So I’m sitting here listening to this great song I came across called “Acceptable in the 80s” by Calvin Harris and I feel motivated to write.

I have come up with a fair few ways since the last time I wrote to save a little money here and there and still be able to maintain your sanity.

1. Buy your veggies from the local farmer’s market. This cuts out all the middlemen and not only does the money go straight to the farmer, ALL of the money goes straight to the farmer allowing you to skip filling the pockets of corporate investors, “transportation engineers” (truck drivers), and pesticide companies. Better for you, the economy, and your neighbors. (And it also plays into the Organic/Fair Trade movement a bit!)

2. Instead of going to get your hair done, get creative. Invest in a curling iron and some hairspray (half the cost to get your hair done once). Either way, it’ll take you 2 hours to do it yourself or have someone else do it for you, and it’s much more gratifying to spend the time doing it yourself, if you can get it to look right! (I did this last night and came out with a rather cute Mod-style bouffant and all it cost was a pack of bobbi pins which are completely reusable and a tiny bit of hairspray out of a can I’ve had for 2 years!)

3. Carpool carpool carpool! If you can’t carpool, use public transportation, ride a bike (doubles as free exercise), invest in a motorbike (a Vespa, for example, that may take an extra 10 minutes to get you there and can even be taken only when it’s not raining, but will be a considerable savings on gas over time.)

4. If you are considering purchasing a vehicle, look into going Green (A great resource for this is found here Yahoo! Green ). Hybrid vehicles are plentiful these days and run nearly the same initial purchase cost as your gas-guzzling luxury vehicles (if not substantially less). On top of that, they get a solid 10-15 mpg extra meaning for ever gallon of gas you buy, you’ll probably get to go 1 1/2 times the distance!

If you can’t go Green in the car you’re buying, look into buying a car that you can convert into a greenmobile for a couple grand, such as a diesel which you can convert to biodiesel. (Of course, if you go biodiesel or biofuel, make sure there is a biofuel station within considerable distance of your home/office or you’ll just waste all the gas and money you’re saving driving to the nearest biofuel station which would defeat the purpose of conversion or going green in the first place!)

5. If you are a fashion nut but don’t like to invest ridiculous amounts in clothes you’re only wearing once or twice, go to a store like Forever21 or Charlotte Russe where you can get awesome clothes for $10-30 and accessories galore. When they go out of style, there are many things you can do with the clothes:

a. Put them in a box in your closet and forget about them. Your kids will LOVE them when they’re growing up (dress-up, retrofests at school, getting a good laugh at Mom & Dad, etc.)
b. Cut them up and make something else out of them (quilt, tablecloth, placemat, dishrag, headband, etc.)
c. Donate them to your local Goodwill, Salvation Army, homeless shelter, etc.

d. Place them on an auction site like eBay. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as they say! Someone

will

want your junk. Why not get an extra $5 or $10 back out of something that’s just going to sit around and gather dust?

6. Instead of buying full albums/cds, find an online service that allows you to download the mp3s you like (legally, of course). Find a site that will provide you previews of them beforehand so you can be sure you’re buying something you like. Spend the $10 extra you’d have spent on the whole CD to buy a stack of writeable CDs that you can burn your mp3s to, or get an mp3 player that you can place them on and carry them around with you wherever you go (preferable). In time, the $200 you’ve spent on the mp3 player and 10 cds’ worth of songs will easily be savings compared to the 10 actual cds you could have gotten for that cost that you have nothing to play them in!

Checking: $200

Savings: $100

(Progress is slow-going, but I’ll get there eventually! Nobody ever said saving was easy! Life comes at you fast!)

Stumble It!