Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

81–90 of 195 posts

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

#81

How about something that prevents purchasing, or forces a 1-day wait. The best way to same money is not to spend it, and most of us don't need half the stuff we buy....

I use Amazons wish list for this, most of the stuff I put in there never gets purchased.

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

#82
post #60

1. 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…

This is a great set of suggestions. On the cooking side of things, I found I was spending a lot of money buying lunches. Sydney is a VERY expensive city: a 'cheap' lunch in the CBD costs at least $7. So, we're talking about saving at least $35-50 per week. Over a year, that's approx $1500-2000 per year. And often, it's not as good as things I like to make for myself. So I cook double-or-triple the quantities of recip…

Slow-cooker meals are indeed great. Very cheap to fix, makes big quantities, and they can be wonderful. Throw things in at 8am, at 5pm you have hot, delicious food in quantities to throw a dinner party or eat for days.

My wife and I did a "month of slow cooking" to try recipes. Most were good and many are part of our regular cooking rotation now.

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

#83
post #21
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, an…

For me I don't think that would work, manually handling the receipts and entering them in a program is part of the process of understanding my spending.

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

#84
For me the simplest solution is to have a second bank account I never take money from. Then every time I get my salary a certain amount gets moved to the savings account. I do not miss money I never really had. Additionally some days before my salary all my money above a certain threshold gets also moved to the savings account, so that I have the same money every month, even when I spent less. Also I have my I am poor level. When I have less than 1000Fr/$ I cut my spending to very basic things like food only. This protects me from depth and touching my savings.

All of this is easily possible in nearly any bank in Switzerland, I am not shure about the US or other parts of the world. Hope I could create some inspiration.

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

#85
post #84

For me the simplest solution is to have a second bank account I never take money from. Then every time I get my salary a certain amount gets moved to the savings account. I do not miss money I never really had. Additionally some days before my salary all my money above a certain threshold gets also moved to the savings account, so that I have the same money every month, even when I spent less. Also I have my I am poo…

Also wanted to say, its important that all of that happens automatic, so that I do not need to decide whether its right to do so or not. It should be like taxes, forced on me.

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

#86
post #23

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.

Also, frugality reaps increased benefits as the income rises. If one can maintain the same cost of living while earning more money, you end up with huge % increases in discretionary cash that can be used for all sorts of great things: investing, philanthropy, starting a business, saving for future personal projects, travel, etc.

Example: earn $100k, $35k goes to taxes, spend $50k a year = $15k discretionary. Increase income 50% to $150k, taxes become $52.5k, spend the same $50k = $47.5k discretionary. So total income only increased by 1.5, but discretionary increased by a factor of 3. Of course, this is a simplistic example -- tax rates aren't constant for one thing. But the principle is very powerful, and the effect strength grows as the income increases. Using the above numbers, 2x the initial salary results in a 5x increase in discretionary income.

Lastly, this strategy also provides great protection against a decrease in income.

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

#87
I never buy anything unnecessary if I'm counting how much financial impact it's going to have. I don't have a car, but if I do, it's because I need it for the income, or because I have so much money buying a car feels like getting a packet of chips. "Why not, looks like something fun to do.".

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

#88

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…

Why not both?

A penny saved is a penny earned.

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

#90
post #85
post #84

For me the simplest solution is to have a second bank account I never take money from. Then every time I get my salary a certain amount gets moved to the savings account. I do not miss money I never really had. Additionally some days before my salary all my money above a certain threshold gets also moved to the savings account, so that I have the same money every month, even when I spent less. Also I have my I am poo…

Also wanted to say, its important that all of that happens automatic, so that I do not need to decide whether its right to do so or not. It should be like taxes, forced on me.

Hey, I pretty much have the same setup you've described except the second money transfer if your current account balance is above a given threshold. How did you solve this? Do you use a special tool for this such as MoneyMoney for example? (This is what I'm currently using for dealing with my bank accounts)
Post reply on HN