It is no secret that the economy has affected many families. One of the most stressful situations families face is trying to pay their bills every month when they may have been laid off or had their pay checks cut by an employer that is just trying to survive themselves. One of the biggest priorities is to find ways to cut expenses. Every dollar that can be saved is, like the old adage, the same as earning another dollar. Fortunately there are many opportunities for savings in the life of most people. The question is how to find the ones that will save your the most money, while impacting your lifestyle the least.
Understanding your finances is most likely the answer. There’s nothing easy when you don’t understand it. The real key to getting good results with saving money on things you do everyday is to analyze your spending. You are trying to determine where you spend the msot money, because there will be your largest opportunities for savings. Don’t neglect the little things however, because on many occasions those “little” things can add up to major expenditures. Often, they are taken for granted, despite the fact that they can have a major impact on your finances.
Sadly, most poeple have only the most rudumentary financial education. A little bit of financial knowlege can go a long way here.
Here are 5 great, money saving tips tips that can help you rfree up some extra money every month :
Money Saving Tip Number One - Mos tpeople spend a huge amount of money on groceries every month. It is sad because they don’t have to, yet many people are totally unaware that an alternative exists. It does, and can cut your monthly grocery bill by up to 40%. You have to look beyond the traditional grocery stores, such as A&P, Albertsons, and Safeway. Instead, shop at one of the many warehouse food stores that have sprung up in recent years, such as Winco Foods. These huge warehouse stores offer much the same variety as other grocery stores, yet sell their wares for much lower prices. Why is this one of the msot powerful money saving tips?
Because, unlike other opportunities for large savings , everyone has to eat, and most people can save substantial amounts of money doing so by changing where they shop and being a little careful when the do so. In most cases you won’t even have to make any major changes to your diet. What happens once you adhere to these tips? Simple, you save money, and sometimes quite a bit. A family of four can chop 25 – 40% off their food bills using this money saving strategy. Think of the money saving opportunity this gives you. If you are spending $800 on groceries now, you could easily cut that to $500, putting an extra $300 in your pocket every month.
2. Bring your lunch, and a couple of snacks to work, and switch from drinking pop, sports drinks, or juice, to drinking water. That could be very important because if the average lunch costs about $7.00, and you also have an afternoon snack for $2.00, that adds up in a hurry, to the tune of almost $2,000 a year. In addition, there are other costs that you bear by buying food at restaurants or delis. For most people, eating in restaurants is not the healthiest diet choice. You can prepare much healthier lunches that taste great, in your own kitchen. That means you could also enjoy some nice health care savings due to your new, healthy eating lifestyle.
3. Here is a powerful money saving tip; ditch your cable TV. Yes, it will hurt at first, but not nearly so bad as you might think.
If you live in an area where you can get good over the air TV for the local channels, you can almost skip cable altogether, and not miss a thing. Windows 7 will even act as a DVR, so you can record and pause your favorite shows, and watch them when you want to. You can easily save over $50 a month. USe the time you previously spent watching TV to earn some money, and really turn the tables. Start your own business, or market your current one more. Think you won’t be able to watch your favorite TV programs without cable? If you have broadband Internet most of the cable shows are available for free online, as long as you are willing to wait a short while for them. You can even get them in HD! Why is that? Most of the networks will let you watch their shows in HD on line, for free, you’ll just have to do a day or two later, that’s all. You can also get inexpensive software that lets you watch live TV on your computer. Thanks to this kind of software, and websites such as Hulu and ESPN3, you’ll be pretty well set for TV .
4. The fourth thing you can do to save money is compare money on your car insurance. You can still get great insurance from the top rated car insurance companies in the United States, but you’re likely to pay much less for it . Figure you’ll save about $40 – $50 per month doing this, possibly more. In fact, there are many reasons to examine your insurance coverage for money savings opportunities. Typically people are elligible for a few discounts that can save them money every month, suhc as multi line or multi car discounts. You should talk with your agent to be sure you are getting all the discounts you are elligible for. In addition, lower your deductibles. That alone can account for hundreds of dollars every quarter in savings.
5. If you have any credit card balances, take advantage of those 0% balance transfer offers that you’re bombarded with in the mail every other week, although it seems they do not come as often as they did a couple of years ago. If you are carrying the average American credit card balance of about $8,000, and paying the national average rate as this is written of 14.15%, you are paying about $700 in the upcoming year in interest on that balance, provided you pay off about 10% of your balance each month, and don’t charge any more on it.
Why is this so important ? If you don’t use the new, card, simply transfer your outstanding balance, you’ll not only save the $700 this year in interest, you will receive a nice bonus as well.. What are the additional reasons? Because your total credit limit went up, but your aggregate outstanding balance was unchanged, a little thing called your credit utilization score went up, and that is a component of your overall FICO credit score. That means, you guessed it, your credit score will go up too, and you’ll save on just about all things credit related.
Do you think an extra $1,000 each month would change your financial picture for the better? You’re darned right it would! Imagine how much imporved your financial situation would be if you suddenly got a $1,000 raise. This is much better, because you have to pay no additional taxes. This is your first step on the road to financial freedom.
Discover more powerful ways to get out of debt and regain financial control of your life now – visit the Insider’s Guide to Financial Freedom and Bad Credit Refinance now!