This list of tips is useful: 35+ Most Important (And Useful) Things You Must Know About Money http://www.thesuccessmanual.in/chapter/money-35-most-importa...
Have you really been plugging your own site successmanual/bighow for 6 years on HN?
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?
#92I do something that's been working for me:
i save X amount every month ... if I save > X then it makes me happy , the rule is never save less than X , whatever it takes.
I don't buy expensive clothes anymore or go on the piss massively you now it's all about balance.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?
#931. Fatwallet Until it was acquired a few months ago I was a longtime user of FatWallet to make a few percentage points back on the dollar at many stores. 2. Jet Anywhere Jet.com has an incredible cash back program called Jet Anywhere. While the number of stores is small, the percentages are very strong. For example, 20% back at Nike or Saks Fifth. What I'm getting the most out of though is plane tickets. Flight purch…
What card are you using with universal 2% cash back?
I guess this only works for people with good credit rating, where the risk of defaulting is low? It seems to me this would be you getting back the 2% default fee on credit card transactions, that has been featured on HN before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11887469.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
this is true, but the most you can save is 100%, but earning potential is generally unbounded. if you do not have marketable skills, then saving may be the only way to go, but if you can develop a valuable skillset, you can earn significantly more than you can save.
Earning may be unbounded but so is spending. Unless you have a baseline lifestyle that you maintain then any increased earnings will just be eaten by increased spending since you'll already have convinced yourself that saving is pointless.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?
#95 * Walk a bit more so I save money on my drive to work
* Work from home most of the week
* I've stopped eating/ordering outside food dramatically
* Stopped smoking cigarettes almost 15 months now
* Reduce alcohol consumption
* Turn off fans, AC, TV at home/office
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?
#961. Learn cooking: Saves a lot of money, healthy and a lot of long term advantages. 2. Learn to do the 'beginning with the end in mind': A lot of us here in India go and buy a plot on a reasonable loan, and then try to clear it off within 2-3 years. This way you get to acquire a resource, make a investment, and are forced to save up every month to clear the loan. This is more like forced savings. Repeat this for a lon…
5. I wish there was a definite way to determine quality beforehand easily, but in most cases it's a huge hassle.
Also, customer feedback a few years down the line instead of right after the purchase would be nice because that's when the product's weak points really become known.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?
#97There are a bunch of apps that help you spend money more efficiently - but I always feel they're in the lower % of effective saving, and the real answer is 'choose not to buy that thing'.
So my question is - are you looking to help people buy thing x more efficiently (and I'm not sure there's a lot of unment need there), or to help people not spend at all (in which case monetisation becomes contrary to the goal of the app).
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?
#98I would love a Chrome extension that converts all dollar figures on the page into a the number of hours of work at my salary it would cost.
Or better, convert it to the opportunity cost of spending it, which is the base price plus all the gains over X years had it been invested instead of spent.
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?
#99My 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…
If you are very poor then clearly doing something to increase your income makes a lot of sense. For most people on HN I'm not so sure, most roles have a ceiling that is very difficult to get above without moving into upper management or starting your own business. The odds don't look so good then. On the other hand having some FU money will improve your quality of life significantly. Just being able to say no to that…
There's a distinction between "saving money", as in putting it in a savings account, having a nest egg. That is clearly a good thing. The other, which is what the OP is about, is "saving money", as in paying less for things. This is rarely a good investment in terms of the time/happiness/convenience/actual money saved trade-off. A somewhat extreme example is clipping coupons - the cognitive load of planning around saving a few cents on butter is simply not worth it for most people (and also, there's the subtle bias in altering your behaviour to take advantage of an offer). Another saying in the same vein is "penny-wise, pound-foolish".
I know someone who carefully plans and then spreads the weekly shopping trip between up to five different grocery stores -- and also complains that they have too little time. I and several others have tried connecting the dots for them, but it's clearly become an obsession (and needless to say, it's not like they track their spending and saving on this -- just assumes that they are saving loads).
Obviously, there are things that make sense. Of course you should shop around and negotiate for big-ticket items. It might well make sense to alternate weekly shopping trips between two different stores with different strengths (one might be good for fresh produce, but expensive for staples and household goods etc).
> For most people on HN I'm not so sure, most roles have a ceiling that is very difficult to get above without [...] starting your own business
Hacking on a side project is one of the things you could do once you stop spending hours saving dollars.
But, the point is, time is a strictly limited resource. Money has steeply diminishing returns around those ceilings. Stop wasting time saving small amounts of money and spend it getting the most out of your time (whether that's working on your revenue streams, or doing any of a number of activities that makes you happy).
Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way to save money?
#100My 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…
With all due respect to your father but that is seriously very bad advice. It's almost impossible to fill a container leaking all the time. Also make note a lot of people have gotten rich by saving and investing than have people who went into doing start ups or 'revenue stream' or such.
It's good advice, but it can be misinterpreted. You either spend 3 hours cutting coupons every few days or you can spend three hours learning new tech or gaining a qualification or going to meetups. Spending some money on books/taxi's etc to do so.
The best payoff is spending the money. However there is a "poverty" mentality where people would be scared of spending that money. You need to avoid that.
On the other hand you could buy a gimmicky fancy tv or keep your decent old one. Obviously just keep your old one.
Just optimise for the best expected payoff. For that you require a mix of saving, and spending.