My Favorite Money Saving Tips

These are just a few of my favorite savings tips that I've collected, thought about, and used over the years!

1. Be Careful What You Clip - By that I mean, Coupons. Often when we're flipping through those wonderful inserts we clip about 15 coupons for items that we don't need to buy - exactly what the company wants you to do - there providing you with an incentive to buy their product. But do we really need to try NEW Special K Bars - no, since I'm not going on a diet soon and I'm not that big a fan of them - I don't need to buy them.

2. Wait for the sales - It's great when you have a coupon for something - but you'll save about 50% more if you combine it with a sale! So wait off on the Grape Jelly which you have a $.75 coupon for, until it goes on sale - it'll probably be about 1.99 and a .75 coupon doubled is $1.50, so it'll end up to be about .49 cents!

3. Make Starbucks At Home - If you bought a $3.00 coffee every morning for 3 mornings a week, that would be close to $500.00 a year! So why not make it at home - or better yet stop all together! Lynnae at Being Frugal did a blog post yesterday on how to make a Frugal Mocha - check her out on my blogroll!

4. Read - I can't believe I am saying this because my whole life I have heard about how reading is the key to knowledge - but it's so true. By reading The Tightwad Gazette I learned so much - by reading Blogs I save so much, and by reading books I open up a world opporunity. So stop by the local library and pick up a few books!

5. Follow Blogs - This may sound like a weird tip -but it's a valuable one. I have about 35 blogs (yes, 35 - thats actually considered small in the blogosphere!) which I follow daily. About 30 of them are money-saving related, and the rest post just the deals. I've scored tons of free soap, shampoo, you name it - I probably got it due to some of the blogs I follow.

6. Shop When You Need To - By this I mean stockpile! When an item goes on sale and you have 5 coupons for that item - use all those coupons, and buy 5 shampoos! It may seem like a silly idea now - but when it's 3 a.m. in the morning and your out of t.p. ... you'll be glad you have that toilet paper stockpiled! One rule of thumb I have is to keep at least one shampoo, toothpaste, etc. handy for each person in the house. So if you have 4 people, keep 4 shampoos, 4 toothbrushes, etc.

7. Take Your Time - This was probably the most important tip I ever learned - you're not going to save money in a flash. It takes a couple of weeks, even months to really get going. So be patient with yourself - and remember you aren't going to save $455 on your first trip - you'll probably only save about $15.00 which is still pretty good!