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Musings • Blog

My Ultimate Money Saving Guide

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BradLey
Chad
Two Cents
Nov 3, 2020

For Business

Google Voice

It's a free telephone line that connects to your current number. It gives you a free number but the calls and text come through on your phone under that number. Just save it in your contacts at "Work Call" or something like that and boom - free phone. You can easily set it up to go straight to voice mail on certain days and times too.

Saves you: $40/mo for a business phone line.

I don't recomend Google for anything anymore, but I do provide some handy replacements with better privacy and such.

Azlo

A free online business bank account that allows you to organize you balance into envelopes so you can save for certain bills and taxes in the easiest way possible.

Affinity Designer

Now you can dump photoshop and illustrator for Affinity. Designer and Photo are just one time fees of $50 as opposed to paying $25 a month to Adobe for even just one of apps you need. Affinity does a whole mess of things way easier than Adobe too. It's amazing.

Gusto

Pay your employees for $20 or $40 a month. It automates payroll and takes care of creating all your employees tax documents. It makes it easy for them to download them too. Payday is way easier with Gusto. Check out their plans for a ll the details.


For Life

When you save in life it saves for your business too.

MINT MOBILE

This is the best money saver I have ever found. As long as your current phone is payed off and unlocked (most have been since 2015), just sign up online, receive the SIM car, stick it in and your phone - done. If you payed for the 3GB/mo plan you. Now instead of paying $100- $200 a month, your paying $200 a YEAR per person. You can do family plans too. Also their app makes everything easy and you'll never have to call a terrible customer support line.

Emily and I looked at the data we were using on TMobiles unlimited plan and found with few adjustments we could easily stay under 3GB a month. I started with 5GB and turns out I didn't need it. All I had to do was stop playing Pokemon Go. Totally worth the immense savings. You can easily do it to. You are probably paying for data you don't even need right now.

Shop at Aldi, not Walmart

When Emily and I first got married we spent a little over $100 a week on grocers at Walmart. We had gone there our whole lives and din't know Aldi was there. Then we shopped at Aldi and the first trip was $50! So literally half the price. For years that stayed consistent, then we had a kid and guess what? It's like $60-$75. Most things are about half the price. Most everything has better ingredients. There's fewer options, but infinitely better ones, so it saves time of looking through tons of them too. Theres sunlight! Also Aldi finds always read our minds on the most bizarre things. We say I wish Aldi had this and it's there in the next two weeks. They ofter a great line of organic products at the same price or less than Walmart. It's not too expensive to eat healthy with Aldi. Granted there are some things that cost a lot that you won't find there, but Aldi has all the more basic needs, so they really do have you covered.

Cut your grocery bill in half. No joke, plus get in and out in 10-20minutes.

Update: Obviously that price has gone up in 2022-2023, but the savings compared to Walmart are still just as good.

Know what you need before you get groceries.

Don’t go looking just to see what’s there. This applies to everywhere you shop. It will double your bill if you like to go see what's new. Except at Aldi somehow it only goes up $20-$30 buck when we do this. Again Aldi is perfect.

Drink Good Water

Stop drinking sodas! They are terrible for you and just cost you money. Do a study and see if you save $100 a month simply by not getting sodas at restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. If you really can't stop, just slow it down. A great way to stop is to buy one take a sip and grow it away. Then you train your mind to say that sodas are wasteful. Guess what? They are. I've done this and it works.

Water is infinitely better for you too. You'll see weigh loss like *that and feel that your heart is healthier.

Don't be fooled though. Sink & bottled water has over 200 chemicals including fluoride which you do not need in that mass amount. The best price filter I've found is from Clearly Filtered. We bought their water bottles and the fridge filter. We could not be happier!

Limit Sugar to 25 grams a day.

You’ll be healthy and find yourself saying no to things that suck for you. When I eat ice cream I only get it at Sweet Dream Creamery and I eat about six super small bites and tell myself I'm good. I really am. "Oh but everything has sugar in it!" I know, but not at Aldi. Shop there.

Qube Bank

We used to used Simple Bank but they closed. After years of searching we found this!

The best bank interface and only bank that offers a saving account too. It's all free, but the best part is that you can split your balance into "Expenses" which are exactly like cash envelopes for certain things, but it's digital. When you go to Yeyo's for lunch, a notification pops up and right there you can choose to take that money out of your Eating budget or somewhere else. When you can keep up with your money easily you won't find yourself lost in it. This is the best way to do that and the only bank in America that offers it at this time.

The only downside is that they don't have checks available yet.

Call Chris Rasmussen for Home Repairs

This is Emily's dad and he saves us thousands upon thousands of dollars just by knowing who will rip you off and who won't. Sometimes you'll get rates so low from his guys that you won't believe it could that much cheaper than the other guy you called. Trust him. Yhey always take good care of you. So if you need a guy to fix your roof, electric, AC, paint or whatever - call him and see who he recommends. He's been building houses in NWA for $35 years. Look up Rasmussen Construction.

Repair Your Car At *Midas

If you live in Rogers or Bentonville, only ever go to Midas for car repairs. Never a dealer unless you have a warranty and it's really going to be free. Midas is trustworthy and can fix everything. I went in a asked for a new tire a couple weeks ago and was ready to bust out over $100 and then I asked if it was patchable and they totally did for only $20. They could have easily sold me a tire, but they didn't. They never want to take your money if they didn't earn it. Eric is the best dude. When you walk in, you might feel like he is too busy for you or something, but he has a heart of gold man and he's hilarious. Just relax and let them take care of you. We have saved thousands of dollars by going to them the past three years.

Directions

UPDATE (2023): Midas got new management and lost the awesome guy Eric who used to be a the front desk. Now they're trying to sell us more than we need and we've stopped going. I'm liking Strickland just down the road though.

Get the basic version when you buy a car.

Even if it's free remember that you will pay more for new tires and all sorts of replacements down the line. Enjoy it, but don't put any pride in your vehicle and you'll have tons of money for more important things.

Delete TV

You don't need it. There's streaming apps for everything and Youtube TV too.

Saves $40/mo


Random Hacks

Use purification oil on cutting board when cutting onion and it won't burn your eyes.

If you need a dish soap that's good for your hands, cheap and works perfectly go with Puracy.

Ok that's all for now, but I'll update this when I learn new things.