7 Ways to Save Thousands Every Year!

Watch your savings GROW!

Try one of the following items for a month or a couple months and then add another item.  You can experiment and celebrate by showing your family how much you've saved or bring them into the planning stages.  They might find it a challenge to replicate their favorite pizza or meal at home.  With creative ideas saving money can actually be fun.

These are some items we have tried and incorporated into our savings plan.  We often find that the planning for the evening is almost as fun as the event itself.  It's pretty cool knowing that we are using technology to make our lives easier and a little less expensive!

• Use subscription based or FREE access to watch your favorite TV programs or movies instead of paying for premium cable services. 
• Use a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) phone service.
• Use coupons for restaurants, events, amusement parks, and groceries that you purchase anyway.
• Plan and run all your errands at once.
• Pay CASH. If you can’t pay cash today then save the money until you can and who knows, the urge for the purchase might not be there anyway.
• Dine on your favorite foods at home. Stay in and cook as a family.
• Movie Night at home!

Here’s the key to making all this really work.  Take the amount of money you would have spent on an evening out or the difference between what you paid and the full price and put that in a “Vacation” or “Addition to House” jar.

We were able to save enough to pay for the closing costs on our new house!

Make staying in for “Movie Night” an evening everyone looks forward to.  Change your living room into a theater café and offer cheese fries, nachos, popcorn, soda, and adult beverages or have a theme where the food matches the feel of the movie.

Another big way to save money and have fun is to entertain at home.

How do you save money and what do you plan to do with your “loot of cash”?  Do you have a “Vacation” jar?