I frequently read blogs about coupons, frugal living and how to save money. Reading about these topics helps inspire me to reduce my own spending so that I can live a simpler life. Some of the most popular blogs related to this topic are the blogs of coupon queens, women who have turned the use of coupons into an art form that also seems to earn them an income.

There are a lot of tricks used by these coupon queens to get the most for their money with coupons. Ultimately, though, these tricks seems to boil down to three basic things. Coupon queens concentrate their efforts on searching for and saving as many coupons as possible (using coupons for everything), stacking coupons which means using multiple coupons for the same purchase, and always looking for new information about the best ways to save money.

People who want to learn to save money with coupons but who don’t want to invest the time and energy to go ahead and become coupon queens should find that working on these three tricks will help them to save the kind of money that they want to save through the use of coupons.

Tags: coupon queens, couponing, coupons, Frugal Living, Personal Finance, save money

People who are trying to save money will find that there are certain areas of spending that are smarter to cut back in than others. The most obvious thing that you should do is to track your spending and see where you spend the most; then cut back in those areas to significantly reduce your expenditures.

Most people will find that the two biggest areas of expense for them are the cost of their housing and the cost of their daily transportation. You can save a whole lot of money by moving into a smaller home and cutting back on your use of a car.

Of course, not all people will be able to cut back in these areas. There are some other things that you can look at to reduce spending by a lot. Reducing your vices, limiting what you spend on luxuries and spending time instead of money wherever possible are three more ways that you can probably save money in your life.

These seem to be the quickest places to start saving money if you work on them in my opinion. What do you think? Are there better places to start saving money in your life than these key areas? Where would you start with trying to spend less?

Tags: kathryn vercillo, money, Personal Finance, save money, spend less, spending

I’ve been reading a lot lately about coupon queens and coupon divas. These are people who pride themselves on an ability to use coupons to save a large amount of money on everything that they purchase. They offer all sorts of tricks and tips to enhance money-saving with coupon use.

This is all smart stuff. However, I think that the average person needs to balance saving money with saving time. Clipping coupons can end up wasting a lot of time if you don’t know what to look for and how to do it efficiently.

One of the most important things to learn if you want to save money with different types of coupons is how many different types of coupons are out there and which ones are even worth your time. There are coupons for free stuff, coupons for half off, coupons for buy one get one free … You have to really know what’s what if you’re going to be able to quickly sift through coupons and really make use of them without spending too much time on them.

See my recent article describing 10 different types of coupons to learn more about this area of personal finance.

Tags: coupons, discount codes, kathryn vercillo, money, Personal Finance, saving money

Remember when Mom or Grandma used to get out the Sunday paper and clip out coupons. She probably organized them in some sort of envelope or fancy organizer and then took them to the store with her when she did her grocery shopping. Although there are still people out there using coupons like this today, it really doesn’t make sense any more to rely on these printed types of coupons to save money.

Printed coupons just don’t have the benefits that they used to have for most people. For one thing, it has been shown that you can probably save as much or more money by shopping for store brands instead of buying name brands using a coupon. More importantly, the whole process of printing coupons (whether the manufacturer prints them or you do it yourself at home) is time-consuming and costly and it makes saving money in this way inefficient.

Online discount codes make sense in today’s society. Mobile phone coupons make sense in today’s society. But printed coupons just don’t make a lot of sense anymore.

Tags: coupons, Frugal Living, kathryn vercillo, save money, society, Technology

I do a lot of research into saving money when shopping online. Because of this, I’m constantly looking for news about discount codes and other tools for saving money online. Recent news suggests that college-aged kids are the ones most likely to be interested in using online coupon codes.

This is an example of how technology has taken an old tradition and brought it to the younger generation. Young folks and young couples have traditionally been opposed to “coupon-clipping”. However, now that they’re able to get their coupons online, they are more interested in saving money this way.

Of course, the recession has encouraged all people to start looking at ways of saving money. It just so happens that college-aged kids are most likely to turn to the Internet to do that. As a result, the industry for discount coupons online is growing rapidly.

What’s interesting about the research is that young couples without kids are more likely to use discount codes than are young couples with kids. You would think folks with babies were the ones most interested in saving money wouldn’t you?! Maybe they’re still using the old coupon-clipping method in keeping with tradition. What do you think?

Tags: discount codes, Frugal Living, promotional codes, saving money, shopping, shopping online, trends

This isn’t the only blog that I write. I also write a few other blogs including Real Words which is my blog all about freelance writing and what it’s like being a web writer for a living. I recently added a post over there that’s all about the things that I do as a web writer that ultimately probably end up being a waste of money. For example, I often over-pay postage on things that I’m mailing out so that I don’t have to go to the post office and weigh out my packages.

You may be thinking that it’s not possible that I waste all that much money on extra stamps. You’re right. I don’t mail things out for work all that often and I probably waste less than a dollar each time. But isn’t it these little things that ultimately end up leading to a whole lot of wasted money in our lives?

A great example of small bits of wasted money that add up quickly is the grocery store trip. I often purchase a pack of gum or a bottle of water that I don’t need or a snack for the walk home when I could just wait and actually eat what I went to the store to buy. Again, I’m only spending one or two dollars on these things but I go to the grocery store four or five times a week which means I’m wasting $20 or more on these little things each month which would add up to a nice chunk of change if I saved it all over the course of a year.

And that’s just one area of a bit of wasted money here and there. There are a lot of other little ways in which I waste amounts of money that seem trivial at the time but then they add up. These are the things we need to be aware of if we want to have a savings at the end of the year!

Tags: Frugal Living, kathryn vercillo, money tips, Personal Finance, real words, save money, spend money, spending, waste money

One of the topics that I have been doing a ton of research on lately is the topic of using promotional codes to save money online. It’s something that I do regularly when shopping online at my favorite websites. There are some sites that I just know always have promo codes available (Walgreens which is where I get my photos printed and 1800Flowers which I use to send gifts sometimes).

What I’m learning, though, is that you can basically use online promotional codes for everything. If you know what you’re doing and where to look, you can get discounts on everything from your daily needs (like food) to your ongoing expenses (like car insurance). It seems like it takes some time to research the best places to actually get those discounts but apparently they’re out there.

I’m really just starting to get the hang of figuring out the right use of discount codes. I’ve been doing it for awhile but I’ve found through researching the topic that there is just so much out there to learn. My next step is to really keep up with my RSS feeds from my favorite money saving blogs so that I can get more tips to use in daily life.

Any tips from you readers out there about using online promotional codes or other ways of saving money when doing online shopping?

Tags: Frugal Living, online discount cods, online shopping, promo codes, shopping

One of the things that I don’t miss about my last place was that it had carpets. Sure, there are great things about carpets but they are so hard to keep clean! I much prefer my hardwood floors.

Nevertheless, I did have carpets for a long time. I also had dogs, a combination that doesn’t mix very well. Because of this, I was constantly testing out new vacuum cleaners and carpet cleaning products to try to keep that carpet free of pet hair and dirt.

What I found was that the best solution was to make your own carpet cleaner. This was great for three main reasons. First, it was cheap. Second, it was made using natural ingredients instead of chemicals so it was healthy and “green”. And finally, it really worked a lot better than anything else I tried.

Have you ever made your own carpet cleaner? Do you have any suggestions for how to make a good solution that works on all different types of carpets? I don’t need that advice anymore since I’ve got my great hardwood floors but I’d love to know the answer so that I can pass it on to others!

Tags: carpet cleaner, ehow, home, household products, how to, kathryn vercillo, make your own cleaners, natural cleaners

Two of the topics that I write about most frequently are technology and personal finance. Specifically, I often write about mobile phones and I also often write about how to save money in your life. Every once in awhile I get to combine these two areas of interest in one article. That’s the case with an article I recently wrote about how to make your mobile phone last for a long time.

I know that most people upgrade their cell phones about once each year. Some people that I know get new phones long before that year is up. I, on the other hand, tend to hang on to my phones for at least a couple of years. Yes, I certainly have an interest in the latest new technology (and have been eyeing the Android phones a lot lately) but I also think that it’s a good idea to hold off on getting a phone until I really need one.

Every time that I have upgraded my phone, I’ve increased the cost of my phone bill. This means I’m not only paying for the phone but also paying more each month for the services on the phone. I’m fairly certain that’s going to happen again when I upgrade the next time because I’ll be adding a data plan which I don’t have now.

I’m not saying it’s not worth the money and convenience to get the new mobile technology. I just think that people who are trying to cut back on spending right now may want to hold on to their phones for a bit. What do you think?

Tags: cell phones, keep phone longer, make phone last, mobile phones, Personal Finance, save money, Technology

I’ve mentioned a few times already on this blog that I do a lot of my shopping online for a variety of different reasons. When I do so, I try to keep my costs down in any way that I can. I participate in swap sites that let me get things like books for free. I do some comparison shopping between different sites before making a purchase. And I try to avoid that so-easy-to-fall-into trap of impulsive buying.

But ultimately, saving money online (or off, for that matter) really boils down to being able to do the math. You need to be able to determine whether or not the deal that you’re getting truly is a good deal. If something’s “10 for $10″ but you only need one then it’s a waste to buy ten of the item to get the deal but oddly enough there are a lot of people who don’t realize that.

One area of online shopping where problems with math often arise is when it comes to shipping and handling fees. You can lower those fees if you’re smart about it but you have to be able to do the math. “Free shipping” isn’t always free and expedited shipping is usually, but not always, a bad idea. Then you get into things like bulk shipping and flat rate shipping and you really need to start looking at whether or not you’re getting a deal.

If you don’t want to do the numbers then that’s okay but you should be aware that you’re probably going to lose money if you’re refusing to do that math. Smart shoppers take the time to make sure that they know what they’re paying for what they’re getting!

Tags: online shopping, reduce shipping costs, save money, shipping and handling, shipping fees, shopping