4 Tips to Help You Save Money

When the economy is down or you find you have more bills to pay at the end of the month than money in your pocket, you must do what you can to save money. It’s not easy to do this because you have to give up things you would normally enjoy and that can be one of the hardest things to get over. These things may include steak dinners, new clothes every week, expensive trips, or a Starbucks coffee every morning.

When you find yourself in this situation, giving up things may be hard to do, but it may not be necessary to give up all of them. One way to help you save money and maybe not give up as much as you think is to change your shopping habits. Here are several tips to help you save money and ease the pain you may feel at the end of the month when all the bills have been paid.

1. Meal Planning

Planning your meals will help to ensure you have the right food in the house to make meals. This will prevent the need to go out to eat or the need to visit the store on a daily basis. Both of these situations may cause you to spend more money than is necessary. Plan for the number of meals you’ll need to have until the next shopping trip. Then create a list of all items needed for those meals. When you have this plan in place you’ll be able to save money and that will help when it comes to paying the bills each month.

2. Shopping with Weekly Ads

When you plan your meals around the weekly store ads you’ll save even more money. This can be tricky, but it can be done if you take the time to review the ads. You’ll need to review all of the ads first and then come up with meals that work around the items in the ads. If you don’t have recipes to match you can do a Google search for recipes that contain certain food items. You may have to go to multiple stores to get everything you need for the meals if your stores won’t price match the ad prices of other stores.

3. Coupons

Another great way to save money is to use coupons. Coupons are found in the Sunday newspaper or you can print them from websites like coupons.com, smartsource.com, and redplum.com. The best thing to do is go to sundaycouponpreview.com and search for the items you need to purchase. Most of the time this site is only good for coupons found in the Sunday inserts. If you don’t find anything there you can do a Google search for the name of the item and you may be able to find a print that way.

4. Facebook groups

There are Facebook groups for couponers. These groups offer deals; help with coupons, and often times they share their hauls so you can learn how to use coupons better. You’ll also find these groups will share recipes and may be able to help when it comes to matching ad deals and coupons. These groups may even share things that aren’t publicly known to others or things they find. These would include deals, printable coupons, in store coupons, or rebates. They may be available online, but others may not know so they share so it’s known to others.

These are four of the easy ways to save money when the economy is low or when money is tight. These ways may help you now so if you ever find yourself in a need for less money going out, you’ll be ready. There are other ways to save money such as riding a bike or carpooling to work, do things to your home to save money on your heating or electric bill, and take a sack lunch to work instead of going out or wasting gas going home. All of these tips will help you save money each month.