Saving Money with New Habits

Hey all, happy Friday!

Holding myself accountable has been a goal of mine for quite a while now, especially with regard to this blog. One of those accountability measures of mine is being more conscience of what is going out and what is coming in in terms of income and spending. I'm always looking for ways to get things cheaper with minimal effort as well. I've been changing my own oil in my Jeep for years now, I buy from the on sale items at the grocery, stopped using certain products that I feel are excess in my life, cut my own hair, etc. These measures aren't necessarily to make myself miserable, quite the contrary. I have a great sense of accomplishment doing things myself and being a self sufficient engine. It gives me a sense of pride to change the oil and fix things around the house. I'm not paying some else $20-$40 per hour to fix the things that I can just as easily do. That gives me that money to do what I value, such as travel, save, or not work forever. The latter being the big one that I'm focusing on. I don't want to work the rest of my adult life and I'm making sure that is in order.

Today I stumbled upon a great article about saving money in your day to day life. It's over a CNNMoney and the article is here. There's some great advice and reality checks if you're interested. I enjoy personal finance blogs and news sites, so I come across these often. Some of the suggestions are easy and some are honestly life changing or rather, lifestyle changing. I especially like the page about Twittering for savings. Twitter and technology in general have come so far that we can now quite easily use them as financial and business tools in our life. When people say, "technology will change the way we live," this is no joke. We have channels of communication all around us that allow us to feed each other ideas and suggestions at all times of the day or night.

The article also mentions ways that college students can save money by renting books online as well. That's a great option for people that aren't in college and love to read all the same. This page has the link to their websites, but another great one is PaperbackSwap.com. This site allows you to buy points and then trade paperback books for others endlessly. It's easy and free after the initial points purchase. You trade a book for another, etc. It's basically an online book bartering service that connects people all over. Of course, you always have the local library as well that your tax dollars support, so use that resource too.

Have a great weekend and I hope this helps to tighten your budget a bit and help you save some pennies! :-)