2% tech trick

One of the easiest things to do to save a little bit of money is to use the most cost effective method of purchase. For most day to day transactions at retail vendors, the most effective method of purchase is to use a credit card that gives you discounts. Obvious things being obvious, don't use credit cards if you can't use them responsibly. Pay off the balance in entirety each month to avoid interest payments and don't buy anything you wouldn't buy other wise.

That being said, make sure to have a credit card that gives you discounts on everything you buy (if you are the kind of guy that doesn't care to travel). I have a credit card that gives me a 3% discount on gas, 2% on groceries, and 1% on everything else. Simply by using this credit card to pay for my normal expenses, I save roughly $100 a year just by using this spending habit. $100 a year is a very small amount, but this is a technique that is similar to saving up coins in a jar. Using several different techniques to save money will add up in the long run in the same way that saving all your coins in a jar will grow to a few hundred dollars.

• Use a credit card to pay for everything
• Buy a hair clipper and shave your head instead of going to barber shops
• Buy your own beer and drink at home rather than hopping bars
• Order only dollar menu items rather than combos at fast food places
• Strip away unneeded coverage on car insurance
• Take defensive driving to lower your car insurance premiums 
• Substitute your smart phone for a prepaid phone

These are all just simple spending habits/changes that compound your savings in the long run.

When you make purchases with a rewards credit card, you get a discount but you don't get the discount immediately. You still pay the same price for your stuff but you build a rewards balance that you can redeem later. I did notice an interesting thing about how the rewards are calculated.

One would think that the rewards are calculated by an item by item basis. If you go to Walmart to buy tomatoes you would get a 2% discount. If you go to Walmart and buy the complete box set of Cowboy Bebop, you will get a 1% discount. This isn't how it works though. The kind of database in order to keep track of every individual item would be insane. Instead, the discount rate is based off of the vendor.

I checked my rewards statement and noticed that Walmart is considered a grocery store. Every purchase there gets a 2% discount including my Cowboy Bebop dvds. This provides an extra incentive to make purchases at Walmart given that the same item costs the same in Walmart and a different vendor.

The card that I use gives me 2% on groceries and 3% on gas. I've seen a card that gives 2% on gas and 3% on groceries. I'm sure that there are men out there that juggle multiple credit cards and use the particular credit card to get the optimal savings out of every purchase.