5 Ways to Save Money on Everyday Expenses

• Author: William Asher
• Posted: 2024-04-16

Monthly expenses are an unavoidable fact of adulthood, but if you make some lifestyle changes, they will be less of a burden on your bank account. These money-saving solutions range from simple home maintenance modifications to significant routine changes. Here are five ways for you to cut down on your monthly bills while still getting everything you need.

Update Your Light Bulbs

Though light bulbs have been around for almost a century and a half, recent innovations in their technology greatly reduce their energy consumption. Even relatively recent incandescent light bulbs consume a lot of energy and do not give off adequate light. Light-emitting diode bulbs, or LEDs, produce vastly larger amounts of light while using less electricity. These light bulbs are available everywhere and are inexpensive to buy, so you can get them and install them in your home yourself. Even if you only replace a few of the most frequently used light bulbs in your home, your electric bill can plummet by around $40 per year. You can use this money to take your family on a day activity, or just keep it in the bank as savings.

Cut the Cord

Though cable companies advertise themselves as having indispensable products that nobody can do without, their services can be largely replicated by many competing services that charge much less money. Firstly, you should not be paying for any entertainment that you do not regularly watch. Cable companies charge boatloads of money for packages of channels that very few people watch, so switching to an internet-based customizable service will alleviate these bills for you. Today, there are so many streaming services that provide almost all of what everyone needs to watch. Additionally, buying a broadcast TV receiver will eliminate recurring payments. Finally, if you are a sports fan who regularly watches your team, there are a limited number of streaming services that carry the designated sports channels, so you can watch them without cable. These services will almost definitely be cheaper than cable.

Eat at Home

Simply put, the amount of food you get per dollar by eating at home is vastly greater than what you would get from a restaurant. Restaurant food never costs simply what the ingredients cost. Restaurants add all their other expenses, such as labor and real estate costs, into their prices. Anyone who goes to a restaurant has to pay a lot more per meal on top of the actual prices of food. Instead of paying these inflated prices, eating at home cuts out all the other middlemen that restaurants have to pay. Ten dollars of unprepared food from the local grocery store can feed you and your family several meals instead of only one that a restaurant does for that amount. In order to make your money go further, pack meals from home for work instead of going out to eat.

Buy the Store Brand

When you buy food to eat at home, the common temptation may be to choose the name brand on a belief of higher product quality. However, this is not the correct way to shop. Typically, the only difference between products of a name brand versus the store brand is just the label, not the food inside. In fact, the real difference between foods of generic and name brands is the process in which it gets from the farm or plant to the store shelf. Name brands have an extra middleman to pay between the supplier and the store. Generic brands eliminate that extra expense, as the store directly buys the food from the supplier. This is why the unit prices labeled on the store shelves are so much lower for the generic brands. Store brand food serves the exact same purpose as its more expensive name brand counterparts. The food is the same, so there is no purpose in paying more.

Buy Cheaper Phones

If anyone says that people do not need a smartphone nowadays, they are simply wrong. Most everyday essential functions of life are mostly performed digitally, so anyone who chooses not to use a smartphone can fall behind. However, not all smartphones are created equal. The most expensive phones can run upwards of $1,000 apiece for features that are not that impressive. Phones from smaller manufacturers such as Motorola and Samsung cost a fraction of the price of Apple products while still delivering most of the basic essential functions that people need. Instead of shelling out several hundred dollars on a phone that purposely gets bricked by the manufacturer to entice replacement, consider buying a cheaper phone that works the same.