What is the number one (or two) thing you do to save money?

[Anonymous]

We're trying to come up with new ideas.

I think ours is making a huge crock pot of beans every week and incorporating it into meals. It dropped our grocery bill by $125 a month and making our lunches every day for work instead of sporadically dropped our food bill by $150 a month

[Anonymous]

We stopped buying alcohol. We are by no means heavy drinkers, but I used to have a glass of wine every night for dinner, and DH had a beer. We bought not expensive, but nice beer and wine. It dropped our grocery bill by $130. I was amazed! We have fizzy water now

[Anonymous]

Absolute #1 is taking my lunch to work. If only I could get DH to do the same we'd really see savings!

Second is refilling a water bottle at the water cooler rather than buying multiple disposable bottles of water.

I also cut my husband's hair and get my own cut basically every 10-12wks rather than 6-8.

[Anonymous]

1. Food choices: We only go out to eat a maximum of once of week, sometimes not at all. Lunches are almost always brought from home. We rarely buy meat, and eat other forms of protein (mainly beans) instead. We make coffee at home (I love my Keurig!)

2. Money is automatically transferred from our checking to a high-yield savings account, which doesn't get touched at all

3. Coupons (grocery and non-grocery items), online coupons for stores, and waiting for sales.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. Food choices: We only go out to eat a maximum of once of week, sometimes not at all. Lunches are almost always brought from home. We rarely buy meat, and eat other forms of protein (mainly beans) instead. We make coffee at home (I love my Keurig!)

2. Money is automatically transferred from our checking to a high-yield savings account, which doesn't get touched at all

3. Coupons (grocery and non-grocery items), online coupons for stores, and waiting for sales.

Would you mind sharing where you found your high yield savings account?

[Anonymous]

Rent.

[Aimee4]

Got rid of cable. It was running us close to $200/month for cable & internet. Now we only have internet ($40/month) with Roku using Netflix and Hulu ($17/month).
We also opt to have money go directly to our savings account, and money automatically to kids college funds.
We got out of the habit of making lunches... but I think I need to get in the habit again.

[Anonymous]

We don't own (or lease) a car. Take metro/cab everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Stop breeding.

[Anonymous]

13:06 - that is interesting. We actually BOUGHT a car because our metro expenses were astronomical. It was costing us $15 a day (husband took train and bus 2 ways and I took train 2 ways) and we thought case would be cheaper.

We stopped paying for a housecleaner and started just biting the bullet and cleaning the darn house ourselves. It sucks, but we are saving $200 a month.

[Anonymous]

Prepay my mortgage. Saves us thousands over the term.

[Anonymous]

take lunch. eat out once a week (or only 2x a month sometimes). Use coupons and shop sales for food. Launder all DH's shirts instead of sending them out. signed up for windpower and cut our energy bill way down, no big vacations, cut the lawn service and do it ourselves, and we RARELY buy things with our credit card. There are others, but these are the big ones.

[Anonymous]

heh.. my phone wrote case, but meant to say "gas"

[Anonymous]

Cloth diapers.

[Anonymous]

Ditto on getting rid of cable, and reduced to sharing one car. We commute together, which has implications, but we make it work.

Also, about once a month I have a 5-day "eat what's in the house" rule. It forces me to use up cans/frozen food that would otherwise sit in the back of my cabinets/freezer.