Some more money savers that I conjured up... :)

I posted this article a short while ago, outlining a few simple tips to save a few bucks each day.
For any international visitors who are perhaps a trifle confused at this point, I am not talking about wildlife conservation here. Bucks = South African Rands. :)

Since then, I have picked up on a few more ways that may help you out somewhere along the line - I know I sure as hell keep trying :)

- Make your own lunch for work:

Image via Wikipedia

This may or may not apply to you, depending on your personal work context...

However, if you are someone who regularly (perhaps daily?) heads over to KFC, Steers, Macdonalds (Burger King if you are in the USA :) etc... to pick up a quick lunch, then this is a total no-brainer:

1. Before the week begins, buy a loaf of bread and something to put on it, some fruit maybe and a selection of snacks;
2. Come Monday morning, take 10 minutes before work to pack yourself a homemade lunch;
3. Enjoy your lunch a great deal more than you normally would;
4. Marvel at the amount of money that you suddenly save daily;
5. Marvel at the decreased indigestion post-lunch... ;)

Sure, it is going to cost you initially to buy the ingredients required for lunch, but trust me, it will be nowhere near what you would normally be spending on fast food (which probably leaves you feeling shoddy anyway)...

- Delay the take-away... :)
This kinda follows on from the previous tip - if you are someone who frequently gets take aways to avoid having to cook at home, then this is for you.
It's pretty simple - make those take-away pizzas / ribs / burgers that you love so much, a weekly / monthly treat, rather than a regular occurrence.
It is all too easy to pop out and pick up take-aways, and don't they always just taste so damn good?!

Give it a try it though - next time you habitually find yourself heading for take-aways, stop for a second and think: "What do I have to eat at home...?".
Something quick out of the freezer? Perhaps whip up some pasta?
This doesn't mean that you need to cook a complicated dish in place of take-aways - the point is to save money by eating food that you already have.

The other benefit of this, is that take-aways will once again re-establish themselves as a novelty in your life - a treat that you look forward to - and when take-away time does come around, you will just enjoy it that much more :)


- Resist the urge to check your email on your cellphone...

Image by KhE 龙 via Flickr

I confess. Guilty as charged.

This is one that I struggle with daily, sometimes hourly... :)

Having email on hand at all hours is a fantastic new way to work, what with Smartphones now being able to deliver our email no matter where we are or what the time.
The flip side though, is the trap of becoming obsessive about this.
By obsessive, I mean checking your email on your phone all the time - something which as I said before, I have struggled with personally.

Now unless you own a Blackberry, repetitive checking of your email can soon add up to a decent chunk of cash being spent on your data bill... sometimes a few hundred bucks... and for what?
Added stress. Yup - that's all that you are getting for your money.

Try and get into the habit of checking your email on your phone slightly less frequently - start out small if you are a hardcore email checking machine... :)
It is tough - trust me I know, but just equate this to how much hard cash you are spending (wasting...?).

It's that simple.

Related articles

• Easy Ways to Save Money, Anyone Can Do It (socyberty.com)
• Be smart about buying a smartphone (money.cnn.com)
• Can Once-a-Month Cooking Really Work? (thesimpledollar.com)
• Lunch Hour (pinkbananaworld.com)
• Do Teens Need Smartphones? (lockergnome.com)
• Life Before Smartphones? (markevanstech.com)
• Cheap and Healthy Vegetarian Eats in Melbourne, Australia (nzausoceaniatravel.suite101.com)
• Kids Lunchboxes Made Easy Peasy (scrapsofmygeeklife.com)
• How to Pack a Healthy Lunch for You and Your Children (fyiliving.com)
• Money Saving Lunch Tips for School or Work (socyberty.com)

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KFC has the worst taglines in their adverts...

Maybe it's just me, and I am in no way an advertising buff, but I cringe everytime a KFC ad flights on TV nowadays.

Here's the thing. There could be a million (maybe more) different ways to promote something like the KFC Twister® on national television:

1. Being a fast food product, I would think that maybe KFC would want potential customers to see just how amazingly good the Twister® tastes (I assume... I have never eaten one). Food = something you eat and taste, so taste and flavour would top my list of product selling points.

2. Maybe price comes into to it as well - let customers know how affordable the Twister® is compared to some other fast food chain's offering. Good value for money and all that.

3. How about the nutritional value of the product... ok this may or may not be applicable to the Twister®, but customers may want to know that the Twister® has less calories than some other fast food, or maybe it has a low GI value, or maybe KFC only use organically grown ingredients / organically farmed chickens in the product. Who knows - there must be something they could use as a positive in terms of how healthy the product is... I think. :)

So with the above in mind, how on earth did KFC come up with the tagline for the Twister®, as illustrated in this short summary of one of their current ads...?:

A girl walks down a corridor, eating a KFC Twister®. A guy follows her. She glances nervously over her shoulder and ducks into an alley, then kicks the unsuspecting guy in the crotch as he approaches. She does this because she thinks the guy wants to mug her.
Instead, the (now mute and sterile) guy produces her wallet which she dropped, and he is returning it to her.

"At least your KFC Twister® won't make a mess of things!"...

What?? So if I go and buy a KFC Twister®, it won't make a mess of things?
Can someone please explain...? Surely the creative people at KFC could have come up with something a bit more relevant to food, than "making a mess of things"...?

The only logical thing I can think they are trying to say, is that the foil / plastic / paper packaging is somehow incredibly strong and impervious to any kind of splitting, spillage, breakage or leaking. Hence the reference to "making a mess of things".
Who knows.

I won't even get started on the "inspiration" centered KFC ads that are currently flighting...
To their credit, and so that KFC don't totally hate me when they read this, the Twister® does look pretty yummy in this pic:

I just hope it won't make a mess of things if I go out and get one...

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