How to Save $500 or more Per Month Without Reducing Your Lifestyle

The current economy has many people crunching numbers and pinching pennies in order to make ends meet. In this article, I intend to lay out the steps my family and I have been taking to stretch our income and to keep our savings on tract.

Of course finding the savings is one thing, maintaining that savings and not rolling it over into other spending is going to take discipline on your part. To help, arrange to have the savings you realize automatically transferred from your checking account into your savings account. This will eliminate the temptation to spend it on other things. This one little tip helped us visualize our savings and reinforce the ideas that we were attempting.

The savings ideas are going to be presented in a way that does not mean you’re going to have to reuse coffee filters or eat ramen noodles for dinner. These are savings methods that will not lessen your lifestyle or diminish your sense of self worth. Like I mentioned earlier, it will take a bit of discipline, but once these methods are implemented you may realize, as we did, a savings of $500 or more per month. I’m sure you could use an extra $500 per month or you wouldn’t be searching for ways to save on the internet. So lets get started.

Shop for groceries once a week.There may be some logic to buying what you need when you need it but little thought is put into the amount of fuel that is wasted when making multiple trips to the grocery store each week.

Plan your grocery shopping in advance. It is said that two thirds of all grocery purchases are unplanned. That accounts for 66% of lost opportunities to save. Instead, sit down with your family and plan out a weeks worth of meals. Make a list of all the products that you are going to need for those meals. Now, go register at this site and search for and print out all the coupons you can find for the products you already use everyday.

Assuming that you eliminate all of the unplanned purchases and you use the free services at the site hyper-linked above to save an estimated 10% - 20% of your grocery bills, and you are on a $100 weekly grocery budget, this course of action can save you and your family roughly $80 per month. That doesn’t mean go spend an additional $80 a month on groceries, it means transfer that to your savings account.

There are some simple tasks you can do to reduce your monthly expenses on expenditures such as auto insurance, phone bills, medical bills, as well as certain other spending habits that you can take control of.

Auto insurance can be pretty expensive, but you have options. The days of being loyal to your local insurance agent are long gone. You need to be loyal to your family needs by shopping around for the cheapest insurance. Compare several insurers online. Raise your deductibles and drop collision protections on older cars because collision coverage is often as expensive as the older car itself. The average savings is around $400 per year, or an additional $33 per month.

Drop your land line. This shouldn’t even be a second thought especially if you have cellular service with decent signal in your area. If you need the land line for DSL connection then ask your provider to just eliminate the local and long distance service. If you don’t have a cell phone then you can invest $40 on a device called the Magic Jack. The Magic Jack works on VOIP (voice over internet protocol) and when attached to you computer through USB you can connect any regular house phone to it and get unlimited local and long distance calling for around $19 per year. You get your own phone number and also access to emergency 911. This course of action will save you roughly $50 - $150 per month.

Drop you cable or satellite provider. Or at least reduce to the very basic options. By spending a little money upfront on a device that can connect your computer or laptop to your high definition television, you can stream movies and TV programs through services like Netflix (for a small fee) and for free on services mentioned in the link module to the right. And depending on your movie watching habits, you can eliminate your monthly Netflix membership and opt to rent $1 DVD’s from RedBox. After spending the roughly $140 for the Atlona USB to HDMI converter(the Atlona converter is the best because it allows you to connect audio and video into one device), you can add another $85 a month, or so, to your savings.

Reduce your medical expenses.You can reduce your medical expenses often just by asking for the reduction. Once you get a bill from your medical provider outlining what your health insurance did not cover, you can ask your how much they can cut from the remainder of the bill if you pay the total immediately. We have done this 4 times this year alone and have realized a 50% savings each time, or roughly $1600 total, just for asking for it. Just one $400 reduction and save an additional $33 per month.

Also, if your pharmacy has savings cards then use them. They may cost a little more upfront but over the course of a year they can pay off pretty well in savings because these cards also offer savings of 10% - 20% and more on most of the products being offered at the pharmacy and they will also send you additional savings coupons in the mail.

Stop buying bottled water. Instead invest $60 or so in a faucet water filter system that will provide you with the same quality water or about a half a cent instead of the dollar or more you are now spending. Savings here can be as much as $30 a month or more.

Stop buying $7 lattes. Instead, make you lattes at home with an inexpensive latte maker, or at least try purchasing them from a cheaper source such as McDonalds. Savings here can be as much as $60 a month or more.

Use Shopper Cards where ever they are offered.How many times do you go into a store and the teller asks if you have a preferred customer card and you not only say no but then decline the offer to get one? How many times do you return to that same store during a year and go through that same ritual? Get the cards. Sure it’s an added expense upfront (except grocery store cards and many department store cards, which are free) but as I stated earlier, sometimes it pays off to spend a little bit more upfront to realize a better savings later.

It takes a little discipline to get these types of savings to pay off for you but they will pay off.  My family is saving roughly $500 a month just from the steps I have outlined above.  Not one of these adjustments in spending has lessened our lifestyle or reduced our quality of life.  In fact, we are much better off and it teaches the children an important lesson in financial decision making without skimping on necessary items or appearing overly frugal. 

I sincerely hope these savings ideas can work you you.