5 Tried and Tested Money-Saving Tips You Can Do at Home Every Day
There are so many lessons to be learned from this pandemic, and one of them is about frugal living. With companies downsizing left and right, we’re learning again the hard way that making smart spending choices and exerting effort to save for rainy days are a must.
If you’re stuck at home and have more time on your hands, consider grabbing this opportunity to save and perhaps earn a few extra bucks. There are things you can do to save and/or earn a little extra whether you’re working at reduced hours or working from home.
So, if you’re ready, here are 8 tried and tested money-saving tips you can do at home every day:
1. Cook your own food.
It’s probably not surprising to see this at the top of this list. If you remember how you used to spend money on dining out, you’d be sighing at how much it cost you – especially if you calculate your yearly expenses on eating out at your favourite restaurants.
A study by Business Insider revealed that Americans spend anywhere between $1,700 and $3,600 per person per year on eating out.
Average figures differed based on state, with the biggest spenders being those living in Alaska, who spend $3,572 per year on average. The most frugal spenders appear to be people living in Nevada, spending $1,782 per year on average for their culinary excursions.
Now that you’ve more time to plan your meals and actually go to the supermarket or farmer’s market and cook what you buy, you might wonder why you had to spend so much on eating out.
2. Try going green.
Maybe you’re not into the whole sustainable living thing or you don’t know enough about it to appreciate eco-friendly living. Well, now’s the perfect time to see how you can benefit from going green.
And you don’t have to go all out, too. You can try doing these things in stages until they turn into habits:
- Save and treat gray water so you can use it for watering your garden, flushing the toilet, and cleaning your car and the garage. For your filter unit, you can use a simple one using layers of gravel, pebbles and charcoal.
- Reuse food bags – the ones that you put in the fridge or freezer. Just clean them first and dry completely before reusing them.
- Plant your own herbs and vegetables. You don’t need to have a lot of space, too. In fact, there’s container gardening for apartment dwellers. And once you start harvesting your own organic tomatoes, green beans and lettuce, you may never want to buy veggies again.
- Save your food waste for the compost. Instead of buying expensive fertilizers, you can use food scraps to feed your garden – once it’s been composted, of course.
- Eat less meat. We all know that meat is more expensive than fruits and vegetables, so this isn’t an entirely new frugal living concept. However, you don’t have to become a vegetarian if you don’t want to. Just know that there are plenty of plant-based foods that can provide the protein and minerals you think you’ll be missing if you cut your meat intake.
3. Give up your vices.
Whether it’s smoking, drinking or your twice-daily serving of grande caramel macchiato, it’s probably time to calculate how much you spend on your vices or indulgences.
If you give up your cigarettes, you won’t just be saving $2,292 per year (if you buy a pack of cigarettes a day), you’ll also help reduce the prevalence of harmful secondhand smoke and lung diseases.
But if you must have your coffee, then brew some at home and save as much as $500 per year. If you give up your alcohol intake, you’ll also be saving roughly the same amount per year.
4. Look for a good side hustle.
Finding ways to make some extra cash is another method of saving money. If you have a few hours extra every day or every week, you can try the following side gigs:
- Teach English online: There are plenty of online schools (mostly for Chinese and Japanese learners) that offer decent hourly rates to native English speakers, especially those with a teaching background.
- Sign up at a freelancer platform: Whether you’re into IT, accounting and finance, SEO, digital marketing, copywriting, transcribing or something else, you can put your skills and experience to good use by offering your services online.
- Sell items online: You could start by decluttering your home and selling stuff that you don’t use or need but still in good condition on Amazon, eBay or some other online selling site. Who knows, you might find online selling to be profitable enough that you’d want to do it full time.
5. Opt for free things.
Whether it’s exercise or leisure, make a conscious choice to do things that won’t require you to spend money. Instead of going to a gym, why not run or power walk your way around the neighbourhood? Instead of spending money on an expensive resort holiday, why not go hiking nearby or have a picnic in a park?
Aside from doing those things, you can also walk to the grocery store instead of paying for transportation, do your own nails or cut your own hair (thanks to YouTube!).
Time to give frugal living a shot
After experiencing what it’s like to indulge your every whim, now is the time to start spending mindfully. It’s a hard but good lesson to learn.
When you live frugally, you not only learn to save but also realize that you don’t really need so much to be happy and healthy.
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Oli Kang is a working mum who has a passion for teaching and all things educational. With a background in marketing, Oli manages the digital channels and content at Courses AU.
*This is a collaborative post.
