When you are on a limited income, it is really  important to save money, else in the long run you will start feeling that life is going past you and you haven’t enjoyed it a bit. If you start saving money now, you will be able to afford later on more than  you’d think you will.

Particularly large companies have a 401k plan, which means that the will match the amount that you set aside, sometimes as much as ten percent. Thus to not participate means turning down free money. When you participate in this plan, they will take a small portion (usually a few %, depending on your agreement with your employer) of your salary and put it aside. You will not see this money from the get go, so you will get used to not have it in the first place. I remember after a few years when I left my previous job, I got back the money put aside for the 401k plan (here we call it provident fund), and it amounted to a nice sum of $10000. I put that money in the bank, and should I ever be laid off from my current job, I always have something to fall back to.

Also make sure you don’t go into debt. If you have more than one credit card, by all means, cut all but one in half and throw them away. Credit cards are a blessing but mostly a curse, particularly when you are tight with money. Your grandparents could live without a credit card all their lives, so can you!

Try to do your laundry as few times as possible per week. That doesn’t mean that you have to walk in dirty outfits, however you don’t have to throw everything in the washing machine right away. Wait until you have enough whites, or color clothes to make the washing machine really full and then start it up. I usually wash one color and one white per week. It’s really seldom that I need to wash more often, and I do change my clothes every day, and so does my husband too

Don’t wait until tomorrow to start saving money. Like dieting, it is easy to put it off until you realize it’s too late. Make a commitment to save money today, and begin feeling the increased level of security that having a bit of extra money can bring.

The first thing you need to do when you’ve decided to start saving money is develop your action plan. Your plan doesn’t need to be very elaborate, but it needs to contain the basic steps that you want to take and follow to be successful at your money saving business.

Here are a couple of tips that will guide you in starting your own savings plan.

1. Set your goals you want to achieve – Depending on what you need to save the money for, you need to know approximately how much money you want to save. Is it for a new car, is it for your children’s schooling, is it for your new Hawaii vacation? Is it for ‘darker days’? Once you know what the money is set aside for, you will be easier able to achieve those targets.
2. Monitor your finances – you need to start keeping track of your finances, to see how much you’re spending and now much your income is. Get bank statements, ATM card statements, collect all your spending receipts, and have them all in one place. Start budgeting your money because you will soon see a pattern emerging and you will realise where you need to tighten a bit the belt, and where you can keep on doing what you’re doing without problems.
3. Thought of investing? Investing is not only for rich people, who already have their pockets full. If you have a low amount of savings, you can also invest this. As by your bank what investing opportunities you have, maybe you can set up an Investment Opportunity Plan with your bank.
4. Start saving. I’ve already mentioned a couple of saving strategies in previous articles, for example, you can save money on water usage, save money by using fans instead of air conditioners, and a few other ways of saving money, check them out here.

One of the most difficult concepts to deal with is the idea of saving money. It might be appealing in theory to put money aside for darker days, but in practice it’s not so easy. In normal circumstances, people find it difficult to create and stick to a realizable savings plan. It does take a lot of commitment to do so, however, the benefits are too great to not do it: think of the financial benefits, the psychological benefits, the comfort that you will get once you know you have your coins ready to use whenever you need them.

Here are a couple of reasons to jump start your creativity on why you really need to save money.

1. Emergency cases – something always can come up. We never know what might come in the future. A sudden illness in the family, a natural disaster that might strike, a bad investment, the loss of a job, the need for an emergency repair of an expensive appliance or vehicle. These can – at to some people – will happen at one point or another. How nice when you know that all you need to do is go to the bank and withdraw the money that you saved specifically for this occasion!
2. Debt prevention – one of the main reasons why people get in debt in the first place is because they keep on purchasing beyond their means (and their credit cards). Beware of the pitfalls of the credit cards! Once you purchased and purchased and used your card and now you’re in negative in the bank, now not only you have to pay back the debt, but you also have accumulated a lot of interest on the card, which also needs to be paid back. Some people are still paying back only the interest years after their original purchase. If you have enough money in the bank, you don’t ever have to worry about debt or credit card funds!
3. Planning for the future – this is not a negative reason at all. If you have children that will go one day to college, if you want to have that dream vacation to exotic locations, if you want to buy that new car, while you’ve been always driving second hand cars before, these are all reasons why you need to save money.

A good savings plan can definitely help you achieve those goals much sooner and without the problems of having debt to deal with your whole life.

This is the title of the book that Kerry Taylor wrote on the topic of saving money. Once you read her book, even if you thought you were ‘frugal’,  you will understand the real meaning of ‘frugal’. She is the epithome of frugal. Until I read her book, I was spending money lavishly without realizing!

Some of her tips among the 397 that she gives include renting instead of owning your own home (read the book to see why, and why it seems to go against everything that we’ve been taught so far!), living in the suburbs instead of the big city, if you have to buy your own home, buy it smaller than (you think) you need. If you have more than one car, sell one and use the bike instead. Aha! she also says to use fans instead of airconditioners, just as I mentioned in my previous post here. I’d say great minds think alike!

Her book does focus a lot on living and consuming smart, but she also tackles financing and traveling. Paying off your debts is top priority with her, and I fully agree. If you buy index funds, buy them at a discount brokerage. Don’t insure your children unnecessarily. Regarding traveling, she has 18 different tips on how to save money. One of my favorite is ‘passing lame souvenirs’ (how guilty I am of this one!), and ultimately stay at home and rediscover your own space, and she calls this ’staycation’. Great name for a great tip!

If you really want to save money, I’m 100% that you will find a lot of great gems among the 397 that she describes in her book. It’s not expensive, and I urge you to buy it. Trust me, I didn’t know what saving money WAS before I read her book!

With this tip you not only save money, but will also help the environment at the same time. You can save money by using less water.

If you’re in the US, there is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) WaterSense program, which allows you to find high-quality, faucets, water-efficient toilets, shower heads and much more. The Watersense program has been introduced in the US in 2006, and this program helps people buy more water-efficient appliances and fixtures. Imagine that products that have the Watersense certification save up to 20% your water, and they perform sometimes even better than your current, traditional appliances.

WaterSense contractor Kathleen Brady says that” a family of four typically spends more than $800 on water and sewer services every year. But switching to WaterSense-certified appliances can make a noticeable difference on that bill.” Basically going from a toilet manufactured before 1994 to a WaterSense toilet will save a family of four around $90 every year.

And the environmental benefits that come along with it are also very important to keep in mind. I think this quote from their website says it all the best:

“If one out of every 100 American homes retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, we could save about 100 million kWh of electricity per year — avoiding 80,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.”

I’m sure you have plenty of clutter in your drawers and wardrobe, things that you never use any longer, but you’re weary to throw away because they’re still good. So why don’t you just sell them to others who might need them and help your budget in the process as well?

Selling your clutter on Ebay is a great way to make some extra money. This will allow you to leverage better the money you already have and enjoy more the freedom of un-cluttered house.

If you don’t have an Ebay account just yet, it’s very esay to open one. And if you’re worried that you’re not living in the US, no problem. Ebay has sites in over 20 countries, so chances are you will find an Ebay.xyz for your own country as well. And if not, you can still sell at the nearest Ebay location. For example, one of my friends is living in Hungary in Europe. He speaks German, and as Ebay doesn’t have an Ebay.hu (that’s the country code for Hungary), he is selling his clutter at Ebay.de (the German Ebay). The buyer is paying the international shipping fees, so this way he is getting some nice side-income while he is de-cluttering his home.

For example if you have older college text books, you can sell them, as there are plenty of college students who also want to save money, and they will buy your older books gladly. Afterall, marketing or sales, or mathematics hasn’t changed that much in the last 3 year!

So by selling your stuff at Ebay, you will not only make space for new things in your home, but you will get some money that you can add to your budgeting plan. Afterall, one’s junk is another’s treasure.

Saving money is not only important when the economical situation is bad. It is wise to always save money, because you never know when you will need that little extra that will pull your head out of the deep water.

So here are 5 ways that you can save money in any situation.

• When you’re out shopping, use coupons and rebates. You can use coupons for gas, oil change, all sorts of groceries, books, and pretty much anything else around the house. When you’re flipping through neswspapers and magazines, make sure to cut out those coupons. Every penny counts.
• Use coupons for online shopping. There are some great discount  coupon places for pretty much anything that you want to shop online. Coupons for clothes, for website hosting, for domains, for any sorts of pills, for movies, you name it, for anything. Use them. Just Google ‘discount coupons’ and you’ll be busy for a week!
• Don’t buy new books, use the library. Or use one of the many internet book exchanges, where your only cost is the postage cost to ship your books. Some are international, like Bookmooch.com, yet others, like Paperbackswap.com are in the US only. You can get the latest Stephen King in new condition at less than $2 a pop. Also libraries are great ways to read books without having to spend money on them. Use all these free means, they’re there for you!
• If you have magazines/newspapers subscriptions, cancel them. You’ll be amazed at what all you can find online. Pretty much every small newspaper has an online edition, free for you to read.
• Bundle cable and internet together. If you have internet connection, and you’re also paying for cable, and you have them from different sources, enquire if you can get both in one place. It will save money in the long run!