If you are like many thousands of Americans you would probably love to start saving some money but have not got a clue as to where to start.Here are five brilliant tips to get you started.

1.  Magazines cost a lot of money.  The mail box of a normal US family gets filled with magazines on a regular basis.  He will have a sports or gardening mag, she will have a home or fashion one and the kids will each have their favorite.

On average each of these magazines costs about $30 a year for a subscription.  That works out at a lot of money in a year. If there are five in your family and you have only one a month each that works out to $150 you could save straight away.  The same information is freely available on the internet these days so you do not really need them.

2.  Start bulk buying. How do you think that the big companies can offer goods cheaper than the normal high street store?  It is simply because they buy in bulk massively. Although you will probably not be able to get the discounts that they get you need to look out for the offers for bulk buying.

You can sometimes save on non perishable items by about 20 or 30 per cent. There are a lot of household items such as cans of food, which you can buy in this way.`

3.  Cut out the fast food meals out. When I was young I remember that we only went out for a meal for a special occasion such as a birthday or wedding anniversary. Nowadays, with the onset of fast food restaurants and people’s generally more packed lifestyles, it has become the normal rather than the exception.

Eating at home can save as much as 50% on your food bill.  Not only that it is usually a lot healthier option as well.

4.  Plan ahead what your meals will be. Once you have decided that meals out are economically quite crippling you need to do a bit of menu planning.

Spare a bit of time at the weekend to make a plan of what you will eat for the following week. Then make sure that you get the meal for the next day out of the freezer before you go to bed.  They will gradually thaw out in the fridge. So when you get home it will be ready to cook.

Just go out to eat once a week and you will find that you have saved enough to go to a nice restaurant.

5.  Make your own skin cream. There are probably some basic items already in your pantry that could help you to cut back on the money you spend on your weekly skin treatments.  You do not have to spend a lot of money to look beautiful – no matter what the TV adverts tell you.A few examples:-

a) a good way to exfoilate your dry skin is with oatmeal and honey.

b) To soften your skin put some ginger in each time you take a bath.

c) another good skin softener is a mixture of milk and cucumber.

With these few simple ideas you can be well on the way to being in total control of your personal finances and even find a little for a special vacation.

0

Follow me on Twitter here

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!