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Buy from bulk stores and markets instead of bagged supermarket products.
Switch to soap strips instead of liquid detergent for laundry
Cook yourself instead of getting delivery
Use public transport and or bike
Buy local produce and fruits that are in season
Use public transport
This is the biggest cost savings for me right now... Assuming I get a cheap rust bucket paid in full (estimate in metro Vancouver, BC in Canadian $s):
So all together that's $591 per month or $7100 per year.
Transit costs me $135/month and I'm lucky to live and work somewhere where transit actually sort of works.
This is particularly true with the multitude or car sharing programs that are available in major cities like Vancouver. The odd time you need a vehicle it is trivial to rent one, which is still cheaper than owning a vehicle.
as far as buying bulk, the idea it to look for price per unit, and with this you have to take at least a medium (month) or long (annual) look at the pricing. This is your typical restaurant budget strategy.
And this assumes you have storage space, which not everyone has.
I love the principle of buying from bulk store but after a non-zero number of weevil infestations I tread carefully. Could just be bad luck though.
my dumbass read
Cook yourself
I know how to fix almost anything mechanical and I usually try to buy really high quality things when I can. It means spending more money up front, but things tend to last a lifetime and I don't have to buy it again.
I can't even fathom the amount of money I've saved from buying older used vehicles and doing all my own automotive work on them, or fixing all my appliances. I couldn't fathom a $400 vehicle payment. My prius I've had for three years I installed a new oem hybrid battery in and have a grand total of about $7,000 into (three years of tires and replacement parts and buying the car itself). Never had a vehicle loan in my 25 years of driving.
I wouldnt dream of swapping out a gas tank, or a combustion engine, but I did a diy battery swap on my gen 1 Leaf, and it was surprisingly easy (well, physically it was hell, but engineering-wise it was a piece of cake).
My attitude to fixing anything is "well, it doesn't work now, it's not like I could break it more". Swapped out a 3 euro rubber ring on a 400 euro coffee machine last week, and feeling pretty good about it.
An interesting realization was that "saving money" and "reducing waste" are often competing optimums. I live in the developing world where there people waste a lifetime sitting at home doing nothing to save money. I am one of two or three people in my neighborhood with a job -- the rest "save tons more money than I do" but don't have jobs so their real income after inflation is negative.
Anyway, I figure out what my time is worth (based on what I estimate I could earn by grabbing extra contract work). Then I don't spend my time saving money unless it saves something at least comparable to my hourly rate, or it's in a context where working would be impossible, or there's a nontangible element (e.g. repairing a thing I like a lot).
I prioritize not wasting my time first (it's the only resource I can't buy more of), and spend most of my spare effort finding ways to make more money (I regularly cram-study 2-3 hours per day for this purpose, usually tech). Then with the extra money I make, I can save 80% of my income on a good month.
When I started this habit, I made about 135 USD per month and had zero savings. Even if I saved 100% of my earnings, it still amounts to essentially nothing -- so it became obvious that the best way to save more money, was to earn more money. When I had a little money, I didn't put it in the bank -- I invested it in myself by buying tools to learn more things and provide more services to accelerate my gains.
Anyway it's not the right advice for everyone, I'm just another fool like the rest of us, but I hope it's maybe useful to someone out there.
This comment generally only applies if you are earlier in your career or don't have much to spend (earning will result in more money than saving). If you're already making a middle to above average income, you're likely better off reducing spending and increasing investments β 99.99% of rich people (including the minority born poor) don't get rich through their labor (wage); they get rich through assets, whether through owning and building a business, or buying and holding shares in them.
I agree to a large extent! There are some interesting caveats though (mainly that I'm not in the USA). Six years ago I had a Vietnamese company license and 0$. I'm only very recently anything like "middle class" so I don't have much experience with it.
The company license was key (as you say), but not due to growing it as an asset -- it was more accurately an instrument to extract remuneration based on the value I deliver, instead of just the amount of time I spend. It also gave me control of how I spend my time. That meant that early on, I could only tackle low-value work and times were tough... but eventually I could solve more expensive problems and demand far more than I could as an employee. Selling solutions as a contractor (especially to foreign companies) made a ton more money than selling my labor as an employee.
In other words, my company is not worth much money as an asset, because without me, it's non-functional. I also work with a lot of foreign VCs and am convinced that private equity inflates valuations pre-IPO by enough that there's a lot less upside to capture than there used to be. Gone are the days when a private investor could buy e.g. Microsoft shares and see a 30x upside. Also, I'm in Vietnam -- we do have a functional stock market, but the volume is much lower and stock ownership less attractive overall. Anyway, overall it would be hard to sell my company.
So there is a decent argument that my optimal path really is though labor -- but definitely not through "wages". Working for wages was always a mess where I only got paid half the time, and had to work all the time. Also it means my visa status depends on my employer, which has always lead to flagrant abuse. With my own company, I get more stable visa status.
I've also been offered equity for my work. However, I have said no 100% of the time and this has never been a mistake so far. One day maybe, but equity is a weirder prospect here than in the USA.
So I focus on selling the solutions to the most expensive problems I can solve. That's put me on track to a home + modest retirement for my wife and I. That's "enough money" for me and I will likely go back to academia and volunteer work ASAP. I have no desire for millions of dollars -- even if I can maybe see a possible path to it.
I wish you and your family the best in that endeavour.
Can I ask what job/s you did starting off?
Ah, I was foolish enough to do web development in the developing world. It seemed like a good idea at the time -- as the economy grew, I reasoned businesses would need websites -- so I started a company to do this. In truth, it was really hard to bring client expectations in line with reality, most businesses were rent-seekers and did not want to invest even a small amount in their future, and I had stiff competition from undocumented migrant workers from the West that did not have any overhead. I barely scraped by at the time, and now platforms like Wix / Facebook / Grab / Lazada capture nearly all of that market anyhow.
Those were the early days of running my company. Later, I got into prototyping, which was a vertically-integrated margin business instead of a horizontal volume one (the former is much easier to run in Asia!). There is very little competition in my niche, but pivoting was brutally hard due to my low income at the time. I also got into writing about the things I was working on, which helped pay the bills. In many ways, my time spent here is an experiment in reflecting on some of the lessons I've learned.
Before that, I managed a branch of an Australian advertising company. That was my first job in Vietnam. I replaced seven or eight people. I received my salary less than half the time -- but what can you do when your visa depends on your employer? Those years were quite bad too.
Prior to immigrating, I worked in medical research, and before that I was a scientist. Those years were pretty easy (even if they did not seem so at the time), but also around then I became acutely aware that I had no future in my home country. Looking back, I'm grateful for that -- I had no right to see that far ahead, or with such clarity. It was pure luck that I had all the right ideas in my mind at the same time.
Buy and use whole chickens instead of buying chicken pieces. They're not difficult to break down yourself, a youtube tutorial is all you need.
Then keep the bones and stuff that would normally be considered waste. Put them into sturdy ziplock bags and freeze until you have a few of them. Then take them out and use them to make a chicken stock that can be the base of a soup or stew.
Add to that, onion butts, potato peels, corn cobs, tough mushroom stems, etc. All great for stock.
Not really a money saver, but I've been buying shampoo and conditioner bars. They often come in cardboard or paper wrapping instead of plastic containers like regular shampoo and conditioners. I enjoy the reduced plastic waste, and they don't take up as much space in the shower.
Adding some more
Im pretty certain since cardboard has plastic on the outer layer for graphics
Yeah peel off plastic the rest is compostable even the ink used on cardboard
If you have a dishwasher, do NOT rinse things before putting them in. Just scrape off the bits into the bin. A big part of the efficiency of a dishwasher comes from not running more water or the water heater unnecessarily. If you rinse you might as well hand wash.
Also, use the cheap powder and make sure to use it in the prewash phase.
Good tech connections video: https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04
To continue your first point buying a decent shaving puck and brush goes a lot further than buying shaving cream. Plus, I find it much more soothing on my face than the cream. A decent shaving soap is ~$5 and lasts a month at least.
You can also buy bar body wash instead of liquid, which is far cheaper as well.
If you have space to store stuff buy bulk in things that donβt expire.
Make your own cleaners for some things. Vinegar, dawn soap, and rubbing alcohol are the base for most.
Boardwalk laundry detergent has been a great cost saver. You have to buy 40 lbs at a time, but it works great. We typically use half the recommended amount since itβs made for larger washers.
Watch for commercial products as sometimes this is the way to go for simple items that need to be durable.
I think I'll be looking into Boardwalk. I haven't heard of that before. How long does that 40lb detergent bucket last you?
About 6 months. It even seems to be working for the sensitive skin person in the house.
Plants / gardening.
You get free food while reducing waste in its purest form. I have alot of indoor plants giving me seasoning, fruits and vegetables that are also pretty plants and great for the indoor environment.
If you don't own it, don't pay for it. That's one of my main principles and the motivation why I don't pay for streaming services anymore. I also noticed that I wasn't enjoying music and movies as much anymore anyway when it was in such high quantities. That's just about saving money.
Other one is, I don't buy anything of which i know of that it won't work or keep much of its value anymore after several years. So I rarely buy anything with irreplaceable batteries, that basically ends up on the junk pile after 3 years.
Chest freezer if you have room for it, and a Costco membership if there's one within a reasonable drive. Being able to buy in bulk and freeze what you don't use can save a lot of money over time. Costco gas is also typically the cheapest so you will save a few dollars each time you fill up your car too.
We also save all of our egg cartons and donate them to the elementary schools. Teachers love using them to help students learn math, especially fractions. They're also useful for arts and crafts. Check with the school office before dropping them off, but I've never had the schools be anything less than enthused to have these.
I also use a double edge safety razor, but have an electric razor also for a quick morning shave. Other things I do:
I cut my hair with clippers I bought 15+ years ago for the price of 1-2 haircuts. This probably only works for people with simple, short hair, but has saved me thousands of dollars compared to getting a monthly haircut at $20+
We put a basket with cloth napkins next to the dining table and a basket with washcloths on the kitchen counter and have drastically reduced the quantity of paper towels that we use
Use a budget
I use a $20 beard trimmer to buzz my whole face twice a week. It lasts five years or so. I do still have to shave occasionally but
I second the safety razors. Except I've been running through the same box since 2016 and I'm barely half through. Takes a bit to learn, but when I want a real smooth shave nothing beats it (except maybe an actual blade razor).
When I get up in the mornings, I just don't want to do all the wet shave stuff. I use an electric razer. I have one at work (I work a 48 hour shift) that's 15 years old I paid $175 for that still works great (replaced the battery in it once. A $6 18650 battery) and one I've had 3 years now I paid $100 for. In the grand scheme of things a few hundred bucks for 15 years of shaving and still going is really a drop in the bucket.
The college geography department will sometimes sell old and outdated maps to raise some funds, rather than just recycling them. They make great wrapping paper that's unique to you.