Asklemmy

I do a few things. I drink Cold Brew "black", I use the Areo Press to make my coffee. Drive a EV, I have a 3 degree temp swing on thermostat longer on and off time is more efficient away temp setpoint is 61 and home 63 and sleep 62 degrees. All led lights use a electric razor, I don't drink milk, sodas, juice only water and cold teas "Black no sugar or cream". Use a toaster oven VS the regular oven for small cooking jobs or reheating. Cook some food for the week like chicken breast and sweet potatoes and reheat in the toaster oven. When I take a shower I turn the heat maybe a degree higher if the heat isn't on so the boiler is more efficient. In the summer I have two window inverter AC set @73, the inverter AC save so much electricity and are fairly quiet. Almost forgot I was my clothes in cold water.

tldr: Being mindful and trying to find new ways of using stuff that I already have before I go buy new.

I reuse. All those bigly plastic bags from 20+ toilet paper rolls - I use them at least as thrash bags. That's like simplest one, but also for example when my clothes are beyond being deemed worthy of being sleepwear, they get cut into cloths to live on as cleaning utensils.

When something breaks I tend to try to repair it instead of getting new stuff. If that's impractical or not possible, depending on a thing I disassemble it, and salvage what can be useful. Also by doing this I learn how stuff was made, which I liked to know since being a kid :)

I found europalletes and repurposed them to make my balcony space nicer (made flooring and a small bench out of them) I also ask people if they have spare construction materials, like bits of wood or stuff like that. There are fb neighbour groups in my area, and it makes so much sense to me to use what I can get in my projects. I rarely have a full-on plan/vision of the stuff I want to make. I much rather have a storage with random materials and stuff and play adult version of Lego with them.

When faced with obsolete electronics, I try to repurpose it and assimilate into little Borg of mine (how I like to call my little network). I learned java a bit to write small android app to decode amiibo NFC data to control the stuff around my flat when phone (placed under the tabletop) detected Pikachu statue my lights toggled. Such stuff.

I dunno if with me it's less about saving and more about how to use things in different way and getting most out of stuff. A chipped cup can still be an awesome pot for your new plant friend. Broken cutlery knife can be helpful as a tool when you wouldn't want to use proper knife.

That said. When I have to buy something, like hobby-related, or electronics so guitar, piano, home recording studio shit like that, also PC parts - I set myself a budget, read upon things available, do my research and order stuff for 110% of my initial budget. What I mean by this, we have a saying in polish - chytry dwa razy traci - sly/greedy loses twice - as in you buy cheap shit, it breaks, you have to buy new thing again. When I set on buying something it will take me months to do my homework, and also because of my upbringing, lessens the anxiety from spending money.

One I don't see here that we follow, if we didn't absolutely need it yesterday we don't want it today. Keeps us from buying things that seem like a good idea for aren't really solving a problem for us.

Edit: Here's another one. Buy cars for cash instead of a loan. Here's how we do it: We save about ~$400 a month to buy a car, in a year we buy a ~$5000 car. We do it again and then sell that first car for about what we bought it for and put the new ~$5000 towards it.

Right now my wife drives a 2023 Ioniq 5 and I drive a 2014 Z51 Corvette with no payments. To be fair we've been doing this for a long time and we no longer do yearly upgrades. Last time was 5 years between upgrades and this time we think it'll be 10 years between upgrades.

We used to have a lot of empty plastic water bottles but I went and got a 5 gallon jug with a pump attachment and now we can just refill the jug with good water and not waste so much plastic

The biggest bills are usually from heating and cooling. In the winter try to set your thermostat a few degrees lower and just use a blanket while you're sitting watching TV or whatever. Usually if you're up moving around doing housework or whatever being cold isn't a problem.

Also if you have a hot water heater you can set it a few degrees lower and it won't use as much energy.

• Learn to cook. Always eating out or getting takeout is expensive. You’ll also become healthier in the process.

• If you have a simple hairstyle, it’s possible to learn to cut it yourself or have your SO/spouse help. I bought an electric razor and a set of scissors for a total of $40 and have never gone to the barber since the pandemic started. I’ve probably saved thousands in haircuts by now.

• If you’re ok with eating the same food twice, cook enough food for double the amount of people at home, so you have enough leftovers for another meal, instead of having to cook again.

Unless you live in Antarctica (in which case my advice probably won't reach you anyways), instead of paying for heating all the time, just wear thicker clothing in your home. If common animals can survive even the outdoors of Oymyakon on account of their fur, the cold shouldn't be any match for us pesky humans and our ability to improvise.