The other day I was watching this segment that talked about inflation here and how things are getting more expensive pretty quickly. As usual you would see interviews from people on what they thought about it and there was this one lady that had an interesting comment. She mentioned how her strategy to save more money as a result was to simply classify the more expensive things as a form of luxury that she doesn’t need.

That actually made me think as many times I actually use that train of thought to save money as well. I know for a lot of people as well for certain things they would never classify it as being a luxury regardless of the price tag as long as it falls within their definition of something that they need. It’s only when it comes to extremely expensive items like a house when the majority of people seem to agree that over a certain price tag would be considered a luxury purchase.

It’s those smaller items I guess where you have to be a little more picky about. Example, everyone has to eat, but if you are telling me say this small hamburger patty by itself costs like $3 I would say that is a luxury purchase that you have to learn not to perceive as a necessity. I think for the most part for myself I usually classify something as luxury based on the price.

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Recently it was suggested that I try out an online advertising network. To help promote it the company offered a bunch of online coupons that ranged anywhere from $50 to $100 worth of advertising credit.

The coupons appeared to be stackable as well and so you could literally just pile them up. I ended up redeeming three of them so far and got about a $150 credit. Now if I can make good use of that credit to generate sales or exposure for something that would definitely be a good return.

I always try to do something similar for stores too as sometimes you will find that the vendor allows you to stack up as many as possible. Of course, sometimes it is just a machine error. This usually happens in campaigns where companies give everyone in a certain region or demographic the same coupon code and so people just end up sharing and stacking them up.

I guess if you are a business and you didn’t want that to happen then it is important not to forget that fine print of “one coupon per customer”.

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I was reading about this financial strategy that some families implement to save a lot of money. Essentially, most people for things like grocery shopping determine what they want first and then try to adjust their budget accordingly. Instead, what these people do is they look at what’s on sale and then create their plans based on that.

For example, instead of saying this week you feel like eating a steak and then saving money to buy one, if you see that there is a crazy deal on angus beef you would then create a meal around that instead. They would do something similar with trips or activities too such as they see if there are any deals to take advantage of first.

I don’t do that for everything personally, but for many things I do. It started when I was kid as when I went with my parents grocery shopping they would always ask me to go choose a box of cereal that I wanted. The thing was I didn’t care too much which one I chose, well aside from the “healthy ones”, and would base my decision mainly on the price. I didn’t want my parents to spend more than they had to.

If you are not very picky and can discipline yourself to do this, it can be a great way to start piling up the savings.

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Over the weekend my dad went on a small trip with some of his friends and he came back with a whole load of seafood that they caught themselves such as fish, oysters and muscles. Because he got so much, he wanted to give it to other members of the family as well.

My brother had an interesting comment about that as he was wondering whether or not it was safe to eat since they caught it themselves. That immediately made me think of the tap water story I wrote about yesterday where most people can’t help to think that if it doesn’t come in some kind of package or store it much be very dangerous to consume.

I bet if you really needed to save money doing things like this in terms of trying to acquire your own food the natural way can save a lot of money. I once saw a person who actually had his own garden where he grew some vegetables as a hobby. Similarly, he seemed very paranoid about consuming it since he grew it himself.

I always have the thought that what you are paying for when it comes to things like these are not necessarily better in terms of quality or safety, but rather you are paying for the convenience of having someone else doing the work for you.

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Apparently here there is going to be some kind of ad campaign created to educate people about tap water here and how it is safe to drink. The article I read basically revolved around bottled water and how various commercials have made people believe that tap water has a high chance of being unsafe to drink. As a result, people shell out money for bottled water.

There was an interesting fact too where it indicated that today a litre of bottled water was actually more than a litre of gas. I wonder if anyone has ever done a case study on how much money they have saved by either bottling their own water or simply relied on tap water.

Kind of strange in some ways when you think about it as it’s like someone spending money to convince another person to simply eat the apples that grow in his own backyard tree as oppose to going to the store and spending money.

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