We all have our little tricks when it comes to saving money. Here my little tricks in 5 easy ways to save money.
5 Easy Ways to Save Money
1. Consider getting rid of your home phone if you haven’t already. This is one of the easy ways to save money. Hubby and I save about $30 a month by not having a home phone. Sometimes we need a fax machine and in that case we go to the library. Usually we can just scan in and email.
2. Online bill pay. Postage is going up, again. The average family has 5-10 bills that need to be paid monthly. If you are mailing them you could be saving upwards of $7 a month by taking advantage of online bill pay. Your cellphone bill is the easiest, you can pay that by calling an automated number on your phone.
3. Get e-statements. Many banks and companies, offer onetime discounts if you choose e-statements. One bank we are with, actually charges for sending you a statement. At $2 a month for paper statements, it’s much cheaper to print them off yourself!
4. Loyalty and rewards cards. I have a little stash of loyalty cards in my purse. My favorite would be the Speedway card. If you live close to Speedway, and don’t have a Speedy Rewards card, you are missing out. Before we went to KS we redeemed our points and got a $75 visa card to use for gas on the way out there!
5. This last one is a little unique to us. Sure we track our purchases and can see where our cash is going, but every month I would pull up the reports and consistently we saw one area where we spent way to much! That area was a dining. I’m not talking a date night or dinner out, I’m talking a little here and a little there. I would leave work and stop for a mocha, hubby would stop for a snack here and there. Just a little bit at a time, but it really added up!
So what did we do about it? Well, we each get an allowance! At the beginning of the month we get a certain amount that is ours for snacks, coffee and such. If we run out before the month is over, to bad. I think that alone helped us save $20 or more a month. 🙂
So those are the 5 easy ways to save money that we use each month. What are some things that you do in order to save yourself some cash? Share some of your money saving tips with us, by leaving a comment below.
Gege @ The heart of a housewife says
January 24, 2013 at 4:35 amVery very good idea to save money! Thanks for sharing! I love the idea n.5! It’s a blessing so you can realize where money is going and if you can improve!
Kendra says
January 25, 2013 at 8:08 pmThanks! Idea 5 is rather fun 🙂
Bethany says
January 24, 2013 at 7:17 amI think those are great tips! We actually have the magic jack plus for our phone (it plugs right into the internet router) and we get unlimited local and long distance plus extremely cheap international. I think we paid $100 for 6 years of service. I get absolutely nothing for saying all this, but that company has saved us a lot on phone bills!
We also have a completely separate bank account where we’ve decided to put all checks into it. Since we get paid electronically, we don’t receive that many, but over the past 5 years we’ve managed to accumulate $15,000. We got rid of all checks, debit, & credit cards linked to that account to keep ourselves from being able to easily pull money from there. It’s great having an emergency fund all tucked away. Such peace of mind!
Kendra says
January 25, 2013 at 8:07 pmI’ve heard great things about Magic Jack. I do wish I could find something cheaper for our cell phones. But we use every bit of our plan and we looked at pay as you go phones and decided to stay with ATT. We’re glad we did too. My mom went with a pay as you go type plan and has had nothing but problems.
Sue@housepretty says
January 24, 2013 at 8:06 pmAll great ideas. Actually, Im going to mention the landline phone idea to my husband! We started giving ourselves an allowance, and we are finding that seeing our allowances each accummulate, has made us even more thrifty. Yeah, I know, your allowance “usually” is for spending however you want. However, when you start to see the money adding up by not treating yourself very much, even your alowance can start to become a little nest egg, lol!
Lynne says
January 29, 2013 at 10:08 pmWe got rid of our land line a couple of years ago for the savings. Other ways that we save are making our own laundry detergent and our own dishwasher soap. I also try very hard to only buy items at the store that I have coupons for. There are so many bloggers that do coupon matchups, which is lovely, they do all the work for me of figuring out which stores have what items on sale. The one I use is local to me, which is even better http://couponstl.blogspot.com/ if any of you are from STL!
My newest money saving tip is that every time I get a $5 bill, I set it aside, and when I next go to the bank, I take them in for the Christmas Club account. Thanks for all these great tips, and for the recent guest post from Rebekah!
Leslie Monroe (@BeSimplyBetter) says
January 30, 2013 at 8:22 pmOnline bill pay is the best! I save $10 a month with auto payments and sending checks through the bank. Good ideas.
Barb @ A Life in Balance says
January 30, 2013 at 8:57 pmI need to get our HSA to send us e-statements. We would save about $18 per year if I did so. Putting it on my to do list.
Thanks for linking up at Fabulously Frugal Thursday.
Jenn @ The Purposeful Mom says
January 30, 2013 at 10:30 pmI wish we could get rid of our land line, but we have to have it for church purposes! I think the e-statement is a great tip for so many people, because it’s something you normally wouldn’t think of. Once I got a $10 credit on a bill for switching to e-statements! Thanks for sharing again at Thrifty Thursday 🙂
Sherry says
January 31, 2013 at 7:15 amThere are several free online fax services that are very easy to use, just google or search engine of your choice (I use MyPoints to get gift cards even faster!). I noticed you said you scan and email, so just scan and fax!
Kendra says
January 31, 2013 at 8:29 pmThat is a great idea! And I use MyPoints too, but like Swagbucks better 🙂
Sherry says
January 31, 2013 at 9:15 pmSwagbucks is only for if you have your own site or blog, right? I don’t have either so that doesn’t work for me 🙁
Countrified Hicks says
February 5, 2013 at 4:47 pmGreat tips and ideas. I would love for you to come over to my blog hop and share this and other posts there!
http://countrifiedhicks.blogspot.com/2013/02/mondays-with-countrified-hicks-blog-hop.html