When we think about saving money, we all have this horrible idea that it is a painful journey where we have to give up on all the luxuries that we enjoy today. This has been said many times before, but all of those little everyday expenses can start to add up when looked at over a longer period of time.

1. If you are a coffee drinker stop buying your coffee, and start making it at home. This is especially critical if you tend to buy your coffee from the more expensive stores (which I wont name here, but you know which ones I'm talking about). Just stop and think about it for a minute, lets say you buy coffee from one of the more expensive places, and it costs you $4 / cup, if you are buying one cup a day, every weekday. that would cost you $960/year! (240 working days * $4 = $960). Now lets say you buy your coffee from a less expensive store, for $1.50 /day, you are looking at a $360/year, so even if you just switched from your expensive brand to the less expensive brand, you'll be saving yourself $600 a year. You'll save even more money if you start making your coffee at home. If you are coffee drinker, its worth the time to think about this point.

2. If you are someone who likes to buy your lunch while at work, then you have a major opportunity to save yourself money AND to start eating healthier. Read my article Why You Should Bring Your Lunch To Work to learn about why bringing your lunch to work is by far a better option then buying your lunch.

3. If you are like me, then when you see a book that you want to read you probably go out and buy it. There are a couple ways that you can save money if you tend to do this and we'll start with the way to save the most amount of money. Go to your local library and see if they have a copy! This is something that I generally fail to do, but I am consciously trying to start doing this more often. The library is free, and they have a wide variety of books, in most cases they will have the book your looking for and you can take it out and read it for free. Then if you decide that you are going to want to read the book again, or that it was so good that you want to support the author, then you should go out and buy the book. Depending on how many books you read in a year, you can really save yourself some money by doing this. The second way you can save money, is when you actually do want to buy a book, look for it ONLINE first. You can save a lot of money by buying your books online. I do almost all of my book shopping on amazon.ca, and if you have more then $39 you will get free shipping, so a little trick that my wife and I do is wait until we have 3 or more books that we want to buy, and then make the purchase to take advantage of the free shipping . One last thing I want to mention, is don't forget about used book stores, you can sometimes find the book you want for a very good price.

4. For a long time my wife and I were in the habit of just going out and buying movies that we wanted to watch, we figured that we'd probably watch them again in the future so it was worthwhile to purchase them. We were especially susceptible to the 'used movie bin' at our local movie rental store. Not only did we sometimes find movies we hadn't seen, but they were cheap too! It wasn't until a gentleman I work with mentioned to me the plan that his family uses, their movie store, has a plan (that they don't advertise) where you can spend $25/month and get an unlimited number of rentals a month, only stipulation is that you can only have 2 rented at a time. So if you are a family that watches a lot of movies or plays a lot of video games, whether you are just renting or buying them, you can save yourself a lot of money by finding out if your rental store has this sort of plan. This also got me to thinking that we'd be a lot better off just renting movies instead of buying them because in most cases we usually only watch movies again because they are 'in the house' and not for any particular reason. Now just like the books I recommend that if you know that you are going to watch the movie again, or it was so good that you want to support it, go out and buy it.

5. Here is one that we have been doing for a while in our household. If you have the ability to, group your telephone, TV, internet and cell phones all with the same provider to take advantage of their 'package' discounts, we save an additional 15% a month on our bills because we have moved them all to the same provider. So by doing this, you save money, plus you have a few less bills to have to keep track of every month,

6. When you are out shopping remember that you don't always need to buy the 'Brand Name' items. Don't get me wrong, there are some cases where you have to go with brand names, but a lot of times the generic 'grocery store brand' will be just as good as the brand name, and cheaper. You can cut your grocery bills down a bit if you take this bit of advice along with you on your next grocery shopping trip.

7. When I see people who have bank accounts that have fees, I can't help but feel sorry for their savings because they are just getting eaten away slowly by the bank. Go out and get a NO FEE bank account. My wife and I have all of our bank accounts with PC Financial, not only are there absolutely no fees, but we get free groceries just for paying our bills and using our cards. Going with the bank account topic, if you are saving any money, move it into a high interest savings account, even if its only going to be there for a few weeks, you'll be able to get a little bit more money in your account because of the higher interest rate.

8. Only use your dishwasher when you have enough dishes in there to make a full load. Doing this simple thing will save you money in electricity and water use, plus it's better for the environment!

9. If you are a smoker, then you've probably heard this a hundred times, QUIT SMOKING! If you are smoking a pack a day, ad $8 a pack, your looking at around $2900 per year you can save! And not only will this save you money, it is also better for your health, which is something a price can't be put on. If you are interested in quiting read my article on How To Quit Smoking for a simple way to kick that habit and build up your willpower as well.

10. This final tip is one so simple to incorporate, but it is one that is overlooked so often. When you leave a room, turn the lights off. This goes further then just the lights, turn any electronics you may be using off. Even if you are just leaving the room for a little while, turn them off. every little bit of energy that you can save will save you money and it will save the environment. It is so simple to do, just flick that switch as your leaving the room.