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Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

• codegeek 10y ago
  Give me a chrome extension that always alerts me if I am missing a possible coupon on an e-commerce site that I am on. For example, automatically check sites like retailmenot.com etc and tell me possible coupon codes for a product i may be checking out without applying any coupon. Bonus points if u also apply that coupon for me :)
  • jmaccabee 10y ago
    Thanks! Are you interested specifically in coupons? One thing we've been brainstorming is an extension that offered a more comprehensive set of ways to save - coupons, cash back, deals, etc. Is that something you'd be interested in?
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • michaelmior 10y ago
    You mean Honey? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/honey/bmnlcjabgnpnenekpadlanbbkooimhnj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/honey/bmnlcjabgnpn...
    • blahi 10y ago
      I cannot see the aggregator going on too long with this. The retailers will run the reports and see what's going on and put pressure on the network. Last second couponers do not add any value to a retailer and they are fighting those type of affiliates.
• ogandda 10y ago
  Here is a chrome extension - Honey - that deals with coupons. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/honey/bmnlcjabgnpnenekpadlanbbkooimhnj?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/honey/bmnlcjabgnpn...
• myroon5 10y ago
  I also created a Chrome Extension that searches for the best discounted electronic gift card on Raise.com to help people save money. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/raisecom-extension/kknoembcnnnhefehcmegppchcmggaafo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/raisecom-extension...
  • jmaccabee 10y ago
    Cool idea! Thanks
• jasonpeacock 10y ago
  How about something that prevents purchasing, or forces a 1-day wait. The best way to same money is not to spend it, and most of us don't need half the stuff we buy....
  • swalsh 10y ago
    Oh man, what a great idea. Especially as you start shopping around, you can build a broader profile of a customer's shopping habits, which could be sold for better targeting advertising.... oh wait... argh why does my mind always go there.
    • EdHominem 10y ago
      Have a meta-site, like a pluggin, with a shopping cart. You browse other sites such as Amazon, EBay, Anandtech, etc and it creates a registry of things you want. On the backend it can solicit better offers from other merchants on the same and similar merchandise. Also, as you note, the customer's data could be sold and (partially) turned into a rebate. Perhaps the site could also tell you which extra data (your gender, age, other purchases, etc) would be the most valuable and you could choose to release these facts.
      • jrcii 10y ago
        You can already do this with Amazon's Add to Wishlist bookmarklet which lets you add any product from any page on the web to an Amazon wishlist.
  • tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    I use Amazons wish list for this, most of the stuff I put in there never gets purchased.
• sdegutis 10y ago
  Show me a free alternative to some product show-cased on HN.
• fleitz 10y ago
  Ad Block Plus, no ads, no desire to purchase the products I didn't see. Seriously, not buying stuff / eating out is the best way for me to save money, especially if I spent the time that I would have been shopping / going out, working. Something that might be an idea is linking to a savings account and adding a button beside the purchase link on amazon, etc, like "Save money instead, if you saved $56.32, you'd have $2345.54 in total savings" it would be epic if it went into a GIC or something not very liquid.
  • jmaccabee 10y ago
    I really like this idea!! Thanks
  • charlieflowers 10y ago
    That is an EXCELLENT idea. You'd get a bunch of customers on reddit.com/frugal
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• s_kilk 10y ago
  I just record all my discretionary purchases in a spreadsheet and recoil in horror at the end of the month. My monthly spend has been steadily dropping since I started doing this about six months ago. EDIT: I seem to have misunderstood the topic of this thread, but, as another commenter puts it, the best way to save money is to not spend money in the first place.
  • iamdave 10y ago
    On that note though, while I realize there are plenty of apps that will do this sort of thing for you, I really wished there were that did it with this level of simplicity. And I don't mean create an account for Mint or Level or any of the other bountiful budgeting services out there and merely export to a Spreadsheet. I (personally) literally only want something that can connect to my accounts, see a transaction, and update a row. Nothing in the middle. Does it exist already?
    • fakename 10y ago
      I record all my spending manually with Expense Manager [ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.markushi.expensemanager https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.markushi.ex... ] Dead simple. Add an amount, give it a category, add a note (optional). See trends, exports to excel. Every attempt to use mint, level, etc has resulted in confusing duplicated entires or entries that don't show up until I've forgotten what they are.
      • iamdave 10y ago
        This is perfect. I have one of those phone case/wallet combos and cards are right there with the phone so I can quickly enter purchases. Thanks!
    • tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      For me I don't think that would work, manually handling the receipts and entering them in a program is part of the process of understanding my spending.
    • 10y ago
• koolba 10y ago
  Create a chrome extension that somehow keeps people working as if you're busy making money, you're generally not spending it. Something that disables access to HN would probably be enough.
• drinchev 10y ago
  My father always says : "saving money is the beginning of being poor". So I always try to save money by thinking how can I make more. These days money = time is a strong equation, so just don't loose your time and use it in a way to make money. Stop thinking about saving money and spend your thoughts on revenue stream. That's why I rarely use services like that and don't count the pennies ( I'm neither rich nor bragging )
  • patmcc 10y ago
    Certainly it's good to increase your revenue, but saving money is often much more valuable; a dollar saved is $1.4 earned, assuming you live somewhere with a high marginal tax rate.
    • elsewhen 10y ago
      this is true, but the most you can save is 100%, but earning potential is generally unbounded. if you do not have marketable skills, then saving may be the only way to go, but if you can develop a valuable skillset, you can earn significantly more than you can save.
      • kamaal 10y ago
        Firstly they are not mutually exclusive. Secondly, though there is no upper limit to how much you can earn it rarely works that way in the real world. People who are not saving money are doing it for many psychological reasons, like being unable to resist the temptation to spend on things. And most of the times they don't like it after they do it.
      • Lockyy 10y ago
        Earning may be unbounded but so is spending. Unless you have a baseline lifestyle that you maintain then any increased earnings will just be eaten by increased spending since you'll already have convinced yourself that saving is pointless.
    • charlesdm 10y ago
      Whenever I've had cashflow problems in the past, for me, spending less was never the solution. Having a good idea (and thus, making more money) always was.
• hkmurakami 10y ago
  Automatic deduction into a 401k plan. Separate bank accounts for everyday spending and long term saving.
• johnloeber 10y ago
  Not quite on-topic, but I think that for a normal tech worker, it's usually easier to increase your revenue stream than to increase your savings.
  • swolchok 10y ago
    On the other hand, if you're in CA and subject to a 50% marginal tax rate, saving $1 has the same impact as making an additional $2.
• kearneyandy 10y ago
  I like https://paribus.co/ https://paribus.co/ It automatically requests refunds for things you buy online that drop in price. It's nice because it's very passive and it's basically found money when it works.
  • vemv 10y ago
    Seems a scumbaggy app to me (even if it's legal). If you buy something for $X, it's because you can afford $X at that point in time and you agree that that's its value.
    • imgabe 10y ago
      Many credit cards offer "price protection" or something where if the price drops with X days after you buy something they'll refund you the difference. It doesn't seem scumbaggy to take advantage of a service a company offers you.
  • joshdickson 10y ago
    Worth noting that Amazon recently discontinued its practice of supporting these refunds, which was a major use case of this app. If you're someone like me who primarily is buying from Amazon, this won't help you on that.
• onion2k 10y ago
  I read a lot of philosophy books. They taught me to think deeply about the things that make me happy, and it turns out most of the things that make me happy are essentially free (reading, coding, etc). I doubt it'd work for everyone, and it would be tricky to turn in to a Chrome extension, but something that put a Stoic quote in to Amazon's checkout page might help people.
  • tue4Iezi 10y ago
    Any book recommendations on this?
    • onion2k 10y ago
      Anything by Alain De Botton but especially "Consollations of Philosophy" and "Status Anxiety", "How To Live: Micheal De Montaigne" by Sarah Bakewell, and "Philosophy for Life" by Jules Evans. None of them are hardcore academic works; they're just really interesting introductions to how philosophy can actually be useful.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• vemv 10y ago
  There's https://digit.co https://digit.co : Every few days, Digit checks your spending habits and removes a few dollars from your checking account if you can afford it.
  • paloaltokid 10y ago
    Just be careful! If you make a large deposit to cover an upcoming expense Digit can go crazy and pull too much money because it thinks you've had an influx of cash that it can squirrel away.
  • tedmiston 10y ago
    It's a cool concept, but I won't use Digit personally because it doesn't provide clear financial benefit to me. Digit sits on your money collecting the bulk of interest and giving you a paltry 0.2% annually [0]. To be clear, I'm not dissing it... if it helps some people save more than they would otherwise, then that's great, but it's just not right for my use case. I feel similarly about Acorns. That said, their concept is solid. I run the same strategy but a few times per month by hand and into an account with a good interest rate. [0]: See "Does Digit cost anything?" and "What are Savings Bonuses?" on https://digit.co/about/faq https://digit.co/about/faq
• Havoc 10y ago
  I like the CamelCamelCamel.com extension for amazon. It does something useful - shows me price history graphs so that I can see if that 40% discount is actually a discount or a sales tactic...and they also allow me to set alert for the stuff I buy in bulk but need regularly (toothpaste etc). The amazon prices seem to fluctuate enough to make this worthwhile.
  • tedmiston 10y ago
    Didn't Amazon block CCC because of the price history graphs? I could have sworn they were all blank last I used it.
    • Havoc 10y ago
      No just ebooks they can't track
• 3eto 10y ago
  Buying second hand. From utensils to a motorbike, the amount of money I have been saving is insane. Perhaps if the extension showed me the second hand value of the item or when available, where to get it?
• tedmiston 10y ago
  1. Fatwallet Until it was acquired a few months ago I was a longtime user of FatWallet to make a few percentage points back on the dollar at many stores. 2. Jet Anywhere Jet.com has an incredible cash back program called Jet Anywhere. While the number of stores is small, the percentages are very strong. For example, 20% back at Nike or Saks Fifth. What I'm getting the most out of though is plane tickets. Flight purchases through them get 5.6% back via Orbitz or 4.8% back via Expedia. After verifying you completed the travel, they dispatch cash back in the form of Jet Cash in 30 days. Many items on Jet are equal or cheaper than Amazon, so this is effectively cash. 5% back on plane tickets becomes a significant amount of money very quickly. By the way — they do not have a Chrome extension and I have interest in working on one. 3. Cash back credit card I also purchase everything on a card that gives 2% cash back on every purchase without exception. This is literal cash off your bill, not a rewards program. I've received $100+ back from the first two methods, and even more from the third. --- I'm really passionate about the topic of "money hacking" and happy to discuss more via email if you're interested. I'm currently writing a few blog posts on personal financial habits myself.
  • ap0 10y ago
    What card are you using with universal 2% cash back?
    • xur17 10y ago
      I use the Citi Double Cash which gives 2% cash back, with no annual fee.
    • tedmiston 10y ago
      I'd prefer not to list my specific card provider on a public discussion board out of security consciousness. That said, NY Times ran an article on "the holy grail" 2% cash back credit cards last year [0] which includes four: - Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite Mastercard - Capital One Venture Visa Signature - Citi Double Cash MasterCard - Fidelity Investment Rewards American Express [0]: Credit Cards With 2% Rebates, While (or if) They Last http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/credit-cards-with-2-rebates-while-or-if-they-last.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/your-money/credit-and-debi...
• sawthat 10y ago
  Don't use credit cards. I also recommend YNAB: https://www.youneedabudget.com https://www.youneedabudget.com
  • sushid 10y ago
    Definitely use credit cards. If you know how to manage your finances (i.e. spend about 40-50% of what you make and save the rest), it shaves off 1~2% off of all your purchases. This is even before mileage, hotel stay, etc. rewards come in.
  • tedmiston 10y ago
    More precisely: Don't use credit cards to carry a balance. By not using credit cards, you're giving away 1–5% free reward money from cash back programs. Not to mention the additional purchase protection you receive from shoddy vendors, like bars padding tips.
    • sawthat 10y ago
      Best way to not carry a balance is to not have a credit card. It's very easy to say "don't carry a balance" but most people do. When I used credit cards I often carried a balance, despite my best efforts. If you have the discipline to NEVER carry a balance, more power to you. But most people don't and the points just aren't worth it.
      • tedmiston 10y ago
        That's fair. I've never felt like it's taken much discipline for me personally, and I've never carried a balance on any credit card. I try to live far under my means and mostly just spend money on food, coffee, travel, and a laptop. Most of the rest of my "things" are hand-me-downs. One "hack" that works for me is reviewing each transaction and paying the card in full every week. If I see it especially high one week then I spend more conservatively the next. I don't do any explicit budgeting, but being conscious of the big picture helps me.
• kyleblarson 10y ago
  Zillow: use it to buy a house that's not in the Bay Area and move to a place with a reasonable cost of living.
• paloaltokid 10y ago
  My strategy: * use mint.com for budgeting and expense tracking. * a budget line item is "savings". * set up an automated transfer from my direct deposit checking account to my savings account. * fire and forget.
• jheriko 10y ago
  not spending. :P its a shame banking services are still pretty archaic in their infrastructure - with secure access to user data through a good, secure, api, i'd love an app that would give me alarming notifications if i was spending money out of my account. :)
• ziggit 10y ago
  I like simply using the approach of pretending a portion of my income doesn't exist at all. I've got a Money Market account that I shuffle money over to automatically, and in a reasonable enough quantity that I don't have to run the risk of tapping into it. I make a point to never look at my paychecks and never check the balance of the account, and instead simply deal with my post tax, post saving total. It doesn't lend its self to an app, but it has served me well over the years.
• kamaal 10y ago
  1. Learn cooking: Saves a lot of money, healthy and a lot of long term advantages. 2. Learn to do the 'beginning with the end in mind': A lot of us here in India go and buy a plot on a reasonable loan, and then try to clear it off within 2-3 years. This way you get to acquire a resource, make a investment, and are forced to save up every month to clear the loan. This is more like forced savings. Repeat this for a long time, and you will get really really rich. 3. Keep a diary: Keep a habit tracker, try to get a continuous streak of $0 expense days. 4. Pick up a hobby like music: Gets you entertainment without bills for TV/Cable and things like that. 5. Buy for need and durability: Don't buy everything that you see people buying. Buy only if you need something and buy durable stuff. There are a range of other things I do. But it might get a little too long for a HN post.
  • suranyami 10y ago
    This is a great set of suggestions. On the cooking side of things, I found I was spending a lot of money buying lunches. Sydney is a VERY expensive city: a 'cheap' lunch in the CBD costs at least $7. So, we're talking about saving at least $35-50 per week. Over a year, that's approx $1500-2000 per year. And often, it's not as good as things I like to make for myself. So I cook double-or-triple the quantities of recipes on the weekends... I take pride in making complex curries, slow-cooked casseroles and the like. Usually, doubling or tripling the quantities does not change the cooking time significantly and there are economies of scale with the costs as well. Then, I package up the extra into lunch and dinner-sized portions for myself, wife and family for the week in the freezer. This way, we all get cheap lunches (cost approx $1-2) and gain extra time at dinner during the weekdays (no cooking! just re-heat and add rice/salad/veges). I'd say that as well as saving $1500-2000 per year, it's also saved us an hour or 3 every single week. Frankly, it's worth it if just for the time saved.
    • cscharenberg 10y ago
      Slow-cooker meals are indeed great. Very cheap to fix, makes big quantities, and they can be wonderful. Throw things in at 8am, at 5pm you have hot, delicious food in quantities to throw a dinner party or eat for days. My wife and I did a "month of slow cooking" to try recipes. Most were good and many are part of our regular cooking rotation now.
• pm24601 10y ago
  How about modifying the displayed price to reflex the cost of the item after cc interest. If person is going to put something on a cc, display the price after 6 months of interest has been applied.
• cylinder 10y ago
  I would love a Chrome extension that converts all dollar figures on the page into a the number of hours of work at my salary it would cost.
  • tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    Something like this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-is-money/ooppbnomdcjmoepangldchpmjhkeendl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-is-money/oopp... Note I haven't used it.
  • purplelobster 10y ago
    Or better, convert it to the opportunity cost of spending it, which is the base price plus all the gains over X years had it been invested instead of spent.
• ehnto 10y ago
  I often frame my not-spending as a positive revenue, which works really well for small items. Don't run your business this way though! For example, I didn't buy a coffee on the way in, that is five dollars more at the end of the day than I would have had otherwise, so the question becomes "Do I want five dollars for doing nothing?" I have some habitual spends like that which are much easier to cut down on if I think I frame it that way.
• papacoen 10y ago
  Personally, I save money by not buying stuff. Otherwise I tend to buy secondhand. Requires some sort of lifestyle to get this to work, since you don't always find stuff the moment you need it. Not needing/wanting to spend money, is also a (new) mindset; appreciating or even realizing/knowing what you already have. Yes, this is very close to tree-hugging-hippie-style-living, but what the heck :) Also: never, ever spend money you don't have. Don't borrow money. Maybe for a house, but never, ever for a car, t.v., laptop, whatever.
• pramit 10y ago
  This list of tips is useful: 35+ Most Important (And Useful) Things You Must Know About Money http://www.thesuccessmanual.in/chapter/money-35-most-important-and-useful-things-you-must-know-about-money http://www.thesuccessmanual.in/chapter/money-35-most-importa...
  • ddebernardy 10y ago
    > The stock market gives 10-11% returns on an annual basis. Before 2000, maybe. Not so much since, especially if you took the two rides all the way down.
  • wingerlang 10y ago
    Have you really been plugging your own site successmanual/bighow for 6 years on HN?
• Gustomaximus 10y ago
  For me a good way to save money is 'not have it' and not get used to spending it. Each pay cycle I move set %'s of my income into 5 separate accounts. These are; Daily spending, risky investments, safe investments, lifestyle savings (e.g. holidays or other luxury spends) and bills/fixed expenses. Often I will dip into lifestyle savings if I overrun my daily spending. The best simple extension would be to have something that tracked my current spend for a month against time left in a month for my 'daily spending' account. But not sure I'd want to give just anyone access to my bank details.
• faebi 10y ago
  For me the simplest solution is to have a second bank account I never take money from. Then every time I get my salary a certain amount gets moved to the savings account. I do not miss money I never really had. Additionally some days before my salary all my money above a certain threshold gets also moved to the savings account, so that I have the same money every month, even when I spent less. Also I have my I am poor level. When I have less than 1000Fr/$ I cut my spending to very basic things like food only. This protects me from depth and touching my savings. All of this is easily possible in nearly any bank in Switzerland, I am not shure about the US or other parts of the world. Hope I could create some inspiration.
  • faebi 10y ago
    Also wanted to say, its important that all of that happens automatic, so that I do not need to decide whether its right to do so or not. It should be like taxes, forced on me.
    • W0lf 10y ago
      Hey, I pretty much have the same setup you've described except the second money transfer if your current account balance is above a given threshold. How did you solve this? Do you use a special tool for this such as MoneyMoney for example? (This is what I'm currently using for dealing with my bank accounts)
      • e12e 10y ago
        [Not op, but:] It's kind of sad, the bank I'm using is constantly looking for engineers to "help create the future of banking" (or maybe that was a sibling bank - they're both constantly after engineers) - and yet neither have something as basic as a programmable api to do check balances and do transfers between accounts... As I've finally gotten to a better cash flow (making a bit more, cutting/reducing some regular expenses, paying off some high-interest short-time debt), I'm experimenting with some new saving strategies (although the amount is still very small). I have one tiny transfer that goes out of my account every day to another bank that has a small positive interest (a whooping 1.8% - which I guess is +/- zero wrt. inflation) - a "savings" account. As far as I can figure out, this only goes out on business days, and sometimes it gets canceled due to my regular account being empty. My general plan is to from time to time, when/if I have some excess cash, calculate what "should" be there (amount * current-day-of-year) and transfer the difference (The interest is a rounding error). It's kind of interesting to turn savings on its head like this, and fun to see how "much" one can save, if you multiply that amount by 365 days. You could call it "a latte a day consumer saving", because you can quickly save enough to avoid buying one electronic gizmo on credit a year (ie: last generation phone, medium range laptop etc). Well, ok a good regular size latte in Norway will likely set you back ~5 USD. But I suppose in the US people would go and get a latte that's three times the size for a similar price[1]. The other experiment I'm doing, is transferring a similarly sized sum, but scaled up to weekly deposits, that go into a somewhat high-risk fund (more or less the closest I could find to a technology index fund - low fees, but probably overall worse than an actual index fund). It comes to a little more over the course of a year, and hopefully over time will see ~5% interest - although that is certainly uncertain. It looks like I'll be moving to a new job/location - with higher pay and less expenses, so I'll have to try to do an evaluation and see what I do with my "excess" cash. I'll probably save as much as I can for a year, and then see how close I am to being able to simply pay the rest of my debt (low interest government-backed student loans). They're a little different from other debt, in that they are personal, and come with some insurance in case of unemployment or disability. [1] http://www.fastfoodmenuprices.com/starbucks-prices/ http://www.fastfoodmenuprices.com/starbucks-prices/
• meric 10y ago
  I never buy anything unnecessary if I'm counting how much financial impact it's going to have. I don't have a car, but if I do, it's because I need it for the income, or because I have so much money buying a car feels like getting a packet of chips. "Why not, looks like something fun to do.".
• CalRobert 10y ago
  I live in a city where I don't need a car. I brew my own beer (fortunately I enjoy this activity, and I live in a place with very high alcohol taxes). I eat little meat.
  • markdog12 10y ago
    I also brew my own beer, saves me lots of money. I think when I did the calculations, it cost $0.70(CA)/355ml, although I know I can get that lower.
• bechampion 10y ago
  I do something that's been working for me: i save X amount every month ... if I save > X then it makes me happy , the rule is never save less than X , whatever it takes. I don't buy expensive clothes anymore or go on the piss massively you now it's all about balance.
• arc_of_descent 10y ago
  * Walk a bit more so I save money on my drive to work * Work from home most of the week * I've stopped eating/ordering outside food dramatically * Stopped smoking cigarettes almost 15 months now * Reduce alcohol consumption * Turn off fans, AC, TV at home/office And of course, investing. I usually force myself to invest whatever money I get in stocks or forex trading.
  • neppo 10y ago
    How did you get started in trading, can you recommend any good resources? I'd like to do it myself, but am unsure how to get going.
    • shoo 10y ago
      I can't offer any advice specifically for trading, but for a more general introduction investing in the stock market, you might want to read "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton G. Malkiel.
• Ntrails 10y ago
  There are a bunch of apps that help you spend money more efficiently - but I always feel they're in the lower % of effective saving, and the real answer is 'choose not to buy that thing'. So my question is - are you looking to help people buy thing x more efficiently (and I'm not sure there's a lot of unment need there), or to help people not spend at all (in which case monetisation becomes contrary to the goal of the app).
  • alexhawdon 10y ago
    Okay, so a Chrome Extension that interrupts the user at the checkout stage when buying luxury items? The interruption could range from a simple nag screen, to an enforced cooling-off period before you can proceed with the purchase. Perhaps in the future the user could opt to move the money from their current account into a savings account instead of making the purchase. Or maybe not even let them purchase at all so you have to use your smartphone to buy anything online. PITA; makes you think twice.
    • shabble 10y ago
      If there would be a realistic way to reliably identify 'luxury' purchases, you could just have a really infuriating interstitial that: * displayed the amount of money in a personally relatable manner - "ShineyTron300 costs the same amount as your last 2 months of food expenses, are you sure? (y/N) * make it easy to cancel/stash or defer the purchase, including as you suggest, an enforced time delay before re-prompting * make it hard to complete (require several captchas, solve a maths puzzle, or complete a couple of levels of Duolingo or something) before letting you through. * Enforcing a personal 'luxury sales tax' that padded the total amount of some %, and transferred that amount to savings if you complete teh purchase. Basically, go hunting for dark patterns, and use them against yourself. I'm not sure how far you could go without it just being too annoying and disabling/bypassing it though.
• simonbarker87 10y ago
  I save money the old school way - envelope/budget system. We have a current account for day to day expenses (groceries, toll road pass top up, a couple of meals out) and the same amount gets out in that at the start of the month. Then with a separate bank we have an account for all direct debits and standing orders (mortgage, electricity, internet, phone etc) including a standing order to an investment account which we view as a monthly expense (we are essentially paying ourselves but it's taken monthly so no excuses to miss paying it), so we put the same amount in to that every month. We then have a number of savings accounts that cover the various expenses that crop up on an irregular/long terms basis. Holiday fund, clothes fund, Oh Crap! fund, TV License, insurances, christmas/gifts etc. We know how much needs to be in these by the time a payment is due (say annual payments) so each month one 12th of the amount gets added so when the payment is due the money is there. For gifts and christmas we adjust as we go on a six monthly basis, basically by Christmas we know we need a certain amount and it's great come November and all of christmas is paid for. Any money left over gets put into a either investments or a big pot for a large purchase we may want to make in the future (eg, property). Historically we have tracked expenses with a web app that I wrote however recently have switched to Pennies on iOS. For cash back we use Quidco, to reduce monthly costs we look at moeysavingexpert (Martin Lewis's old site). Beyond that we often check if something counts as lifestyle creep - the tendency to needlessly upgrade aspects of your life just because you have more disposable income that before. If we see a habit developing that costs extra money or we are making a big purchase we have a quick chat and ask if it's needless lifestyle creep? Sometimes we decide it is and we're ok with it, other times we'll decide that in the long run it's not worth the extra spend so stop. Seems to work for us.
• danieltillett 10y ago
  The best way is get your income above your interest in spending money. I buy everything I want and I end up saving money because I earn more than I spend. It helps that I am not that interested in consumer goods, but I can't think of a better way to save money :)
• s3nnyy 10y ago
  Saving money is primarily a mindset. Tools might help but in my opinion they are absolutely not needed. Reading http://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html http://earlyretirementextreme.com/manifesto.html helped me to get the "saving money mindset" into my bones more than any other resource.
  • atmosx 10y ago
    Agreed, it is indeed a rather simple mindset: You have to spent less then what you earn. However, that might not be as easy as it seems and hence you need data: $ ledger reg Expenses:Personal:Food -b 2016.06.01 -e 2016.06.30 16-Jun-03 Pita Gyros Expenses:Personal:Food € 10.00 € 10.00 16-Jun-04 Pizza Expenses:Personal:Food € 35.00 € 45.00 16-Jun-09 Pita Gyros Expenses:Personal:Food € 10.00 € 55.00 16-Jun-10 Greek Tavern Expenses:Personal:Food € 25.00 € 80.00 Now I know that last month I spend 80€ in food month in fast food which is within my budget for fast-food. If you're not managing a very small amount of money along with a very short list of expenses, then ofc you don't need tools otherwise tools give you data and as we all know, data can be of huge importance.
  • wocg 10y ago
    John Greaney's "retire early home page" is also helpful: http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/ http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/
• start123 10y ago
  Automate. Automate. Automate.
• grecy 10y ago
  In the past I quit my job and spent 2 years driving from Alaska to Argentina on my savings. Now I've done it again and will spend 2 years driving around Africa. By far the number one question I get asked is how do I save money to do all of this - it's become a huge topic of discussion. I wrote an eBook on the topic - called "Work Less to Live Your Dreams" which describes exactly how I'm able to do it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4AL8BE https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4AL8BE
• pjc50 10y ago
  Essential life habits: reduce, reuse. Do I need to buy a new thing? Do I have space for the new thing? (housing floor space costs a lot here) Am I really going to get good use out of it? Can I just use the old one or buy something good enough from a charity shop? Can I make do with the $2 Chinese electronics solution? Beyond that, review your regular expenses. Anything daily or monthly. Is that subscription still good value? Mortgage interest rate and payment schedule optimal? About once a year or two I'll pile my downloaded bank transactions into a spreadsheet and look at the biggest categories. I'll also reccomend moneysavingexpert.com to anyone; UK-focused but great general advice. I'm not a big fan of coupons as they're mostly a way of getting me to buy things I wouldn't otherwise, which isn't actually a saving.
• timwaagh 10y ago
  you might look into helping people save people money on their work commute. i save something like 232 euro each month by commuting outside of peak rail times (meaning i spend just 99 euro each month on this). but I'm not sure what the costs are for other options (if i bike it would cost more time, if i get a car then there is a number of costs to take into account). an app might analyse all the options and give people a good overview of the pros and cons.
• rufus42 10y ago
  This app changed literally my life. YNAB! https://www.youneedabudget.com https://www.youneedabudget.com It takes time to get used to, but after 6 years on and off, I am using it for the last 8 months regularly, and I already saved enough money for the next 4 months in advance. This, and in addition, read https://www.amazon.com/Early-Retirement-Extreme-philosophical-independence-ebook/dp/B0046LU7H0 https://www.amazon.com/Early-Retirement-Extreme-philosophica... You don't need more, trust me. But, of course, what these two have in common, is simply: 1. Spend much less than you earn 2. Try to just spend 30-40% of your income, but an emergency fund which stores 6 month worth of money, and then invest the saved money. What I recommend, is a little game: 1. Don't eat out for a whole month 2. Don't do any big purchases for a whole month You will see how much many you usually spend, and how your mind is triggering you to buy things. It will be really hard, so instead of thinking about "oh no, I shouldn't buy this", just write a note on a piece of paper everytime you want to buy something. At the end of the month, you will see how "stupid" you were to want a certain things. If a certain things come up on this list over and over, then maybe it could be useful.
  • sickbeard 10y ago
    YNAB is good if it's just you or you're the sole manager of your account, but multi-user is hard to maintain, spent more time fixing syncing issues etc. I also don't like things that claim to solve money problems by asking you for money
    • rufus42 10y ago
      Well, they don't solve your money problems, nobody can do this :) They offer you a really good service, which of course they want money for. But I think its around 2,50 Dollar a month? I already saved up to 15k in the last few months, so they can have their 2,50 ;)
  • codersteve 10y ago
    YNAB is awesome--the desktop version, that is. Unfortunately, they're going the web route for obvious reasons; but for me, I'm holding on to the desktop version as long as it can run on a Mac, which I hope will be a long time. I've backed up the installation file and my license.
• return0 10y ago
  https://withplum.com/ https://withplum.com/
• orthur_b 10y ago
  I am using this spreadsheet https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/2tymvf/poormans_budgeting_spreadsheet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/2tymvf/poo... for budgeting
• dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  Since nobody else said it. STAY SINGLE!!! If it flies, floats or fks it's cheaper to rent than to buy. If you can't stay single at least avoid kids... I know that won't be a popular opinion but the numbers don't lie.
  • dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    More realistic advice: live like you would at 2/3 your income and use the extra 1/3 to optimize for low cost as necessary.
  • ViktorasM 10y ago
    congratulations to the only comment in the whole comments section that mentions kids or children. like always, there's an XKCD for that: http://xkcd.com/946/ http://xkcd.com/946/ ..and like someone mentioned their 200$ food budget, try spending twice that amount on kindergarden a month that your kid is not attending for now because he's home sick and you're spending extra on treatment. When you've exhausted your saving options, making more is still the best option for saving money:) Simple math, if you spend 3000/month of your favourite currency, then you'll have twice more money by earning 4000 vs 3500.
  • skrause 10y ago
    Why is staying single cheaper? My girlfriend and I save a lot of money by being able to share an apartment and splitting the rent, internet connection etc. Living alone would be much more expensive for each of us.
    • shoo 10y ago
      sharing a place tends to be a lot cheaper - but note that many people who are single do not live alone.
  • sickbeard 10y ago
    Stay single, save money, die and leave your paper trinkets for someone who will actually spend it to raise another human being
• thesignal 10y ago
  Since I set a goal for myself(hose/flat/something like that), I looked for a lot of ways to save money, my tips are: - keep track of every cent spent, i started using GnuCash, but there are a lot of other solutions available - don't buy yourself a lunch every day, make a sandwich at home, or buy a thermo-box for warm food (this saves me ~30€ every week) - if possible, drive by bike instead of the car or public transport - i changed my petroleum gas and power provider and save about ~100€/y - my opinion about coupons and "best deals" (on the web) is: they only mislead you to buy something you don't need. I only use coupons for grocery, and here you also need to be careful and compare the reduced price to prices of other stores. - instead of going to the cinema/restaurant my girlfriend & I make picnics in the park or nature near, sometimes a bottle of wine + glasses is sufficent ;) - second hand buying, ebay doesn't have the good deals anymore i think, but there are other (local) platforms (maybe there is a plugin which cross checks other platforms and puts it next to te amazon price tag?)
• bluedino 10y ago
  Since this turned into a personal finance thread, how about favorite ways to spend money? Starbucks. Every morning. Latte and a danish/cookie/muffin. $7.00 * 30 days = $210.00 Eat lunch out. Every day. And not with a coupon or fast food, but a sit-down restaurant. Sandwich, fries, soda, tip - $12.00. Every weekday, that's $240.00 Vending machine snacks, my job doesn't offer free snacks. $2.50 for a Mt. Dew/chips when I get that craving at 3:30. Every weekday, that's $50.00 Spend more at the grocery store than you would eating out a restaurant. Throw food away, don't eat your leftovers, buy expensive meats, cheeses and fancy ingredients. $150/trip or $600/month Now that we're past the daily items, let's go into the monthly expenses. SUV instead of a small car. $600/month and another $250/month in insurance, $60/week in gas. $1100/month Buy a new MacBook. Every year. You sell the old one but you're still spending another $700 on the new one and sales tax. Don't forget to buy a new case/decal for the new one. Upgrade your phone. Every year. Buy new accessories for it, and get the mammoth dataplan. This can be $150/month. Frivously spend $100/month on iTunes purchases. Songs you don't really like, movies you don't even end up watching, games you'll play once and never open again. Drink heavily! What else are you going to do with $70/night? Inebriate yourself a few times a week. Piss away $25/week on lottery tickets. Might as well try, right? Impulse purchases under $500? Don't even worry about it. GoPro, new tablet, latest game console, high-end pots and pans for your house - just buy it!
  • loco5niner 10y ago
    Spur of the moment trip to Africa? Don't even bother packing, just bring your credit card! Clothes won't fit after all those vending machine snacks? Throw them all away and upgrade to bigger ones!
• eswat 10y ago
  Food: It wasn't until recently that started to cook my own meals every day. I felt time was always time limited when I worked for a company so I would get takeout a lot. Especially in my time in Toronto due to the large amount of good places to eat at. Switching to eating predominantly stuff I make has saved a lot; next to rent food was my biggest monthly expense. Phone plan: In Canada carriers have different plans for each province, with the prairies getting the best deals. It's gotten so ridiculous that there's a "black market" where resellers sell SIM cards from other provinces and carriers trying to lock that down. Anyway I lived in Manitoba and got a phone plan there where I'm paying half the cost for 3x the amount of data and features I would get in Ontario. The only downside is that most people calling me would get dinged long-distance since I'm using a Manibota number in Ontario, but Canada-wide calling plans are so common for mobiles now that I don't feel guilty about it.
• deleted 10y ago
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• tmaly 10y ago
  from this book the richest man in babylon, I like the simplicity of just putting aside 10 percent to start. It build up over time, and it is dead simple to implement.
• tummybug 10y ago
  My method which is my least favourite but most successful was to marry a quite frugal woman. I was never the type who had any money left at the end of the month but have just put a 55k€ deposit down on a new house and have money left to furnish it (about 2 yrs of saving). I also have a young child, live in a nice area with high rent, have a car and have many hobbies which I enjoy regularly. The main savings have come from cutting back on expensive impulse purchases, the second would be cutting down to one coffee a day and bringing my own lunch to work. Next on my list is to quit smoking which should also greatly increase my savings ability.
  • smilingtom 10y ago
    you sound like an enormous piece of shit
  • shabble 10y ago
    > Next on my list is to quit smoking which should also greatly increase my savings ability. Setting aside the obvious health benefits, this can make a pretty impressive saving by itself. From memory, I was spending something like £100-150/mo on cigarettes, and in the UK at least, I think the "sin tax" on them has only increased in recent years.
• fuzzfactor 10y ago
  Be a producer, not a consumer.
• sickbeard 10y ago
  Frankly.. do boring things that don't cost you a thing. Stay away from vices (bars, pay to pay games, tech gadgets you don't need etc). Spend money on things that last, a nice bed, nice shoes, reasonable car, your family. Live.. but don't waste.
• JamesBarney 10y ago
  Instead of buying a house, bought a triplex. I save about $2,000 a month in rent/mortgage from this one decision, and it only taxed my willpower once. And I get to go out with my friends and loved ones as much as I want without running into any money problems.
• amerkhalid 10y ago
  Before I purchase anything, I read reviews, both positive and negative for balanced views. A lot of time negative reviews change my mind, even when product is rated highly overall. Though it is not intentional for me but I guess if someone is trying to save money, show them negative reviews first.
• Rmilb 10y ago
  I live in a 126 sqft Tiny house I built my self with my partner. Saves an incredible amount on rent.
• kwc98 10y ago
  Growing a pony-tail. I have not had to pay for a hair-cut in more than 1.5 years. When I get a little neck trim-up they only cost 10 dollars. Haircuts are expensive.
• cdnsteve 10y ago
  I physically put a piece of electrical tape over my Visa card number. It sounds completely weird but I encourage everyone to do this. You'd be amazed that when you whip out your card all excited to buy something that it really, really makes you embarrassed to use it in public. Aka save the money, or you can't afford it.
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• rmarsdendox 10y ago
  RACHEL MARSDEN DOX Rachel Marsden, who is the worst slut in the world, has been falsely accusing people of raping her during 90s and 00s, including her swimming coach and the Wikipedia founder. On Twitter, she has been caught using her main Twitter accounts and even sock Twitter accounts such as @Non_Disclosure to harass other people she don’t like, even using sexual suggestive words inside her tweets. ​ This girl now lives in Paris, France and is working for Sputnik Radio in there. ​ By falsely accusing other people of raping her, this Rachel Marsden scum had insulted all of the rape victims out there. She also exhibits stalking behaviors against others, particularly hackers like “The Jester”. ​ If you want to learn more about her, you can go to the discussion page of her IMDB profile, there’s a post detailing all of her dark deeds. In addition to that, the hacker “The Jester” also has a piece, which is titled “Rachel Marsden – Come on down” that details the sadistic behaviors of the daughter of bitch. ​ By faking her resumes, that Marsden bitch is a fake bitch scum who always boasts about her psychopathic and sadistic scheme. This pinko/commie also always shamelessly defending dictators who commit heinous crimes. ​ By calling herself a “journalist”, she is making the whole journalist community looks ridiculous. ​ Sluts and psychos like Rachel Marsden deserve no place in our current society, and maybe she should be exiled to a remote island to let her rot by herself. ​ So, wanna let her taste her own medicine? Here’s her doxes: Scroll down to the Rachel Marsden part in the link below: https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/tender-notice/PW-15-00688111/list-of-interested-suppliers https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/tender-notice/PW-1... There’s an address of Rachel Marsden in this pdf: http://efoia.bis.doc.gov/index.php/component/docman/doc_download/1027-bis-2015-0011-commen http://efoia.bis.doc.gov/index.php/component/docman/doc_down... Apparently her email address is rachelmarsden@gmail.com and she has multiple phone numbers. She might now lives in a room in 1 RUE CAMILLE DESMOULINS 92300 LEVALLOIS PERRET, PARIS, FRANCE, according to the pdf and the links below: http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/41612630/Marsden-Rachel-Rachel-in-Levallois-Perret http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/41612630/Marsden-Rachel... http://french-corporate.com/french-corporate/521/244/921/521244921-MARSDEN-RACHEL.php http://french-corporate.com/french-corporate/521/244/921/521... http://edecideur.info/edecideur/8542Z/MARSDEN-RACHEL-MARSDEN-RACHEL-521244921.php http://edecideur.info/edecideur/8542Z/MARSDEN-RACHEL-MARSDEN... Want more details? Here’s her home in Google street view: https://www.google.com/maps/place/1+RUE+CAMILLE+DESMOULINS+92300,++LEVALLOIS+PERRET/@4 https://www.google.com/maps/place/1+RUE+CAMILLE+DESMOULINS+9... Rachel Marsden’s court record regarding her stalking charges: https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcpc/doc/2004/2004bcpc369/2004bcpc369.html?searchUrlHash=AAAA https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcpc/doc/2004/2004bcpc369/2004b... So, troll her if you can by calling pizzas to her home, since there’s a Domino’s pizza shop in 99 Rue Aristide Briand, 92300 Levallois-Perret, France. Also, you are welcomed to swat her at your own will. Or at least troll her (@Non_Disclosure) on Twitter with shit talks and gamergate style insults and threats. You are also welcomed to throw rotten eggs and shoes against her when you see her walking in a Parisian street in real life. ​ We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.
• patatino 10y ago
  I know myself and my spending habits, so I have an account at another bank, no online banking, no credit or debit card. If I ever need that money I have to go to the bank.
• artur_makly 10y ago
  simple..move to a country where your USD = (3-5)x.
• Zelmor 10y ago
  GnuCash, definitely. Habit of my lifetime is to enter all expenses and incomes on a daily basis. It makes you accountable, and once a month I can sit down and check on financial plannings, where we are and where we ought to be. YNAB is a paid SaaS whereas Gnucash is free, libre and has a nice mobile client to accompany it. Mobile also uploads to cloud storage, from where you can auto-import on desktop client startup.
  • ShinyCyril 10y ago
    YNAB still updates their 'classic' desktop version, which also has a nice mobile app to accompany it.
• samblr 10y ago
  Eat out LESS - invest in kitchen appliances :). I wonder now how I lived without a FOOD PROCESSOR and ate out/prepared not so good food. Must haves food processor, a flask, a good lunch box. Take home food to office, beach, parks. Life gets so much better. Though one cannot avoid an occasional icecream on a summer day ;) Invest on health - buy an exercise bike, bench/squat rack instead of gym. Saves a lot of time and money. Property investment - dont know need to learn.
• LukeFitzpatrick 10y ago
  I stumbled upon this, which I think is pretty cool, www.wealthnation.com (every time you spend money on your card, it rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar and saves them for you). On the other hand, you also have Robo-advisors like "Acorns" who do the same thing, but instead of saving it - they invest it shares.
• bybjorn 10y ago
  Favorite way? No apps, just automatic monthly savings the day after I get my salary.
• Kylea_Waller 10y ago
  My fav is our startup MyMoneyZen :P Originally developed it just for myself to use 10 years ago, then more and more people started asking me to set it up with them and I couldn't serve them all, so decided to make it available online. Keen to hear anyone's thoughts... MyMoneyZen is an online course, with built in software, which teaches people how to set up an automatic system to manage their money for them. So they can be good with money… fast. https://www.facebook.com/mymoneyzen/videos/688678827952669/ https://www.facebook.com/mymoneyzen/videos/688678827952669/