Ten tips on how to save money.

Here are ten easy ideas to spend less and to help save money on your regular expenses.

Five easy tips to save money,

• Set a budget for how much you will spend each week/month.

• Divide the money you have to spend each week up into groups, one for food (groceries), one for utility bills such as gas and electric, one for petrol etc.

• Try not to waste, this applies to many things but especially to food,electricity and gas.

• If you really need to cut back on what you spend and you know you are spending on non-essential items - try to think about the difference between wanting something and needing something. Often a question I ask myself is do I want this or do I need this? There is nothing wrong with spoiling yourself with luxuries and treats if you can afford them, but when money is tight you might need to defer that type of spending until the future.

A couple of examples of saving in ways that are good for more than your budget-

by not wasting power or goods

• Switch off lights when you leave the room and switch off standbys on electrical equipment (where possible) at night.

• Use all the food you buy before it goes out of date.

  This can be achieved with planning for meals and using shopping lists. Even just a quick check of dates of food in the fridge as you put away items can help to remind us that they should be used up in the next couple of days or so.

If you really need to cut back try to shop only for items you need.

This often involves avoiding buying items that the supermarket is trying to tempt you to buy, which is difficult as lots of work has been put in to influence your choices and encourage you to purchase more than you need to buy.

It helps if you make a list when you are going shopping especially for food and keep to what is on the list to avoid being tempted to spend more money.

I believe this cutting out luxuries is difficult to do because the stress of having to cut your budget makes your crave the very things you are having to cut back on.

Five more money saving tips,

• Only buy special offers such as three for the price of two if you can use the products up while they are still in date.
• Set a budget for gifts at Christmas, for birthdays etc. and stick to it, it can be tempting to spoil others even when you are being frugal with spending on yourself.
• Cook meals that are quick and easy to prepare, but use good quality but low cost ingredients.

This means using fruit and vegetables when they are a good price and readily available in season or better still growing some foods for your own use. Look at the fruit and vegetables before you buy them select the freshest and best. Also check the sell by dates as you shop and couple of extra days gives you time to use up the product and not waste it. Talking of sell by dates supermarkets in the UK often cut the cost of fruit and vegetables as they near the sell by date on the bag, good news for you but bad news for them. As long as the reduced price fruit and vegetables are still fresh there is no harm in buying them, think of it this way an apple on a tree does not come with an 'eat me by ' date stamped on it. These reduced price fruits can provide a good chance of making easy desserts from them if you want to.

Some ideas to use up fruits quickly - try using them before they over ripen in-

Bananas - bananas and custard, make a banana bread cake, banana add bananas to your breakfast cereal or yoghurt.

Apples - stewed apple, baked apples, apple cake.

Most fruit and berries can be cooked up into a fruit compote to use as part of a dessert or with muesli,yoghurt, or porridge or on toast for breakfast.

More money saving ideas -

• Instead of buying magazines and books if you can read them on-line or use library books and try to cancel magazine subscriptions.
• With these two tips you might want add up how much you have saved to make them seem worthwhile.

• Try not to be tempted by take away food and purchasing coffee, work out how much you spend in a year on such things and you may get a shock at the amount it totals up to.

That's it, if trying to follow the ten ideas at once seems harsh then try to introduce the idea of them one at a time.

If you already do all ten of these then well done maybe you have some more ideas that you can add as a comment here or join us and write a HubPages hub about them.