My experiments with thrift

I have never really been thrifty. I am not the kind of person who knows how to save a buck. That is probably because I always equated saving money with consuming less and didn’t like the idea.
Lately I discovered a way of saving money by buying the same stuff that I was buying earlier, only, cheaper. To a lot of people, what I am saying here must be common sense, but to me, it was a kind of a revelation.

I did a few things and that made me save money by not sacrificing anything. I started transferring the money saved, from my Checking to my Savings account; even if the amount was small, like a dollar or two and that helped even more. Because, after some time, you really get to understand that small things do add up a lot.
1.Buying used games: An avid Wii gamer, I buy a lot of games, some of which can go as much as $49. I started buying used games from Amazon and that helped me save a lot of money. I buy games which are labeled – ‘Very good’ or ‘As good as new’ from buyers with good ratings. This ensures that the games reach on time and also that their quality is great!

2.Clipping coupons: This is the one thing that really helped me save a lot of money. To some, it may sound cheap. But by spending a few minutes online, I was able to find coupons for things that I was anyway going to buy and saved money. The best example, is when I had to change my brakes at Midas. For a bill of over $800, I spent a few minutes online and found a discount coupon for $30. That helped save a few bucks which I had to otherwise spend.

3.Avoiding Cosco: I used to shop frequently at Cosco but the trouble with that, is the lot size. While the things are cheaper, I invariably used to buy more than I needed and ended up paying more cash at the end of the month. Now I don’t shop their at all and that has helped reduce overall spending.

4.Getting hooked to Digg and Yahoo! Answers: I used to visit sites like deals2buy and Amazon in my  free time and if I liked something and it didn’t cost much I used to buy things. These were real impulse buys. Lately I became active on Yahoo! Answers and Digg and found that I stopped visiting sites like deals2buy and that helped save money on those impulse purchases!

5.Getting Kroger and CVS cards: I really don’t know how it works but some retailers like Kroger and CVS give you their cards, which you can scan before any purchase and sometimes, you get money off on your purchases. You don’t need to pay for the cards and there is no fee whatsoever. Getting these cards has helped save a few bucks on groceries.

So there you have it, a few ways to save money while continuing to buy the same stuff.  I will be interested to know your thoughts on this, do you know of any other interesting ways to save money?

Manshu Verma

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