6 Quick Money Saving Ideas So Easy You Can Practically Do Them in Your Sleep!

I try to keep myself busy with little projects on the weekend to keep from getting bored or going crazy especially on rainy days. More often than not, there is an (accidental) money saving component like planting all of this year’s container garden with seeds I found during a junk drawer clean out just to see if they will grow.

Since most of these little projects and happy accidents are too small for their own blog post, but still pretty darn useful, I figured why not put them in an old school round up post of quick and easy money saving hacks?

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1. Make it easy to take reusable items with you when you leave the house. I started using a Water bottle carrier like this one to carry one of the sports bottles I keep filled with water in the refrigerator with me, when I’m out and about.

I’m not much of a soda drinker and prefer water but of course could fill your bottle with iced tea, drink mix, etc. This way I don’t have to adsorbent prices for a bottle of water at a festival, the zoo, or where ever BYO is allowed and is easy to refill for free at a water fountain. My carrier has a little pocket for my phone and cash, which means I don’t have to deal with a purse during playtime either.


2. Take care of your stuff. Try to have it fixed before replacing it. Thanks to a reader tip, I now use a razor blade sharpener like this one to sharpen  my disposable razor after every time I use it (it works on cartridge razor blades too.) he says the sharpener gives him a great shave and makes his razors last for at least a year. So far so good!

On a much bigger scale, I fixed the error code on my washing machine by cleaning the filter (thanks to YouTube,) instead of calling a repair person or replacing the washing machine when it stopped working. Actually I made money on the project because a dime was clogging the filter and causing the error.


3. Before you ditch something because you hate it, try using it another way. For example I bought these lemon green tea bags to drink when I was sick with a sore throat but wasn’t overly fond of them. I used them to make iced tea on a blistering hot day and like them much better this way! 
Now I have a delicious excuse to make and drink iced tea by the gallon! I’m happy. My cupboard space is happy. My compost bin is happy because it gets all of the paper wrappers and spent tea bags. A win - win!


4. Keep checking in with memberships and subscriptions you buy to take advantage of new services or to end them if they remove the services you originally bought it for. For example by keeping tabs on the new services that keep popping up in our Amazon Prime membership, we use it as our TV streaming service, for free ebooks and audio books, and just recently I filled a big spice jar of basil for 22 cents at Whole Foods bulk bins using their new Prime Members Only discount. Don’t believe me? Sign up for a FREE Amazon Prime  30 day trail here and check it out for yourself!

I also paired Ibotta rebates (learn more about them here) with the few things at !Whole Foods I bought to save 25% off my total. Amazing because I actually saved more money shopping at the store nicknamed Whole Paycheck than I did later that day at Aldi for the first (and probably last) time in the history of ever.

I guess another money saving hack is to never assume the prices and savings will always be too high at the expensive store and always be the lowest at the cheap store.


5. Sometimes shopping in unexpected places brings saving. I was introduced to Facebook Marketplace (basically it’s like Craigslist but on a Facebook tab) by friends of mine who furnished most of their house with antique mid century modern furniture they bought off Facebook Marketplace for cheap.

I loooooove yogurt! Thanks doc!

  I needed two storage baskets for a laundry room project, and accidentally found two that matched what I already had in that room on Marketplace. Five dollars later, I had an organized room and saved myself an expensive trip to The Container Store because I have no will power in that store.


6. Try to use the stuff you already have to the best of its ability or in new to you ways. Thanks to Lacey’s vet, I leveled up my my Instant Pot game by finally making yogurt, something I’ve been resisting for years, since we just don’t eat that much yogurt on the regular.


Lacey’s vet told me to add yogurt to Lacey’s food after she got very, very sick. I’m going through a lot of plain yogurt and once I found a yogurt recipe that makes only a half gallon (or less) of yogurt I gave it a try.

It was super easy and cost less than 2 dollars instead of the 4 – 6 I was paying for less yogurt.  Instead of writing a tutorial, I’ll direct you to the cookbook I used Instant Pot® Obsession: The Ultimate Electric Pressure Cooker Cookbook for Cooking Everything Fast. I rely on this Instant Pot cookbook so much I gave one to every member of my family for Christmas – along with an Instant Pot.

Looking for more frugal hacks and money saving ideas? Check out the following tips - and more! - below!

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