Personal Finance Tips (Pt. 2)
This is a continuation of the previous article:
https://steemit.com/money/@profitgenerator/personal-finance-tips-pt-1
In this article I will talk about household budgeting and saving on shoppings. In the last article we've talked about how to stay out of debt or minimize it, here we will talk about minimizing other expenses, so let's start:
2) Minimizing cost of Households:
Most household costs revolve around energy, that is the far biggest expense in your bills. It is very easy to overcome this by moving to a house, using solar energy and such, let's see a few comparisons:
- Apartment vs House: In my opinion the house is better, the insurance is lower and the overall costs are too, not to mention the freedoms you have. If your apartment neighbor put's his apartment on fire, yours get damaged too, if your house neighbor does the same, you don't get affected. You can also install solar energy in houses ,while its harder in apartments, as there are more regulations.
- Solar energy vs Gas energy: For heating and for electricity, it's far better to use solar energy, it may be expensive to install, but over time it will save if will save your a lot on the bills. It's clean, so you won't risk getting intoxication if a pipe is cracked, not to mention it will not destroy your house and cause fire. There is no reason to not use solar.
- Central water vs Well: If you live already in a house with solar energy, you can just dig a well, and extract water from there. The extractor can be electric and tied to the solar energy, so it will be very cheap to use, just make sure it's insulated very well, and the installers know what they are doing, to not risk electricuting you when you shower. It is not recommended drinking from there, unless you also install a filtration system, since almost all ground water is poisoned with heavy metals and fertilizer chemicals, but if you do, you can save even more on the bills.
- Supermarket Food vs Gardening: Supermarket food is full of GMO crap, and poor quality vegetables and fruits. You can grow your own food in your own garden, sure it might not be enough to cover all your intakes, but it will be healthy and you can save some costs that way. I would pretty much grow things like tomatoes, onions, peas and lettuces in my own garden, because they are easy to manage and don't require much work and buy the rest from the store.
- Saving Power: You should save power and not leave lights on in your house when not necessary, and unplug all devices if they are not needed, you can save a lot of power that way. And since the solar energy is creating more power than you consume, the excess is wasted. Well not anymore, you can always setup Bitcoin and Steem mining operations with the extra electricity you don't consume, that way every single penny is utilized and the waste is eliminated!
If you adopt this lifestyle, you will guaranteed save a lot on the bills, and pretty much eliminate most of your costs just by changing your lifestyle this way.
3) Save money on Shopping:
If you read point 2), you can already see that we can eliminate most food costs just by setting up our own gardens that require minimal management. Let's see how we can save more money on shopping:
- Shop with Bitcoin: You can already buy a lot of things with bitcoin online ,and get good promos: Gyft, not to mention shopping via Openbazaar you can get pretty cheap stuff there.
- Sign up to your supermarket's loyalty program: All supermarkets do this nowadays, they give your 1-4% discounts if you are signed up. Yes you essentially give away your privacy (which is not a big deal when you buy groceries anyway), and you will probably get ads via SMS and e-mail thereafter, but i think it's worth it for the discounts.
- Credit Cards schemes: I am not a fan of credit cards, and in my opinion people should be very skeptical about using any banking service for that matter. That being said, there are also many credit card programs that give you 1% back on shopping or credit of 0% interest if you repay the credit before 1 month. It can come in handy when you are in short of cash, but could also lead to some other risks via debt ( Which I explained in Part I. of the series ).
- Buy in Rates with 0% interest: Many hardware or electronic stores give you the possibility to buy an item in rates, with 0% interest. This is only useful if it's 0% interest, otherwise it's just a loan, but if it's 0% then it's a huge benefit since it decreases the burden on your cashflow. If your salary is 2000$ and you buy a 1000$ PC, that takes away 50% of your cashflow that you could have invested in Steem Power and grow your capital. Instead you just buy over 10 months by only paying 100$ each month, that way you will have 900$ extra to invest in Steem Power, and over 10 months you could have acquired a nice capital to yourself instead of a crappy PC.
- Don't buy Deflationary items: I already touched this subject in Part I. of the series, but it's essential. If you want to save money, you should not buy items that lose so much of their value after purchase. Think of a Phone, why buy now when in 5 months it will be 1/4th of the price? It's not good to be trendy and buy the latest stuff, because you will always be broke. Just buy these items as latest as possible and just use your money to invest in good cryptocurrencies instead, you will be far better off.
That's all for now, just remember, DON'T WASTE MONEY. If you do, you will never become wealthy, and you will always be broke. There will be another part where I'll talk about maximizing profits and family investments, stay tuned!