Would you like to save more than $ 300.00 a month? As a money-saving consumer advocate, this is a question our family regularly visits as we review our monthly Family Budget. We recently got together for a brainstorming session to see how we could shave and save more money each month. Our tips can work for your family too. Schedule time to talk with your spouse about money and break up money saving missions.
How were we able to save $ 300.00 each month?
Money saving tip n. # 1: evaluate the services you don’t use
When we reviewed our monthly expenses, the first thing to move on to the block was our AT&T package bill. Maybe yours is DirecTV, cable or pay TV under another name.
We spend $ 9.99 each month each for premium channels like Cinemax and HBO. We enjoyed watching movies, but the reality is that we just couldn’t watch these movies in the moments that they were in and not even recording them on DVR didn’t help, we couldn’t find the time to sit back and watch as much as we wanted. What. Leaving the premium channels saved us $ 20.00 per month.
Money Saving Tip # 2: Eliminate Unused Entertainment Expenses
We feel that we are already frugal in the area of entertainment taking advantage of the Entertianment book and free events. With coupons, promotions, and free events, much of our entertainment ends up being free or low-cost. Still, we went back to the monthly movie costs. Using Blockbuster Online was $ 15.99 per month, and we also had to rent at least four movies each month to get free movies in store. As we had not taken advantage of a free movie in more than 6 weeks, we saw that it was an expense that we could easily reduce. We were not getting value for our money. Instead we signed up to the store for Block Buster movie rewards and now we can buy one get one free 3 days a week and only pay when we use the service.
This brought our monthly savings to $ 35.99.
Money saving tip n. # 3: check your phone bills
Next, we examine our mobile phone bills with Verizon. Since our home phone package includes unlimited long distance, we found that we weren’t using the full amount of minutes. We called our cell phone provider, Verizon, and asked for discount ideas, including corporate and school discounts for our son who is in college. By changing our plan to Friends and Family and reducing minutes, we reduced our communications expenses by approximately 15% for a savings of $ 37.00 per month.
Our monthly savings now total $ 72.99.
Remember, these first three money saving tips were only necessary for one phone call. We call once but save money every month.
Money saving tip n. 4: brown bag lunches
How much do you really spend each month on lunch? A look at our debit and credit card statements showed us that only one of us was spending around $ 6.00 per day for lunch, which ends up being $ 120.00 per month. This doesn’t even take into account gas money to go out for lunch. With some reusable packaging and leftovers, our family is saving money, saving gas, and going green, too, not to mention healthier packed lunches.
By packing 20 weekday lunches per month, our family’s cumulative monthly savings is up to $ 192.99.
Money saving tip n. # 5: smart coupon clipping
Clipping coupons is smart, but it’s also an art. Coupons won’t save you money or time unless you follow these coupon clipping rules.
A. Don’t cut it if you don’t use it.
B. Don’t buy anything just because you have a coupon.
C. Make the most of coupons by stocking up when grocery items are on sale.
We recently saved $ 45.00 on our grocery bill with coupons. On average, we found that we can save around $ 110.00 per month using coupons. Where do I find the best coupons? In addition to the circular coupons on Sundays, I use Coupons.com, Smart Source, and Red Plum.
By using these tips to save money plus clipping coupons, our family now saves a total of $ 302.00 per month.
How do we get these money saving tips? At your budget meeting, break up the money-saving tasks and give yourself 24 hours and re-register. Remember that while two of these tips, packing lunches and clipping coupons require an ongoing commitment, they saved over $ 70.00 a month with just three phone calls.
What could your family do with an additional $ 300.00 a month? Pay the debt? Saving for college? Holidays? These real money saving tips worked for our family and we hope you will use these money saving tips to help your family start saving money this month too.