10 Unnecessary wastes of your money !
Some money-saving tips are obvious, like flying coach, cutting back on eating out, or ditching expensive bad habits like smoking. Some ways are uncommon enough to be impractical for consistent savings like choosing cheaper hotels on vacation or buying a used car rather than a new one — great advice, but it’s not going to help keep your monthly expenses in check.
Store and generic brands have to be one of the most underused ways to save money across a range of products. From food, to skincare, to over the counter medicine, chances are your local grocery or drug store has a store brand for them or sells a generic version. Check the labels; in most cases, the ingredients are pretty much identical, but you don’t have to spend money on the big brand names.
2. Grocery shopping when you’re hungry:
Or when you have all the time in the world. Avoid these two scenarios when taking a trip to the grocery store at all costs. If you shop for groceries when you’re hungry, even just kind of hungry, you’re more susceptible to buying extra stuff you don’t need or that you’ll waste later. Same goes for a leisurely grocery trip. If you make your trip when you have other errands to do and only a certain amount of time to do them, you’re less likely to spend time exploring all the isles and picking up more food than you originally planned on buying.
3. Buying a snack at the gas station:
All those bottles of soda and chip bags you pick up when you’re filling up the tank or making a stop at the drug store add up. Make a rule that you have to track all of those little snack purchases and you only get a small allowance of them per month. Get in the habit of bringing plenty of fluids and a snack or two with you whenever you go do errands or anything else that might bring you near convenient snack-filled temptations.
4. Only using credit/debit cards:
If you almost exclusively use your card to pay for things, it’s a lot easier to spend more than you intend to because you aren’t seeing the money. You just press some buttons and boom, purchase made. You might not be so liberal with your funds if you had to watch the cash leave your wallet. If you use mobile banking or money management apps to keep on top of your finances while still using your card, and it’s working, keep doing your thing.
5. In game purchases:
As a semi-recovering Candy Crush addict, I know how hard this habit is to break. But those $1 or $5 purchases here and there WILL add up, and you’ll suddenly be looking at your bank statement with a whole lot of shame and regret. Remove your credit card info from any sites or apps where you play games, and if you get really frustrated by a level you just can’t seem to beat, Google a how-to guide. (After finding some really effective ones for Candy Crush, I feel really dumb about buying those power-ups.)
6. Paying full price for clothes:
Some cities have really great thrift stores or, for the pickier people, consignment shops. If there aren’t any near you, you can find plenty of sites that sell gently used, good quality clothes, as well as let you sell your own. Plus, by buying better quality clothes that have been gently used instead of cheap new clothing, your stuff will probably last longer. Cheap clothes break and tear, and then you have to buy more.
7. Energy drinks:
If you have an energy drink habit, it’s time to kick it if you want to save money. Those things aren’t cheap, and chances are you eventually have to start drinking more than one a day to keep the buzz once you begin to tolerate them. If this habit is due to poor sleep, think of the money your sleep habits are costing you as an extra motivator to change them.
8 . Buying individual coffee drinks in general:
Get yourself a decent coffee-maker and make the coffee yourself to save big bucks over time. A lot of coffee machines now have the ability to preset your brew, so you can program it the night before to start brewing your coffee before you even wake up. Now you can’t claim it’s too much work!
9 . Buying several different cleaning products and wipes:
With a couple exceptions like wood and certain upholstery materials, you don’t need to buy a specific and often pricey product for every different surface in your home. It’s easy to find recipes for DIY all-purpose cleaners on the cheap like this one, as well as homemade cleaning products for specific surfaces if the need does arise.
10 . Disorganization
Being disorganized has cost you money at some point. Losing chargers and cables, misplacing expensive jewelry, forgetting where you left your keys and having to pay a locksmith to get into your house or car. If the mess itself hasn’t motivated you to declutter and get organized, link back on all the times you lost or misplaced something and ended up spending money in some way because of it. Then think of how many of those times you ended up finding the missing item later and realizing you spent that money for nothing. Yeah, I thought that might get your attention.
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