Living Within Your Means

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Far too often today I see people shopping and buying for status associated with those items. Spending outside ones means or spending without anticipation of your future financial situation will inevitably catch up with you. I know it certainly caught up with me and my husband.

Paying for Ambiance

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Did you know that you pay for ambiance? Did you know you actually pay for those fancy fancy carts, fancy shopping bags, and employees who are trained to cater to your every whim. I personally consider myself a pretty low maintenance individual so I make a point to not frequent places where I am actually paying for anything other than the product or products I am buying. 

Freezing Your Food

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Freezers are very valuable appliances. I save a great deal of money by freezing most of my food. Yes of course you can buy those pre-frozen bags of food but we pay for the convenience of having someone cut up those onions and carrots for us.

Homemade Homemaker

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Another way to maximize ones budget is to go homemade as often as possible. People pay for convenience. We pay extra to have someone do the work for us. If our income is limited we can view homemade as paying ourselves to do this same work. By paying ourselves instead of some outside individual we pocket that money plus, we have the benefit of actually knowing what goes into our homemade items. 

Getting Help from a Hobby

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One valuable way I am able to stretch a limited income is by looking for ways to earn additional money. Whether it is selling the items I re-purpose or having a yard sale, I am always looking for ways to earn additional income outside my regular salary. 

Being A Handy Person

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I know I talked in one of my previous posts about the importance of doing it yourself to save money. I want to stress the importance of doing things yourself again because I think it is one of the easiest ways you can save money. 

Student Loan Debt Secrets of Success

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So as I mentioned previously, I am in fact a PhD student. As a matter of fact, I have been in school nonstop my entire life. The longest break from school I have ever had was a summer. I went High School, College, Masters, onto PhD. People often hear this and are shocked because most people think of being a student as a financial death sentence.