Money Saving Tips For the Big Spender

We currently receive Money magazine here at the BRC household. I enjoy the investment advice; not necessarily tips on specific funds/stocks to buy, but rather info concerning general long-term strategies. I also like to complain about its annual "Best Places to Live" issue. A problem with the magazine, at least for me, is that it unsurprisingly caters to a more affluent clientele. Each month, the magazine has a feature in which it profiles a family and fixes its finances. These families always make well over $100,000, which makes the column less than useful for a working-class guy like me.

This tailoring of magazine content to wealthier readers manifest itself again this month, when Money gave us "103 ways to trim the fat, not the fun, from your budget" (magazines sure love their lists). Here are some of the tips:

• Drop the pet insurance
• Reduce the hours of your gardener (or get rid of him)
• Play tennis at public courts, not the tennis club
• Take a home-swap vacation (not an outlandish suggestion in and of itself, but this one assumes your family spends $325/night on lodging on a normal vacation).
  

I'm afraid these tips won't help us with our budget.