5 Ways To Save Money That You Never Knew About

Are you trying to save money everywhere you can and still feeling the pinch? Here are 5 money saving tips that you probably didn’t know about.

This post is sponsored by Groupon Coupons. However, as always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

If you’re like a lot of people these days money can be tight at times. Between rising gas prices, the cost of toys and gifts for holidays, cost of living increases, and everything else it’s getting harder and harder to live on the money we have. This year my husband’s company changed their pay periods from twice a month to every other week. We still make the same amount but our monthly take home is a couple hundred less than what we were used to. In order to keep saving money every month instead of spending it all we got a little creative with our money. Today I want to share with you 5 ways we save money every month. Some of these are bigger money savers than others, but every dollar counts!

 

Shop at stores that offer fuel rewards. We do the majority of our grocery shopping at Smith’s. Why? Because the prices are good, we like the employees but most importantly we love the fuel rewards. During the summer months they offer 2x fuel rewards on the weekends, so we do all our grocery shopping on Saturdays then. We’re not buying anything we wouldn’t buy if we shopped anywhere else but we are saving about $10 every month on gas. That may not sound like a lot, but we only have a 10 gallon tank and fill up 3 or 4 times a month. For those of you who drive big trucks or SUV’s the savings will be more substantial.

Call your service providers and ask for rate reductions. When we first got our internet we were paying a special “new customer” price for the first year. After that our rate almost doubled. We called and told them we were happy with our service but were considering going with a different company because it was costing too much. They gave us the same “new customer” price for another year. Since then we have called two more times and gotten the same deal. If you feel like you are paying too much for your internet, cell phone, or any other monthly service call and talk to the providers; they would much rather have you still be their customer paying them something vs. having you leave. Then they are making nothing.

Turn off your heater/AC at night. Back in December I read somewhere that you sleep best when it’s 65 degrees F in your room. I had out thermostat set to 72 and it seemed like it was always running. So I turned it off when we went to bed. Not only did we all start sleeping better but our gas bill was much lower too. We went from paying $60 in November to just under $40 in December. Now when summer comes I’m not going to keep the AC running so it’s 65 at night. But we do have ceiling fans in our bedrooms and we are outside running around more so we sleep better because we’re more exhausted.

Cut the cable. This may be harder for some more than others. How much are you paying to watch TV these days? $50? $75? $100+? Guess what, you don’t need it! We haven’t had cable since we were married and we haven’t missed it one bit. We did buy a digital antenna for $60 so we get local channels, but we don’t pay a monthly fee. We do have Netflix for movies and there is HULU for TV shows (we never watched many shows so we don’t have HULU). Both services are under $10 so for less than $20/month you can have pretty much the same programming you would have with cable or satellite but for a fraction of the price. Plus with less TV you are more likely to go outside and explore the world. It’s a win-win!

Use coupons…for EVERYTHING! You’re not going to hear me sing the praises of extreme couponing, because that’s never going to happen! That’s way too much work. But what I am talking about is using coupons for all the things you buy, not just groceries. Groupon just launched a new site, Groupon Coupons and they can help you save money on just about everything. We were able to print our family pictures at Walgreens for half the price. One of my girlfriend’s loves BareMinerals and she was just telling me she found a coupon for a FREE foundation with any $25 purchase at Nordstrom on Groupon Coupons too. They have deals and coupons for everything from clothes to toys, electronics to convenience stores. They even have restaurant deals too! And who doesn’t love free chips and queso from Chili’s?! Most of the coupons and deals they have save you at least 25%. Think about if you could save 25% on all the “stuff” you buy every month; how much could you save? For our family it’s meant we are able to give better gifts and buy some of the things that we’ve wanted sooner than we had planned on, just because they cost less.

So there you have it, 5 easy ways to save money without changing a lot or making huge sacrifices. What are some of your secrets to saving money every month? 

And if you are planning a trip this year you can save money there too! Check out my 10 Tips for Traveling on a Budget and enter to win a $50 gift card!