A Couple Quick Hacks

Look around any personal finance site, and you will eventually find an article or blog post about frugal hacks. Basically, tricks to can do easily to save yourself money, or get more for your money. There are thousands of them. Here’s a couple of hacks that I use frequently:

At Home:

Out of body scrub and your feet resemble a reptile? Mix granulated sugar, salt, or rice into a squirt of your usual body wash. It works really well in a pinch (and is WAY cheaper than the sugar/salt scrubs you can buy. I’m looking at YOU Fresh Brown Sugar Polish). I wouldn’t suggest using it on your face though. Maybe it’s just me, but I found this to be way too harsh on my skin, and I broke out worse after trying it. It worked really well on my legs through.

While Travelling:

Do you feel like your intelligence is being insulted when you go through airport security and the price of bottled water jumps another $3? I know I do. That’s why I started carrying an empty water bottle though security. On the other side I go to Starbucks and ask the barista to fill it for me. I’ve never had a problem with this. One thing to consider, make sure the water in the country you’re in is safe to drink. I drank tap water in Prague once and was quite sick as a result. In Canada and the US however, it’s perfectly safe to drink. If you go to a fast food joint and they try to tell you their tap water isn’t safe to drink, remind them that the same tap water is being used to make their fountain drinks. TIP: Take the bottle out of your carry on and put it in the tray before putting it through the scanner, otherwise security will rip your bag apart looking for fluids. Or try one of those new collapsible bottles that are popping up everywhere.

At Starbucks

Most Starbucks hacks have to do with coffee, but this one is for the tea drinkers out there. When you order your tea, order the Venti (not a huge price difference from the Grande). The Venti price includes 2 tea bags rather than the standard 1 bag. Ask the barista to leave one of the tea bags out on the side when she’s making your tea. For the extra 20 cents or so you paid for the size upgrade, you now have a second cup of tea. I stash the extra bags in my desk at work. And seriously, use those bags more than once. There is a ton of tea in them, you can easily make 2 or 3 cups. Do that with both bags and you have 4-6 cups of tea for the price of 1.

What are some of your favourite hacks?