Guest Post by Bethany North

You may be surprised at how easy it is to save money around the house when you put your mind to it! The first change that my boyfriend and I made was to go down to a single car within our home. Not everyone has this option, but my boyfriend works about a mile away from our house, and I work at home. It is always convenient to have two cars, but one of our cars was constantly sitting there useless because we didn’t use it.

We sold our second vehicle on Craigslist, and we didn’t even make a profit off of it. We just sold it at an amount where we could pay off what was owed on it so that we wouldn’t have to pay that car payment any longer. This idea isn’t for everyone, but it was a great choice for us because it took away a car payment that was several hundred dollars a month. By only using one car, we are also saving a great amount on gas since we are only caring for one vehicle. Over the course of a year, we saved about $3900 on gas and car payments. This may not be the ideal option for a large family, but any couples that can do this definitely should because it makes a significant difference in your finances!

On top of that, there are many other ways to save money on household items. We normally like to spend a lot of time at home, which saves money on going out. When you are homebodies, you have the opportunity to invest in some nicer things around your house, like a big screen TV, so you don’t even need to go out. As far as our television watching goes, we have started ordering DVD series of TV shows on eBay so that we can watch them in their entirety. When we are done with them, we sell them back on eBay since we won’t watch them again. The entire cost for watching a full season of a prime time TV show is almost nothing when you resell it on eBay. You may even have the potential to make a profit!

Lastly, to save money on household indulgences like wine, it is surprisingly worthwhile to buy boxed wine. I have read up on boxed wine, and it is actually a great method for packaging wine so that it stays fresh and keeps it from being oxidized. If you love a few glasses of wine on a nightly basis, it may be quite expensive to buy bottle after bottle. We regularly purchase eco-friendly boxes of wine for around $15, and they can last up to two weeks. If you compare this to purchasing three bottles of $10 wine a week, you will be saving about $1080 per year on wine!

The bottom line is that if you want to save a little bit of extra money for a larger TV or a vacation, then you easily have the opportunity to do so when you make little tweaks in your household purchases. The best part of all is that you will not be sacrificing quality because you will be using your money for items that you really want!

~ Bethany North is a coffee fanatic that has spent the entirety of her career cultivating and studying all of the best uses and brewing styles for optimal coffee and espresso flavor. Her specialty site for all coffee needs, supplies, and Saeco Espresso Machines can be found at www.thecoffeebump.com.

Have you found other ways to save around the house? I’d love to hear them!