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With the economy firmly in a recession, its at this time that consumers have to start thinking about tightening their belts in an effort to cut costs and save a bit more money for a rainy day. Clearly for some people I am preaching to the converted, but for many others out there, the idea of living frugally seems somewhat of a necessary evil in the current economic climate, so it’s best to ease the pain as much as possible.

Frugal Living Tips - No. 1

If you are used to buying a new car every few years, then don’t! The first three years of a car’s life are when it depreciates (loses value). It’s a much better idea to buy a car that’s already three years old and replace every two years. This way you will get some other sucker to pay for the depreciation, while you still get two years of hassle free, low service costing years of motoring for a fraction of the price of new car ownership.

If you’re worried about the plate, simply use a small fraction of the money saved on an private plate that doesn’t give away your cars age, simple!

Frugal Living Tips - No. 2

If you are used to living the high life and eating out on a regular basis, then continue, just alter your habits slightly. Cut down your weekly eating out slightly, if you usually go out three time a week, cut down to two times a week, or swap one night for a night at the cinema, much cheaper. If you really can’t cut back, either cut back on the amount of wine you order, or simply switch to a BYO (bring your own) restaurant and take along a bottle of plonk from the supermarket, it’ll no doubt be at least half price compared to the same bottle on the wine list.

Frugal Living Tips - No. 3

Go through your monthly outgoings and work out which ones are a complete waste of money. For example, are you paying £12 a month to your bank to be part of their (slightly pretentious) premier or advantage account? It usually means you get some free breakdown cover and a crummy amount of life insurance that wouldn’t be enough to pay for a funeral! Cancel this and use your banks’ normal, non-premier banking service, breakdown should only cost about £40 a year and if you have a mortgage you should already have enough life insurance.

You may find in the process of doing this that you are shelling out for a gym membership each month - ask yourself this - how many times do you use it? If you use it less than 10 times a month, realistically it’s not worth it and you should stop wasting your money.

Review your sky/cable package, you may find you’re paying way over the odds. This can usually be rectified by cutting back on some of the channels you have or switching to a cheaper supplier.

Remember though that this cost cutting is not meant to increase your disposable income such that you can go out and spend these savings on something nice, the idea is to put the money away into a savings account for a rainy day. It’s no good making budget cuts on non-essentials if you then go and blow the resultant monthly savings on some other tatt that you didn’t need!

 

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