12/06/2018

One of my main goals with ‘fitragamuffin’ or rather MY MAIN goal, is to bring some sort of value to your life.

Whether through laughter, inspiration or food for thought. .

I thought today, I’d share two tips (take it or leave it) on ways that we as a family cut costs.

Being married to a finance major, we are always looking for ways to cut RECURRING costs (things that you pay on the regular, say monthly/weekly or yearly) and it works well because he married a “reduce reuse and recycle” addict. .

TIP 1: Re-filling your printer cartridge (tends to) cost less than buying them new at the stores. Buying printer ink new for our printer (black and white) costs about $50 per every 3-ish months, and comparing prices is about the same on Amazon. If you google “ink refill” you should find some locations near you. The one that I found in Spokane is called @cartridgeworldspokane - I called to make sure they had my ink in stock (which they did) walked in, gave them MY OLD cartridges (which they recycle) and they handed me filled ones-

ALL FOR $30 bucks!

That’s eighty dollars of SAVINGS over the year on something that we “need” .

I also use the local library to print (which is a GREAT option if you don’t have a printer)

TIP 2: Call and see if your trash pick up does EVERY OTHER week pick up. This saves us around $70/year (and at our last location- it saved us over $150, so the savings are location dependant) .

Side note: I realize THIS may NOT be feasible for everyone- because it took us a while to get down to taking OUT one can a week- the key is to INVENTORY your trash. Which I know SOUND GROSS- but I mean- observing what you ARE throwing away and seeing if you can reduce it. For example: (packaging) from packaged foods. Like bringing your own netted bags to the store and putting spinach in one of those instead.

I’d love to hear some things that you all do to cut costs on recurring expenses-