Thanks for the Grand Pappy link. Good stuff.

Another couple of small tips: Contemplate what your paying for 'convenience'.

A coworker would drop by a coffee shop every day before work. Her typical cost was something like $4 for a fancy coffee and $2.50 for a pastry. Five days a week and four weeks a month she spends $130 a month.

An alternative would be to get coffee and the danish at home. Set her coffee machine to start brewing before she gets up and keep pastries on hand the total cost is about $1.50 Or about $30. Saving a smooth $100 every month.

I started bringing my lunch instead of eating out. The difference is about $20 a week or $80 a month.


Look at those cable bills. Used to be you got something for $20. Now most are well over $50 a month for 45 channels of 'nothing on'.

Ask around and see what channels you can get if you have an antenna. Digital TV may provide a good picture even with poor reception. Even if you only get a couple of channels what are you really missing?

I had cable and went to an antenna. I still see most of my favorite shows and I fill in the difference with movies I get free from the county library and the internet. The antenna, amplifier and cables cost about $100. The cost of two months cable. Now I save $50 a month and have for several years.


When running a computer there are a lot of good free programs:

Only a fool would go on the internet without a firewall, anti-virus and an ad-ware remover and pop-up blocker. But why pay money if you don't have to.

One of the better firewalls is Zone Alarm and it's free for personal use. Lavasoft's Ad-Aware is an effective mal-ware remover that is entirely free. Spybot-Search and Destroy is a combined anti-virus and malware remover that is free. Spyware Blaster, an immunity type unit, is another and is also free. For anti-virus AVG is well rated and it is entirely free.

Browsers: Firefox and Opera are free and more secure than IE.

Operating systems: There are many Linux based OSs out there for free. Ubuntu is entirely open sourced and is well supported.

Open Office has many features in common with MS Office. Difference is that it is both more secure and it's free.


A neighbor used to spend $50 a month for a gym membership. He took a few months worth of that membership and invested in some free weights and a stationary bicycle and started walking around the block for exercise. Because the gym is in his home both he and his wife exercise far more often. They are thinking of getting more equipment and because they haven't paid for a gym membership in over a year they can afford to.


Saving money is always good and it is hard to beat free.

Save those nickels because even though each of these suggestions is only a small gain of maybe $20 to $50 the difference between financial security and being in debt is often a matter of a few dollars a month. Every little bit helps.