12 Frugal Living Hacks To Save Money (That ACTUALLY Work)

hey everyone welcome back to the channel so today we're discussing 12 ways that you can essentially save money or kind of some hacks and tips for people who are trying to maybe live a little bit frugal so that they can retire earlier the average American retires at age 63 so maybe if we can do some of these different tactics and hacks you can maybe dial it down to 55 or age 50 or age 45 and in some cases people are retiring in their 30s by using some of these tactics so if you're new here to the channel make sure you hit the subscribe button for more videos like this one we help people save more money and make more money so that they can build a better financial future for themselves so without any further ado let's get into this video so let's talk about the first one and the first kind of hack for frugal living is to really increase your negotiation skills so we're talking about negotiating for all kinds of different items that are generally going to be bigger ticket items so you know you're not gonna negotiate for the lettuce at the farmers market that's two dollars there's no point in that because you look like a cheapskate and it's two dollars it's two dollars but we're talking about the the items that might be you know like a car a house really anything once you get into over a couple hundred dollars for that item a lot of times you can negotiate and how do you actually go about negotiating for some big-ticket item that you might be buying well there's actually a book that I have right here let's go to getting to yes so look I kind of increase some your human capital here and build some negotiation skills I read this book and I think it really helps with kind of getting to a common ground finding common ground and saving a lot of money or making a lot more money when you're trying to buy or sell something and so I think just building your human capital and reading a book like this can really help your negotiation your negotiation skills and end up saving you a lot of money in the long run now the next one is by getting to know your car a little bit better so I find it so interesting how many people get inside of their car and they kind of just use like this magical box they don't even understand like the basic concept of an engine now you don't be a car mechanic but you can kind of get to know your car a little bit better so that you can save a lot more money on it so learn different tricks and tips to kind of save money when it comes to your vehicle expenses but also if you can learn how to fix some of the problems with your vehicle even if it's as simple as changing the oil in your own vehicle you can end up saving a lot of money I know people who don't even know how to like add more windshield washer fluid into their vehicle they have to take you to the mechanic for that so just kind of take some time to learn about it and actually I believe I have it somewhere around here yeah so what when I was in high school I had this really old truck and the check engine light would come on every couple of weeks and so instead of taking it to the mechanic I would end up fixing it myself and I use this really simple it's like you probably find this on Amazon for like 20 bucks it's called an obd - scanner we don't to get to like technical into it but essentially if the check engine light comes on in your vehicle you can plug this baby in and it'll essentially kind of tell you what's wrong with your vehicle or kind of the general idea the general area of what might be wrong with your vehicle and so you can then then see look okay maybe it's just like the o2 sensor or the catalytic converters not efficient or something so you know if they're worried about it as much as maybe something that could be more serious that you do have to take to the mechanic so that's just a little tip the tip that I did that worked very well throughout high school I saved so much money by just kind of fixing this myself so let's talk about the next ones here by the way if you're finding value in this video make sure you drop a like on this video or you could smash the like button I don't know but let's let's keep going on here so the next step that I would have is by getting to know your library your local library a little bit better now for some reason people don't really go over the library library anymore and actually the reason is pretty obvious some people just watch Netflix instead of going to the library to pick up things for free but you can actually get a lot of value out of this I actually go to my local library all the time to get books and also there's different types of services that your city or county or town librarian might offer that you might not realize I know some libraries will allow you to rent laptops for free through their library program all kinds of various other different tools and and and things you can use for free by by by just utilizing it so I think it's just something that people overlook and you want to just like I would suggest heading down your library sometime this week and you're talking to feel weird walking into it because nobody ever goes to their local library anymore but go in and see what they offer or at least go on their website and see what they offer and I think you'd be quite surprised to see that they might have audible memberships maybe a lot of audiobooks and different types of TV shows and stuff that they can kind of give you discounts on and stuff so I just think it's really interesting so the next one is by just saving money on clothing by having a pretty simple style so I don't know if you noticed but I like to keep my style kind of simple I we're just pretty plain clothes and the reason for this is because it allows you to not have to worry as much about what you're gonna wear for the day so I you don't think Oh gung-ho and like extreme about this like Steve Jobs who wore like the same exact thing every day or Mark Zuckerberg wearing like a great t-shirt every day you don't think extreme on that but if you can kind of curb your style a little bit so you don't have to worry about what you're wearing every single day saves you a lot of time and it can save you a lot of money by just buying simple things for example my grandfather wore a white t-shirt and jeans for like seventy years of his life and he saved so much money by just wearing something consistent and people kind of know that like yeah you're not wearing the same thing every day you're changing up you have multiple pairs of the same clothing if that makes sense so that's just one that I think can save a lot of money because I see people who once they start to really up their style game feel like they have to keep up so that people know that they're keeping up so they're buying new stuff like every few days and it can really become pretty costly which you know you might be buying something it might be cool now but it might not be cool six months from now if you get something very plain and basic this will be normal forever I guess I don't know maybe I don't put enough effort into my style but it saves a lot of money so another tip that you might want to consider for living frugally is by cutting back on an expense that can actually add up quite a lot and that is by avoiding bottled water now if you've been following me on instagram you probably know that I've been doing a lot of traveling in the past few months and when doing all this traveling you kind of find yourself wondering you know is this country's water good is the city's water good and you have to buy bottled water a lot of water or maybe you just do this because you forget to bring water with you on your way to work and you have to buy a bottle somewhere from a vending machine for like two dollars well a great fix of this is you just get a filtered bottle so something like the LifeStraw bottle I'll leave a link for it Amazon below I can't think of the exact word for it but something like this where you can get water from anywhere and filter it and not have to buy bottled water I know my University Penn State it came out like after a year of drinking their water that they had a lot of lead in their water it's kind of weird education on the university LED water kind of counterintuitive yeah either way so now I just filter all of my water instead of having to buy bottled water it really does save a lot of money if you just calculate how much you spend on it trust me you spend a lot of money on bottled water a lot of people do and it's also pretty terrible for the environment so not a big fan of that bottled water now the next one very simple very quick we're just going to touch on it ever so briefly and that is by hanging your clothing up on something like a line like a clothesline instead of using a dryer or a drying machine so not only does this save you money by doing this but more so what I would care about is that you're helping the environment you really probably don't need to use a dryer all the time unless you're running really late and you procrastinate and I'm washing your clothes what I do is I just hang it up and it saves energy it saves electricity and it ends up saving you money as a whole as well and it's it's very simple to do I think people use too much energy and yeah it does cost you more money but it also really doesn't it's not so great for the environment if you're just wasting energy on something that doesn't need to be done so just consider hanging up your clothing I think that's something that's pretty simple now another one that has been really kind of recent for a lot of people and this can save a lot of money and help with that frugal lifestyle is by doing something like grocery pick up at something like Walmart or even Amazon fresh in some cases and the reason for this is because when you go to the grocery store especially if you haven't eaten in a few hours you can end up spending so much money at the grocery store because everything looks good and you're just getting like Chips Ahoy and Oreos and all kinds of just random food that maybe you weren't planning on getting but you're really hungry so what I would consider doing is possibly order food online so you can pick it up at the store so you know exactly what you're getting you know exactly what you want and it can end up saving you not only money and but also a time in the process as well which saving time is very important that's the one asset that we can't really we gained so the next one is by buying things on Craigslist offer up or let go and I think this is something that people overlook in a lot of cases for example say you need a ladder to clean your gutters outright well instead of just going to Lowe's or Home Depot and buying a ladder for like $150 trust me ladders can be pretty expensive especially for those really long ones you can go on to something like Craigslist and find something for maybe half the price and and then buy it and use those negotiation skills we talked about earlier on in this video to get a pretty good deal on it so Craigslist offer up let go I think it's just good to buy kind of used items especially like those outdoors items like if you need a lawn mower maybe you don't need to buy one use you can buy one for really cheap on something like Craigslist save a lot of money and it also just helps everything by by kind of reusing products I think it's just a good thing that people should be doing more often so number four can actually end up saving you a lot of money in the long run and that is by unsubscribing from all those emails that you might be getting from clothing stores department stores on various other online retailers if you unsubscribe from those email lists you're gonna find yourself saving a lot of money because most people it's difficult to kind of avoid or at least not be enticed to buy something that maybe you weren't planning on buying but you get an email says 30% off storewide urban outfitters or something and and you say wow you know I I have to get this is such a good deal and you end up spending money even though it's a sale you ended up spending money you weren't planning on spending so the easiest way to combat this just unsubscribe from all those email lists they can really kind of bog you down not only just kill your emails and kind of you know like really flood your email list but also you're gonna end up spending more money if you're not unsubscribing from those emails so I unsub from so many different email lists so I only have the important things coming into my inbox now the next one's a little bit funny my mom used to tell me this for literally years and that is by getting a crock-pot I'm not joking an actual crock-pot can end up saving you a lot of money I used to laugh at this but I found it actually does save a lot and that is because you know there's times when you come home for maybe you're working or at school or something and you're really hungry you don't have time to cook food because you have to go to a meeting or some else or an exam and there's a time in there we say what the hell do I do well if you set up a crock-pot earlier in the day you just throw like some potatoes in there a sausage I don't know and it works out pretty well you end up saving so much money instead of getting ubereats again which I've done a lot in the past and it's a big waste of money so another tip for living frugally is to kind of when you look at sales or coupons for certain stores you want to think about whether that's going to make you spend more money or save more money see I think there's kind of this notion that you know if you're using coupons like 75 cent off coupons for two boxes of jell-o that you're getting a better deal but you want to kind of take a step back and realize like are you actually going to use that jello and is that going to help you and that's something that I don't think everybody does another example of this is Black Friday right so you think there's such great deals for Black Friday but guess what these companies are still probably making money off of you that's why it's called Black Friday not red Friday unless your Sears you probably be going under but you know companies are selling a lot of stuff and maybe you can get that TV for 150 bucks but you might be buying those other items that might not really be worth it so think about sales and whether they're making you spend more money we're actually saving more money because I know people who are using coupons who ended up spending so much because they're buying like weird things that they just don't need but they're like well I got fifty percent off so I bought it anyway I'm never gonna use it but it's such a good deal I couldn't pass it down and I think that's the problem with couponing and thinking about savings so just kind of take that approach and I think you can save a lot of money and so the final one is by you know we spend so much money on our vehicles I believe that the statistic is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics it's almost $9,000 per year that we spent on a vehicle total vehicle expenses when you think about insurance and gas and wear and tear on your vehicle we spend so much on cars so if you can think about this expense and find a way to cut back on it one of the best ways to do that is by just investing into a bicycle you know spend like a hundred bucks two hundred dollars on a bike and if you're lazy like me just get an electric bike it cost like a few hundred dollars more you can get an electric bike where you don't really have to do anything for those small little things maybe you have to go three miles through your neighborhood just ride a bike it's gonna save you a lot of money I think that's the problem in America especially if we have to go half a mile down the road we drive in our car we won't bike we'll always drive and I think it's a problem it costs us a lot of money and it's not very effective so if you enjoyed this video let me know down below what your thoughts are on it and share this video with somebody who you think this could help somebody who's maybe trying to save more money or want to get their finances in order maybe consider sharing this video with them or sharing it on social media very much appreciate that so thanks for watching the video and I'll see everybody and next time

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 484,064

Rating: 4.9146252 out of 5

Keywords: debt free, early retirement, financial freedom, financial independence, financial independence movement, free to frugal, frugal habits, frugal lifestyle, frugal living, frugal living hacks, frugal living tips, frugal living tips that actually work, frugal tips, how to be frugal, how to live frugally, how to save money, how to save money this month, living frugal, living frugally, minimalism, minimalist, retire early, saving money, saving money ideas, nate o'brien

Id: rLnHx5Ojq3c

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2019