Saturday Savings: Put Change In Your Pocket

We are trying to be more aware of the little ways that we waste or misspend money. Last week, The Today show profiled a family and asked them to cut down on their spending to save money. I was laughing at this couple who seemed so shocked at how much money they could save by cutting their own grass and washing their own car. Then I started wondering, am I living in an alternate universe?

These are easy ways to put change in your pocket...

1. Wash your own car. ($5.00) Washing your own car not only puts change in your pocket, but can be a family activity too. Our boys love putting on their swimming trunk, blasting the music in the car and getting wet.

2. Cut your own grass ($40.00) Cutting grass is great exercise and if you have kids who are old enough they can share in the responsibility.

3. Make coffee at home instead of driving through the local shop. ($4.50) This has always seemed like a no brainer to me, but I am still amazed at the people who get coffee every morning on their way to work. With the money you are saving you can try out a flavored coffee or flavored syrup and still never come close to the money you were spending.

4. Pocket Change = Christmas fund. ($182.50) Did your Dad have a jar where he put all his pocket change at the end of the day? It is still a great idea. Typically, hubs will have about .50 at the end of a day. With both of us contributing, that is a helpful Christmas fund at the end of the year!

5. Eat at home! ($20.00) Is it quick to run through Subway or Wendy's on the way home? Yes. But is it easy on the pocketbook? No. The average person spends $2,276 dollars on eating out in a year's time.

6. Pay cash as often as possible. Dependency on the credit card is a really bad thing and paying interest on the credit card is even worse. You might as well go outside and grill your money for supper!

7. Use coupons, but only use them for items that you would typically buy.

8. Have a garage sale. If you haven't used it in six months, chances are you can do without. Same goes for all that junk in storage.

9. Become a patron of the library again. Why buy books when you can read them for free? Our library system even has downloadable audiobooks and an entire section of FREE movies for checkout.

10. $1.00 movies! Our Kroger has a movie kiosk where you can rent movies for a $1.00. These aren't old movies, but the latest releases.

Add it up... That is a lot of pocket change!