TIPS TO SAVE MONEY on everyday spending


If you are a broke there are several ways to squeeze extra money out of your current budget. Budget your expenses with gift cards. Sometimes you can buy gift cards on Ebay for a fair value under retail price.

Say, buy a Home Depot $500 gift card for $460.
Hey, if you HAD to buy something at Home Depot you are getting 8-10% off instantly. You can then use any other Home Depot (or competitors) coupons you can find in the newspaper. You could easily save 10-20% this way!

To find gift cards:
There are many gift card sites online, Ebay, or you could even post ads locally for buying gift cards at 60-80% of face value. A lot of people have gift cards sitting around they have no use for.


Always signup for FREE store rewards programs, you dont have to give them your real phone and address. Grocery stores like Kroger offer lower prices on gas and food for these programs. You also sometimes only need to give a phone number to get the discount. When you are in line, listen to someone giving their phone number for the discount. You can then use this at the Kroger gas pumps to get an extra 3 cents per gallon off. A lot of food items and other items for the home are cheaper if you have a Kroger number.


Happy hour. If you drink at the bar, go out during happy hour. Drinks are cheaper, and maybe there are some food specials also. You might as well order all the drinks you need before that 7 o'clock cutoff. Tipping the bartender well may be hard if you are broke but a good tip and nice chat with the bartender (not about the bill) can get you significantly cheaper bartabs.

Free Wifi. This might be kind of obvious, but if you are broke and have 3-4 open Wifi Points accessible in your home, why are you paying for internet?
I know several people in apartments that use their neighbors wireless, and signup for service when the neighbors move, until the next neighbor has an open wifi network. You can save $400+ a year if you live in a good place for this.


Movie rentals. $1 movie rentals. Way better than blockbuster isn't it? There are several vending machines that offer $1 rentals, no account to signup for, 1 day, $1. 31 movies a month for $31. + local/state tax of course. They have a lot of good movies, I even found a movie that blockbuster did not have in one.


Driving style. Your driving style can significantly change your gas mileage. When driving, if your vehicle is new you can see real time gas stats, you'll notice the more you press the gas the lower it goes (duh) You will also notice that the faster you accelerate, or the faster you drive down the highway, the more gas it uses. I reset this number every 100 miles and make it my goal while driving to make the gas mileage higher on my next try. It is very dangerous, but driving 10-15 feet behind an 18 wheeler on the highway can get you DOUBLE gas mileage. Yeah just drive up closer and you can see the numbers go from 18-20 to 30+ just because you are letting the 18wheeler take the wind, and the wind doesn't have time to fill in the gap behind the 18wheeler. Your car is driving in a vacuum kind of.

If you have any tips to lower living expenses post them here!