365 Money Saving Tips to Live Cheap

Another great thread idea, this is turning out to become a great forum to sort your financial life out. Anyway here is my tip.

Tip 2. Think Before You Buy

This is more about self control and frugality buy I'm sure it leads to frugality. I was also a reckless spender when I was younger and something think about all the money I flushed down the toilet. Now I'm changing day by day and what has really helped me was to think before I buy anything, I have managed to control my urges and impulses and every time I consider buying something I will think about it for at least one minute before I decide. I ask questions like do I really need it? where will I put it? will I gain weight? Do I have space. The more questions you ask the more likely you are to refrain from buying thereby saving money and getting one step closer towards your financial goals.

Great Post, thanks guys, I've b73ookmarked this and I've got a feeling it's going to be big. Anyway my tip is as follows

Top 3: Keep Track of all the Money Your Saving

When I turned my attention to saving money and practicing frugality I started keeping a track of how much I was saving on a monthly basis, each month I wanted to beat the previous month. I can remember that on the first month I saved $135 and was really pleased with myself bearing in mind I was always in negative territory, I then challenged my self to save even more the next month and I did. Keeping track of your progress really motivates you and being in positive territory is a great feeling. I used the home budget planner shown below to keep track of everything, seriously it's hard work so investing some money into tracking will help you remain motivated.

Nice thread, I'm sure I'll be revisiting this one as it takes off. Anyway another tip, is not really a tip, it could be but I'm just going to post it anyway.

Tip 4: Talk to Your Wife or Husband About Your Finances

If you're in financial trouble you need to talk to your partner, don't just continue spending hoping you'll get that bonus, pay rise or lottery win. Seriously people if you'r going to get ahead financially you need to get your husband or wife on board otherwise it's going to be an uphill battle. I kept most of my financial affairs away from my wife and when things went south I had no choice but to tell her, after some initial abuse her analytic mind got to work and we planned our way out of trouble, having two minds working synergistic-ally to solve a problem makes it so much easier, I stopped worrying and started to think about progress. After a few months we got into positive territory and now were going from strength to strength, don't be a moron, share your problems. I've attached a cool video if you've got your head buried in the sand.

One thing that really helped me to save more was to put everything on autopilot, I got the tip from Ramit Sethi and the Author of automatic millionaire.

Tip 5: Put Everything on Autopilot

The stories being told here sound similar to mine so I'm just going to go straight to my tip. Before you spend a penny pay yourself first and then use the remaining money to live your life. As soon my salary enters my checking account the 401K and Roth IRA is topped up and my employer makes a nice contribution. I then automate a saving of 30% from my checking account to my ING account and I don't even miss it, as it's on autopilot I don't even have to do it myself. Just forget about it and be comfortable in your mind that step by step your finances are improving. I've got two books to recommend if you really want to automate your finances
1. I Will Teach You to Be Rich
2. Automatic Millionaires

This is probably going to sound obvious but I'm going to mention it anyway, great thread by the way, have bookmarked it.

Tip 6: Wear Lots of Clothes in Winter

In London it gets really cold in winter, sometimes the weather is so crap I feel like emigrating. Our energy bills use to shoot up during this time and my wife and I decided that enough was enough. We got into the habit of wearing think jumpers, sometimes ever two jumpers along with socks and gloves, we got the kids into the habit too and we turned the thermostat down significantly. We sat together and enjoyed each others company. It was great our energy bill went down in half compared to the previous year and we all enjoyed each others company. Seriously this tip will save you money, what the point to overspending on heating when you have jumpers in the closet, this is an obvious solution. No books, no videos, just common sense. LOL

I was hoping to share this with some friends, but I think there might be an issue with the Facebook share,.I've emailed Admin. Here's my tip:

Tip 7: Buy Used Quality Items

I've got into the habit of buying everything used, most of my clothes are used, most of my appliances are used, and most of my electrical equipment is used. I only buy designer clothes and appliances that have a history of reliability. The way I see it is I can buy a ordinary shirt for $20 or I could buy a fairly decent Armani shirt for $20 that will last even longer, same with the appliances. What I find is that the items are much better in terms of functionality and seldom breakdown. Buying used does save you money and if you can research into buying the most reliable items you'll be saving money on repair costs. Try this out for a year and all your breakdown problems will be solved. With all the designer clothes people will think you've become a millionaire and try to keep up which means they will spend more money than you. Hahahahaa.

Great content, excellent tips, going to try the used clothes one as I love designer clothes. I have a tip to share. Yaay.

Tip 8: Make Your Own Washing Detergent

If you're OCD like me you'll put anything in the washer, at one point I was doing the laundry every day, when I realized how much money this was costing me I stopped and only washed when I needed to with full loads, non of that half load rubbish. I also started to make my own laundry detergent to make up for all the money I wasted washing clothes. Normally I spend about $40 per month on laundry not to mention the cost of energy as well as wear and tear of the clothes and machine. Now that I'm doing full loads on cold wash short spin after 6 when the lower electric tariff kicks in I'm saving all my money because I don't buy anymore detergent or washing powder. This is a great way to save money, by the end of the year I hope to save about $480 which is great. I'm not going to write how I make my detergent but here's the video I use.

Hey, the detergent idea is something I'm definitely going to try, I use to love making potions at home when I was younger so this will rekindle a lot of old memories. My tip has to do with travel so here goes. Great thread by the way, information on roids.

Tip 9: Use a Bicycle, Carpool or Public Transport

Before I got serious about my money I used my car for everything and I was hemorrhaging money in terms of fuel, insurance, tax, repairs. After reading some personal finance blogs I came to the conclusion that I need to put a stop to this and eventually started using public transport and walked more, I was saving a lot o money however after I became hell bent on saving as much money as possible I started using a bicycle and sometimes I used a carpool when it was convenient, I went from $600 per month on transport to virtually zero, when I did need a car I just rented or borrowed a friends for a couple of days. If anyone who wants to save money seriously needs to control their spending when it comes to transport. Don't try to listen to other people who just say get a better insurance deal, restructure your finance or keep the tires inflated, just sell the damn thing and walk or cycle. You'll save money and your health will definitely improve.

Useful thread, got some ideas already, the detergent one is really cool, might try it out. Here's my tip

Tip 10: Save Money Towards an Emergency Fund

Not sure if this is a way to save money but it beats the heck out of using the credit card especially ones with high interest rates. The way I see it is if you have an emergency and you don't have any money then you have to reach for the credit card, if you've saved up for an emergency fund then you can just dip into that account whenever you need money. Be careful not to substitute it for a "that would look great on me Fund" this should only be used in emergencies. This is a great video that explains everything, Suze Orman's book's quite cool too and you should check it out.



The Amazon Link for the Book

I seriously love this thread, this is the first forum thread where you've got book recommendations, videos and personal experiences, I love it, keep it coming guys, I'm sure this thread will reach 100 tips. Here's my offering

Tip 11: Freeze Your Food and Use a Deep Freezer

When I had my financial epiphany I realized that as a family we were spending too much eating out and buying food, what was most annoying was we were throwing food away that had gone state and we could not ever finish the food on out plates because of the portion size, all of us were also piling the pounds and slowly but surely becoming overweight. When the credit cards came to breaking point and no one was offering a zero percent credit card we decided that enough was enough, we stopped eating out unless it was someones birthday, we only bought food that was on promotion and we cooked in bulk for the week and deep froze the items which meant that we were spending less time cooking. I was averaging about $1000 per month on my shopping and I was eventually able to shave this down to $350 per month, it can be done. Here's how I did it.

1. No more eating out
2. No more large portions
3. No more throwing food away, everything goes through someones mouth
4. Buy in bulk when there is a promotion and store in deep freezer
5. Cook for the entire week and then freeze the items in the deep freezer
6. Reheat items in oven and eat.

This tip will save you lots of money, if you can add coupons then you'll save even more, try buying everything using a cashback credit card and pay it off immediately, you'll get money for spending on food. Check out the video.

I must say I'm thoroughly enjoying this thread. Thanks for sharing all the information. Freezing food sounds like a great idea and I'm already planning everything in my mind already. Believe it or not I have a tip to share!

Tip 12: Get a Savings Account That Pays Decent Interest

I neglected this for so long and put my money in ordinary accounts which earned me nothing, when interest rates were higher I was too foolish to put my money in the right place, believe it or not in the past you could get an account which paid 10% interest in the US and the UK. Now anything that I save goes into my instant access savings account, once I reach $5000 I transfer the money over to a fixed term deposit account ad lock it away for 2 to 3 years so I can earn the higher 4%. Interest rates might not seem very high however if you do want to practice frugality you need to squeeze every cent out of every dollar. The way I think about money is as though each dollar is a freedom fighter that will buy me time, the more freedom fighters I have the more time I will have making me a wealthy person free do to whatever I want to do. Set up a system where you've got access to an emergency fund and where the remainder goes into an account which pays the most.

Really like what's going on here, a personal finance forum where people share their experiences really cool, especially threads like these. This has already helped me and anyone who checks this out will almost certainly leave with a tip or two, I'm certain we'll reach 365! Ok, time for my tip, this is the mother of all tips so here goes.

Tip 13: Fully Fund Your Retirement Account: 401K, 403B, Roth IRA

This might seem boring but you need to take advantage of the tax free money you get from the government not to mention employer contribution. Make sure you opt for maximum contribution or as much as you can and closely look at how much your employers contributing to your pension. Set up a Roth IRA and put any other money towards that. Invest the money in an Index Fund where the charges are low, some of the greatest investors of our time (Warren Buffet) has remarked that it's near impossible to beat the market over the long run, so make sure you pick a index fund which offers really low annual management charges and initial charges, Vanguard and Charles Schwab offer index tracker funds with rates as little as 0.2%. Rather than investing in a fancy fund which charges 6 per cent per annum the fund with the lower charge has a greater chance of making you more money. I cant stress this enough! Open a retirement account and start pumping in money.

Here's my book recommendation: Index Funds Made Easy

This video really got me thinking

Cheers guys, most of the time you have to look at several sites to get information like this. I have another tip I want to share (it's the least I can do)

Tip 14: Learn About Frugality

Some might say that this is not really a tip but frugality is actually a way of living and although you can share tips there's so much more to learn, if you can change the way you think, feel and act when it comes to money the only direction you're going to be going is towards financial security and financial independence if it's Gods will. Seriously peeps you need to learn more about this subject, tips are great but there's so much more to it. I've recommended some books. Also go to the library more and read, using other people's free resources means that you're saving yours. If you go to the library and it will stop you spending on needless things.

Great Book - Americas Cheapest Family

Tip 15: Buy All Your Stuff On Sale

Whenever I need something I always buy it when its on sale, I never buy anything I don't need and always look for the best deal. I buy mostly used quality products that have excellent reliability. I also have a sewing machine and I always repair clothes and sometimes even attempt making my own. As we have a large family it makes sense to save as much as we can on clothing, my children are not bitter because they know that the money will go towards giving them a better future, when they start to moan I give them a choice (a) A Better Future (b) Clothes they throw away after a few years. It's finally sinking in and were saving so much.

I think it's worth noting that if you're paying for a gym membership, you can still get a great workout at home doing bodyweight exercises. Greatist.com has a lot of good articles about it, including this one: http://greatist.com/fitness/50-bodyweight-exercises-you-can-do-anywhere. All of the moves can be looked up on YouTube, I'm sure, but I'll admit that I haven't heard of all of them. If you have some space at home, you might want to plan a routine using a bunch of these and see if you can get enough of a workout to nullify a gym membership.