Money Saving Strategies-Steering Clear of Pennilessness

Welcome back to my money saving August feature! Today Mercedes is sharing her wisdom on how she saves money in her life. I met her through the blogging community and immediately fell in love with her blog. She is such a sweet person and always gives great advice in her blogs and shares amazing life stories. I highly recommend her blog and would love to have a blogger meet up with her sometime in the future! I will now turn over my blog to Mercedes!

 

To this day it still surprises me but I have always been quite frugal. I remember saving my lunch money, allowance, birthday money, and eventually employment money. Here are a few of the ways I have gone about saving money:

1. When carrying cash I prefer to carry a larger bill (i.e. A twenty versus smaller bills) because spending a buck here or there in the short term doesn't seem as bad as spending a twenty right off the bat. 

2. Carrying cash can new helpful because you can physically see how much you are spending. When you use debit or credit cards you don't instantly see the decrease in your account until you look.

3. If you have credit cards use them sparingly and pay them off. Also set up the text or email alerts that tell you when you account has decreased to a certain amount. There are also text alerts for other account activity that can be very helpful.

4. “Can we go thrift shopping?” You may have heard Macklemore’s hit song “Thrift Shop” whether it is your style of music or not it has a great meaning about not spending outrageous amounts of money on merchandise simply because it's limited edition or name brand. Plus you can find amazing things at thrift stores, I found two Hale Bob dresses ($250 a piece) for $20. I've also found great housewares of great quality that were much cheaper than buying from a chain store.

5. Just like you can bargain shop for clothes and housewares you can go to farmers markets for great deals on food particularly produce. You can also go to a local butcher shop to get better quality meat for cheap while supporting your local economy.

7. If you have an income source work on taking a percentage of it every time you get paid to put into savings. Keep a budget sheet whether you create it in excel or use some kind of software because when you see where you spend your money it can really help change your attitude about saving money.

I am not perfect at saving money and have had countless slip ups but I have learned from those mistakes and these tips are just a few of them. You need to budget and find a balance among your finances if you want to save money.

 

XOXO- Mercedes

 

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