If you are feeling guilty over the amount of money you’ve splurged this Christmas, it’s not surprising you might be looking at January to be the month when you start cutting back. The good news is you can save an impressive amount of money and free up a significant amount of cash to invest next year as well.
Let’s look at just some of the ways you might do this in the weeks and months to come.
1: look at reducing all your bills
Are you paying the lowest possible amount for your bills? We’re talking about energy bills, phone bills, and internet bills not to mention several others. If you want to start cutting back on your outgoings this is the best place to begin. Even if you shopped around for good deals a while back and got all the best ones available, they may not be so good now. Make sure you have the chance to spend less every month by evaluating your current bills to see how cheap they really are.
2: switch to home cooked and prepared meals instead of pre-packed
Are you a good cook? You don’t need to be brilliant to learn how to cook a few decent and nourishing meals in bulk that can be easily frozen to enjoy later. This saves time and is far better than buying ready meals – not to mention a lot cheaper.
Get a couple of basic cookery books if you need them and start expanding your repertoire. Start taking a quick packed lunch to work too. A piece of fruit, a drink and a sandwich is an easy lunch to put together the night before. Cook a batch of pasta or rice too, and add something different every day for a quick and easy option that is also very cheap.
3: sell anything you don’t want or need
There is a lot to be said for de-cluttering your home. It will feel very freeing and give you a clear head too. You can also make money from doing it, because you can sell all manner of things on auction sites like eBay. You could also hold a garage sale if you want to.
It will take a little time to list things on auction sites but the more popular items are the easier it will be to get better prices for them. Be sure you watch as the prices rise on auctioned items in the last few hours and minutes. The total price for everything could be a lot better than you might think.
As you can see there are lots of ways to earn money if you want to free up more cash to invest in various ways. Make sure you have a basic savings account at the very least, so you can squirrel away all the cash to keep until you know how you will invest it. 2014 could turn out to be a very profitable year.