Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

5 Easy Life Hacks That Can Save You Thousands This Year

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Once in college, I sat down and calculated how much money I spent on food-not on groceries but those coffee shop pit stops and late night meals. It was in the thousands which are crazy, but not unrealistic. We all can get busy and start spending money on convenient things without thinking. This article will show you how to do the opposite. Here, you will find some awesome tips for saving money on the things we do every day.

Carry Cash

Now, you shouldn’t carry more than about $100, but spending cash will typically encourage you to not spend it. If you use a credit or debit card you are spending the same money but it feels different. Having to hand someone your hard earned cash makes us uncomfortable and that’s a good thing. Those moments of hesitation will keep you from making impulse purchases or buying things you may want but you don’t actually need.

Keep Rebates In Mind

There are so many rebate programs that we just don’t take advantage of. There are programs for retail and grocery shopping that will give you money back when you load your receipts. Check out your insurance plans as well. Auto insurance will often give you discounts and rebates for a portion of travel, rental cars, and for things like towing and roadside assistance. Many auto insurance companies have rental car coverage included, check your insurance agreement and if it includes rental coverage, never buy it from the rental company.

Health insurance programs tend to give reimbursements and discounts for certain gym memberships, and other health-related programs. You are already paying for these types of insurance, don’t pay more than you have to for other services.

Start Loving Store Brands

Do you know the difference between many store brands and name brand products? The marketing budget. That’s it. Don’t spend up to 25 percent more on a product because you’ve seen their commercial on TV. This is especially true for higher-end grocery stores like Trader Joe’s, Publix, and Whole Foods. Their store brands are quality and so much less expensive than their name brand counterparts. This one change can save your family thousands every year.

Get To Planting

Growing your own food can really help to reduce your grocery budget. For the tiny cost of seeds and soil, you can have a huge amount of vegetable. Start with easy to grow to produce like tomatoes or spinach and expand as you learn. Also, planting trees can help you save money in a couple of ways. First having beautiful landscaping will up the value of your home, it can also reduce your energy costs by acting as a windbreak. Adding trees can lower your energy costs by about a fourth which is great

Stop Buying All Purpose Cleaning Supplies and Make It Yourself

Cleaning supplies are a recurring cost that can be expensive. There is no reason to buy something when you can make something just as effective at home. Try this easy recipe for an easy DIY cleaner that is all natural and completely non toxic.:

Start by eating a couple of oranges or other citrus fruit.You’ll need the peels. Add the peels to a large glass jar or bowl with a lid. Fill the bottles half with boiling water and the other half with white vinegar. Let it sit in a sunny place in your home for a couple of days. Then strain the peels out and pour the cleaner into a couple of spray bottles. You can use the ones from whatever cleaner you typically bought. Just make sure you rinse them out first. Then use it as you normally would.

There you have it. These simple tips will have you spending money in no time. It’s all about finding easy ways to save money every day.

The Importance of Fixing Things Sooner Rather than Later

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A few years ago, my brakes started making noise whenever I pushed the brake pedal.  I procrastinated quite a while before I took the car into the shop because I didn’t have the money for the repair.  However, because I waited so long, the brakes had worn down to the rotors, so my repair was much more expensive than it would have been had I come in right away.

But Wait! I Hadn’t Learned the Lesson Yet!

You would think I’d have learned my lesson, but no, I haven’t.

We own a minivan that is 11.5 years old and has 167,000 miles on it.  A while ago, one of the back sliding door handles broke, so we could no longer use it from the outside.  No worries.  We simply herded all the kids in through the other side door.  Was it a pain?  Just a little bit, but we didn’t want to spend $200 to $300 on a door handle repair when we had so many other pressing expenses.

But, then the other sliding door broke.  The wire coil started to fray, so we couldn’t open the door.  The repair for the outer wire coil?  A cool $900 to $1,000.  Ouch.

Fixing Things
Fix it now!

So, we started opening the driver’s side door and reaching around to open the side door with the outside broken handle by using the inside handle.  By now, we were starting to feel a bit, um, special, I’ll say, because of our unusual way to open the door.  Still, we put off the repair because we had other expenses like a $210 garage door repair and a $90 air conditioning tune up along with a $900 deposit for braces for our son.

All was okay until the inside door handle broke.  Now, the only way the kids can get in and out of the car is through the front doors.  The special meter has gone up enormously, and even the kids are talking about how embarrassed the are to get in and out of the car.  Now that the repair is inevitable, I called the shop to find out the repair will likely be $400 to $500 because they’ll have to remove the door and replace both the inside and outside door handle.

Lesson learned.  When a repair is needed, make the repair.  If you don’t, you’ll likely end up paying more in the future.

How to Get the Money Together

If your budget is tight like ours is, there are ways to get the money together to make a smaller repair immediately so you don’t have to pay more for a larger repair later:

Raid your emergency fund.  This is the easiest.  If you have an emergency fund, use the money and then rebuild the emergency fund as quickly as possible.

Have a pantry challenge for a week.  We spend approximately $150 to $200 a week for groceries.  By taking just one week to eat only what we have in the house and not going to the grocery store, we could have had the money for the handle repair before it got worse.  Lesson learned.

Sell stuff.  Everyone has stuff around the house that they don’t need or don’t use.  Sell things at second hand stores, sports resale stores, or eBay or Facebook.  You’ll be surprised how quickly the money will add up.

Do you procrastinate on repairs because your budget is tight?  If so, like us, has that rationale ended up costing you more money?

Living on a Tight Budget: Should Groceries Be the First Place You Cut?

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If you’re like me, the last few years, you may have felt that you’re simply treading water when it comes to income and expenses.  It seems every time our income goes up, our expenses go up, and I’m not talking about lifestyle inflation but rather insurance premiums and deductibles, etc.

Like many people, I try to cut corners to make our money stretch as far as I can.  I’ve certainly had times a few years ago when I bought the cheapest groceries that I could find by using coupons and sales, even though the food was processed and not that good for my body.

I rationalized that I was being frugal, and, I’ll admit it, I was proud of myself.  Never mind that we were eating casseroles that we didn’t really like made with processed foods or that the leftovers often went to waste because we didn’t want to eat the meal again.  Never mind that both my husband and I had cholesterol well over 200 even though we were in our thirties.

Change in Eating Habits

However, over the last few years, my opinions on grocery shopping, the foods we eat, and how to save money have changed. I still like to save money (and I still need to in order to make our budget stretch), but now I do it differently, and I feed my family differently.  A few years ago, I went Paleo.  I dropped a lot of weight, and my cholesterol level settled around 155, even though I was a few years older. True, our grocery budget went up, but not by as much as I expected.  I learned ways to buy healthy food at a reasonable price.

Where Else Can You Cut Besides Groceries?

Should you Cut groceries first?
Where would you cut first?

Sometimes, especially when money is tight, groceries seem like an easy place to cut.  Convenience foods bought with coupons can be had for a steal.  Take a look around Pinterest, and you’ll find many posts of bloggers touting how little they spend for groceries.

But is this a good thing?  I know groceries are typically one of the largest monthly expenses for a family, but should this automatically be the place we look first to reduce our budget?  After all, there is great truth in the adage, “Pay your farmer now, or pay the doctor later.  In fact, “Americans spend nearly 20% of their income on healthcare costs, while on average spending 10% of their income on food. . .Considering the age-old adage, ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ may be the first step to attempt to reduce healthcare spending—and the key place to start is food consumption.  If you start to consider your diet a form of preventative health care, you might start rethinking your daily meals” (University of New Hampshire).

Take a look at your budget.  If you don’t automatically slash your grocery budget, where else can you cut expenses?

If you don’t short change your body healthy foods, you’ll save thousands on health care later on.  Meanwhile, why not consider dropping your smartphone and getting a “dumb” phone?  (Yes, I still have a flip phone for emergencies that we bought 10 years ago.)  Can you drive your current vehicle a little longer so you don’t need to have a new car loan?  Can you drop cable?  Do you have subscriptions you’re paying for but you don’t use?  Likely, there are several lifestyle choices you can make to cut your expenses without compromising the quality of food you can buy and eat.

Do you cut other expenses so you can continue to buy quality foods, or do you prefer to slash your grocery budget?