When you work for yourself and don’t have the option of living paycheck to paycheck, you’re forced to start learning how to take better care of your money.
There are some tricks that can help you out with that. Writing down every dime you spend for a month or using websites like Mint.com can give you a clearer perspective on where your money is going. Setting back enough cash to cover six months of expenses with no income coming in can also give you a lot of peace of mind. It’s great to know that if you have a major car repair or your income dips unexpectedly for a few months, you’re not going to be struggling to pay your bills.
But the real key to socking away the dough is to think incrementally. The big checks help a lot, but as often as not, it’s the small savings you make over the long haul that really pad your bank account.
Think about it like this: You’re likely to work five days a week for at least 40 years, probably even longer than that for people under 40. So 40 times 260 working days a year equals $10,400. In other words, if you can find a way to save a dollar a day, that’ll amount to an extra $10,400 dollars over the course of your working lifetime — much more if you invest the money.
Here are some ways to start putting more money back. Although most of them won’t seem like huge difference-makers at first, over time they’ll really add up.
1) Buy used cars: The average cost of a new car in 2009 was $28,400. In most states, $28,400 is more than half the median household income for an ENTIRE YEAR.
So, let’s do a little comparison. One person buys a new car every five years. Another person buys a used car at half the price, takes care of it, and keeps it for a decade. After a 10 year period, the first person has spent $56,800 on transportation. The other person? He’s spent $14,200. What could you do with an extra $42,600?
Let’s take those numbers 40 years out. $42,600 x 4 = $170,400. That alone is bigger than the nest egg most Americans have saved up when they retire.
Not really a good choice for a first car.
#1 is a silly comparison. Person A buys a new car every 5 years, and apparently gives the old one away. Person B buys a used car for half the price, keeps it for 10 years, and miraculously pays no more for maintenance that Person A.
A more interesting comparison would be with Person C who buys a new car and keeps it 10 years.
I agree. I’ve had bad luck with used cars in the past. The repairs for the last used car cost more than buying a new one. My current car, I bought new eleven years ago and have no plans on replacing it soon.
Exactly our philosophy for the past 30 years. Works well. Also, find an independent mechanic.
You can get a great deal on great used cars if you are careful. (We did get one lemon on an impulse buy.) We have a great used Versa that we bought at the dealer. It was 1 year old when we got it. It was bought originally when gas prices were high and sold 1 year later when gas prices were lower. Then we got a great deal on a Rogue at the same dealer. It also was only 1 year old and really souped up! It had been owned by the company for their reps. It was low mileage and in fantastic shape. We learned a LOT after our one lemon and the last two buys came out great!
To avoid lemons – try an independent mechanic you trust and if you are looking for a quality used car – sometimes, the mechanic’s customers are looking to upgrade and sell their older vehicle for more to another person rather than get a few thousand at the dealership. And normally, if that other person has had their car maintained at the independent mechanic – he has the history and can advise his customers correctly (or he would lose them). Got a few great cars this way for the family!
Agree. The topic that goes round and round my work place is leasing vs. buying a car. I’m willing to endure a fair amount of heckling from coworkers about my “old car”. It’s paid for.
Other than a business that leases equipment for tax purposes, I’ve never seen the attraction to leasing a car for private use. I tend to keep my cars for 7 years or more and the happiest miles are those after the car is paid for. All leasing seems to offer is perpetual car payments. I just don’t see the attraction.
You definitely pay a premium for driving the latest version of a car. Buy when it’s a year old and you will save a lot.
I agree. My pattern is to buy a two-year-old used car. Often they’re repossessions and are in great shape. I get a nearly new car, often save 20-30% off list price, and then I keep it for a good long while. Sometimes they’re still under warranty when I get them, which is nice when surprises crop up.
So far that’s worked for us. But I can easily understand someone preferring to buy new. It often makes more sense than buying an older used car.
Cutting down on the fizzy beverages could save a lot.
Lemonade made with fresh-squeezed lemon juice and stevia powder is a staple at our house. At one lemon per half-gallon of beverage, it is cheap. Homemade iced tea is a lot healthier and cheaper than the “sugar water” Steve Jobs made fun of when he was trying to recruit Pepsi executive John Scully.
We also drink real grape juice and orange juice cut with water, half and half.
“We also drink real grape juice and orange juice cut with water, half and half.”
I do that as much to cut down on the calories as on the cost, but yeah, it does save a few bucks.
But now I can’t handle the taste of the full strength juices anymore.
I rebottle soft drinks into smaller containers. 2 litre bottles go flat, but if you buy smaller bottles, you pay a lot more. I buy 2 litre Pepsis when they are on sale at $1.00/bottle. One of these will refill 5 355 ml. bottles. Cool the 2 litre bottle in the freezer until it is very close to freezing. The soft drink is less fizzy when its cold and you will lose less fizz if you do this. Then pour carefully into the cleaned 355 ml. bottles and fill to within 1/8 inch of the top. This leaves a very small volume for the fluid to degas into, again helping to retain the fizz. You do not get quite 400 ml. into the 355 ml. bottles, so you have a bit left over when you’ve filled five of them. Gulp it down as your reward and you have 5 approx. 395 ml. Pepsis for $0.20 cents each.
Another helpful tip is to not use credit unless you absolutely have to. I buy everything on a cash basis except houses, and those I never finance for longer than five years. The average American family throws thousands to tens of thousands of dollars away on finance charges over a lifetime.
Along with jkidd above, I advocate keeping a car for 10 years and keeping it well maintained. If you work at it, you can never pay car finance charges again. If you buy one modest car which you can pay off in 36 months and then you keep it for 120 months, you’ll have more than enough time to save for your next car, perhaps a little more luxurious. By making regular ‘car payments’ to yourself over that seven years, you’ll have a decent fund which will allow to duck out of the car finance racket altogether.
On a personal level, it’s great fun to tell car salespeople “Why don’t you let me worry about how I’m going to pay for this car and you just concentrate on giving me your best price on the car. We’ll go from there.”
“Another helpful tip is to not use credit unless you absolutely have to. I buy everything on a cash basis except houses, and those I never finance for longer than five years.”
I don’t like to keep too much cash on me, but if by cash, you include debit cards (used as debit cards and not credit cards), I agree. However, just about any credit card can be arranged to automatically debit the monthly bill from your checking account, so there is really no excuse for accumulating interest charges.
In the past, come could do better if they financed a car and got a great rate from the dealer and felt that you could invest the money at a higher rate of return. But that’s not happening today, and won’t in the foreseeable future.
One adjustment to the car buying strategy suggested above — even if you have the cash to pay for the car, it still makes sense to let the dealer finance the car. Most times, the dealer (and sales person) get a commission for talking you into financing the car. They count that as part of their compensation, so if you deny them that, they are going to work harder to make it up in the sale price. Let them have the financing, hammer them on the sales price, then turn around and pay off the loan in a week or two.
Actually I use my credit card for just about everything I buy. Then I pay it off immediately. My bank gives points for the money I put on my card. When I get enough points, they credit my account for $100. I’ve made several hundred dollars this way.
Meanie, you exercise caution, focus, responsibility, discipline. Stop it!
I use a credit card that gives you points for how much you spend, which you can then spend on gift cards and other things. (And pay it off every month, of course.)
Each year, I manage to get three $50 free gift cards for my children at Christmas.
To hell with those “point” deals. We prefer cold hard cash. Case in point: For several years we had a Citi card that rebated 1% of all purchases toward the mortgage principal. We loved that card and used it as much as possible. Then this spring Citi canceled the rebate and instituted a point system. We told them to stuff the points and closed the account. Now Discover is our default card, and we’ve resolved to cash in the rebate every December and apply it to the mortgage — effectively doing manually what the Citi card was doing automatically.
And yes, we do pay in full every month. Annual interest payments: $0.00. I’m sure the card companies hate us frugal types, but I don’t care.
Instead of spending the discover points on cash at a 1:1 ratio, check out their gift certificates and deals — they go anywhere from a 2:1 ratio ($15 for a $30 FTD gift certificate works well on Valentine’s Day) to a 10:9 ratio ($45 discover points for a $50 Lowe’s gift certificate).
Obviously, limit your gift certificate’s to stores you’d normally use. There are enough stores on the list you should be able to find a few options.
I also use a credit card for most of my purchases. I’ve found that cash is difficult to use, as I constantly have to go to the bank to get more. Then I switched to debit, but I found that about once a year I would enter a crunch where lots of money would go in and out of my account at the same time. Inevitably my account would briefly dip below $0 and I would get slapped with overdraft fees (sometimes multiple times). Meanwhile, using a credit card, I get rewards points for all of my purchases, I pay off the entire balance every month, and I rarely get hit with any type of interest or finance charges.
Since becoming an adult, I have probably paid a couple hundred dollars in overdraft fees for my debit card. In the same time period, I have paid less than $50 in interest and fees for my credit card and gotten back nearly $1,000 in rewards.
The best way to save lots, and I mean LOTS, of money is to vote to elect a real conservative into office, one that treats public tax money as if it were their own.
I wish we could get some cheap Scotsman in as president that would force every government agency to explain what they do and why we need to have them. Think about how much money we could save in this country if we simply reduced by 10% the size of every civilian (that is, non military) agency. Or how much would we save if we simply got rid of the Departments of Energy and Education, departments that did not even EXIST until the Carter administration. Heck, if we simply fired all of Obama’s czars, their staffs, and kept the money that funds them all, I’m sure that would pay for at least one or two badly-needed frigates for the US Navy.
So you want to save money? Vote in conservatives, REAL CONSERVATIVES. If we could save money, and I mean save some serious money, just think how much our taxes could be reduced.
A dream, I know. Well, let’s get back to seeing how much change fell into our sofa.
The corollary to that is you can save money by moving to a conservative state, with lower sales or income taxes, or lower cost of living.
And my state (NJ) does not qualify.
And live in a conservative municipality in a conservative county (in a concerverative state…)
And vote conservative, always.
I can personally attest that that corollary is true. Simply by moving from central LA to a north Texas town, I have increased my post-tax income by nearly 20%, and cut my housing costs by a third.
As a fellow NJ-ite, Eric R., I can attest to that. Been trying to encourage/coerce/trick/bribe/beg dear husband to leave this place for years. Not working. Sigh. I told him, I might have to live here now, but I refuse to die here! lol … we live on the Delaware River – my kids have instructions to put my dying body in a canoe and push it across the river and the state line, to PA, clinging to my guns and bible … to make that happen. (joking … ok, kinda joking. Really don’t want to end my days in NJ!)
Is PA any less of a tax hell than NJ? That part of the country seems pretty uniform regarding hostility to taxpayers (except NH, of course — for now). And IIRC, clothing isn’t taxed in NJ. Supposedly New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians flock to NJ clothing stores on weekends.
John, you forgot several:
a) When buying a car, do Internet pricing – you save the haggling and the dealers pretty much go to their best price right away – with a little research, you can find out how much of a rebate they get from the car makers – they can go down to MSRP. Much better than haggling down from their list price when they are the experts at sales. Probably will save $1,000+ when buying an average car, and a lot of headaches.
b) Buy online where possible, and where possible use Amazon or other sites where you won’t be charged sales tax. Even if you have to pay tax – or you live in a state with no sales tax, you can get things slightly cheaper online, where they may not be supporting a brick-and-mortar retail operation. If you spend $2,000 on line, you can save $100-$200/year in sales tax depending on the state.
c) With regards to savings – do as much as you can in a company plan if they match.
It’s amazing the amount of bad advice you get on the internet.
Last week I read an article about things NOT to do at work. The idiot writer said to NOT bring your lunch because it made you look cheap.
I’d rather look cheap and have another $1,500 in my back pocket at the end of the year.
My wife for years had a Baskin Robbins Cappuccino Blast addiction for over 10 years. Those damn things are about $4.25 each. $4.25 times 365 times 10 equals over $15,000.
For my lifestyle $15,000 just pissed away is a big thing.
So little things DO add up.
That morning coffee and roll each day and other little “treats” can in the long run make or break you.
One big trick is to not look at the daily costs, but whip out the calculator and see what the little things cost over the course of a year or even over the course of your working career.
It also really helps to be about 60% Scottish, like me.
All you others are just going to have to work harder at being cheap, while it come natural for me.
About three years before my father retired the store he had managed for many years was sold. He had a choice between losing his retirement or moving to another state to finish his time with the company. The company really wanted him to stay with them and offered to pay for his move and for a place to stay while he found a new house. So, he sold the old home, (paid for) and moved. When he found a nice, although smaller house he liked, he went in to the realtors office and asked how much they would take for it. Once they had settled on a price the lady asked how he would like to finance it. When he said he wanted to pay cash she shuffled the papers on her desk for awhile looking totally confused. She finally had to call in her supervisor because she had no idea how to sell it to him for cash. When he reached retirement age he moved again to Florida. By selling the house he had bought he had enough for the move and a substantial down payment on his retirement home as well as enough in the bank to keep him going. (He went back to work down here just for something to keep him busy and lived a happy life working at what he loved until a stroke ended his life about ten years later.)
My point is that he did most of what you have stated in your piece and was able to live as he wanted while having enough to support himself and my mother for the rest of their lives.
Oh, and Libertyship46, he voted Republican his whole life and never missed an election.
Another way is to brake free of keeping-up-with-the-Jones disease. This condition causes people to buy 4,000 and 5,000 square foot houses with rooms in them that no one goes into for months, and to tear out perfectly serviceable and good looking counter tops and replacing them with granite.
To keep it at bay, all you have to do is brag about what a tightfisted cheapskate you are as if it is a badge of self control and prudent maturity.
When friends suggest I do something that strikes me as an unnecessary expense, I say, “But that would be a violation of the Landlord’s Code — not to spend a nickle that the courts don’t order you to.” [BTW, my buildings are all very well maintained]
Randy, spot on. Words to live by.
I just wanted to add that the Joneses aren’t down the road anymore, they are in the television set. In “Overspent American”, the author found an inverted correlation between increased TV time with decreased savings. Schor believed that the increased TV watching changed who the Joneses were in the watcher’s mind. The watcher’s peer group became the people on TV, not the next door neighbor.
BTW, I enjoy Starbucks, but once every few months, not daily. Then it’s a real treat.
I’ve heard networks like HGTV called “home improvement porn”. Their biggest advertisers are companies that sell upgrade hardware. What a surprise to see all of their shows saying that a perfectly good home “needs updating” because the perfectly good features are “dated.” My wife, who is normally extremely frugal, watches all too many of those shows and now wants to spend thousands replacing our perfectly fine tile countertops with granite. Only, I know that in a few years, granite will be considered out of style and they’ll be pushing something else.
Fashion is for suckers regardless of whether you’re talking about clothing or homes.
The statistics are great about coffee expenses. One thing to which you could have compared the cost of a cup of coffee is the cost of a gallon of gas. Figure out how many cups of coffee make up a gallon. Next, calculate the costs for 1 gallon of “special” java and 1 of gas. Then all you have to do is wipe all the poop off the floor.
Kinda makes me glad neither my wife nor I drink coffee — we simply don’t like the stuff. Cream and/or sugar doesn’t help, either. Naturally we received a coffee maker as a wedding present. I took it to the office and used it as a water heater for making hot tea and hot chocolate (this was pre-microwave era).
One economics writer coined the term “latte factor” to represent the concept of many small purchases over time. When someone complained about not having enough money to contribute to an IRA, he asked them about their personal expenses. Buying a latte and eating out for lunch each day can easily set you back $50 or more a week, meaning $2600 or more per year. You can buy a coffee maker for pretty cheap and brew coffee at home for a fraction of the cost of buying it at a store, and I can pack lunches for a week for about the cost of eating out once or twice.
Saving money on interest was a big thing with me and my wife. Whenever we took out a loan, we always paid it off early saving a lot of money in interest payments. We started doing this in 1990 and the savings were huge.
1. Inventory all of your bills. Some, like utilities are going to happen every month while others (mortgage, car, student loan, credit cards, etc.) can be paid off.
2. Pick one of the bills that you can pay off quickly by putting some extra principal on it (money saved from not eating out and buying expensive coffee, for example).
3. Pay off that bill as fast as you can. Suppose you had a credit card payment of $100 a month with a balance of $2000. Put an extra $100 or more on that bill and pay it off quick. Next, take the money you were paying on that bill (say $200 a month) and add it to the next debt. You’ll pay that one off quickly as well. Lather, rinse and repeat until you’ve walked your way through the entire stack. It’s amazing how fast it can happen.
My wife and I are 100% debt free (house, cars, everything) and that’s a great feeling. We’re having layoffs at work and if my number comes up, I’m in a relatively good position to weather it out while looking for my next job. If we can do it, just about anyone can.
All good tips. Some additional ones:
1. If you are trying to get out from under multiple interest-charging debts, pay off the required minimum on all of them, but focus your extra payments on the one charging the highest interest. This causes the overall pile of debt to go down faster.
2. Buy a French press and a thermos. Every morning I brew up enough for one big cup to drink at home, and one thermos-full that goes with me to work.
This column is just plain ol/ common sense in action. . . . It encourages me to see that there are others out there who think like I do. . . I tell my wifr ” Isn’t there anyone else out there who thinks like we do?” Now I can tell her that, yep, there sure are.
IF you ever wonder about that again, simply Google “frugality” and “tightwad”
and you’ll find hundreds and hundreds of money-saving frugality websites, blogs and vidseos on the Net.
There’s some great advice and forums out there too.
The last new car we bought was in 1985. I do most of my own maintenance and repairs–very little of it is really rocket science. I keep a repair manual and look up the job–if it’s too bad or takes too much special gear, I go to the shop. If I do it myself, that’s money I don’t have to earn (and pay taxes on).
When we go to a fast-food place, we eat off the dollar menu–and we do not buy sodas there at all. Healthier as well as cheaper. We largely live without sodas anyway; once a year or so we’ll buy a case of high-end root beer, the kind still made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. The rest of the year we mostly skip it. I’ve never smoked, but I knew a man years ago who decided he would rather smoke one good cigar a day and enjoy it than two packs of cigarettes and hate it. Pick your luxuries carefully and don’t overdo.
If you have space for horticulture, planting fruit trees/shrubs/vines pays well. For example, a muscadine vine that costs $10 will have paid for itself in three years at most, and then for another 15 years will provide you annually with $15-20 worth of fruit. You have a percentage return on investment that a hedge fund manager would envy. Magnify that across 10 kinds of fruit and 5 plants per kind and you can save thousands over a lifetime. Improves the resale value of property as well. I’ve never understood why Americans don’t use edible landscaping. It’s much more done in tropical countries.
Psst. Buy low. Sell high. Pass it on.
Oh, and always remember don’t get high on your own supply!
Why have a landline? Seriously, a cell phone is much more useful than a landline, and at a whole $35 a month for unlimited calling and text, the modest extra cost is well worth the additional utility. And if you don’t want to talk to somebody, then don’t answer the phone.
Computers: why upgrade every few years? Sure, your computer may be obsolete, but DOES IT STILL DO WHAT YOU NEED IT FOR? If it does, keep using it.
Used everything: No. Used cars, sure. Some used tools, okay. Otherwise, I buy new and keeeeeeep things for, well, ever. I have zero interest in getting somebody else’s problem, and if you’ve ever been the youngest, well, hand-me-downs are downright depressing. Seriously.
Oh, the last consideration on saving money: Buy it right, buy it once, else you’ll be buying over and over and over….
“1) Buy used cars:”
Or do what I did. Buy a new car for $13,000. Pay cash. Sixteen years later, I still have it.
VOIP phone services such as Skype and Vonage will, in fact, save you money vs. a land line. But some will save you more than others.
While Vonage charges $25.99 per month, Skype is $30 per year. Doing the math shows that Skype will save you $281.88 more than Vonage.
Good tips, all around. I still have a no-frills landline for emergency reasons. We live in hurricane country, and if power goes out the wireless towers will only hold out on battery power for so long before they finally go out.
This. Also, the home alarm requires a landline, as does the DSL.
We live in hurricane country also, and agree on keeping the landline. Yes, cable internet is much faster than DSL, but a few years ago Hurricane Frances paid our area a visit and we lost power for almost 5 days. Cell phones were useless for about that long, too. A fallen tree took off the phone line from the top attach point on the side of the house, but left the line connected to the distribution box, so we had telephone service on the old-fashioned straight line connection throughout the storm’s aftermath, and could use a laptop to get online, at dial-up speeds alas!–but slow as molasses in January is still something. Now we have several of the automobile 12VDC-110VAC converters so we could run a line and use the DSL modem and router as well.
So I go my whole life without delicious coffee so I can afford coffee when I retire?
Depends upon your expectations. You’re not “deprived” of good wine just because you can’t afford to open a fresh bottle of Bollinger every evening.
You can make excellent coffee at home forever with just a $20 French press plus the cost of the coffee, and good beans or grounds are sold almost everywhere these days.
RE: automobiles. I am personally against having a used car – basically one major problem and you are done, $3,000 repairs are quite common. And of course, if you have automatic transmission problems, you are done. The automatic transmissions are basically black boxes that can’t be repaired without replacing the unit. Buy new, pay the loan off fast and you are free and clear – stay away from dealership repair centers, they will screw your car up to churn more service visits. My last few cars? 1986 Nissan Hardbody truck lasted 12 years – 296,00 miles; 1993 Mazda MX-6, 312,000 miles – it wasn’t until I bought a HONDA that I had problems (transmission died while traveling cross-country) and had to buy another Honda which died because motor came off mount. I only buy American now.
Re: Groceries: Try this – buy only what is on sale. Don’t be stupid about it but buy and freeze and you will save gobs of money.
Re: Telephone – no landline needed and all those who have those $300+ iphones and data plans are idiots. Tracfone is the way to go for me.
Re: Computer – you really don’t need to buy new computer if you have Pentium IV chip – max the RAM out and add additional hard drive, change videocard – computer will last forever. Any problems, just wipe the hard drive and start from scratch.
Psst. Wanna save around 120 grand?
Buy a typical house in a typical neighborhood without chasing after fancy expensive McMansions, and pay off your 30-year mortgage in 10. Then, with ten years’ practice at running a tight household, rack that money into savings and anything else that seems worthwhile to you. Plus you can enjoy not being a peasant who’s always paying to take up space.
/it’s hard, yes
//no, not for rich people only. Wife and I work middle-middle-class jobs, even Obama doesn’t hate us.
///commit to ACTUALLY doing this, and a lot of the other awesome advice up top will present itself as a natural requirement.
Careful with the landline. In California, a 911 call usually goes to the CHP in Sacramento where they talk to you before its routed to the correct city and you get the right 911 operator. This can add minutes to an emergency. Also using a landline tells the 911 operator where you are, again saving time. If you have kids, a landline is the way to go. During the blackout in SD in September, the landline system handled the call overload better than the local cell system. So yes you can save money, but understand what you are giving up. With small kids in particular, keeping a landline might be a good idea for emergencies.
Be careful about assuming larger sizes gets a better price. Many retailers, such a Wal Mart, now actively take advantage of this previously sound assumption by INCREASING per-unit costs on the largest packages of many items. I have also seen this new marketing ploy at work in our local grocery stores.
“Buy larger sizes of food that you eat in large quantities. You nearly always get discounts for buying larger sizes. ”
Surprisingly, when you check the price per unit (ounce, pound, cup, serving), the largest size of many items is more expensive per unit than in the next larger size. I was certainly surprised when I started noticing this. Not always, so instead of simply buying larger, check unit prices of the larger sizes. Even my dumb cell phone has a calculator in it, you almost certainly have one in one other of your handheld gagets. Use it if you need to to check prices. It will slow you down only at first, price differences between sizes of the same brand rarely change, except for sales.
Sometimes large is better – for the toiletries – the larger size has been a problem at times. The smaller bottles fit/store nicely into the cabinets and if we have not tried a product, smaller is better if it’s crap. The alternative is to find substitutes to the items. Baking soda works great as toothpaste without the flouride and balances the acid in your mouth to alkaline. Vinegar and baking soda double as drain cleaner. vinegar cleans out the coffee machine – so with a few basics that our forefathers used – some might add time or some elbow grease – they can save you more over chemicals/products that are massively advertised to get you to buy, buy, buy and buy them Supersized.
Cars: I buy new and keep for over 10 years. And I hunt for a manual transmission. I’ve never needed clutch or transmission work in my life. I’ve also chosen manual windows and door locks, unfortunately no longer available on almost all cars. Don’t forget the oil changes.
Coffee: I did the math on coffee, figured I’d have $20,000 more if I hadn’t been drinking it, and decided to quit coffee altogether after a 20+ year habit. (Withdrawal headaches in the morning were another factor.) Also, booze in bars is exorbitant even if you are an occasional and moderate drinker.
We bought a new Corolla when Toyota was having its “sudden acceleration” problem with a no interest loan after having problems with two used cars we’ve purchased in the past. As my husband said, why pay the same amount for a nicer used car with a mysterious history?
We have an Amazon points card which we pay the balance of every month and have gotten winter boots and gloves as well as gifts with for free thanks to their very generous point structure. I use it for everything so my budget is on the bill. Recently, I bought five pounds of very nice French roast coffee on Amazon for about $38, which I threw in the freezer and hope to use for the next six weeks. We’ve also taken to buying meat from our local butcher – buying an entire pig or splitting a steer with friends, and having it cut for how we eat meat. Saves a huge amount of money at the grocery store. Same with our garden. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just thoughtful. Grow what you like to eat.