With most money-saving tips, you always get the same advice – avoid spending money! It sounds so simple, and it works very well in most situations. Save money on your monthly budget by not spending money on lots of coffees or meals out.
However, this advice doesn’t always work. More accurately, there are times where you can’t avoid spending money. These are known as life’s essential expenses – the things everyone will pay for and can’t avoid. This guide will provide a list of some of these essential expenses with tips on how you can save money.
For reference, the expenses are:
- Buying a house
- Paying your bills
- Buying & maintaining a car
- Planning a wedding
- Planning a funeral
Quite an eclectic mix, but I think you’ll agree that these are things most people will pay for. So, let’s see how you save money:
Buying a house
There are only two things you can do to save money when buying a house:
- Buy under the right conditions
- Negotiate the price
The correct buying conditions for a house is a market where sellers are eager to sell. In essence, this is called a buyer’s market. Usually, house prices have dropped, and people want to sell before they fall even more. So, the buyer holds all the power, which helps with negotiating the price. Never pay the asking price for a house as you can almost always haggle it a bit lower. Two straightforward tips, but they can save you thousands!
Paying your bills
An ongoing expense that you absolutely can’t avoid – nor can you afford to miss payments. The number one way to save money on your bills is by comparing prices online. Always use comparison sites to find the best energy providers, internet services, etc. Also, save money by only paying for things that you need. Why pay for cable TV if you barely watch it? Do you really need unlimited data on your phone when you use 2gb every month? Take more time to compare offerings and be sure all of your money goes on things you will actually use.
Buying & maintaining a car
Straight away, you will always save money on a car if you buy a used one. Brand new cars look slick, but they’re too expensive and not worth the money. Like houses, used car prices can be negotiated for a better deal. Just make sure you buy from a trustworthy dealer so you aren’t ripped off – always ask for a full-service history to see the health of the car.
When it comes to saving money on maintenance, you mainly have to drive sensibly. That sounds like a ridiculous piece of advice, yet it helps. Sensible drivers are less likely to crash their cars or cause damage to different parts. As a result, you will save money on regular servicing and repairs. Alongside this, save money on fuel by driving more economically. If you can use less fuel when you drive, you will save a lot of money every month. Consider buying an electric or hybrid car as you can slash your fuel costs.
Planning a wedding
Weddings are crazy expensive, like seriously one of the most costly things you’ll ever pay for. If your wedding has already happened, you may want to skip to the next point as you’ll be annoyed at how much money you could’ve saved! Or, carry on reading to save money if one of your children gets married in the future!
Either way, saving money on a wedding is both easy and hard. It’s easy because there are so many little things you can save money on. It’s hard because you don’t know what to save money on! In fact, there are so many ideas that I can’t possibly list them all here. If you want the full list, then click here to read it. Right now, we’ll focus on two simple ideas. Firstly, consider decreasing the size of your wedding. Smaller weddings are more intimate and special as you have a close relationship with everyone there. Plus, fewer guests means you can save a lot of money on catering, etc. Secondly, choose an unpopular wedding date. Getting married on the weekend in summer will be more expensive than getting married in spring or on a weekday. It’s a small sacrifice that doesn’t change much about the wedding but can save lots of money.
Planning a funeral
Things have taken a dark turn, but you can’t hide from the fact that you will pay for a funeral at some point. To make matters worse, they’re outrageously expensive. So, you have to figure out how to give a loved one a good send-off without spending too much money. This sounds really harsh, but your loved one probably wouldn’t want you to go broke just to provide an expensive funeral for them.
Here, there’s not a great deal that you can do. An obvious idea is to look for discounts on specific items. If you look at the caskets from Memorials.com, you’ll notice a lot are discounted or on sale. Save money by looking for things like this when planning the funeral. Another idea revolves around the headstone. The simpler it is, the cheaper it will be. Think about affordable materials instead of fancy ones, and keep the writing respectful and simple.
Again, this sounds really mean as your instinct is to buy the best things for the best possible send-off. The sad reality is that most of you won’t be able to afford a high-budget funeral as they are often thousands of dollars. You’ve already suffered enough grief, don’t make things worse by going broke as well.
On that note, you’ve reached the end of this guide. Hopefully, it has given you some extra advice on saving money when you have to spend it. We all have unavoidable expenses throughout life, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reduce their costs. Of course, be sure you follow basic money-saving advice alongside all of these tips! You need to focus on both essential and non-essential expenses if you truly want to save money.
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