Friday Open Thread: I Didn’t Yet Know About These Moneysavers

Did you read Mickie Meinhardt’s New York on $70 a Week yesterday? The whole piece was great, but there was one sentence that just struck me: the part where Mickie writes about overspending to get home for the holidays because “I didn’t yet know about the Chinatown bus.”

How much money have we all overspent because of something we didn’t yet know about? For example: I didn’t know until this year that I could deduct part of both my smartphone bill and my Internet bill from my taxes. (Business expense.) If I had known that a few years ago, I might have saved myself a little money.

Here’s another example: I didn’t know until this year’s JoCo Cruise that some people who booked early got “stateroom credits” on their SeaPass cards that they could then use on, say, adult beverages. I am already looking forward to next year’s cruise so I can get a stateroom credit too.

It also took me way too long to learn that there were tiny coupon machines stationed at various points throughout the grocery store. Like, in the aisles. How could I not have noticed those?

And I didn’t know until last year that you could stream whole albums of music for free on Spotify. Always assumed it was a paid service. KNOW WHAT? IT ISN’T.

What moneysaving tricks did you not know about — for traveling, grocery shopping, paying off debt, or anything else? If you didn’t know about it, chances are that one of us doesn’t know about it, and by sharing our knowledge in this open thread, we can all learn something new and save more money.

Photo credit: Drew from Zhrodague

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