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Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

#21

Post by iamdave »

s_kilk wrote: post #13

I just record all my discretionary purchases in a spreadsheet and recoil in horror at the end of the month. My monthly spend has been steadily dropping since I started doing this about six months ago. EDIT: I seem to have misunderstood the topic of this thread, but, as another commenter puts it, the best way to save money is to not spend money in the first place.

On that note though, while I realize there are plenty of apps that will do this sort of thing for you, I really wished there were that did it with this level of simplicity.

And I don't mean create an account for Mint or Level or any of the other bountiful budgeting services out there and merely export to a Spreadsheet. I (personally) literally only want something that can connect to my accounts, see a transaction, and update a row. Nothing in the middle.

Does it exist already?

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

#23

Post by patmcc »

drinchev wrote: post #15

My father always says : "saving money is the beginning of being poor". So I always try to save money by thinking how can I make more. These days money = time is a strong equation, so just don't loose your time and use it in a way to make money. Stop thinking about saving money and spend your thoughts on revenue stream. That's why I rarely use services like that and don't count the pennies ( I'm neither rich nor bragg…

Certainly it's good to increase your revenue, but saving money is often much more valuable; a dollar saved is $1.4 earned, assuming you live somewhere with a high marginal tax rate.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

#24

Post by vthallam »

drinchev wrote: post #15

My father always says : "saving money is the beginning of being poor". So I always try to save money by thinking how can I make more. These days money = time is a strong equation, so just don't loose your time and use it in a way to make money. Stop thinking about saving money and spend your thoughts on revenue stream. That's why I rarely use services like that and don't count the pennies ( I'm neither rich nor bragg…

I believe this too and most of the tech people do that i guess, since they their skills are in demand. But there are millions of people who have standard revenue streams and not everyone can be entrepreneurial in finding new ways to make money than worry about pennies. These apps are aimed at those, showing people who they are wasting money and also ways to save it.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

#25

Post by Havoc »

drinchev wrote: post #15

My father always says : "saving money is the beginning of being poor". So I always try to save money by thinking how can I make more. These days money = time is a strong equation, so just don't loose your time and use it in a way to make money. Stop thinking about saving money and spend your thoughts on revenue stream. That's why I rarely use services like that and don't count the pennies ( I'm neither rich nor bragg…

A mix is the optimal approach. Investing some time into cutting the low hanging fruit on the expense side is certainly worthwhile.

People just take it to far...you can only cut thing so far before it screws up your lifestyle so yeah after cutting the obvious its about more revenue as you say.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

#26

Post by vemv »

kearneyandy wrote: post #22

I like https://paribus.co/ It automatically requests refunds for things you buy online that drop in price. It's nice because it's very passive and it's basically found money when it works.

Seems a scumbaggy app to me (even if it's legal). If you buy something for $X, it's because you can afford $X at that point in time and you agree that that's its value.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

#27

Post by onion2k »

I read a lot of philosophy books. They taught me to think deeply about the things that make me happy, and it turns out most of the things that make me happy are essentially free (reading, coding, etc).

I doubt it'd work for everyone, and it would be tricky to turn in to a Chrome extension, but something that put a Stoic quote in to Amazon's checkout page might help people.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?

#29

Post by _cbsz »

johnloeber wrote: post #20

Not quite on-topic, but I think that for a normal tech worker, it's usually easier to increase your revenue stream than to increase your savings.

On the other hand, if you're in CA and subject to a 50% marginal tax rate, saving $1 has the same impact as making an additional $2.
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