Every year, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine publishes tips on how to save $50 per day. This month’s magazine offers over fifty tips from several different categories. Kiplinger’s writers looked at how you can save money on things like meals, home, travel, entertainment, automobiles, finances, and more. Altogether, the magazine makes $18,250 worth of savings and recommendations. I thought that I would highlight my ten favorite ways out of those listed in the magazine. While the list is long and extensive with some great ideas, these were some of my presonal favorites from this month’s edition.
Top Ten Ways To Save $50 A Day With Kiplinger
Meal Deal Websites – There are some great coupon websites out there, and many of them specialize restaurant deals. Some of the best websites that the magazine recommends is Restaurant.com, Wow-Coupons.com, Groupon, and LivingSocial.com.
Groupon – I love Groupon, and the deals that you can get are truly amazing. Recently, the group coupon site offered a $20 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble bookstores for only $10. While most deals are location specific, you can probably find a location near you in addition to some national offers.
Keep Your Clunker Car – While it may not be the advice that you wanted to hear, keeping your old car a little longer can save you several hundred dollars while you save up for a big down payment on the car of your dreams.
Drop Pricey Cable – I always hate the idea of canceling my cable television cable. I do not think that that would work for me and my family, but Kiplinger’s recommends dropping the pricey add on packages such as the premium movie channels and features like that.
Use Smart Phone Shopping Apps – There are tons of great smart phone apps out there that can help you save money and compare prices on major purchases that you are making. While in the store hunting for a particular item, check competitors’ prices on aps like Google Shopper or ShopSavvy. These are some great tools to find the best price even while you are on the go. Many of the apps let you take a photo of the bar code of an item and get the best prices from around town and online.
Brown Bag It – Instead of paying $7 to $10 when you go out to lunch every day at work, you can save a bundle if you buy your own sandwich bread, meat slices, and cheese instead. According to Kiplinger’s article Save $50 A Day, you can save up to $1,040 per year. If you were to invest what you would have spent on going out to eat, you could have a nice little nest egg of over $100,000 just from brown bagging your lunch by the time your career was over.
Shop For Tickets Online – You can save 50% or more on the price of tickets by shopping online. Sometimes buying the tickets direct from Ticketmaster can be the best option, but other times using sites such as StubHub where ticket owners sell their unwanted tickets can really save you tons on ticket prices.
Buy Your Own Gym Equipment – A membership to a gym can cost you $40 per month or more. You could deck out your garage with some of the best equipment for the price of your membership for a year.
Sign Up For Automatic Debit – There is nothing worse than paying late fees after forgetting to pay your credit card bills. But, if you sign up for your card or bank’s automatic debit program, late payments can be a thing of the past for a saving of hundreds per year.
Buy Discounted Gift Cards – There are tons of websites that specialize in trading unwanted gift cards, and after the holidays, many people have these cards sitting around. Trade them for gift cards to locations that you really want through websites such as PlasticJungle.com, GiftCards.com, or GiftCardRescue.com.
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Great website… Many entrepreneurs can get a lot of lessons from your articles. Cheers!
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