How do you Pinch Pennies?

Penny pinch! I would say that all of us do it at some time or other. How do you pinch pennies?

My husband is retired now. I have never worked outside the home since we were married 33 years ago. So we are used to pinching pennies. Though we did not have as much coming in as some families, we watched what we spent - we had to. We also tried saving money when we could. We wanted our kids to be able to go to college and we wanted to save money for when my husband retired.

By me not working, we never had to pay for daycare or a baby sitter, we didn't eat out much and when we did we usually  bought off of the $1 menu (and still do), I shopped sales and used coupons, bought at yard sales and thrift stores.

Even though he is drawing Social Security and a pension, I was very surprised to see when looking at our W2 forms for 2011, that we lived on 52%  of what we lived on in 2010. That is a big difference! A big dent in our income is that over $800 is taken out of his pension check each month for health insurance. When I noticed this, I told my son that we must be pretty good  penny pinchers!

Do you use coupons?
Do you buy generic brands in food and medicine?
Do you have money direct deposited in your savings from your check?
Do you shop at thrift stores and yard sales?
Do you grow vegetable gardens and freeze or can your surplus food?
Do you have yard sales to get extra cash?
Are you driving less to save gas?
Do you cut your children's and husband's hair?
Did you drop your home phone when you got a cell phone?


Please leave comments and tell us how you pinch your pennies.

Let us help each other with our ideas.