My #1 tip for saving money is....i dunno, i have lots of them!
What a weasly way out of a question, huh?! haha...it's true though, i can never lock down just 1 answer. Maybe you have a good one? Drop a comment for sure so we can all ogle it ;)At any rate, this was one of the questions i was asked during my interview w/ Holly the other month. I was happy with my answer (spouting my love for 401ks and living a constant lifestyle throughout raises/promotions), but I was also tempted to answer it with another trick i find helpful:
Whenever i need some new & juicy advice, I simply ask those around me what THEIR #1 tip for saving money is!
haha...it may sound silly, but i always get some goodies outta that :) Everyone's looking for the same thing - having enough money to live a happy and fulfilling life. Family, friends, office-mates, they all have experiences with money (both good & bad) and they will all usually share it with you. Just be sure that ya trust them and they're not one of *those* kinda of people who are nutso w/ their dollars ;) We all have one or two of them in our group!
Checking around with us bloggers is also a great idea, especially if you're looking for something specific. We, too, have our own crazy experiences, and if we ourselves don't have the answer you're looking for, we probably know someone who does.
So that's today's #1 tip for saving money - Get answers from those around you. We're all working for financial security, and if they truly care for you they'd be glad to share the wealth!
posted by J. Money at
10:17 AM
9 Comments:
I agree with that one! I have gotten tons of tips from the folks I read every day. Fellow bloggers and good friends are my two best sources of inspiration.
When I started reading the PF blogs, it was all new ... and every day, I'd find new ideas for saving money, or planning, or frugality, or how not to look like a dickwad on the internet, and so on .. But after reading a bunch of PF blogs every day for months, I've stopped finding much that's new. It's all starting to look the same. It's all feeling like variations on or extensions of a few points: know what's really going on, spend less than you make, save deliberately, and don't act like a dickwad on the internet.
So, my #1 tip: deal with reality, honestly.
There are lots of ways to save money, and I think you're right, ask around, almost everyone has had tight finances at least once and has had to come up with creative ways to save those pennies. My two cents? Do whatever you can, but remember most importantly that saving add up!
Save $1 per day = $30 per month = $365 per year
Save $50 week = $200 per month = $2,400 per year
I agree!
My tip...COUPONS!
My hubby is amazed that I can go to the grocery store with my coupon book, list, deals all mapped out.. ring up $150.. scan my coupons.. and only pay $87!
It's like a weekly challenge!
Like @BigAssSuperstar, I used to find all kinds of new stuff at first. Now it's a little harder to find something really new. The good news is that I can often find something I'm not doing anymore but probably should do...
Excellent tip. I'd also add: LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS!
It's amazing how much can accumulate in savings when you do this.
Make it automatic. Save money by direct depositing a portion of your paycheck into savings accounts: 401k, IRA, High-Yield Online Savings, ect. Use the remainder to live on. Essentially, pay yourself first.
That's how you save money. Anything else is just spending less.
hell yeah guys, that's what i'm talkin' about! all GREAT stuff, thank you :) it's cool seeing how each of you have your own "niche" if you will.
@ BigAss - yup, once you got the majors down, it's all bout implementation at that point. i think that's the hardest part really, and everyone deals with it differently. there's a lotta things i hear and read all the time, but until i actually act on it, i'm still at square one...except for the dickwad part, i hope i got that outta my system ;) i'm diggin' the colorful vocab though, i haven't used that word in a while! haha...
I borrowed 'dickwad' from Gail Vaz Oxlade, who used it in an early episode of this season's "Til Debt Do Us Part" ... she was confronting a couple with spending problems, as usual, and had the man repeat ... "Gail, I ... am ... a ... dickwad." We had to pause the PVR for a laugh break. Seriously funny for personal finance education!
Really, though, I think re-learning the basics is a good thing, especially for people like me who get bored easily and have short attention spans. Like, as much as I think of myself as a professional at my job, with 15+ years experience and all that blather, every one or two years I re-read a book that covers the basics of my industry. There's always something "new" in there to me ... something I'd forgotten about, or something I really knew but had become lazy with. Same with this money stuff. Sure, we all know it's important to save. Maybe we can save more. We know it's important to budget. Maybe our budgets are old.
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