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save money

Shopping

Save Money By Doing Research And Asking Questions

My husband I recently purchased a D-Link gadget used for network storage. It was priced at $195.00 at the Future Shop located within a short driving distance from our home, but it was only $165.00 at CBIT, which is located across the city from us.

Before making purchases for such items, my husband does research online. He compares prices and quality of various brands to make sure he gets the ‘biggest bang for his buck’. Although we knew that it would cost more at Future Shop, we decided to print out the CBIT advertisement and see if Future Shop would price match, sparing us from having to drive across the city.

April 4, 2010

Money Saving Tips

Top Ten Excuses For Not Saving Money

We can all come up with excuses for not doing things we find distasteful. For some people, saving money is like a dreaded chore and they make up all kinds of excuses in order to avoid saving. Here are the top ten excuses for not saving money:

1. I can’t afford to save money. Actually, instead of thinking this way, you need to understand the importance of paying yourself first. Before the bills get paid and you buy that new gadget that is being advertised on television, tuck away a small amount each month or each paycheck towards both your retirement savings and your rainy day savings.

2. I want to enjoy the here and now and not worry about tomorrow. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the present, but you don’t want to do so at the expense of your future. You need to make sure that you are properly saving for your future and not getting yourself so deep in debt that you won’t be able to dig yourself out.

3. I’m not good with money so I just can’t seem to save it. This is a money script that is harmful. You need to change the way you think about money. After all, money is just a thing. You can be in control of your own money, it should never have control over you.

March 5, 2010

Money Saving Tips

Avoid Money Wasters

Although I have written blogs about some big money wasters already, I think it’s important to emphasize them so that we can avoid them. There’s no point in wasting money that we work hard for. Think about it this way, if you waste your money, you are also wasting your time. Why? Because the more money you waste, the more time you have to spend working to pay for it all! Below is a list of just some of the money wasters out there. There are many more, so watch out for them!

1. Eating out rather than bringing your own lunch to work. Bring some leftovers from last night’s supper rather than spending $5 to $7 everyday to buy lunch.

2. Buying food and then letting it rot in the fridge. It happens to all of us. But why? We need to be more aware of what we are buying and make sure that we are eating it before it goes bad.

3. Bottled water. Rather than buying hundreds of bottles and polluting our environment, why not save your money and the environment and drink filtered water brought from home? At around $1.50 a bottle, if you buy one bottle of water every day, you are wasting almost $550 per year!

May 7, 2009

Money Saving Tips

Spend Half of What You Earn

When my husband and I got married I was the main wage earner. It was tight but we were able to set up a budget that worked for us. Once we both began working full time, rather than allowing our expenses to significantly increase, we decided to keep our lifestyle almost the same as before. So, even though we could have afforded a few luxuries we decided if we had been satisfied without them in the past then we didn’t really need them. We did eventually purchase a home and that increased our living expenses but outside of that our budget remained nearly identical. As a result, we have been able to live debt free (except for our mortgage) and have been able to make prepayments on our mortgage to decrease the amount of interest we have to pay.

With the troubled economy and the increasing possibility of job loss it’s a good idea to step back and take a serious look at what you are spending your money on and consider how you can cut back in order to build up an emergency fund. Even in the best of times, it is recommended that you have from 6 to 8 months worth of living expenses saved. It is possible that you will have to do more with less, so why not start saving now by cutting back on the things you don’t really need?

April 3, 2009

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