5 Peculiar Ways To Save Money In 2023
Forget about the mainstream to save serious money this year
I am not that good at making loads of money, but when it comes to saving it was able to achieve a decent amount of success, reaching some kind of financial stability when I was about 30 years old, which is just amazing.
From my experience, I’ve noticed that the commonsense tips for saving are not necessarily wrong; they just do not work as fast as we need in order to keep our motivation and see some results right away.
That’s why I think a little bit of madness is not a bad idea to save serious money.
The truth is that we need to pick our poison: continue to stress a lot about money or become what some may consider radical and solve for good our problems with this fiction called money.
Here are some hacks that can allow us to save a good amount of money this year, seeing the results of our “sacrifices” in the short run.
1. Become an environmentalist
This one, although it seems to be me selling a political agenda, makes total sense once we become aware that the archy enemy of the environment is consumption, and guess what: consumerism is also the enemy of saving.
Today this is quite obvious, but it took me some time to notice that behind ideas like extreme frugality is an environmental preoccupation, as we see from people like Mark Boyle, who lived a whole year without spending money.
Now think about it: if environmentalism was able to provide the necessary motivation to someone live an entire year without spending a single penny, what can this idea do for our finances?
There are other concrete examples of how game-changing environmentalism is when it comes to saving money.
Things like veganism, taking cold showers, reducing our traveling, and the like, have a clear environmental agenda. All of them can save us lots of money.
By the way, trust me: I’ve been vegan for years. This is the best possible hack to save money on groceries if you cook at home and eat whole foods. I manage to spend far less on groceries than my friends who are not vegan.
2. Sell your car
This one is well-known. Simply quit owning a car and save a lot, besides making some money right now by selling your car.
I’ve been surviving for more than 12 years without owning a car, and I don’t live in Europe. I live in Brazil.
What do I manage to save with that? The money to buy the car, interest if I don’t buy it on cash, insurance, gas, tickets, and lots of other expenses to maintain the vehicle and to fix it in case of an accident. Plus, with all this money I can invest and make more money.
3. Move to another location
This is a big one. Sometimes just by living in another city, mainly in the countryside, we can save loads of money. There are several reasons for this.
One of them is that in the countryside we have far fewer options to spend money, we are not being bombarded all the time to buy something.
I live downtown, in a large city here in Brazil. I can tell from my experience that literally every single time I get out I am tempted to spend, to buy stuff.
On the other hand, last year I spent some time in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere. Guess what: I didn’t spend a single penny while I was there.
I know it may sound too radical or boring, but this article is not about following the mainstream, nor about excitement. It’s about saving as much money as we can and doing so fast, so we can stop suffering so much because of it.
Oh, another option, a very good one for Americans, Canadians, British, and so on, is moving to countries with a very low cost of living, like mine.
It sounds too good to be true, but it’s totally possible to live here in Brazil for $ 250 to $ 500 a month and do so in some kind of paradise. Later on, I intend to publish an article explaining how.
4. Do work exchange
As I said in the title, the hacks that I suggest here are “crazy”, mainly if we take as normal a culture that seems to consider getting more comfortable the whole point of being alive.
Here my recommendation is the most uncomfortable one on this list, but maybe the one that delivers the best result.
We can sell our house, rent it or simply stop paying rent, and do some voluntary work in exchange for shelter and food.
This is something very controversial. I may be wrong, but websites like Wwoof, Worldpackers, and Workaway are full of opportunistic people saying beautiful phrases like “make a difference” that in the end just want cheap labor, sometimes disregarding the local legislation.
Anyway, this keeps being an option to save real money, mainly for those who can work from wherever they want, besides providing some amazing bonuses, like learning new skills, dealing with discomfort, being part of a community, and maybe, just maybe, contributing to an amazing cause.
For English native speakers or those who are fluent in this language, I guess it’s even more interesting not ruling out this option, once in this case, one could find volunteer opportunities that would require pretty much just speaking with people, in exchange for food and shelter.
Plus, one would probably live closer to nature, in a beautiful spot, inserted in a community, and live a less stressful lifestyle.
5. Become a nerd on the topic
This is the most obvious one. The more we educate ourselves about something, the better we tend to become at it, besides gaining more motivation to practice it.
I want to stress, though, that I am not talking about books like Rich Dad Poor Dad. I am talking about “crazy” content, that is able to change our mindset and show us immediate results, like the book Early Retirement Extreme and others that I recommend in one of my last articles.
I am aware of how challenging it is to apply what I suggest here, but I guess it’s worth it, being offset by the results that it delivers and the peace of mind that may come with it.
The freedom of doing almost whatever you want of your time is priceless and we can regain it, but we need to want it badly.
A happy new year to all of you, guys!
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