There are so many things that you can save money on in life, and if you are thinking of trying to do this, then one way to approach it is to think about what areas you might be able to do yourself. So often, we pay people to help us with things that we would actually be able to do ourselves, and turning this around can be a really useful way to ensure that you are saving some money. In today’s economic environment where money seems to be getting tight, it could be worth trying to DIY a few more things in your life!

In this post, we are going to take a look at some of the things in life that you can learn to do yourself, which will help you to save money overall. All of the following are really worth thinking about and looking into, so let’s take a look at them right now.

Baby Food

If you have a baby, then that is obviously the kind of thing that makes a huge difference to your finances, and you’ll probably be keen to try and save money in as many ways as you can here. One of the best ways to do that is to make your own baby food. The baby food that you buy in stores is just far too expensive for what it actually is, whereas you can easily make it yourself without any trouble at all, and you could even make it more nutritious in the process. This is certainly going to save you money over time. Mrs. Money and I started doing this fairly early, particularly once they started eating solid foods. Also it felt a bit healthier being able to make it ourselves – allowing us to be more sure of what was going in to the food!

Cleaning Products

The same can be said of cleaning products. These can be really quite expensive, but in truth there is not a great deal to them, and they are the kind of thing that you can easily make yourself at home if you put your mind to it. Most things around the home can be sufficiently cleaned with lemon juice, vinegar or something similar, so you should certainly try that before you spend all your money on cleaning products that might not even be doing much for your home. Often, those products really are a con. Mrs. Money got us on this kick 2 Christmases ago and it’s been great. She buys some organic all natural mix in a concentrated form and waters it down to a variety of mixes for the various cleaning we need to do. Less chemicals to me seems like a win!

Car Repairs

All cars are going to need repairing from time to time, no matter what make and model they are or their age. (Insert my comment of just dropping $2,500 after my car overheated and wouldn’t restart). So it’s a really good idea to make sure that you are thinking about the best and most affordable way to approach this. Actually, most people should be perfectly able to repair their own cars, as long as they are happy to do some basic learning. The first step should be to get some relevant car repair books and then the service manual for your own car, and then start just taking a look at how it works. You should be able to repair many of its most common problems soon enough. Also YouTube has proven to be a great resource (for Mrs. Money, she is the handy one, not me).

Compost

If you have a garden that you want to be as healthy as possible, then compost is going to be a really important part of that. This is what all plants grow in, after all. But if you buy compost at a garden center or somewhere similar, you might be surprised at just how much it can cost you over time. The good news is that you can make your own compost at home really quite easily – and it’s good for the environment too. Just make a compost pile in your garden and add your kitchen food scraps along with garden waste to it – in nine months or so, it will develop into crumbly, sweet-smelling compost, ready for use. We’ve had those home depot type buckets, we drilled holes in them and cut larger holes in the bottoms. It works good enough!

Laundry

For a lot of people, they end up spending a good proportion of their finances on going to the laundromat every week or two weeks. However, you don’t normally need to do this, even if you don’t have the means or the space for a washing machine. You can simply get hold of a twin tub machine, which is a lot cheaper to run than a washing machine and just as effective. You can also think about hand-washing, if you are just washing one or two items. This is the kind of thing that can easily add up to make a significant difference to your finances at the end of the month.

Accounting

There’s no doubt that hiring a good accountant can be a worthwhile financial investment. But if you can learn to do what they do yourself, then you can get the benefits of an accountant without having to hire one, and that will effectively therefore be a double saving. You can at least learn some of the basics of accounting, which is the kind of thing that can make a marked difference to your life in so many amazing ways. Of course, it can take some time, but it is nonetheless worth thinking about, as it might help a great deal. There are a lot of good online software options that may not be free (or may be) but that can really help vs paying a professional.

Lawn Maintenance

If you generally tend to hire someone to do your gardening, then this is an expense that you can certainly save on by doing it yourself. Even if you don’t have much experience with lawn maintenance, it’s something you should be able to learn relatively easily, and hopefully it will be a joy to do so anyway. If nothing else, you should definitely spend some time in the garden making it look how you want it to look, because that is something that you can probably do better than anyone, as it is your own space. That’s definitely something that you should think about.

Summary

Life can be expensive and improving your finances means making more money or spending less (or both!). Follow these tips to become more DIY-savvy to save in your monthly budget!

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