Ways to Save Money with Your Friends and Neighbors

Do you ever find at the end of the month that you're a little low on cash? Constantly looking for ways to save a few bucks? Then why not start a program with your friends or neighbors to share and save. These are a few ideas to save some money by getting friendly with your neighbors.

1. Share a lawnmower.
It's one of those necessary evils if you can't afford a gardener. You have grass that needs to be cut but and you figure by cutting it yourself instead of hiring a gardener you'll be saving money. That is until you realize how expensive lawnmowers are. It's an investment, sure. But why not split that investment with someone else? If you and a neighbor or two split the cost of a lawnmover you'll easily save a couple hundred bucks. Think about it, you only use it once or twice a month, why not share it? Set up a schedule that works for everyone and figure out who will store it when, maybe you trade off every week.

2. Swap coupons.
My mom used to do this when I was a child. You get a bunch of coupons in the weekly newspaper. Maybe you go through them and cut out a few. But you wish you had more that same coupon. Or maybe you're not even aware that Susie down the street subscribes to a different paper and they have different coupons in it. Set up a coupon swap. It can work between two people or ten. If there's more than two people you should create a rotation so that the same coupons don't came back to you again. Once you go through your coupons and clip out what you want, you pass them to the next person and so on and so on.

3. Set up joint child care.
If you're planning date nights try to plan them the same night as other neighbors then you can hire one babysitter and save a few dollars. Or, during their school vacations set up a summer camp where each week they go to someone else's house. If this can be set up with four or five neighbors you'll easily save a couple thousand dollars or more. You may have to take some vacation time to run your scheduled week but what a better way to spend it than with your kids and saving money at the same time?

4. Buy in bulk.
Costco and Samsclub offer some great deals for buying in bulk and there are a lot of things that are practical for a single family to purchase there and store such as toilet paper and laundry detergent. However there are several things that are not nearly as practical such as the huge loads of fruit and vegetables that typically go bad before you can use them all. Why not hit the supersized warehouse with a neighbor once or twice a month. You'll save money and you might find you have a lot more in common with your neighbors than you thought. Perhaps you'll start sharing recipes or have dinner parties at one another's homes. Who knows?