save money

Might seem like common sense but many people don’t these tips and if they did would have a lot more money in there pockets….

1. Use coupons.  Everyday in the mail i get a crap load of coupons, I used to throw them out then until i realized how much money I saved by using them.  It takes a little planning but if you keep the coupons organized with different categories and expiration dates it can become second nature to use coupons.

2. Open an interest bearing savings account.  So many people dont bother opening a savings because they think they dont have enough money to open one or they think they don’t have enough free money to actually save.  Both of those are bad excuses, most banks require 100.00 max to open a savings but if you search around online you’ll find many that don’t have a minimum at all.  One of my favorite savings is one that saves for you, you can either have a certain amount automatically deducted from your checking every week or some employers with automatic deposit will do this for you, put a certain amount in your savings and the rest in your checking.

3. Buy generic brand.  Okay a lot of people will say “but I cant buy generic it’s not the same”, I will agree that not all things generic are as good as the more expensive brand names, however most things are.  Examples of good generics are: drugs, comestics, produce, and spices and toppings.  With other things I suggest you try generic first and if you don’t like it then so be it but at least you gave it a shot.  For example I don’t like generic frozen pizza’s, so I’ll spend the extra money for a name brand that I like.

4. Give yourself a budget.  People that have budgets might seem uptight but they are the people who have money in there savings.  By having a budget it keeps you from wasting your well earned money on things you don’t need.  Always try to distinguish between need and want.

5. Pay off your high interest debt.  If you have high interest credit cards with a balance that you dont pay off every month then you’re throwing away money.  Any credit card that is over 9% interest I consider to be a high interest credit card.  So what can you do to fix this problem?  Well if you still have decent credit many credit card companies will give you 0% APR on balance transfers, so you can transfer that balance on a high interest card to a 0% interest.  The catch?  Just make sure you read the fine print about when it expires and make sure you make your payments on time, otherwise they could jack up your interest rate higher than the card you transfered from.  Whether you can transfer to lower APR or not the next step is putting money aside and paying it down. Every month try to pay at least double the minimum payment. If you do that you’ll start paying down your debt instead of just paying for the interest.