Easy Frugal Ways to Save Money in 5 Minutes or Less

what can you do in five minutes that will save you money more than you might [Music] think hi I'm Larry and I'm hope and we're from under the median where every week we talk about practical frugality if you think that Frugal hacks all take a lot of time then hold on to your hat we're about to give you 50 of them and none of them take any longer than five minutes let's get started hack number one check your bank account why should you do this because when you regularly check your bank account you can immediately know if there's been anything fraudulent that has been charged on your bank account you can look at your spending patterns and habits and immediately determine where you are spending too much money by generic remember most generic items are made by Major manufacturers so you're getting as good a quality as you would if you were paying full price tell us in the comment section do you believe that do you believe that generic products these days are made in the same same assembly Lines by the same major manufacturers it's just that there's a different label put on the product tell us what you think another thing you can do really helps is to inventory your perishables and this is Hope and I going through that process let's run through the basics of what your perishable food inventory is going to look like using my perishable food that I just took out of my refrigerator as our example one of the things that you'll notice is I have a lot and I do mean a lot of perishable food right now and that's because Aldi was having some amazing deals uh we have four pounds or four bags four 5B bags of red potatoes each one of those bags of potatoes was $189 $189 uh they had cabbage green cabbage because it was St Patrick's Day I got four heads of cabbage they also had carrots 2B bags of carrots for 99 and I did have some squash I've got like I don't know look like six teeny tiny potatoes left over and then I've got a an acorn squash and this squash I'm going to cook these together and use them in the same recipe because even though they're not the same kind of squash it is close enough and then finally we have a couple of spaghetti squash that have been sitting on my counter for a long time like since fall they're still good but I need to use them up and finally I've got some yellow onions perishable food inventory guys you're going to fill out a perishable food inventory every week I do it every single Thursday that inventory is going to be what that's right it is going to be prioritized and that means the items with the shortest shelf life are going to go all the way at the top of your list cuz it's going to reminds you to use them up first tip number four while you have your food out of your refrigerator and you're inventorying it that is the perfect time to pull the fridge out you should do this once every four months or so pull it out from from the wall give it a good vacuum in the back make sure that you've cleaned off those coils that are often in the back of the refrigerator that allows the motor to run less and under less stress and strain meaning that ultimately it will help save you on your energy cost push it back not all the way back against the wall it needs to breathe just a little bit and then go ahead and take time and wipe down all of the shelves inside the refrigerator before you put your perishables back in menu planning it does not take as long as you think that it will lar is going to set a timer on his watch and give me a five minute countdown when his watch goes off my time is up we're going to see how much I can get planned in exactly 5 minutes you ready Larry ready all right let's go ready start all right we're starting the spaghetti squash we're going to cook both of these spaghetti squash at the same time we're going to roast them in the oven with about 2 and 1 12 lounds of these red potatoes and we're going to throw both of these squash in at the same time whenever you roast in your oven I want you to make sure that it's full after these are cooked we're going to let them cool we're going to set aside about three cups of it we're going to cut it up really finely we're going to use it in first recipe a big batch of vegetable soup the rest of this is going to go into spaghetti squash fritters moving on I'm going to use uh some of these carrots and I'm going to make carrot dogs I'm going to cut up some of this cabbage but before I do that all the large leaves on the outside of the Cabbage are going to be set aside we're going to blanch them we're going to fill them with a mixture of rice and lentils and they're going to be stuffed cabbage rolls the rest of it we're going to cut up the rest of a head of cabbage and we're going to make some cabbage SLO for later in the week we're going to use these potatoes in with the vegetable soup we're going to use these in with a curried squash soup which we're going to use this as the base for the curry squash soup we're going to once again use 2 and 1 half more pounds of these potatoes and we are going to make a a potato salad to go with our spaghetti squash fritters when we do those and we are also going to cut up carrot sticks and celery sticks to use those for later in the week and oh and some more this cabbage is going to go for cabbage soup and I think I just did it I think I came up with three main dishes three soups three salads oh and one side dish 2 and2 pounds of these are going to be roasted in the oven and we're going to smash them after they are cooled we're going to put them into the air fryer until they're all crispy on the edges so good guys there you go how much time did I use Larry 2 minutes 2 seconds there you go 2 minutes 2 seconds guys and my entire menu plan is planned for the week Tada and that's how you do mini planning vegan stew guys I didn't say in the menu plan but I still had plenty of time left some of the red potatoes are going to go into a vegan stew along with some of these carrots and if I can get a really great deal on some fresh button mushrooms M stew just needs mushrooms you know what I'm saying cut up vegetables and freeze them before they go bad that way you'll get get a lot longer life out of those tip number seven make vegetable broth it doesn't take very long I always have a freezer bag in my freezer that is filled with all of the scraps from my vegetables this can include the root end as well as some leaves cores things like that even the stems the tough inside stems from herbs I put those in there too because they will give a little bit of that Herby flavor to the vegetable broth once that bag is full I'm going to put it into my pressure cooker just cover it with water pressure cook it for 17 minutes let that naturally release and then pour it into some sort of a colander so that just the vegetable broth goes through and the vegetable scraps that are left over are left in the colander and then let it cool put it in freezer bags and usually I do it in four cups you can do two cups if you feel like you generally use a little less vegetable broth than that instead of ordering take out food go through your refrigerator and clean it out of items that you have saved in there I'm amazed at how many times hope can go in and find small amounts of things bring them all together and make one huge dish that we really enjoy this is our example of take out food because you take it out of the refrigerator tip number nine if you feel like you are bored of making the same thing all the time are you just spending way too much time in the kitchen cooking recipe Rees then Google this easy three ingredient crockpot dump recipes it's amazing you'll be surprised you'll find a lot of inspiration there and a lot of items that are only going to just take you three ingredients to make a main dish meal or a side dish crack open that cookbook that's sitting on your shelf it's amazing how many good recipes you can find in there for your family these are my two new fave cookbooks one of our viewers from Canada Jenny sent these to me when I broke my arm this is from plant-based on a budget if you've never checked out her website or her cookbooks make sure that you do I'm going to leave a link for her website guys in the description of the video she cooks and thinks like I do about food she is brilliant at taking those lowcost ingredients and making amazing recipes plant-based on a budget check it out number 11 if you look at a room and organizing the whole room just seems really overwhelming mean to you then don't organize the whole room pick a shelf or a closet space or a drawer organize a much smaller area you will find yes it takes you about five minutes or so to organize that area and then you can always look at that one area of the room that is perfectly organized if you look around the room and get really bummed because it's messed up only focus on that one area slowly make your way around the perimeter of the room as you do that you will see more and more and more space in the room that is organized plan a saving challenge it doesn't take an awful lot of effort to look around your house and see something that you need to save for oh it takes about like we said five minutes but we should say Don't just plan the challenge we want to make sure that you have it as a goal which means it's going to be smart and it's going to have a Time limitation on it you're going to know exactly what you're saving for the amount of time you're going to save and how much money once you plan that make sure and we always say this print it out put it where you can see it and you should be tracking your progress plan a no spined week in now that's the case where you cut down any unnecessary spending you spend just what you absolutely have to and you save some money what is really fun about no spend weekends is the idea of doing this and this is the next tip is to find ways in your area and places that you can have fun without spend ending any money you will be really surprised how much fun you can have without spending a dime tip number 14 is substitute water for a more expensive drink and while you're at it go ahead and track how many glasses of water you're drinking every day so that you're drinking the right amount that your body needs the one thing that we have found is super helpful for this is we have one of those water containers it's like a thermos and we know how many ounces of water that is it's 32 ounces we can fill it twice a day and know that we've gotten our 64 ounces in so something like that really helps you know cuz otherwise I don't know if you're like me but I lose track how many glasses of water was this you won't have to worry about that if you're only drinking from that one water thermos read an article or a blog post yeah go ahead and Center that blog post around something that involves fality or personal finance or saving money budgeting personal budgeting and it really doesn't take any more than 5 minutes to find and read a short article but you'll be surprised throughout the week how many new ideas strategies tips tid bets that you can pick up just simply by taking that 5 minutes a day and reading an article check online to see what's happening at your local public library and if you don't have an active library card now is a good time to go to the library and get one it is amazing how much money you can save by taking advantage of the resources at your own Public Library the next tip is while you're at the library go ahead and pick up a hard copy of events happening in your library a lot of times they'll have little uh onepage or a multiple page little booklet that tells what sort of programs that you can attend for free at your public library that month while you're at the library Reserve or check out some books on frugality or personal finances George camel's book my new read have you guys read it tell me in the comment section now once you've made that list of a free events coming up in your area you'll want to go ahead and register for those events and often you can get that done within that five minute time span we mentioned this because Larry and I just attended this week a free luncheon and a discussion on how to avoid online fraud it was put on through our local credit union really good text a friend and invite them over for coffee or something else enjoy some free time together and this would be instead of meeting them for lunch or coffee or dinner out at a restaurant tip number 20 make a list of your monthly bills and how much each of those bills costs you on average now a lot of those monthly bills will be subscriptions and you'll find that that is a specific cost every single month multiply that monthly cost by 12 and you'll find out in a hurry how much that subscription is actually costing you every single year out of your budget it is an eye openening experience to do this and doesn't take long to get it all down on paper if you're paying every month for your insurance premium you might check with your insurance company and see if you can pay that annually we ended up doing that and saving 8% by paying it annually instead of every month tip number 22 cancel a membership or a monthly subscription that you aren't really using to its fullest extent in the first place cancelling subscriptions is just one of 10 ways that we radically reduced our expenses when we were saving for great big financial goals now if you want to know the other nine ways that we cut our expenses I wrote an ebook called 10 ways to radically reduce your expenses I give you step-by-step instructions and also checklist in the ebook it's free you will find a link to request it in the description of this video call your bank and ask about current rates on CDs we did this and just renewed one of ours 5% guys that's pretty good and while you're on the phone with your bank you'll want to go ahead and set up automatic bill pay through your bank or your credit union you can also do online bill pay where you can go in and manually tell them every month which bills to pay and the arrival date that needs to happen for each of those bills we've done this for years just make sure before you set it up if there are any Hoops to jump through for instance for a long time through our credit union we had to use our debit card at least twice a month otherwise they charged us $4.95 so if anything like that exists make sure you know before you sign on the dotted line and follow through with exactly what you need to do to keep it free check with your bank while you've got them on the phone and see if you can set up separate accounts for your syncing funds these are major accounts where you're saving a lot of money to pay off your property taxes or to pay off your car insurance different things whatever it happens to be check with your bank to set up those accounts and once you get the accounts set up the next thing you're going to want to do is automate it anything that you can automate the money that you don't see is the money that you don't spend so if your bank or credit union will transfer from your main account to those sub accounts that is super helpful if they were automatically do it for you check around for a cheaper cell phone plan now hope and I and our family love using mintmobile we've discovered we're saving a lot of money for the amount of money that we're putting several on that's what we used to pay just to have hope on one account on her cell phone yeah you want more information about mmobile we're going to leave our affiliate link guys in the description of the video now remember all of the tips that we are giving you in this video take five minutes or less so these are not tips that are going to take you a large amount of time you know something else that won't take you much time scrolling up and hitting that like button on this video because that will help us with the YouTube algorithm and if you aren't subscribed to under the median make sure you hit that subscribe button and the Bell notification button step number 28 is specifically for those of you who are having trouble keeping within a tight grocery budget get out an envelope and stuff that envelope with all of the money that you will spend for groceries that month using a cash pay envelope is the one way that we have always been able to bring our grocery budget back into alignment if it gets a little bit out of whack and the other thing that will help with this is make a very specific plan of what you're going to buy at the grocery store so you're not just running out of that cash in that envelope real fast you're going to make it last all the way to the end of the month in a way that works for your family sometimes fality can get to feel like a little bit of a drag and that was when we recommend the next step which is number 29 write down three things that you are grateful for these are things that are encouraging exciting things which are going right because what happens is otherwise we begin to shift our Focus to everything that is not going quite the way we would like it to go meaning that it Shades everything in the whole way that we feel about our financial journey toward the negative this will bring it directly back to the positive and it will help you to make greater strides with less frustration when it comes to your financial goals and right along with that find someone else that you can bless by sharing what you've saved and the extras that you have with somebody less fortunate it's such a blessing it's a blessing to them but it's also a blessing to you tip number 31 find and install a browser extension or an app that will help you with saving money now we have several that we really really like fetch we use it all the time you upload receipts get points for those receipts and then you can redeem those points eventually for gift cards we also love Rakuten it's probably probably our favorite guys rettin will look for coupon codes at checkout and it will also allow you to earn simultaneously cash back when you make purchases it allows you to in essence double dip because you get to take advantage of the coupons and you also get the cash back we've used it for years love love love rettin we'll make sure once again guys there'll be links for these in the video description write down Ted ways you can save money in the next month this is very productive and it really doesn't take too long go through areas in your budget that need a little adjusting a little help and write those down and meet those on the following month one place that you might want to write these ton inspirational ways to save money that you've discovered in your brainstorming session is to write them down on what we call our Frugal inspiration sheet keep it somewhere where you can see it like on your refrigerator and then when you feel like you've just run out of ways that you can be frugal and that you can save money you can look at that sheet right on your refrigerator and gain new inspiration and remember nope I haven't done everything there are still new ways to save unplug five items that you have plugged in right now around your house so that they're not drawing phantom power if you don't want to unplug them because that takes a little effort to unplug and plug back in I find it easier to put them into a power strip and then you just turn the power strip off I have a power strip that actually has separate buttons for each item so I can hit just isolate a couple if I want to run the other things and I do have a TV and a receiver that both use remote controls anything that uses a remote control will be using phantom power in order to be ready to be activated by that control unit and phantom power yes it really does make a difference in your energy consumption and it makes a difference on ultimately on your monthly Energy bill here's something else that does this is often overlooked and underappreciated but that is walk through your house and turn off all the lights that were left on in rooms that no one is sitting in in relation to those two tips you can unscrew light bulbs that are in a multi-light fixture we have a fixture in our kitchen that uses three light bulbs well I don't need all three all the time sometimes just one is good enough so I'll unscrew the other two and just use one MLB at about 7 Watts tip number 37 a lot of people don't know about this the standard temperature which is factory set on your hot water heater is generally 140° now not only does it raise your energy bill because you're heating up to 140° but that temperature of water is actually dangerous especially if you have young people in your home it can scald them or heck even if you're older people it could scald you all you need to do is turn it down generally to the the next lowest setting which should be around 120° that's still plenty hot but it will save your energy from heating up that extra 20° in relation to that water Take 5 minute showers five minute showers is about all you need to take all you need to do is rinse put some soap on scrub up rinse that off and you're done showers just don't take a lot of time 5 minutes is plenty of time to take a good thorough shower what of our viewers said that you have to choose a peppy song you put a peppy song on knowing that when the song is over you should be out of the shower so yeah it's got to be like and it keeps you moving like it makes you shower faster if you're listening to faster music so tip from our viewer put a brick in your toilet tank now we used to have really old toilets at our old house they were large tanks we would actually put a gallon of water a water jug that was a gallon large we'd fill that with water to put that in the tank and believe it or not there was enough water even with that in there to flush our toilet so if you don't need as much water as your tank is coming with go ahead and put something in it to take up that room newer tanks are pretty efficient and you probably don't want to do that if you have a pretty new toilet turn your thermostat up or down now of course this depends on the season yeah so in the summer time you'll turn your AC setting up and in the winter time you're going to turn your thermostat down down in general for each degree you turn it up or down each degree amounts to an additional 1 to 3% off of your final bill for the next billing cycle we have experimented with this using that single tip as the extra thing that we added to our Energy savings uh program and ideas and we found that in general for each degree that we move that thermostat it saved us 2% on the next month's bill now of course another C would be if it's nice enough outside just turn the furnace off Yeah by all means by all means open your windows up and get some fresh air while you're at it tip number 41 is to prepack snacks if you're going to work and you are tempted by the machines there to buy some snacks if you've already pre-planned you've packaged something you took it with you you don't need to be spending that money of many many coins in those machines number 42 it'll take 5 minutes or less to chop up a head of cabbage or a head of lettuce wash it put it into bags and then that's going to be the base for your salads for the week it's interesting I started chopping carrots and celery to take to church for our Bible study and what we don't eat there I take back home and it's so handy to have that in the refrigerator as a snack for one it's good for you and two it's fast it is better than what I generally grab when I'm hungry me too me too tip number 44 you're going to pour your pot of coffee that you make in the morning into a thermos to keep it warm and at drinking temperature all day long instead of leaving it on that heated hot plate which is in your coffee pot tip 45 it should take you 5 minutes or less to list one item for sale now you can use Facebook Marketplace eBay any other place but if you don't do those things let's just say you're like I don't sell on Facebook I don't do eBay that's okay m i want you to send out an email to your friends and family and say hey we're going through the house we found this we don't use it anymore we've got it for sale if you'd like it let me know or if you know someone who might be interested in this pass it on to them you can sell an amazing amount of stuff by that one simple move unsubscribe from retailer emails if you're not tempted by what you see in your email inbox then you won't be spending money you don't have tip 48 we call this your so that you're going to make a list of the reasons that you really want to save money is it because you're not laying in bed at night worrying about the the weight emotionally and physically all those bills have taken on you and you're getting rid of that worry and that frustration every single month that is your so that it's your why and that will keep you moving forward every single month tip 49 make some encouraging quotes write them down and post them around your house that will help you to be encouraged to continue to do what you're doing right this is my visual aid this is my encouraging statement for this week I literally just made this this morning I am human I will never be perfect that's okay for those of you who are you know a little bit perfectionistic as am I then something like this is going to help you when you see it and you realize that you made a mistake and it doesn't mean that you're inept it doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing it doesn't mean you failed it means that you are what you are human and you just made a mistake and you get back up on your feet you try again when you're doing laundry make sure that you're putting in a full load into your Royer that you'll then either move into your dryer or hang outside or around your basement which whichever you prefer to do but by putting it a full load you're going to be saving money because your washer goes through the same amount of work to wash a onethird load as it does a full load it does use a little bit more water on a full load but it's worth it because you're going to save electricity by doing that and if you can do it in cold water even better and please remember this is something that most people do not know you do not have to use the amount of laundry detergent that that detergent manufacturer tells you you have to use you need somewhere between one and two tablespoons of detergent especially if you have a newer H washing machine it does not take that much detergent in fact if you use too much detergent we discovered this when we upgraded to an H unit we were using too much detergent and we had white streaks like on black jeans and stuff there were white streaks I Googled it and it said you're using too much detergent cut back on the detergent the tips were giving you on this video are like overall tips that cover a lot of different areas of your budget and frugality but let's just say that your grocery budget is your sticking point and it is for many people right now if you'd like 50 tips specifically about how to save money at the grocery store we did a video on that and it's right over there

Channel: Under the Median

Views: 36,719

Keywords: frugality, frugal living, frugal living hacks, frugal living tips, frugal habits, under the median, frugal hacks, frugal living tips and ideas, saving money tips, frugal, frugal living ideas, frugal tips, budget, grocery budget, frugal living habits, how to save money, frugal living tips with big impact, living frugally, how to be frugal, how to live frugally, frugal lifestyle, living frugally to save money, frugal family, money saving ideas, habits of frugal people

Id: lLm4a6BNNMA

Length: 27min 53sec (1673 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024