11 New Freebies this Week.
Sometimes people call me cheap, sometimes they call me frugal and occasionally they call me a frivolous spender. It sounds funny that how my spending habits appear different to others, but I consider my self a fairly frugal person and I live frugal.
Actually I don’t spend money on things I don’t care for, instead of spending money on the things I don’t care for I spend money on the thing in which I enjoy life more such as moving to a new place.
There are many other ways in which if I will spend money people will think that I am crazy such as spending money in buying new cars or travelling around the world, and on the other hand there are many other ways about which I REALLY DON’T CARE. For example I don’t care about waiting in a really long queue of thousands of people already in there just to buy an iPhone and I actually think that the people who camp out for that purpose are crazy.
This is what I find great about Saving money blogging – its personal and there is no perfect way for anyone/everyone.
If I talk about myself I am not a frugal person since always but now whenever I think about all the money I have wasted I always cringe. Approximately we spend more than $1000 every month on food, and thousands of dollars on car insurance every year and thousands of dollars on fashion and clothing but that’s not it because the list keep going on and on.
We were spending on the things about which we really don’t care about and we were NOT happy, even we were not close to happy.
The reason behind the question that why do we love spending money on those stuff then if we don’t care about them? Is that we thought we deserved it since we were not happy with our daily routine or job, so we thought that buying these things and spending money on them will make us happier.
Once we are done with our jobs we will stop thinking about buying things and stuff we don’t need, so the point is that we have been happier than ever and stop thinking about buying useless things we don’t need.
If you are willing to be more frugal with your money then here are my best tips for you.
Stop expensive or unhealthy habits
Other than smoking there are many unhealthy habits you may want to quit or cut off from your routine are eating fast food or drinking an insane amount of soda or drinking alcohol insanely and many more. Sure. I agree all of these are fine in small amount, but I know people who get fed up of themselves they try to ruin their health by drinking an insane amount of these types of unhealthy things.
If the pack of cigarettes you smoke is of $5 and you smoke 2 per week means that costs $520 per year and $5200 every 10 years and if the pack of your cigarette brand cost $10 then it means it costs $10400 every 10 years and that does not even include the expenses you are paying for your health insurance or your life insurance and other than that does not include any medical problem may happen a year later.
And if you are a soda drinker and you drink $2 soda each day then that could cost a lot each year and other than expenses don’t forgot about how it is harming yourself.
I consider myself a frugal prince because I do not have any unhealthy habits like smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol or anything. WOOHOO!
One of The Best Money Saving Way is to Utilize Any Extra Space
You must have some extra space in your home if you are like most of America. If I talk about myself, then I have a house of four bedrooms and yet we only use 2. One of them is our bedroom and second is my office. This is not frugal at all and it a waste of a lot of space.
Actually I know we could rent out all of our free rooms in our house, as our last renter just moved out and also I think we are done with renting out our house to others. We did that in past because either any of our friends or family member needed a place to live.
Another way to take advantage of extra space would be to use any space in your front or at the backyard of house by starting gardening. You can start gardening by planting some of your favorite vegetables and fruits and start eating more healthy.
Before Buying, Think About the Value an Item Brings
I know that most of people don’t like this debate, but I think that there is a quite clear difference between cheap and frugal living. Living frugally means you are choosing the best value for your money and being cheap means you will just choose the lowest price no matter what, where living frugally doesn’t means you are being cheap or wasting money on anything instead of that living frugally means you are spending money on the things you need.
Some times buy an item again and again just because its cheap or low in cost can actually mean that you are spending more money instead of buying a good quality product of same item.
An instance from the other day about frugal living is: we were always used to buy low cost can opener without thinking of anything and then our can opener keeps breaking after few days and I think that was our 7th or 8th can opener that broke the other day. After that we went to the shop and started looking for high quality can openers and we bought one of them home which was actually the triple price of the price of cheap one but its been almost two months and its still working perfectly and it don’t even hurt my hands whenever I use it.
Sale Out Your Home And Shift Into a Cheaper One
If you already have a lot of extra space in your home and you also don’t want to rent it out to others then how about downsizing? If those extra rooms are not in your use then what is the point of having them though?
Downsizing may means that you will get a cheaper home, less expense of energy and utility bills.
Initiate Couponing
To be honest we don’t do couponing very much and I am definitely not an expert in this area. I would prefer to be honest and say it straightway. I just don’t have the patience to do it and as I am not organized enough so the only thing I’ll be doing is wasting everyone’s time by doing it.
Few years ago, I did do a bit of couponing but I also didn’t do anything. I still have near about 8-10 bottles of shampoos and conditioner sitting somewhere in my room from those days. So that was nice they all were free of cost.
Well sometimes, I still search for coupon codes before I buy anything online and I do use a Restaurant.com gift certificate few times in a year. Other than that, I am useless in this area.
One more thing that if you are going to buy anything online, I suggest you to use Ebates.com as you’ll be able to get free cash back for doing your routine or everyday shopping. You can also get a free $10 gift card to Target or Walmart if you sign up using my link.
