Monday's Money Saving Tips

1. Make your own items instead of buying them. I like to make my cleaners and laundry detergents.  Hunt around for recipes – it’s amazing how many things you can make at home in just a few minutes that saves a ton of money compared to the commercial version.  Personally, I prefer to make my own with essential oils so that I and my family can avoid those chemically ladden ones.
2. Encourage your friends to do less expensive activities. This is often a tricky thing to do, but there are a number of techniques you can try.  Be the first one to suggest something – that often gives you the power to steer the group towards things that are cheaper. Have you priced a round of golf lately?  YIKES!  Geocacheing is one great idea.
3. Don't Speed. Not only is it inefficient in terms of gasoline usage, it also can get you pulled over and cost you a bundle. My son is a State Trooper and if we get a lead foot and get pulled over my son is sure to know about it within 10 minutes as was the case when we got a warning for speeding a few weeks ago. Boy, did we hear about that one!  It’s highly cost-efficient to just drive the speed limit so keep that gas in the tank
4. Read more. Reading is one of the cheapest – and most beneficial – hobbies around. Most towns have a library available to the public – just go there and check out some books that interest you. Then, spend some of your free time in a cozy place in your house, just reading away. You’ll learn something new, improve your reading ability, enjoy yourself, and not have to spend a dime. 
5. Always ask for fees to be waived. Any time you sign up for a service of any kind and there are sign-up fees, ask for them to be waived. Sometimes (but not always), they will be – and you save money just by being forthright about not wanting to pay excessive fees.
6. Eat less meat. For the nutritional value, meat is very expensive, especially as compared to vegetables and fruits. Simply change around your regular meal proportions to include more fruits and vegetables and less meats – eat a smaller steak and a bigger helping of green beans, for example. Not only is this a healthier way to eat (saving on health costs), it’s also less expensive.
7. Use a brutally effective coupon strategy. Here’s the trick: wait a month before using the coupons. Save your coupon flyer out of your Sunday paper for a month, then bust it out and start cutting anything that might be of interest. For a bonus kicker, use the coupons in comparison with your grocery store flyer that week to find out ways you can use a coupon to reduce the cost of an item already on sale – you can wind up paying pennies for some things and, on occasion, actually get food for free.
8. Utilize online bill pay with your bank. This serves two purposes. First, it keeps you in much closer contact with your money, as you can keep a very close eye on your balance and be in much less danger of overdrafting waiting for those checks to clear. Second, it saves you money on stamps and paper checks by allowing you to just fill in an online form, click submit, and have your bill paid. Try it out, if you’re not already.
9. Always keep looking ahead. Don’t let the mistakes of your past drag you down into more mistakes. Look ahead to the future. The choices you make now won’t affect the past – but they definitely will affect the future. Think back, and remember how the bad choices you made earlier are costing you now, and constantly remember to not make those mistakes now so that they don’t cost your future self.
10. Connect your entertainment center and/or computer setup to a true smart power strip. A smart power strip basically cuts power to all devices on the strip depending on the status of the first item on the strip. So, if you have your workstation hooked up to this, every time you power down your workstation, your monitor powers down, your printer powers down, your scanner powers down, and so on. You can do the same thing with your entertainment console – when you turn off the television, the cable/satellite box also goes off, as does the video game console, the VCR, the DVD player, and so on. This can save you a lot of electricity and significantly trim your power bill.