Peter and I already told you about how we would like to buy a house someday–but houses are expensive. In order to achieve our goal we’re going to have to start saving some serious money. I poured over our credit cards for the past few months and found five things that we could easily change to start saving money.

#1 Only go grocery shopping once a week.

For awhile Peter and I were going to the grocery store every single day. We’d think about what we wanted for dinner, go to the store, and inevitably leave with a few impulse purchases. The impulse buys quickly added up and we were wasting A LOT of money every day.

# 2 Buy in bulk.

Like most people, we have lot of staples. In order to minimize costs we buy these things in bulk. We’ll go to Cost-Co and buy toilet paper, coffee, frozen chicken, and dog food. We always like to have wi for our guests so we buy it by the case from the Spec’s Outlet. Every time we go to one of these bulk stores we ask ourselves if we really need something before we buy it. If we’re unsure then we’ll put it in a mental maybe pile and won’t put it in the cart. If we’re still obsessing over it when it’s time to check out then we’ll go back and get it. If not, then we won’t waste the money. The inital cost is a lot, but we save a lot on the things that we would buy anyway.

#3 Bring your lunch to work.

I work in a sad little cubicle. It’s tempting to flee the cubicle for an hour a day to go out to lunch but eating out every day really adds up. Luckily for me, many of my co-workers eat lunch at their desks and there aren’t many appealing restaurants near the office. By bringing leftovers or frozen dinners bought at Costco, we save money and I can sometimes go home early!

#4 Hang out with your friends for free.

All too often when I want to see my friends we end up going out to dinner or out for drinks. One of my friends and I recently opted for a healthy option of meeting after work to go on a walk. We don’t have to spend money to hang out and we’re getting in some exercise.I hate working out but as we’re catching up on our week both time and miles fly by.

#5 Switch your soap.

Apparently the anti-bacterial soap that we have all sworn by isn’t really that beneficial to us and it’s definitely not good for the environment. You can read the article about it here but in summary regular soap kills 99% of bacteria that we have on our hands, leaving anti-bacterial soap as an unnecessary choice. The chemicals in the anti-bacterial soap kill the good bacteria in the environment and we spend more money. We’ve all been tricked by advertising! The good news is that now we know, we can resort back to the basic inexpensive soap.

What are you doing to save money?

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