A little creativity can go long way in pinching pennies

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Patrick Briola cuts his own hair. No tipping the barber for this Marquette University freshman.
 
Nikol Carlson swaps leftovers with a Germantown neighbor to frugally keep dinnertime interesting. She carpools to the grocery store to save gas.

And Kim Hummer may be the ultimate multitask saver. The 30-year-old hangs laundry on a clothesline five steps from the back door of her south side ranch house to shave about $40 a year from her electric bill, weather permitting. At the same time, she saves roughly $50 a month for tanning bed sessions by soaking up the sun, waiting for her clothes to dry.

When it comes to saving money, human creativity is limitless.

But in times of rising prices, falling job growth and a slowing economy, unlocking one's inner Humberto Cruz can pay significant dividends.

"Saving is mostly a matter of attitude," says Cruz, a Florida-based syndicated columnist famous for giving down-to-earth tips on how to stretch a dollar further than a taut rubber band.

In many ways, managing money is like managing diet -- both require discipline and have no shortcuts. Just as an extra cupcake shows up on the hips, extra spending shows up on a credit card. Both can take months to get rid of.

Instead of eating a cupcake, plant a vegetable garden. The victory gardens that marked wartime frugality decades ago are making a comeback.

Knowledge and awareness of spending habits are first steps toward fighting excess.

Take a hard look at where your money is going by writing down everything you spend for a few weeks, advises Kathryn Crumpton, manager of the Consumer Credit Counseling Service in Milwaukee.

An Elm Grove financial planner has developed a spreadsheet to give his clients for that purpose.

"People don't want to use it," the planner, William L. Rodau, of Creative Financial Services Inc., said of the spreadsheet. "It's too time consuming."

But it is essential if you're serious about controlling spending.

"A lot of people think budgeting is sitting down at payday with their stack of bills and their checkbook, and if there is enough money left over, that's it," said Crumpton. "That is not really budgeting. Budgeting is sitting down and saying, 'This is where the money is coming in this month and this is where I am allocating it.' "

Once you have that knowledge, you can decide how to change spending habits.

There are no right answers. Some people say tithing to their church is the highest priority, while others want to spend money on clothes, Crumpton said. Doing either first is fine, she said, so long as other spending is adjusted accordingly.