Ways to stretch the budget

There are various ways of stretching your money when you have little or no income coming in.

A few ways to keep the basic neccesities of life at a low cost are the following:

• Sign up on company promotions that offer free samples of things from small samples of shampoo to samples of food. One website to look at is Free stuff Free Food Samples. The website has links on offers of free food and other business goodies.

• Other ways are to be a taste tester at food companies doing surveys. This can help for one or two days for any concerns about food. Companies like Dannon (diary products) ask for food tasters and a compensation of about $40 from doing a survey is an option. Sometimes surveys can be long and wanting description, but sometimes its worth the financial compensation for it. For the example of Dannon, go to dannon.com to look and see if you want this as an option.

• Other ways to acquire money in a pinch is to look around at local blood services. Depending on who is doing blood donations you may be compensated with money for donating blood plasma or whole blood. Charities like the Red Cross ask for voluntary donations while commercial operations sometimes will give you a small amount of money for your participation. Be sure to check your local phone book for your local services.
  
  Sometimes your local government may have an agency that helps evaluate the honesty of businesses in your area. Try to know the name of your local or regional government agency. For those in the U.S. the Better Business Bureau at bbb.gov is a helpful resource to evaluate a blood service before you go to one. I suggest doing this only if you are truly desperate for funds and have no income. Be sure you live a clean life and quit smoking or alcohol consumption so you can keep coming back if you need to. Blood plasma can be donated at a high frequency of one or two weeks between visits. Whole blood is a minimum of about three to four weeks between donations. Whole blood is paid higher than plasma donations. Plasma donations are pad more frequently.
  
  My suggestion is that if you have at least two people get in one this action, then one person can go one week and the other person can go the next week. The compensation money is not that high, but if you need money for one week of groceries, then this is an option. I have had two family members do this for a few times when both of them did not have jobs for a time and funds were very tight.

• Other ways are to volunteer a few times a week at a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen. Many times that can cut down your food bill and most of the time volunteers get to eat one meal after serving visitors From my experience the food is fine, usually things like chili, fried chicken, corn bread, or other inexpensive food bought through donations and items donated from farmers' markets and other companies. At least its a way to stretch the budget for groceries.

• Another way of stretching the budget are to do chores for older seniors in the community. Sometimes there are services with senior citizen programs that have people sign up and give their name out out to senior citizens that are willing to pay for chores to get done. Try using google.com to help you with searching your local area for announcement of that type.

Other ways are to cut out everything that can be cut.

• Cable and sattelite television subscriptions being cancelled.
• Cancel magazine subscriptions.
• Downgrading Internet connections from broadband to dial-up. Free and limited internet is available from NetZero.com with conditions of allowing advertising appearing with you. Private email accounts available from juno.com. Consider these as a possible option.
• Go without any alcoholic beverages. They are small luxuries you can survive without.
• Ration your groceries to their serving sizes on the nutrition labels on the packaging.
• Lefttovers in the refrigerator are always eaten and not forgotten.
• Occasionally skipping dinner when you are truly not hearing your stomach rumble for food.
• Wash your clothes in cold water whenever you can; it saves on the electricity bill.
• Hang dry your clothes on a clothesline in your basement/outdoors or on hangers on the shower bar that supports your shower curtain or buy a movable clothes stand. I have been drying my clothes on hangers for the last six or seven years and my clothes have probably lasted longer for that fact. Ironing is more of an inconvenience because of it, but the electricity used in ironing is about one-third or less compared to if you consistently use a clothes dryer.
• Buy jeans, dishes, some books, business attire and other durable items or classic style clothes from resale stores i.e. thrift stores. Sometimes there are retail chain stores that are specific as thrift stores and they usually have good quality. I have found that I have bought over 90% of my jeans from these stores and I estimate the cost per item is on average of what I would have spent going to retail stores buying them new.
• If you have some small bit of land or balcony, try growing some tomatoes in a pot or in a garden plot. It may be just one plant or a few more than that, but having a small way to have food security and something that you can produce to trade or sell to a customer is essential in this economy.
• Buy clothing repair books to to do-it-yourself simple repair on holes or threadbare areas. Make the clothes last.
• Use a microwave as much as possible to cook your food if you only have electricity as an option for a cooking stove. Gas is sometimes cheaper to cook things.
• Cook at home and bring your food in a tempered glass food container to work. You can buy those at Walmart or Target at a good price. A good name brand is SnapLock.
  [*} Buy groceries at discount grocery stores like Aldi's Foods, a nationwide discount food store with good quality food and a store locator at here The condition to go buy at the store is that you must supply your own bags for bagging groceries, like cloth bags or used grocery paper bags. Stores usually have with waist-high shelves to pull aside to to pack your own groceries after purchasing.
• Pay with cash as much as you can. The feel of money leaving your pocket prepares you psychologically to stick to a budget. Advice is that if something is about $60 or under, use cash and carry a minimum of $40 always in case a check, debit or credit card are denied.
• Get a job as a bank teller, data entry or call center operator. The jobs are monotonous or hearing angry people, but it can pay the bills to make ends meet.

Basic advice in tough economic times, live on half of what you normally do if you are living in a middle-class or upper class economic situation.

A proverbial statement I heard about one person say was, "Do not acquire what you need, acquire those things you can not afford to do without."

tag

Eat out a lot less, and when you do, try to keep it inexpensive. Keep track of everything you spend, even something as lowtech as a small notebook can be effective if you write everything down.

Buzzbee

There are many "easy" ways to save money. I have an entire website dedicated to helping people trim from there household budget at thriftytimes.com.

Here are a few suggestions taken from a thriftytimes article entitled 20 ways to save $500 for an emergency fund :

You have heard all those "experts" talk about a small cash emergency fund. Put away at least $500 in a savings account so you can draw on it in an emergency. Many people find this easier said than done. Well, here are 20 simple ways to make your emergency fund happen.

• Put aside your loose change. Saving 50 cents a day will help you save more than $180
• Always comparison shop. Savings on two expensive items could save more than $500
• Make your coffee at home. At 3.50 a day for 250 work days you would save $875
• Eat out one less time a month. At $20 savings per month that would save $240
• Bring your lunch to work. At $2.50 savings for each 250 days worked that would save $625
• Avoid brand named cereals and snacks. Shopping 52 times a year and saving $5 each time will save $260
• Purchase store brand over the counter drugs. Savings could be as much as $100
• Reduce credit card debt by $2,000 and save $300
• Avoid silly banking fees including bounced check fees or ATM fees and save $150 per year
• As your car gets older shop around for insurance and save $200 or more
• Find out if you can drop credit insurance on installment loans, particularly your mortgage. On every $20,000 savings would be $250
• Tune your car and make sure tires are properly inflated, yearly saving $100
• Choose a home near your work. Moving 10 miles closer could save more than $1,000
• Weather proof your home to save on heating and cooling bill. That could save $100 – 500
• Keep a list of clothing needs. Commit to purchasing only what is on the list and wait for good sales. Savings could be as much as $500
• Clean and iron your clothes yourself and save between $100 and $300
• Comparison shop your cell phone, home phone and internet service. Savings could be more than $250
• Give up premium cable services. Savings will be more than $500
• Plan gift giving well in advance and get higher quality gifts for less. Savings could be over $200
• Invite friends to your home for a pot luck instead of going out to eat. Savings of $40 per meal per month saves $480

You could stop eating and move under a bride too. I hear in Boston they heat the streets with steam from the subway. As winter approaches it might be a cost cutting option for some families looking to save some money.

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To know all is to forgive all.

There are a lot of easy things one can do that might actually make life better.

1 - Cook. One can have a real meal for less than fast food costs.
2 - Just keep your eyes open when shopping and don;t get hung up on 'name brands'. I put that in quotes because I was really thinking more about specific variety of a fruit. Near me I know of 3 different stores, Value +, Smart and Final and Henry's which have apples and pears. In the last couple of weeks the difference between th cheap variety and the others is stagering. At Smart and final 39 cents a pound for Gala, nothing else under a dollar. Huge difference.

I'm not saying never go by name, just be sure that when yuo do so it is something you care about. Going back to the apples. Granny Smith is often a cheap variety, but it is a more sour apple. It is an off and on desire for me and my wife hates them. More than one or 2 is a bad idea. But if you like the taste a great buy.

3 Planning trips can make a difference. Gas or even buss fare can add up.

I can do this too:

1. Instead of a big Mercedes buy a small one this year, you can excuse the change by explaining that some places don't provide anyone to park it for you. Your friend obviously won't want to hear of any place like that so that will end the conversation.

2. Use commercial scheduled airlines - anyone you know who sees you on one will be just as embarrassed as you are
.

OK I’ll be serious
It is necessary to both increase income and cut expenses.

These cost money and time:
Newspapers, magazines, cable TV

This eats huge amounts of time: TV
Don’t watch TV, don’t waste the space of having a TV, just leave the stupid thing out of your life, don’t stay up late watching TV.
Unless you get at least 4 dollars an hour for watching TV don’t do it and even then don't let it ruin your sleeping pattern.

Use the time you save to get another degree, an associates or a full degree. Obviously choose the subject to be something that will make money and something you already feel you know a lot about

If time and money are so scarce in my life why am I here?

1. Winding down: CF engages my mind just enough to take it off the cares of the day

2. My biggest failings have not been due to technical knowledge but a failure to express myself succinctly. Posting in CF also helps with that.

3. I need a good internet connection to gain the knowledge I need to do my job, and there is nothing like enough time at work to pick that up and too much stress anyway to learn there.

TV and newspapers may contribute to taking the mind off things but not to expression or real learning.

A fat bride will keep you warmer, but if you don't feed her she'll soon be too thin to live - pound foolish.

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- Daisy

If such people were amenable to facts, they would have gotten the point long ago...Whatever it is that is blocking the understanding of the "denialist", it is not access to facts or information. The blockage is most likely emotional, possibly based on fear, and one does not most effectively deal with emotional barriers by using facts as instruments of assault and battery. - Dan Murphy