Saving Money in a Bad Economy

I know that most of you know that it's time to tighten the belt in terms of money once again, as things are going from bad to worse.  Jimmy Fallon said in his monologue last night that men from countries with poor economies have, ahem, an advantage, well, you know where.  Which leads to the best new pick-up line ever: Hi, I'm an American.

Here are my money saving tips, some sarcastic, some real, some half-hearted...you be the judge.

One: COUPONS, COUPONS, COUPONS!

My family got out of the habit of using coupons back in the 1990s when the economy was great, and I must admit that I let my habit of clipping them from the paper each week fall by the wayside.  But they are great money savers.

I'm not talking like being like the people on TLC's Extreme Couponing.  Those people are nuts and devote waaaay to much time to clipping coupons. But if you get a newspaper and have access to coupons, by all means clip them.  There's no need to be embarrassed; some stores double coupons. 

I brought a stack of coupons to Shop-Rite a few weeks ago and almost every coupon I had (even for $1 or $1.50 off) was doubled.  I knocked about $30 off my bill at the end.  Sweet.  Also, if you email companies that make products you like, such as Proctor and Gamble (Skippy peanut butter...yum! ) they will mail you/send you extra coupons not in the newspapers.

Two: CHANGE HOW YOU FILL UP ON GAS

I have found, weirdly enough, that if I fill up my tank when it's half full, my credit card bills end up being lower each month and I've found myself filling up much less.  Coupled with falling gas prices, this is a good strategy.  I charge gas to my credit card, by the way, as I'm sure most of you do.

Three: IF YOU HAVE PETS...

I assume you feed them some sort of wet food.  Well, if every time you are at a fast food restaurant or a convenience store, take some of the plastic silverware they have out.  Then you don't have to use anything else and you can throw it out when you're done.  My brother and I are out a lot, and as weird as it sounds, we take some plastic silverware from each place we go.  It adds up, and to these corporations, it's not a lot of lost money.

Four: CUT THOSE DISPOSABLE RAGS AND DRYER SHEETS IN HALF

Sounds cheap, but the packages last twice as long.

Five: STEAL OFFICE SUPPLIES

Just kidding....or am I?

Six: COUPONS, PART II

Lots of stores and websites have coupons online.  Use that idle time at work to print them out on company supplies.  Saves you time and money. 

Seven:  ONLINE ORDERING

  It's rare that you won't find some kind of free shipping discount or other percent off coupon code when ordering online, so run these searches.  Even when you're ordering food online some local restaurants have codes to save you money.  Again, don't be embarrassed.  Who cares?  Every penny counts

Eight:  START A LOOSE CHANGE JAR

My brother and I do this.  And he got one for Christmas last year that keeps track of the money.  It really adds up.  Since then we have $191.62 in that jar at last count (please don't break into my house, though).

Secondly if you ask for one of these devices for your birthday or Christmas or Chrismahannakwanza, it's free of cost to you, and you can scam TD Bank out of a free prize each time you cash it in because your guess will be within the machine's margin of error when that annoying CGI girl asks you if you want to guess how much money you think you have.  You could win a prize, dude. 

Nine:  ATMs

Each time you take money out of an ATM, put away some of that money in an envelope.  Trust me, it adds up, and cash is king, not cotton.

Ten: RAID YOUR PARENTS' PANTRIES

If you're over your parents' house, and they ask if you if you want to take anything home, have at their pantry.  They usually overbuy and don't eat half of what they have.

Eleven: INVEST

If you work for a company that matches 401k contributions or offers any kind of benefits, take advantage of them!

Thanks for reading.