How to Save Money on your Bills. Few PiggyBob’s Points
There are only a couple of ways to make money. Increase your income and/or decrease your expenses. Most of us concentrate on saving and investing on our hard earned money to grow it further. People usually rely on savings accounts to save money and then many go a step further and invest in businesses and other savings instruments to save money.
On the flip side though, many people end up spending more than their earnings. This is despite helplessly trying to change the situation. One common argument is that monthly bills take away a large chunk of their income leaving little or nothing to save at all. Is this true? Well, not entirely. Big bills are the result of big expenses and a serious attempt to curtail some of these expenses will definitely do a world of good.
Here are a few tips on how you can reduce expenses and save money on bills.
- Note down every expense you incur for the next one month. This will help you build a list of items that you usually spend money on. Take a good look at this list and underline the unwanted expenses. These could have been avoided had you know before. Keep track of these items and refrain from spending on them in future.
- Get a piggy bank. Make it a practice to put all the change left in your pocket into the piggy bank everyday. Notice how the coins start adding up after a month. This would otherwise have been idle cash that you would have spent without even noticing the difference. Now it adds up as your saving. When it becomes a sizeable amount, you could use it for some definite purpose.
- Pull out your monthly shopping list. Check all the items you could do away with. You begin with the absolutely unnecessary expenses and then to the ones that can be done away with every alternate month. Trimming your shopping list helps you save a significant amount.
- Talking about shopping, here is another important point. Buy at grocery and provision for at least one week at a time rather than going to the stores multiple times during the week. This way you save on gasoline expenses. This is one expense most of us fail to notice let alone control.
- Make it a habit to transfer money regularly from your checking account to your savings account. Use online money transfer or electronic fund transfer to get this done. If possible provide standing instructions to your bank to transfer a specific amount to your fixed deposits. This will force you to save money every month.
6. Alcohol is the next big contender followed by cigarettes. Cut down on drinking and smoking. You will not only save money but also do your body and health a big favor. This will also help curtail future medical expenses on illness related to these vices.
While you may feel intimidated by the mere thought of cutting these expenses, realize that you do save a lot of money by disciplining yourself. Tight budgets will become a thing of the past if you spend wisely. Once you learn to control your expenses, you can sit back peacefully and start thinking of ways to increase you income. How’s that for a start?
Article by Nakagava Ltd., creator of PiggyBob™, the first truly user friendly personal finance software and time manager. PiggyBob™ is an extremely convenient tool to help you keep track of your income and expenses, plus a very useful printable calendar to record all important events in your life. All the data you record in PiggyBob™ can be handily visualized in graphs.
