10 Smart and Easy Ways to Save Money

Everybody loves to save money. This is especially true if saving is easy.

Here are 10 simple tips to save without giving up your comfortable lifestyle.

1. Better Budgeting. If you track your day to day spending, you will be surprised to discover how easy it will be to control your spending. There are two FREE online tools to help you: MINT and LEVEL MONEY.
2. Use these apps to track your spending, and I will bet you will have more money in the bank at the end of the month.
3. Use GASBUDDY, the mobile app that will point you to the cheapest gas in town.
4. Avoid impulse buying at the supermarket. Make a shopping list before you go to the store and stick to it.
5. Shop for clothes in January. Post holiday sales offer the best bargains of the year.
6. Go for cash back credit cards, rather than for credit cards that reward you with points. Card companies frequently raise the number of points needed to redeem gifts and airline tickets. Cash holds its value and can be redeemed at any time.
7. Lower your energy costs. The federal “Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program” (LIHEAP) helps both renters and homeowners get financial assistance to cut heating/cooling costs. Call them today.
8. Never buy a Flash Drive or Thumb Drive again. DROPBOX is free and can give you online storage to save and share files.
9. Free Shopping apps help you save money shopping online: SHOPSTYLE and APPCRAWLR are great web sites and they are easy to use.
10. Clean or replaced you A/C filter at least once a month. You will save 10 percent or more on your energy costs by making your A/C more efficient.
11. Don’t buy pet toys. Your dog will either chew them up in seconds or ignore them within minutes. Dogs or cats would rather have an article of old clothing or a shoe with your smells on them than apiece of chewable plastic.