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Buy used first as often times the used version is in pretty good condition and can often be discounted heavily compared to the new version. In stores like Amazon this is even integrated fully in such that you can even do it yourself. Or you may even be able to get it free by checking your local freecycle.
Price compare first before you do any purchase, most of the time you can save 10% as well as having the added benefit of seeing other customer reviews of the product. This extends to where you shop as well, simply by going to a cheaper store you can save yourself significant amount, don’t be fooled by stores which say they are reducing prices, find the per weight amount of something and compare it for yourself. It is not necessary to do this for every purchase, saving 5 percent on $20 is only $1 but if you are buying something worth $200 it starts to be worth your time to shop around. This can be expended to any service you buy, e.g. auto insurance, life insurance, home insurance and dental insurance, there are places to compare in all these fields.
Always buy generic version of drugs where available as they will be exactly the same as the branded version, the extra cost is purely because they can charge more as they spend so much on advertising to convince you the drugs are different when they are exactly the same. This is mandate by law. If you unsure then just go through the labels on both products and make sure that they contain the same active ingredients in the same quantities. There may be some cosmetic differences such as different taste but the actual medicine is the same. This is also the same in many beauty products, most of the time you are just getting an expensive piece of marketing rather than a product which actually works.
Plan your purchasing away from holidays as generally the time leading up to the holiday will be when goods are more expensive and more prone to run out, instead buy after the holiday and you are more likely to get a discounted product, also this period you are much more likely to be able to pick up second hands goods where someone has received a product that they did not like. For example buy the mothers day card 2 days after mothers day, clearly you are buying for the next year. The disadvantage with this strategy is that you do need space to keep this stuff before you actually need it. this strategy works especially well for presents for others, buy them in bulk works especially well if you have young kids and you are always going to parties.
Set up a swap shop with friends or at work that way you can buy one item and enjoy many others. Depending on how large the swap shop is you can get many times the value out of a purchase. Alternatively you can use a service such as PaperBackSwap.
Check for reliability when buying as especially with modern gadgets once the warranty wears out you are often stuck with having to buy the item brand new if you want a new one. For example a reliable, energy efficient washer with dryer may cost more than other models but it will end up saving you much more in less repairs and less energy and water usage. When researching keep these in mind, rather than the latest ‘feature’ as often times you will not end up using it anyway.
Ask for fees to be waived generally when you buy a service or good you can find that extra costs are added on. But what is not realised by many is that these can be removed if you are persistent and threaten to go with a competitor if it is not waived. I was able to do this with my Satellite subscription, they wanted to charge me to get my dish fixed, and I told them I wanted to cancel, suddenly the whole fee was waived. Note that when you do this tactic you have to be convincing and persistent. Remember that if you are an unsatisfied customer it is fairly easy to voice your opinion on the company on the web and cause the company many thousands in lost sales.

To effectively save money it is important to identify why you are saving money. It is much easier to stick to a saving plan if there is an end goal, which can be envisioned, being it a new house or a treasured holiday, or saving up for retirement. If you are not sure exactly why you want to save here are some ideas to get your started.

• Saving up for retirement can be a strong reason to start saving now, generally the support provided by the government is minimal, depending upon where you are located. At some point in your life you may want to slow down, or have to due to the effects of aging. In this case it is ideal to have a good pot of money saved up so that you don’t have to keep on working even though you do not feel up to it
• Saving up for a holiday another good reason to save up is a holiday, this can help to recharge the batteries as well as give a good opportunity to further bond with your family or friends
• Saving up for your children’s education another fantastic reason to start saving, giving your kids a good education is one of the primary things you can do to improve their life
• Saving up to get out of debt helps you to improve your situation by not having a constant drain on your income. Especially important if you are paying very high interest rates on your debt. Getting out of debt is more than possible, it just takes commitment and a recognition that you can’t have everything, at least not right away

By getting organized you can save yourself time and money. One example is late payment fees for credit card because the due date was forgotten. The key with all these systems is to stick with it.

Set up a system

• You can stick with a paper an pen system if you feel more comfortable with that. Have a folder with each month labelled and in each folder you can place coupons. And have a month planner with all recurring payments on them so that there are no more late payment fees

• Google calendar with this calendar online application by Google you can keep track of everything, with recurring payments it is possible to setup an event which occurs every month, and then have a reminder sent to your email when it is due. Then you just have to make sure to check your email every day. Try and keep all of the paper trail in one place.

Keep your system up to date

Put down everything that you must not forget, meetings, appointment on the list. Organize around this, for example when going to do the shopping have what you will be buying already in a list, this will make the trip quicker and mean that you are less likely to make impulse buys and prevent food spoilage due to buying of too much. You can put this list on the fridge that way if someone wants something specific then can be jotted down right there and then and not forgotten.

General tips

• Label containers so you don’t have to rummage around to find out what is in them.
• Store away items which are hardly used
• Use a daily planner so you don’t get sidetracked
• Establish a housekeeping routine, rather than doing small bits at a time to reduce the time taken

References

• www.dollarstretchers.com
• www.cheaptoday.com

Food is normally a significant portion of budgets, so finding significant savings in this area can make a real difference to how much money is left over at the end of the month, especially with a large family. Here are some money saving tips on how to reduce your expenditure

Before going shopping make a list: Making a list of all the things you want to buy is essential to staying in budget. When you are at the shop make sure you stick to your list. That way you won’t be tempted by special offers or products which you did not really need.
Shop quickly: this will reduce the temptation to buy, shops spend billions to entice you to buy what you don’t need, and the shop itself is their playground, it has been designed specifically to make you buy
Use unit price to compare products: When comparing between two products make sure to compare the unit price, rather than the total price displayed, as packaging can make two products look different sizes. Also the largest size is not necessarily the least expensive, be sure to check the unit price to see if this is true. If the largest size unit price is not that much cheaper consider staying with the smaller size as otherwise you may end up consuming more of the product than you where intending
Beware the product placement: in the shop the most visible product are not necessarily the cheapest, instead these are the products which have had the most paid for them by the brand owners to get visibility with you
A bargain is not always a bargain, super markets (as well as all other shops) will mark up their products then mark them down again so that they can say they are deeply discounted when really they are not if you consider their long term cost.
Don’t buy in bulk just because you get a discount: often the discount is very small, and you will end up consuming more than you intended and spending more money
Buy own brand or no brand stores tend to have different prices to differentiate the customer when in fact the product is exactly the same produced by the same manufacturer. So it is worth trying the own brands at least once to see if they are good enough, often times you can save 30% or more this way. The saving may not be great, but because these are products which you buy on a weekly basis the saving will add up.
Check over your receipts at the till: given the many items of food which is bought every week it is not surprising that mistakes are often made at the cash register, the most common being an item being double counted, so be sure to give your receipt a good once over and see that everything is in order
Write a list before you go shopping and stick to it. You need a very good idea of what you are going to buy before going into the store, otherwise you will end up getting more food than you wanted to. Do not put any items shopping cart if they are not on the list, you should save a significant amount.
Make your own lunch, don’t buy it as eating out for lunch every day can quickly add up, it does not take much preparation to make lunch, and when you cook you can always cook more than you need for one mean and have left overs on the next day.
When you cook, cook for 10, that way you can freeze the rest of it and have it later. Once you do this with a few different meals you will have a large selection and you will need to spend less time cooking, and need to spend less money outside buying food. This also allows you to buy ingredients in bulk that way you can save even more.
Get a large freezer or an extra freezer this will end up saving you time and money and will mean that you can cook greater quantities of food, and buy more in bulk and thus save more money. Another benefit is that you will have less times when you run out of food as you are able to keep stock levels higher, even if everyone decides they suddenly like one thing one week.

There are three main ways to cut your heating bills.

Changing heating provider or change how heat is provided to your house.

Often times you will have an alternative to heating your house, whether it be from gas, oil or even underground heating. Also sometime in your area there may be more than one provider of gas, so it pays to look around and see which is the cheapest source of heating

Improving the insulation of your house.

• Windows are a top priority as most heat is lost through windows, if you don’t have double glazing now could be the time to install it, generally this is a more long term strategy though as the cost of the install will not be paid off by the energy saving for at least five year, if energy prices go back up again though this may change.
• Identify any drafts in your house, these can be sealed up simply and once eliminated will lead to a significantly warmer house. Generally drafts will be coming from either the floor or any joints, or can be coming through poorly sealed windows. You can consider covering windows with plastic sheets as a cheap form of insulation, this is only really useful on windows which are not usually opened.
• Choose the right house this is probably the single most important aspect, see if you can choose a house which is already energy efficient. Unfortunately so much of the house stock currently has been built poorly in this regard, that this can be easier said than done.

Changing your behaviour

There are simple ways that you can change your behaviour to improve the energy usage in your house. You can make sure that you turn off lights whenever you leave a and are not planning to come back any time soon. You can switch your light bulbs to energy efficient light bulbs. You can turn down the heating temperature gauge a notch, you can turn off your heating over night and add an extra blanket.

Categorise your expenses

• Look through your bank statements for the past month and your receipts, to get an idea of what you spend money on.
• The monthly personal accounting spreadsheet has more categories to give you an example you can tailor it to your needs
• Keeping a record of where your money is going. Any large purchases or frequent purchases should be noted. Things you buy on a daily basis can quickly add up, for example if you spend just 5 dollars a day on coffee over the year that comes to over $1800.
• Aim to have as few unknown expenditures as possible
• Where possible and not too costly move yearly payments to being monthly, this will make budgeting on a monthly basis more easy and you can better see how much money you have left at the end of the year
• Consolidate providers for successful budgeting, where you have the option go with the same provide for example for gas and electricity, this will mean less bills to pay and will generally be cheaper
• Once you have a months worth of spending information you are ready to construct your budget from this.

Money saving tips with budgeting

• Each category is either an essential expenditure or non essential. Generally paying for heating would be considered essential while paying for going out would not.

Essential expenditure

• With respect to budgeting this boils down to shopping around for the best deal, when your auto insurance is up for renewal look for other providers
• If you have any outstanding loans then look to paying them of, ensuring that you pay of the loans with the highest interest rate first, it may even make sense to consolidate your loans into one loan as long as the new loan has a lower rate and the terms on the loan are not overly restrictive.
• Are there things in this list was are not actually essential? For example do your still need your land line? If you already have a cell phone you could do without the land line, this will help with your budgeting as you will have less bills to worry about.

Non essential expenditure

• In budgeting terms to cut down on non essential expenditure it is helpful to introduce a concept called marginal utility. This is the utility(usefulness or entertainment) gained from an increase in the amount available on that good or service. For example take two different leisure activities reading a book and going on a night out. Lets assume that reading a book for one hour gives the same entertainment as going out for one hour. Now we can work out which gives the best bang for your buck.
  Book (cost $10) time spent reading 10 hours.
  Going out (cost $50) time spent 5 hours.
  Book costs $1 per hour while going out is $10 per hour. So it is clear from this example (as long as both are equally enjoyable) it makes more sense to invest in the book than going out. Even in the case where going out is twice as entertaining as reading a book it still makes most sense to get the book.

Buy used first as often times the used version is in pretty good condition and can often be discounted heavily compared to the new version. In stores like Amazon this is even integrated fully in such that you can even do it yourself. Or you may even be able to get it free by checking your local freecycle.
Price compare first before you do any purchase, most of the time you can save 10% as well as having the added benefit of seeing other customer reviews of the product. This extends to where you shop as well, simply by going to a cheaper store you can save yourself significant amount, don’t be fooled by stores which say they are reducing prices, find the per weight amount of something and compare it for yourself. It is not necessary to do this for every purchase, saving 5 percent on $20 is only $1 but if you are buying something worth $200 it starts to be worth your time to shop around. This can be expended to any service you buy, e.g. auto insurance, life insurance, home insurance and dental insurance, there are places to compare in all these fields.
Always buy generic version of drugs where available as they will be exactly the same as the branded version, the extra cost is purely because they can charge more as they spend so much on advertising to convince you the drugs are different when they are exactly the same. This is mandate by law. If you unsure then just go through the labels on both products and make sure that they contain the same active ingredients in the same quantities. There may be some cosmetic differences such as different taste but the actual medicine is the same. This is also the same in many beauty products, most of the time you are just getting an expensive piece of marketing rather than a product which actually works.
Plan your purchasing away from holidays as generally the time leading up to the holiday will be when goods are more expensive and more prone to run out, instead buy after the holiday and you are more likely to get a discounted product, also this period you are much more likely to be able to pick up second hands goods where someone has received a product that they did not like. For example buy the mothers day card 2 days after mothers day, clearly you are buying for the next year. The disadvantage with this strategy is that you do need space to keep this stuff before you actually need it. this strategy works especially well for presents for others, buy them in bulk works especially well if you have young kids and you are always going to parties.
Set up a swap shop with friends or at work that way you can buy one item and enjoy many others. Depending on how large the swap shop is you can get many times the value out of a purchase. Alternatively you can use a service such as PaperBackSwap.
Check for reliability when buying as especially with modern gadgets once the warranty wears out you are often stuck with having to buy the item brand new if you want a new one. For example a reliable, energy efficient washer with dryer may cost more than other models but it will end up saving you much more in less repairs and less energy and water usage. When researching keep these in mind, rather than the latest ‘feature’ as often times you will not end up using it anyway.
Ask for fees to be waived generally when you buy a service or good you can find that extra costs are added on. But what is not realised by many is that these can be removed if you are persistent and threaten to go with a competitor if it is not waived. I was able to do this with my Satellite subscription, they wanted to charge me to get my dish fixed, and I told them I wanted to cancel, suddenly the whole fee was waived. Note that when you do this tactic you have to be convincing and persistent. Remember that if you are an unsatisfied customer it is fairly easy to voice your opinion on the company on the web and cause the company many thousands in lost sales.

Buy used this will save you in depreciation, as generally as soon as a new car it will lose up to 30% of its value right there. More care needs to be taken on due diligence on the car, as if you buy a lemon then you will not be saving any money, and just getting heart ache.
Buy the right car focus on a car which is reliable and fuel efficient, this one choice can save you thousands, and forget about buying a new car, buy used and you will lose much less in depreciation in the car. To give you an example of what you cold save if you drive a vehicle for 100,000 miles and choose a car which gets 15 mpg vs. a car which gets 25 mpg and with gas at $3 you save $6,000. Getting a car which is reliable will save you the hassle of having to get your car repaired, which can be very expensive as well as inconvenient
Carpool can be a great way to save money, if there is someone who lives nearby who works in the same area as you. Fuel costs are halved as well as wear and tear on your car, and with gas prices set to increase and stay high for the foreseeable future this is a quick way to become less dependant on oil.
Reduce your speed as the optimal speed for fuel consumption is generally 50 to 60 miles an hour, there is a reason that trucks go at this speed, and it is not just to annoy other drivers. The actual time saved is usually only 5 or 10 of the journey anyway, unless you have the good fortune to be mostly high way driving.
Downsize to only one car this can save you with insurance and maintenance costs, though does require more management and planning, potentially it could work better in combination with car pooling.
Use public transportation if you can ditch the car completely then you will save a huge amount of money, no more fuel costs, insurance as well as the cost of the car. Though for some people it is not an option as they enjoy just owning a car so getting value beyond just the utility of getting from A to B. Also unfortunately this is only possible when you have a good public transportation system, but it can be feasible. Generally public transport will end up being cheaper especially once you consider the total running cost of your car. For times when you do need a car you can always rent a car or there are some city based car rental schemes where cars are dotted around the place and you can pick up the local one for a set fee per day.

Use online bill pay with your bank. This will ensure that you keep better track of your money, so that you can check for any incorrect debits and makes sure that you do not suffer any late payment fees or go into overdraft and get charged by your bank. It also saves you on the time and hassle of stamps and paper checks.
Change your cell phone to pay as you go often times you will find that you have two benefits to this which end up saving you money, first is that you can’t spend too much in one go, so if you accidentally do a call which is costing too much you will get cut off before you can go over budget, second is that you will only pay for what you use, rather than paying for minutes that often times you never end up using
Check through your phone bills and check if you have any services that you don’t use on there, for example if you don’t text at all then it makes little sense to have 1000 free text every month. Cancel those right away. See if you have any expensive calls that you are regularly making, you can often times change your plan to reflect your usage and save. like a surfeit of text messages or web access or something to that effect.
Ditch your land line as we have already come to the point that cell phones have replace land lines as the main way to contact us. It may be time to cancel your land line.
Cancel or cut down cable or satellite channels you don’t use much. Often times people tend to watch a small subset of channels and never deviate from those, so why pay for channels that you are never watching. If its only for the odd movie, then you can get your movie fix from many other sources or even buy the DVD with the money you save.

Call up your credit card issuer and ask them for a rate reduction, they are not guaranteed to give you one, but it does not hurt to ask, you can always give them cheaper examples of other card rates and say that you are thinking of switching. If you have no luck talk to their supervisor, even a small rate reduction can make a huge difference, getting a reduction of 3% on $10,000 can be worth $300 a year.
Put your card hidden away so that you have to make a real effort to use it. That way you won’t be tempted to use it. Ideally credit cards should only be used for online payments (for the payment protection services) and should be paid off every month, as they are normally the most expensive type of credit you can find. At least keep it out of your wallet, unless you have the requisite willpower not to use it.
Remove your credit card details from online accounts and when paying make sure to select the option not to save your credit card details. This will give you an extra pause before you make an online purchase. This works well in conjunction with putting your card hidden away, giving you that extra pause before you by the latest abs blaster which is 100% guaranteed to work or your money back.
Give yourself a strong visual reminder of your debt this will help to keep it in your mind, you can either do this on paper and keep it up to date every month, or get an application to automate the procedure. This will help you to focus on your goals of increasing your wealth so you can spend on what you truly want and not debt servicing so someone else can profit by your hard work.
Consolidate your debt into one or a couple of sources. Consolidation only really makes sense if you can be a significantly lower interest rate on the consolidation loan. If you can then it can be a good way to cut down on expenditure, and it also lets you decrease the management that is required by having so many outstanding loans.
Get on an automatic debt repayment plan often times especially for student loans if you go on the automatic repayment plan then you can get a rate reduction. This also is great as it cuts out the hassle of having to make the payment. Also consider just consolidating your student loan to a lower rate if possible.