Discover Debt Freedom!

For some people, saving money seems to be the hardest thing in the world.  Every time that they save a little bit of money, an unexpected expense arises to clean out the bank account once more.  There are some simple solutions that can be used to help a person save $500 quickly and once that first $500 is in the savings account, the person will begin to see their savings grow more quickly.

Solution #1 – Conserve Energy
With energy prices skyrocketing at an astronomical rate, it is more important than ever to conserve energy and keep your energy bills as low as possible.  There are many ways that this can be achieved, from turning the lights off when you leave the room to turning on the sleep timer on the television each night so that it does not stay on all night to turning the thermostat up in the summer and down in the winter.  Being conscious of how much energy you are using each day can save you as much as 35% off of your energy bill each month with simple changes and as much as 50% each month with dramatic changes to your routine.

Solution #2 – Conserve Gasoline
Unless you have been living in a news-less bubble over the last six months, you know that gas prices have risen dramatically in the last several months and relief from the high prices is nowhere in sight.  Conserving gasoline is not difficult to do, it just requires some adjusting of the way that you spend your day.  You can conserve gasoline by running your errands on the way home from work to avoid making another trip, bringing your lunch with you to work instead of driving to pick something up, or carpooling with coworkers that live in your area.

Solution #3 – Purchase Store Brands
There are many items available in grocery store where a person would not be able to tell the difference between the store brand and the brand name item.  This is especially true of anything that will be covered in sauce when cooked, most paper products, seasonings, and canned/fresh/frozen produce items.  Almost everything can be found as a store brand at the grocery store and the store brand can be as much as 50% cheaper than the brand name product.

Solution #4 – Cut Your Cable Bill
Do you really watch all 300 channels plus the premium movie stations that you are paying for with the deluxe cable package?  Chances are, unless you are at home all day just watching television, you only watch a few of these channels on a regular basis and maybe catch a movie on one of the premium movie channels once a week.  This means that you are paying for a whole lot of channels that you never even watch.

The easiest way to cut the amount that you are paying for home entertainment is to stick to the basic cable package and begin a movie collection for the times that there is nothing on that you would like to watch.  Some basic cable packages begin around $20 per month and thrifty consumers can find movies that they would like to watch at resale shops for as little as $2, a fifth of what it cost to purchase a single movie theater ticket.  The movies sold by these shops are guaranteed to work like new and may have many of the older titles that are hard to find in regular retail stores along with movies that had just been released on DVD in recent months.

Solution #5 – Reduce Discretionary Spending
There are many things that people purchase every day without really thinking about it because they perceive the cost to be too small to worry about, but every item that you do not purchase means more money saved in your pocket.  Instead of purchasing coffee on the way to work each morning, brew your own and place it in travel mug to be taken to work with you.  Instead of purchasing the overpriced snacks in the vending machine, put some gum or mints in your purse and save money while you lose weight from not snacking every day.  Most people have dozens of items that they could cut out of their daily routine and never even miss them.