The Online Investing AI Blog

This post over at Yahoo Finance is pretty typical of articles that tell us how to save a little money. Personally, I don’t know how great these morsels of advice really are, but they sure are popular. The most famous tidbit is

Forgo that Starbucks latte and retire a millionaire in 50 years.

I haven’t met anyone who got rich by skipping Starbucks, but maybe I will in 50 years. So, here’s some ideas that can help us save big money.

1. Instead of buying a new car, buy a reliable used car (Honda or Toyota) that is 1 – 3 years old. That will save $10,000 – $15,000 right off the bat, and makes it easier to pay cash. It’s hard to think of anything better than avoiding debt and interest payments.
2. Turn off the cable or satellite and sell the TVs. Most people spend $50 – $100 per month on TV service, and 8 hours a day watching it. That is $1,200 per year and 3,000 hours. This money can be used to invest or pay off debt.
3. Don’t use credit cards unless there is no other way to pay. Pay for everything with cash. Ever notice how when we use a credit card, we don’t feel like we are spending money? When we use a credit card, on average we spend 30% more than when we use cash. So just by taking the credit cards out of our wallet we can cut our expenses in a big way.
4. Replace credit cards with check cards. What’s the difference? A check card works just like a Visa card, but instead of going on a credit account, the money is simply debited from your checking account. They work everywhere a credit card works. (It is possible to survive without credit cards.) Using a check card makes us responsible for what we buy, and we see the money taken out of our account immediately.
5. Sell stuff on Amazon or eBay. Recently I got rid of a bunch of stuff that was sitting around that I really didn’t want. I like Amazon because the prices are much higher than on eBay. The caveat is that it takes longer, but who cares? It’s great to get rid of the stuff and make money, even if it takes a few weeks or months.
6. Stop expensive habits cold. We only miss things that we enjoyed recently. After going without something that we love, we adapt and tend to forget about it. Going out to expensive restaurants is a good example.
7. Don’t buy anything on credit. Buying everything with the money we have makes us responsible for what we buy. This will eliminate the purchase of all the stuff that we think we need (like iPhones), but we really don’t.

Have any other great ideas? Please share!

Related posts:

1. How To Save Money For Your Family At The Cinemas
2. Three Ways Saving Money Makes You A Better Person
3. Ten Ways To Make Money Without Trying
4. The Debt/Investment Curve
5. Saving Money With Visualization

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