#9 - Saving Cash Is Not 'Tire'some At All!

 

Recently I purchased a set of winter tires for my wife's Toyota Echo, and found them on Kijiji.ca. Her Bridgestone Blizzak's, purchased about five or so years ago, had finally worn down and needed to be replaced. A new set of tires would have run about $550 or more, plus taxes, installed, yet I was able to find a brand new set of older inventory Toyo Observe tires for $200 plus tax at a local dealership, saving close to four hundred dollars!

Never underestimate the savings you can find by using sites like Craigslist, or Kijiji, or other similar buy-sell sites. Of course there was a chance that the right tires in the right size at the right time would be unavailable, but then again, it was well worth the money saved to spend ten minutes or so to find this spectacular deal!

#8 - Dehumidifiers Anyone?

 

Made a trip to the local metal recyclers on my way in to Stratford to rund some errands, dropped off my little bit of scrap, and noticed a dehumidifier sitting there that someone had recently dropped off. Knowing that twice a year Canadian Tire gives away a $25 gift card for turning in your broken busted non functioning dehumidifiers, I tossed it in the back of the van, and proceeded on my way. First I will try it out to see if it can actually work, and if not, I will just store it for a month or two til the next gift card giveaway!

#7 - Oatmeal Instead Of Cereal

 

Want to save a cool $500 a year with ridiculously little effort? Well instead of buying overpriced prepackaged cereals like Rice Krispies, Cheerios, or (God forbid) Count Chocula, cut back or eliminate them entirely! Just buy Quaker quick oats or similar, and have these instead of cereal two or three mornings a week. Not only do you cut down on the expensive cereal, you also save on milk as well.

#6 - Save On Straws

 

I washed the dishes tonight, and tossed a half dozen plastic straws in the drying rack. At the rate our kids use straws, we would probably spend $150 every year if we tossed each after a single use. My solution is to place them in the sink with the hand washing, and once in a while run a pipe cleaner through them. We buy about one pack of 100 straws every 9 months or so. Just clip the ends if they are getting crushed and hard to use.

#5 - Buy A Bread Machine

Two or three times a week, I load up about 45 cents worth of ingredients into our trusty Cuisinart Convection Breadmaker, press a few buttons, and then sit back and relax... Two and a half hours later, out comes a beautiful loaf of fresh homemade bread! And with a typical loaf of bread from the supermarket costing nearly three dollars or more nowadays, you can recoup your cost of one of these babies in about six months flat! As an added bonus, every Friday we use it to make pizza dough for delicious home baked pizza! This $160 or so investment easily saves between $200 and $400 per year, or more!

#4 - Buy The Ugly House, Silly!

It never ceases to amaze me when I watch these home renovation / house flipping / real estate shows on HGTV. Time and time again a property sits around until somene drops a few thousand bucks on paint and repairs, stages the place, and then buyers are all over the place, and a bidding war ensues! If you take any notice of these shows, they illustrate the simple fact that when buying a home, a purchaser is willing to spend up to five or even ten times the money that a seller will put into fixing a place up! Does it make any sense to buy a house for say $350,000 that is nice and pretty and staged, when the same place could be had for up to tens of thousands of dollars less because it is in need of paint? Save yourself tens of thousands of dollars by not getting sucked into the real esate buying phenomenon of staged homes. Find the right house, and get a better price because it is a bit dumpy!

#3 - Composting At Home

Virtually everything organic (except meat) can be composted. Save yourself between $20 to $60 year on garbage tags or pickup fees by reducing the amount of trash you place at the curb. Additionally, don't give away your compost to the city for free for their 'green bin' program, as your home made compost will save you from buying fertilizer next year! Get a cost-subsidized compost bin from your municipality, find a home for it in your yard, and make your own fertilizer!

#2 - Garbage Tag Sharing

Okay, I will admit this one is pretty darn cheeky! Many smaller municipalites use a paid garbage tag system for trash collection. Well wouldn't you know it, but I have a neighbor a few doors down who has a habit of putting out barely half a bag of garbage every collection... I think you can figure out what I do to save anywhere from $20 to $40 a year! Hey, their garbage gets collected, my garbage gets collected, and the municipality gets paid for their sticker: Everyone wins!

#1 - Check Timmie Into The Boards

Save $400, $800, or even $1200 a year, depending on your coffee drinking habits (savings based on a one, two, or three coffee per day habit). We all know that a Tim Hortons coffee now costs about $2.50 (that's $1.75 for the coffee and 75 cents for the accompanying donut - who are you trying to kid). So go buy yourself a coffee grinder for $19.99 at Canadian Tire, a Melita coffee pot and filter cone, and a pack of 100 filters. Buy your beans in 1 kilogram bags for about $8.99, grind them at home every morning, at a total cost of between $10 and $30 each month! Presto, coffee that is twice as good, at one quarter of the price!

So What's This About Anyway

Pretty simple. If you read this blog, you will learn one hundred real ways to save money. Some of these I have implemented, and some of them I will research, discover, test, and let you know about. Either way, if you find finances are tight, and live from paycheck to paycheck, you owe it to yourelf to follow this blog.

I will not ask you for money. I will not tell you about sure-fire ways to make millions while you sleep. I will just tell you the best ways to keep your money in your pocket. Pretty simple.