money to save money. Buying things like energy efficient light bulbs and power strips can cost you money right now but in the long run they pay off and help you save money.  Weather stripping is also a good way spend some money now to get savings later.  There are several books that you can spend money on which will teach you how to save money.  Some of those can be found to the right under the “Resources” heading.