Save a little in a day, Save a lot in a year
I sit on my sofa in my living hall, thinking back; what else can I do cut down my expenses. If I cut down too much, I’m afraid that I’m not living in a standard that can benefit myself and my family. After I realized the coins rattling around in your pocket can add up to big savings over time, I write all the activities which occur money. When I cut down a little things of what not necessary, I may save a little in a month, developing into a snowflake and gradually save big in a year, or two.
- Cut down ASTRO. How many hours did your family spend time in front of TV? Make your time to analyze back whether is it worth to watch HBO or buy DVD, watch football at home or Kedai Mamak, let your kids watch Playhouse Disney Channel or buy a copy kids educational DVD from a store. I spend the most of my time reading novels, browsing stuffs on internet, and writing blog. Cutting Astro is no big deal for me.
- Bald is the new style. Since I don’t know what to do with my hair as it doesn’t fit in any hairstyle trends, I cut it short. Really short that you can see my head skin from 200 meters. I bought automatic machine and cut my hair by myself (with a little help from my wife).
- Turn the lights off or change the lamp. A lot of people argues that at least one lamp remains active during the nights to scare away a house burglar. Fair enough, I found out that regular fluorescent light consumes 50 wattage. While CFL only uses 14 wattage where the output is as good as regular fluorescent light. So I changed the lamps, from regular to CFL one. That might save electricity a bit.
- Accelerates and Brake slowly. Pushing the pedal slowly and wait the momentum to build up patiently might cut down the petrol consumption when driving. If your car has an extra feature such as cruise mode, you should use it as to get better fuel-efficient benefit from constant speed
- Avoid stuck in a heavy traffic might saves you a lot. RM50 worth of petrol can advance my car from Kuala Lumpur to Gua Musang. But if I’m stuck in a traffic doing back and forth to work and home, the petrol consumption jumps, and I can only get 250 km for RM50 petrol.
- Only buy things when on sale. Here is my wife’s favorite point. I always tell her to buy things when they are on sale only. If she has a patience to wait until the end of the year, she would enjoy further price cut because that is when ‘the sales war’ begins.
- Change to wireless broadband. Try to analyze the usage of internet your houselhold. If you are the only person who actively using internet for browsing purpose, you should commit your loyalty to wireless broandband because they are far more cheaper than bloodsucking TMnet Streamyx. But if you are a download junkie and watch youtube all the time, like me, you shall not leave the Streamyx.
- Read online instead of newspaper. Some people says that reading newspaper is a bad and unproductive activities. For reading newspaper is a waste of money. Why pursue newspaper at the stand or Kedai Runcit since we have free and online newspaper. It’s about time we change.
There are lot of things around your room and your environment that can contribute to your determination of saving money. I rethink and rethink all activities that can be cut down its expense to help me to save one sen everyday. List down the activities that occur money help me to draw the first step of saving money.