Saving money
Simplified ways to do so
So what?
ICYMI: Whether you’re saving money on big-ticket items or avoiding small everyday purchases, any money you spend adds up. Making incremental changes and taking quick steps to cut your costs on small and big life outgoings will have the following outcomes:
- Be prepared for job loss, disability, injury, a sick child, a car breakdown and other emergencies;
- Go on adventures, take holidays and spend time with your loved ones;
- Give you peace of mind and lead to a stress-less life; and
- Plans for and achieve short and long term goals.
This series of blog posts provides you with short and sharp ways to cut costs on a range of life outgoings that we regularly spend our hard-earned money on.
Clothing
There are ways to save on various clothing unless you’re after the latest and greatest. If you’re into brand name clothes, try shopping at outlet stores such as DFO and TK Maxx. You can score additional discounts by shopping at certain times during the year such as Black Friday or specified sale periods. You can sign up to newsletters at specific shops to get notified of such times.
If you don’t mind what brand you wear, there are stores like Lowes, Best&Less, BigW, Kmart and Target. These stores typically carry their own home brands that are fraction of the prices of fashion brand stores. Same as above, they often have sales at certain times of the year.
Both of these types of stores have clearance racks. Clearance racks have clothes from previous seasons, final sale products and specific style of clothing with only a few items left. If you opt to browse through clearance sections, make sure to check for any damages as they may be old or returned items that have rips, tears, buttons missing, broken zippers and stains.
The most economical way to shop for clothes is to buy them at secondhand stores. St Vincent De Paul Society and Salvation Army have stores all around the country where people donate new and worn clothes which are recycled to be displayed in stores. Donated goods are checked for quality and cleanliness by the lovely staff at these stores before being put on the racks so you can be assured that they are clean and wearable.
Pets
Whether you have a dog, a cat or a goldfish, have a look at two or three biggest spending for your pet and look for ways to save on each category. For us, the two most expensive categories are food and medical supplies (i.e. flea, tick and worming treatments). For food, we stick to kibbles from Costco. As much as we want to support small Australian businesses, we are saving hundreds of dollars per month by buying Kirkland kibbles. They are high quality and US made and cost half of brand name foods. With medical supplies, we buy in bulk when websites like My Pet Warehouse has 25% store wide sales. These items don’t typically go on sale so waiting for such sale and buying them bulk has been the best way to save money for us.
What now?
- What kind of shopper are you? Do you buy brand name items at full, retail price? Or are you savvy like us when it comes to shopping?
- Have a look at the ways you can save money and take time to find ways to do so.