32 Hacks for Sticking to Your Budget
In January, we asked you for your tips about living within your means and keeping to your budget, with the chance to win a db clay wallet. You gave us 144 responses in total – some of which had excellent advice.
Here’s our round-up of the best tips and tricks for budgeting:
1. Don’t spend more money than you have.
2. Stick to your grocery lists – compile them based on an itemized overview of your household needs and never stray too far from it.
3. In a similar vein, never go grocery shopping hungry!
4. Keep your receipts, or write your own – at the end of each day, list your expenditures. At the end of the month, group those expenditures to create a simple overview of where you’re spending too much or even too little.
5. Pack a brown bag lunch each day. Save hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars each year.
6. Develop a distaste for Starbucks.
7. Talk yourself out of purchases. Ask yourself, do I need this? Think of various ways you can avoid a purchase that seems necessary through innovative MacGyvering.
8. You don’t need the $100 shirt from the pricey store when there’s a $10 equivalent at the thrift store. You don’t need a room-sized plasma TV when your old CRT still works.
9. Remind yourself frequently of your financial goals, especially when you’re at the mall: paying off a big debt, retiring early, the Macbook Air. Remind yourself that by living frugally, you’re at least in some small way helping the environment.
10. Use cash. Take money out of your account and use real cash from a real wallet to pay for your daily expenses. When you run out of bills, you run out of money to spend.
11. Use credit. Run your finances on credit cards so that you don’t lose big money over the course of the year in spare change spent on coke and McDonalds. Always repay within 48 hours.
12. Never watch commercials. Get a PVR.
13. Sleep on your purchases. Give yourself a night to consider and rationalize before buying a new toy, and if you rationally decide you need it, you can go back and get it. Mac users may need to take longer – much longer.
14. Review your budget and spreadsheets regularly. Keep your financial situation constantly fresh in your mind. This helps to curb your desire to spend, spend, spend, ensures you know how much you actually have to spend if you need to, and motivates you to pay off debt and save more.
15. Use spreadsheets instead of expensive apps like Quicken – use Google Docs for spreadsheets and you can even save on overpriced office software.
16. Use every last scrap of every last thing you purchase. Don’t waste anything. Don’t leave taps running, don’t throw out the quarter of a plate of dinner you didn’t eat.
17. Become a power Nazi. Switch off lights and appliances at every opportunity, and tweak your computer’s power settings to give you the optimum balance between power savings and practicality.
18. Think about money philosophically – consider your spending behavior as a reflection of who you are. If you would not like to be defined by your purchases of cigarettes, hard liquor and pork rinds, reconsider and make better purchases that reflect the person you’d like to be.
19. Respect money like you do your family heirloom; that which you respect, can’t be hastily thrown away. It’s not about how much you make, but how much you save.
20. Exercise in the great outdoors, or use your own body weight – forget expensive gym memberships and personal trainers.
21. Diligently organize rebates and send them in on time, every time.
22. Do extensive research before all purchases, especially impulse purchases. Find the best price online or off, even if it’s “almost new” from eBay.
23. Do extensive research not only on price, but on durability and quality; buying everything from Crazy Clark’s is a bad decision as far as your long term savings go.
24. Don’t fall for the vicious technology upgrade cycle. Your laptop is still fine until there’s something actually wrong with it; performance is all in the software you run. Do you need to be running Vista or Leopard or the latest version of Photoshop? For most people, probably not. Wishing for more drains what you have.
25. If you come under your budget, save the excess. There is no legal obligation to spend it!
26. Pay yourself first. Take 10% or so off the top of your income and save it before you even start paying bills.
27. Base your meals on cheap, but nutritious, food sources instead of fresh produce that goes off quickly all the time. They might be a better food source, but if you want to pinch pennies go to grains, lentils, legumes and beans.
28. Preventing an impulse purchase with this motivation hack: simply think about how many hours it took you to earn that amount.
29. When keeping track of credit card purchases, put them into your checkbook as soon as the transaction occurs. That way the checkbook will always have as much money as you actually have, letting you freely pay off your credit card when the time comes.
30. Don’t keep credit cards in your wallet, or near any of your computers with an Internet connection.
31. Water is cheap (for the time being) and can easily replace most other beverages, such as soda – just not coffee.
32. Borrow books from your library, don’t purchase them. This puts an imperative on you to actually read your books (how often do the ones your purchase just sit on the bookshelf?) and saves huge amounts of money if you read a decent amount.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Joel Falconer
Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a blogger, writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers critical news and practical advice you can use to make life more liveable.
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Comments
Jacki Hollywood Brown says on March 11th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
#33 - Don’t read the weekly flyers. If you don’t see it, you won’t want it. If you MUST look through the flyers, toss them out with the recycle bin without looking through them a second time. If you can’t remember what was on sale that you REALLY wanted, maybe it wasn’t that important anyway.
Miss Cellania says on March 11th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Why should Mac users think longer about purchases than other people? My entire Mac setup cost me $750 new. For the twenty years of Macs beforehand, I bought used computers. Yes, I thought and planned all purchases, as I do everything I buy. But using a Mac doesn’t necessarily mean a person is a spendthrift.
SaiF says on March 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Hey Joel!
Nice tips here! I would like to add something that I think you might have missed out - I might be wrong.
And that is paying yourself first AUTOMATICALLY. Don’t even look at the money.
I also don’t agree with your point about looking at your spending behaviour as a sign of who you are.
I think you should never, never, NEVER define yourself by what you do. No matter how noble the cause is.
Define yourself not by what you do, define yourself by who you are.
To CANI,
SaiF
The World’s First Teen
Personal Development Video Blogger
Stephen Martile says on March 11th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
#34, Have a money management system.
I’ve used the JARS System for over 18 months and it’s helped me to,
- increase our net worth by 45% in 12 months,
- put money away for our Whistler Ski trip,
- have more fun spending money.
…. among many other benefits.
To learn more see,
Managing Money - The JARS System
http://www.stephenmartile.com/?p=96
Sam Davidson says on March 11th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
This is great stuff, especially the reminders on why it’s important to reduce consumption.
Matt says on March 11th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Good list, apart from #8 - which is utter rubbish
(Just bought a new TV…)
SurvivalTopics.com says on March 11th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
And don’t forget bartering. Barter things you have but no longer need for stuff you do need. This helps both the barterer and barterie!
Marelisa says on March 11th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Great list. I think #9 –keeping your goals in mind–is key. That way you have the feeling that you’re not denying yourself, you’re working toward something that you want even more than those cute sandals or that 3rd cup of cappuccino. Now you need to come up with 32 hacks to raise your income (afterall, that’s the other side of the coin–spend less, earn more).
Crotchety says on March 11th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
These aren’t “hacks.” They’re “tips.” But I guess saying “hack” makes it somehow more technical. Sheesh.
Dave says on March 12th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Well, well, well, Miss Cellania, aren’t we just the Grand Dame, now? Oh, yes, “I always use Macs because I’m a sucker for iMarketing and skinny urban justpostteens in black mock turtle sweaters and small black rectangular glasses.” Oh, you’ve only spent $750 on your current Mac, have you? Well la-dee-da. Excuse me, mater, I’m putting away my $750 iComputer before I skip off into the iSolarium to play the grand iPiano. Tweedle-dee-dee.
Dan says on March 12th, 2008 at 2:18 am
This list is stupid regurgitated tripe self help lameness bleh dugg down
dexter says on March 12th, 2008 at 4:28 am
thanks a million, this is really helpful. I also think this part is so funny: “Mac users may need to take longer – much longer.”
Thanks
summer says on March 12th, 2008 at 4:56 am
thanks for these hacks. after savings and long wait yes! i have a mac. i gave my old laptop to my sister who needs it for her classes. it’s true do not spend more than you have right now. otherwise you’ll be in big trouble.
Joel Falconer says on March 12th, 2008 at 6:42 am
I probably should point out that I made that joke as a Mac user myself. The Macbook Air I found terribly tempting until I waited it out.
Thanks to the readers for submitting these tips!
christa says on March 12th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I already do most of these things and still find myself not having enough.
#23 is good but I often find myself waiting so long doing cross checking to find the best price and quality that the item is no longer for sale when I’ve decided to make my purchase. Then I end up spending more to buy the item I’ve decided is the best one.
The only ones I disagree with are:
#4 who has time to do that? I do it when my wallet gets full and just file all the receipts. That way if I need them they are there.
#27 fresh produce - if you buy purposefully and use what you have it is usually cheaper than canned or preserved fruits and veggies, and more nutritious.
#11 and #30 are contradictory. I do keep credit cards in my wallet, but they have specific purposes. One is for gas only. Another is for emergencies only.
Michae says on March 12th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
If you think of money spent on food as paying for nutrition, fresh produce is great. It contains nutrients that you don’t find in dry, especially enzymes. And lots of fiber.
Also, have to totally disagree with the comment on Macs. My mom had a PC and it was nothing but trouble. Why have a computer if it’s so cheap (junky) that you don’t enjoy using it, and slow, and virus-prone? Plus the software bundled with PCs is junk. If you want to get something done, especially if are a computer newbie, money on Macs is money well spent. It’s hard to quantify the cash value of productivity when it comes to free time, but I consider my time valuable enough that a Mac is a bargain.
dexter says on March 13th, 2008 at 4:32 am
not every one can buy a mac, also here in the middle east it’s cheaper to buy a laptop than buying a MAC. Iam doing all my stuff with a PC, sometimes I use windows, sometimes linux, but you can not have troubles with your PC if you take a Ghost backup from your OS partition, and then if any thing happened to your PC, just boot into your ghost and install the backup image.
I know that talking about MAC is not the issue here, but it’s a fancy dream for some of us to have a MAC.
even when i can buy a good mobile phone, iam still sticking to then one that do what i need, and that’s what i do with every thing that i wish to have but can’t afford buying.
Steve says on March 13th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
You guys are taking the Mac comment (joke) far to seriously, he is just cracking a joke toward mac fans that need to have all Mac gadgets as soon as they come out. He is not saying Macs are a bad investment.
Relax people
fulopfelan says on March 14th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Funny how all recent switchers or dreamers say MAC and not Mac or Macintosh.
Ralla says on March 20th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Yeah, Steve (Jobs?) is right
(Besides, how could anybody say Macs are bad investments??)
I’m glad I’m following all these tips already - though 2 of them clash: how can I buy stuff cheaper on-line if I hide my credit card? (Just bought new jeans at 2/3 the price in the malls!)
Coker says on March 22nd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Yeah great list, but i think it’s damn too extreme, good for salary earners! am a creativity guy and need these gadgets to inspire me to create better service, thereby earn more income! Am a flash developer, if i dont have the latest device, how can i develop software for them? man relax!
MrJuggles says on March 24th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I’m quoting a guy called Martin Lewis, but as regards tip number 7, you should always ask yourself these three questions in this order
1. Do I NEED it?
2. Can I afford it?
3. Is it cheaper elsewhere?
BillinDetroit says on April 29th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Using credit cards is 100% dumb. Credit is NOT an asset … it’s a liability — and a mighty big one at that. Almost NO ONE actually makes good on the ‘free rent on someone elses’ money’ idea. When the bill comes due, they’ve burned through their cash, too.
Just don’t spend what you don’t actually have. Need a card for some purchases? Get a debit card. That way you can only spend money that actually exists.