Economic downturns are never fun, but as Adam Smith observed centuries ago, these cycles of very scarce and many are a fact of life. Although none of us can say with certainty when this will reverse the recent downturn, there is at least secure ways to save your money in the meantime. Here are some penny-preserving techniques tailored to our 21st century life:
1. Lots of people are in the habit of cutting out paper coupons, but even though many of us doing a part of our shopping online now, not many of us seem to have gotten into the habit of coupon-hunting online. Places such as CouponCabin.com, CouponMountain.com, and DealofDay.com offer thousands of current offerings to dealers across the Internet.
2. Use price-comparison websites like Shopping.com, Pricegrabber.com, Google Product Search, and mySimon.com to find the best online deals.
3. When you're out on a brick-and-mortar store, send a text message to 46645 (Google's text-number) and enter the letter "F" followed by the name of the item you are viewing. Google will respond with a message citing its online prices. To compare the prices in shops in your area, go to ShopLocal.com.
4. If you do not already belong to one, you might consider participating in a warehouse club like Costco or Sam's and buy things in bulk. This can be especially useful if you have a big family.
5. Buy generic instead of branded products. Much of the difference is often marketing hype and no product, anyway.
6. Pull your green from surcharge-free ATMs, which can be located on AllpointNetwork.com and MoneyPass.com.
7. Buy locally raised food at farmer's markets or shops selling local produce and meat. The prices are often lower because of the food has not moved very far.
8. Shop on the dollar stores. You must have an easy time finding one since they have been appearing everywhere recently.
9. Buy prescription medications at online pharmacies. You will often end up paying less than half as much for the generic pills carried by these discount prescription drug stores than you would do the same trade name medications at brick-and-mortar pharmacies.
10. If your car is seven years old or older and / or worth less than $ 2,500, consider dropping comprehensive and collision on your insurance. Your deductible can close in on the value of your car anyway, in which case a larger collision would send your car to the junk dealer, and you are at the dealers.
11. Keep cell phone costs under control. Children today love to text message, so save yourself from unexpected high bills by paying a fixed monthly fee for unlimited texting.
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