Ways to Save Money

Don't play the lottery. Just don't do it. You might as well flush your dollars down the toilet. Save $50-$250 a year.

Cancel cable TV premium channels. You know they are a big money waster. Save $200 a year.

Going out to dinner once a month instead of twice can save at least $500 a year. You know you've been eating out too much lately when your child says "Mom, why is the oven door hot?"

Instead of buying expensive bottled water, use a water filtration system such as one from Brita or Pur. It turns your free tap water into the same pure water you're buying at the store. Evian spring water, by comparison, costs $21.19 a gallon. And you thought gasoline is expensive! I'm saving $250 a year.

Eat less red meat. Pasta and chicken are inexpensive and better for you. Three meatless meals a week will save your family over $500 a year.

Break the McDonald's / Pizza-Hut / Taco-Bell / Kentucky-Fried Chicken habit. My family was spending over $40 a week, which was over $2,000 a year.

If you have a $3.00 a day Starbuck's habit like I did, cut it down to 4 days a week. Save $500 a year.

Bring a sack lunch to work. Are you paying $5.00 for a deli sandwich? That's throwing away over $1,000 a year.

When shopping for the sack lunch or the kid's lunches, those individually packed snacks and drinks look so convenient. Buy juice in bulk and use a thermos. Buy fruit and cheese in bulk, and use your Tupperware. Snack-size chips cost twice as much as filling a plastic bag from a big bag of chips. You get the idea. Save hundreds of dollars a year.

If you smoke, you are blowing $1,500 a year on cigarettes, and paying double for health care over your lifetime than the average non-smoker. Kick the habit and your car, health and life insurance will be cheaper too.

Every night, put all the change and dollar bills from your pocket or purse into a change jar (do they still make piggy banks?). Save maybe $1,000 a year.

Popcorn is a very healthy and inexpensive snack. Not the microwave kind smothered in butter at a dollar a bag. Get a hot air popper and use the $1.50 a pound bags of corn. It's as fast as a microwave and uses less electricity. My family saves $300 a year on snacks.

Save on gas. Drive smart, keep your speed down. Leave extra room between you and the car ahead of you. Smooth, lawful- speed driving will save you at least 3 mpg. Besides saving $200 a year in gasoline, there will be less wear and tear on your tires and brakes, and less chance of an accident or tickets causing higher insurance rates.

There is probably no bigger waste of money than payments on your credit cards. Interest on your cards should not be part of your cost of living. If you have to charge it, you probably can't afford it. Hey, your credit cards don't get up in the middle of the night and go shopping all by themselves. Now we'll take a look at what may be the ultimate rip-off. No, it's not the $4.00 popcorn and drinks at the movie theaters. It's Christmas! Yep. Big business has pulled quite a scam on us poor fools who celebrate it by buying expensive gifts for everyone close to us, just because we've been made to feel it's an obligation.

When I was a child, I could hardly go to sleep Christmas Eve. The anticipation of finding a pile of presents for me under the tree was the high point of the year. After I would rip open the last present in sight with my name on it, I would look around for another one that I might have missed. It didn't matter if I had 6, 8 or 10 presents; I would instinctively think Is that all? Is that the last one?. If I had been raised with the expectation of 2 or 3 gifts, I probably would have been just as happy.

If there is a Dollar Tree Store or a Family Dollar Store in your area, give it a try. My family uses 3 loaves of bread each week, but the huge selection at the Dollar Tree Store at $1.00 a loaf instead of $3.00 saves us $300 a year, and were saving another $200-$300 each year on other brand-name items purchased there.

There are many other ways to cut unnecessary spending and free up an amazing amount of money for your investments. I guess the simplest way is changing your attitude about how you spend your money, and exactly what, and where, are your priorities.

Saving and investing must become part of your way of life. The 'spend today - save tomorrow' strategy just doesn't work. Instead of driving or wearing your money, live a little beneath your means and invest the difference.

The easiest way to have more money is to not spend so much!

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