Here’s a couple examples from my life:
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Safety Razor. I get a better shave and it’s like $15 for 100 razor blades, which lasts me a couple years. Way way way better than the disposable multi-blade Gillette things, which sell 5 heads for $20.
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Handkerchiefs. I am prone to allergies, so instead of constantly buying disposable tissues, we now have a stack of handkerchiefs that can just be used a few times and then thrown in the wash. This has also saved me loads.
What about you?
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Buy from bulk stores and markets instead of bagged supermarket products.
Switch to soap strips instead of liquid detergent for laundry
Cook yourself instead of getting delivery
Use public transport and or bike
Buy local produce and fruits that are in season
Use public transport
This is the biggest cost savings for me right now… Assuming I get a cheap rust bucket paid in full (estimate in metro Vancouver, BC in Canadian $s):
- I’d expect to pay $200 a month in insurance
- I’d expect to pay at least $100 a month in gas
- I’d expect to pay $250 a month in parking fees
- I’d expect to pay at least $500 a year in maintenance, repair and incidental items (oil, winter tire storage etc.)
So all together that’s $591 per month or $7100 per year.
Transit costs me $135/month and I’m lucky to live and work somewhere where transit actually sort of works.
This is particularly true with the multitude or car sharing programs that are available in major cities like Vancouver. The odd time you need a vehicle it is trivial to rent one, which is still cheaper than owning a vehicle.
Ditch the car, live near transit, ride a bike.
If only I could afford to live near transit…
The real question is, can you afford not to?
Cheapest city with moderately decent public transit is probably Washington DC. With an average home price comparable to the one I live in without public transit of about $600,000 more than my current home. Even if I didn’t own my truck outright (8 years old, 58k miles) and the price of gasoline doubled, my payback period for 100% free public transit is greater than infinity with a 5% cost of money calculated in.
It’s a bit like solar. I’ve run the numbers, and had others run the numbers, and the conclusion is that it would require replacing solar panels twice before I made back my investment, even with a 0% loan for the panels and install.
I’d love to be part of it. I’d love to have European-style public transit. Even in the few places where viable public transit exists in the US, it’s not affordable to move to those places. shrug
Cheapest city with decent pubtrans is almost certainly Chicago, where you can still buy a SFH for under 200K pretty easily.
The weasel words in your reply are “comparable to the one I live in”. Of course dense areas have the best transit, and if course homes and especially lot sizes are smaller in dense areas, and prohibitively expensive at the scale of lots you see in less urbanized areas. It’s ridiculous to compare.
The fact is, the large homes far away from city centers are heavily subsidized by the convenience of personal automotives. If we’re going to unravel car dependency or even the current high level of car incentivization we currently experience, the true cost of that lifestyle will be shown to be much higher.
If you don’t own it, don’t pay for it. That’s one of my main principles and the motivation why I don’t pay for streaming services anymore. I also noticed that I wasn’t enjoying music and movies as much anymore anyway when it was in such high quantities. That’s just about saving money.
Other one is, I don’t buy anything of which i know of that it won’t work or keep much of its value anymore after several years. So I rarely buy anything with irreplaceable batteries, that basically ends up on the junk pile after 3 years.
tldr: Being mindful and trying to find new ways of using stuff that I already have before I go buy new.
I reuse. All those bigly plastic bags from 20+ toilet paper rolls - I use them at least as thrash bags. That’s like simplest one, but also for example when my clothes are beyond being deemed worthy of being sleepwear, they get cut into cloths to live on as cleaning utensils.
When something breaks I tend to try to repair it instead of getting new stuff. If that’s impractical or not possible, depending on a thing I disassemble it, and salvage what can be useful. Also by doing this I learn how stuff was made, which I liked to know since being a kid :)
I found europalletes and repurposed them to make my balcony space nicer (made flooring and a small bench out of them) I also ask people if they have spare construction materials, like bits of wood or stuff like that. There are fb neighbour groups in my area, and it makes so much sense to me to use what I can get in my projects. I rarely have a full-on plan/vision of the stuff I want to make. I much rather have a storage with random materials and stuff and play adult version of Lego with them.
When faced with obsolete electronics, I try to repurpose it and assimilate into little Borg of mine (how I like to call my little network). I learned java a bit to write small android app to decode amiibo NFC data to control the stuff around my flat when phone (placed under the tabletop) detected Pikachu statue my lights toggled. Such stuff.
I dunno if with me it’s less about saving and more about how to use things in different way and getting most out of stuff. A chipped cup can still be an awesome pot for your new plant friend. Broken cutlery knife can be helpful as a tool when you wouldn’t want to use proper knife.
That said. When I have to buy something, like hobby-related, or electronics so guitar, piano, home recording studio shit like that, also PC parts - I set myself a budget, read upon things available, do my research and order stuff for 110% of my initial budget. What I mean by this, we have a saying in polish - chytry dwa razy traci - sly/greedy loses twice - as in you buy cheap shit, it breaks, you have to buy new thing again. When I set on buying something it will take me months to do my homework, and also because of my upbringing, lessens the anxiety from spending money.
I wash and reuse ziploc bags until they get too many holes in them.
What do you use bags for that you can’t use reusable containers for?
Half an onion or whatever in the fridge, freezing meats in to portions, vegetable snack portions, taking crackers on the road, organizing little odds and ends, other stuff.
I do use containers and glass jars for other things and wash and reuse those too, but containers and jars take up too much space for some things and cost a lot more. The last time I bought a (100) box of ziplocks was like 6 years ago and it’s still half full so I’m ok with my method.
Definitely support this from the eco angle, but given how much you seem to use these bags (100 is a lot, but 6 years is a long time), do you not feel the $15/year is really not a big deal? Over that time, you’ve saved ~$75, which over 6 years… It’s not that much.
Not trying to discredit the method, I’m just curious as to what makes the method work for you!
It’s more about not wasting the plastic than it is about saving money. New bags come in to rotation from other sources too. Like my buddy gave me a weed cookie in a Frozen bag a year and a half ago. That one’s been rotating for a while and I smile every time I see it.
An interesting realization was that “saving money” and “reducing waste” are often competing optimums. I live in the developing world where there people waste a lifetime sitting at home doing nothing to save money. I am one of two or three people in my neighborhood with a job – the rest “save tons more money than I do” but don’t have jobs so their real income after inflation is negative.
Anyway, I figure out what my time is worth (based on what I estimate I could earn by grabbing extra contract work). Then I don’t spend my time saving money unless it saves something at least comparable to my hourly rate, or it’s in a context where working would be impossible, or there’s a nontangible element (e.g. repairing a thing I like a lot).
I prioritize not wasting my time first (it’s the only resource I can’t buy more of), and spend most of my spare effort finding ways to make more money (I regularly cram-study 2-3 hours per day for this purpose, usually tech). Then with the extra money I make, I can save 80% of my income on a good month.
When I started this habit, I made about 135 USD per month and had zero savings. Even if I saved 100% of my earnings, it still amounts to essentially nothing – so it became obvious that the best way to save more money, was to earn more money. When I had a little money, I didn’t put it in the bank – I invested it in myself by buying tools to learn more things and provide more services to accelerate my gains.
Anyway it’s not the right advice for everyone, I’m just another fool like the rest of us, but I hope it’s maybe useful to someone out there.
