Personalfinance tips

We talked about starting a cheap hobby earlier to save money, but gardening is more than just a cheap hobby. It's a way of life that could save you $600 a year or more on groceries. Even if you're living in a big city, you could grow a few things on your apartment porch to get $100 or so in savings per year. Best of all: gardening is fun. Once you start, it's hard to stop.

One of the best ways to save more money and become more financially independent is to learn more about how money works. The best way to learn more about money is to read a book or two on personal finance. This is the perfect opportunity for you to hit up the library as we talked about in money saving tip #24. PS: If you want to read the best fiction books in quick 15-minute summaries, check out Blinkist. I use it to read a book every day.

You're not doing yourself any good by living in too much house. More house means more money. You know what more money means? More problems. The truth is you'll be just as happy – or happier – in a smaller house. If you find a cheaper place and you can afford to move, it could save you a lot of money in the long run. If you can't afford to move, try renting out your spare room on Airbnb.

Buying lunch at work is awesome because it's delicious and convenient, but it's not great for your wallet. A typical take-out lunch could cost you twice as much – or more – than a home packed lunch. Here's how much money packing a lunch could save you.

Spotify, Hulu, Netflix, Apple music, there are so many different subscription services nowadays it's hard to keep track! I suggest going through all your subscriptions and figuring out which ones you need and which ones you don't. If you need help, Trim can track your subscriptions automatically and cancel the ones you don't need for you.

Back in Highschool, I wasted a lot of money on fast food. I can tell you it definitely wasn't worth it, and it was probably bad for my health, too. Skip the fast food and make extra portions of your meals and freeze them. That way if you're ever in a pinch you can just heat up a leftover for a nice healthy homecooked meal.

The 24-hour rule is a key tip to stop wasting money. If you're about to buy something, stop yourself and sit on it for 24-hours. At the end of the 24 hours you can then decide whether the purchase is worth it or not. For more expensive purchases, upgrade to the 30-day rule. It's the same thing except you wait for 30 days instead of 24-hours. But you already knew that.

This one sort of contradicts the last money saving tip, but I specifically said to make a separate email for promotions. Once you do that, make sure your primary email address is unsubscribed from all retailers. Then you won't be bombarded by promos all the time and if you need a nice deal you can hop over to your promo email address and see them all in one place.

I'm not encouraging you to shop, but if you need to buy something anyway, take advantage of email signup promos. A lot of online stores will give you fat discounts if you sign up for their mailing list. Before you go crazy though, I suggest creating a separate email for these promo emails otherwise you might be tempted to buy more in the future.

Some people think saving money is all about finding the cheapest things, but that's wrong. Think about it: Would you rather spend $10 on something that will last a year or $50 on something that will last 10 years? I'd choose the latter.