6 Easy Ways to Put Money Back in Your Wallet

Fall is here, and holiday season is right around the corner. If the economy hasn’t already had you thinking about your money, then holiday-related expenses undoubtedly will. Did you know you likely have several easy money drains that you can stop up with a few alternatives? Here are some areas to reevaluate if you need to carve a bit off your spending:

Cable TV. How much TV do you actually watch? I used to have HBO, and there was basically one show I watched: Sex and the City. Later I did away with cable and instead went to Blockbuster and Netflix and watched an entire season over a few days. Yes, I did miss out on that instant gratification of seeing what was happening to Carrie and her pals every week, but it was tolerable. And when I watched all of those episodes over a few days, I was luxuriating in the series as if it were brand new.

Movies at the theater. This has become extremely expensive, even for a family of two. I purchased a single ticket recently for the matinee, and it ran me over $9. So going early isn’t inexpensive anymore. The alternatives: If you want that theater experience, see if there’s a “dollar theater” in your area. These are usually slim on the aesthetics and the offerings in the way of popcorn and Sour Patch Kids, but you also may enjoy yourself just as much. If the theater experience isn’t really necessary, go back with Netflix. In fact, consider having a few of your movie-going friends join Netflix at the 1 movie per month rate. Befriend each other on Netflix, and plan what movies you’ll rent. You could start a new trend of getting together for a new movie a week for less than one monthly theater ticket.

Magazines. I look beside me, and what do I see? A wicker basket full of magazines. There are some industry ones I get here as part of a membership, but the others—Oxygen, Bookmarks—each have information I could easily have found online with a little googling. Health and body-building sites are easily found online (a favorite: www.bodybuilding.com). Book reviews are found all over. Amazon publishes The New York Times Bestseller List as well as Best of the Year So Far, Award Winners, and others. I truly don’t need a magazine about books. And while there are some beautiful magazines available with enticing recipes, I would suggest that you never need a magazine about cooking—or a cookbook, for that matter. Check out sites like allrecipes.com or epicurious.com. Both have a plethora of recipes as well as features such as adding recipes to your own virtual recipe box. The ratings by other cooks makes the sites invaluable. After all, if you purchase a cookbook or a magazine, you really don’t know whether the recipe is actually good.

Newspaper. Do you read it? All of it? Could you just as easily enjoy compiling your news and entertainment reading into an RSS feed reader? This is what I do, and I haven’t missed the newspaper since. Plus there’s no mess—no newspaper pile to recycle, no ink-dyed hands to wash. I’m able to tailor my RSS feeds to subjects that I like, and I find that I can adjust the screen to a format that allows me to browse and read quickly, filtering out those stories that don’t appeal.

Cleaners. The cleaning aisle in the grocery market has a cleaner for everything—one for mirrors, one for the toilet, scrubbing agents, foaming agents, spot cleaners for carpets, tile cleaners. The list goes on and on. Over the last year, as my current bottles of cleaner run dry, I’ve been reevaluating the need to purchase a replacement. What I’ve found already: Ajax or baking soda work just fine to scrub the toilet clean. One jug of ammonia costs less than a dollar and can be diluted with water in a spray bottle to create an all-purpose cleaner that works great on kitchen and bathroom counters as well as mirrors. Oxy-Clean, or the store brand generic form of the same, is terrific as a laundry booster or a spot cleaner on the carpet. A little goes a long way, too. Often furniture polish doesn’t need to be used every time you clean or polish wood. As Cheryl Mendelson stated in her book Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, a slightly moistened cloth picks up dust extremely well.

Paper Towels and Napkins. I heard an ad for Publix, our local grocery store, that stated the average family goes through several rolls of paper towels a month. This can add up to over $500 a year. Several years ago I switched over to white, lintless cotton cleaning rags purchased through The Clean Team. I have a stack of neatly folded clean rags ready to be used at any time. I keep a dirty rag bin in my laundry room. When it nears full, these get washed in hot water. The result is I very rarely purchase paper towels. There are times that certain spills or microwave needs just seem to call for a paper towel instead, but those are so rare that a roll of paper towels lasts a long time. I never use paper napkins. I purchased cloth napkins years ago. I sprayed them with some Scotch-Guard, and they’ve lasted for years. They’re softer, and they feel much more elegant and homey than a scratchy paper square, anyway! I have no idea what my money savings have been since switching to cloth towels and napkins, but I imagine it’s significant. Then there’s the significant impact of paper products on the environment to consider.

All combined, these are pretty painless adjustments to make. And if you have several of these areas you can improve in, it could easily translate into thousands of dollars saved per year.

What other areas can you think of that are money drains in your budget? Let’s hear them in the comments.

Photo courtesy of Rob Lee.

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