One of the easiest ways to get rich is to spend less.
Indeed, it is more complicated to get money elsewhere…
…rather than trying not to give away the money you already have.
Tough competition among businesses creates incredible savings opportunities…
…and the Internet drove the point home by allowing anyone to find the best price in just a few clicks.
Yet these alternatives are often not well known.
Today, I scan the most important budgets and I guide you step-by-step to online and offline solutions to cut your expenses.
As I have explained in my previous articles, investing starts with controlling your constrained expenses . I group them in the HFT (Housing – Food – Transportation) circle: these three items of expenditure must not exceed 33% of your income . The residue being invested, in order to create a heritage rent.
So that will be our goal.
To get there, let’s see the 3 expense items one by one.
Finding accommodation without having to pay these famous agency fees is a complicated process.
Especially since they often represent significant amounts, sometimes more than a month’s rent.
If you live in Paris, a month’s rent can make all the difference.
The solution is to meet landlords who do not want to rent through an agency and who prefer to manage the rental directly.
There are a large number of them , and they are often overshadowed by real estate agencies that benefit from bigger budgets and a better brand image.
Faced with this observation, and in order to reduce the barriers to access to housing, a company saw this opportunity. It has set up a platform for connecting landlords without agencies and tenants, who also do not want to go through an agency.
The result ? This is Somhome. Totally free.
In a few clicks, you tenants can be put in touch with dozens of owners. All without an agency.
The procedure is very simple in 3 steps:
5 minutes later, here is the result:
19 apartments in Paris corresponding to my criteria, completely without an agency. To get in touch, it’s very simple, once on an ad:
And voila ! Thanks to Somhome, you have just saved one month’s rent that you will not give to the agency.
In France, a monopoly in any sector often leaves traces.
In the case of electricity, there is a huge information gap that needs to be filled.
Indeed, the electricity market is open to competition .
This law allows new players to enter the market.
One of the pillars on which these new players play is the price, which allows them to be more attractive than EDF.
The key is great savings . And yet, few French people take the plunge for fear of the unknown.
However, the electricity always remains the same and the production and delivery are still managed by EDF (under the name of ErDF for electricity).
Clearly, no change in quality. Only the price differs.
Precisely, the Énergie-info site offers a very well done interface to compare the actors in your region:
Then, by entering some information on your usual consumption:
You arrive on the cheapest contracts in your neighborhood:
Compare with what you are currently paying.
For example, on this capture, Direct Energie offers -8% compared to the regulated EDF tariff , which is the tariff you currently pay if your supplier is EDF.
A simple change of supplier can therefore save you 8%, without altering your consumption.
Energie-Info offers exactly the same thing for gas and water. Repeat the operation, the savings are just a click away!
If the savings proposed by Energie-Info do not seem sufficient to you, then the solution may be to stay with a large historical juggernaut like GDF Suez.
Like Air France creating a subsidiary HOP! to counter low-cost airlines, GDF also launched its Low-Cost subsidiary . Her name is Happ-e.
And it hits hard, guaranteeing for 1 year, -15% reduction compared to the regulated price.
No hidden fees, you can cancel at any time.
-15% reduction compared to the EDF rate paid by everyone, it’s starting to be significant. Especially since maintenance remains provided by ErDF (EDF’s network management subsidiary).
Clearly, the quality remains the same, the price is the only adjustment variable.
Having already done a massive guide on this, most of the advice has already been seen. To sum up simply, the strategy is based on 3 pillars:
1. Limit the use of your personal car as much as possible, even sell it
2. Use a bike
3. Take a public transport pass, which is more often partially reimbursed by your employer
The whole strategy and more are reviewed in detail and illustrated in the dedicated article.
In addition to everything mentioned in the article, I recently discovered a new government service to really find gasoline at the best price .
It will be useful to you only if the personal car is really essential for you. Simply indicate your fuel and your department:
And immediately, you have access to the cheapest stations near you:
The advantage of this solution is that the prices are updated very regularly by the Repression of Fraud and that you will therefore not have any surprises when you arrive at the service station. This new service has the advantage of being guaranteed by the government and updated very regularly.
It is the third item of constrained expenditure.
And as many economic theorists have demonstrated, it takes up a significant portion of the budget, especially among low incomes.
Here, the idea is to use trickery to find the best prices while eating good quality.
Cooking at home is by far the most economical way to eat.
You take care of everything: buying the products, preparing them, cooking them, eating them, and then cleaning the kitchen utensils.
The consequence is that eating at home very regularly can lead to unthinkable savings.
This is for example the use of a tupperware to bring his lunch to work. Unlike your colleagues, who use their restaurant tickets to buy the local burger for 8 euros.
By preparing to eat at home, you avoid the madness of the restaurant: indeed, the network of chartered accountants ECL Direct accompanies restaurant creators, and publishes a guide on the good practices to be respected so that their establishment is profitable. The margin figures announced are incredible: 72% for meals, 85% for drinks!
It is simply mind-boggling.
The solution ? Supply you most often in hypermarkets, and at the best price.
It was then that MonsieurDrive was born.
It’s a comparator that takes your entire shopping list, and compares all the nearby hypermarket drives.
So, in a few minutes, you benefit from the most up-to-date prices and you immediately know where to shop.
For example, here are the results I got:
MonsieurDrive is totally free. So, in a few seconds you can get the best price for your shopping near you.
Earlier, I mentioned the staggering margins of restaurateurs: more than 70% on average.
The catch when you decide to eat out is that you are sure to be taken in by one of those restaurants with 70% margins.
Now, here’s how I go about eating out cheaper.
To cheat, two solutions:
— Identify very good quality restaurants that offer abnormally low prices: that is to say, restaurateurs who break the myth of the 70% margin.
A single address: Les Petites Tables.
The concept is ultra-simple: we test restaurants for you where the menu is less than 10 euros. Then we give you a report. Then feel free to go and try them yourself — without breaking the bank.
By clicking on one of these good deals for less than 10 euros, you are shown the dish in question, as well as the authentic receipt:
For now, this site is mainly based in Paris. It is indeed necessary to find the addresses, to test it… and that takes time. But there is no doubt that this concept can interest many.
— Benefit from windfall effects thanks to group purchase offers
Even if you like to eat for less than 10 euros, this is not where you are going to get the very best deals.
Indeed, a restaurateur needs to live and even by reducing his margins, it is difficult to find an excellent restaurant experience for this price.
Here we will raise the entry ticket a bit. But the added value that you will recover will be double, even triple.
First, the ogre of bargains is of course Groupon.
And its French outsider, LaFourchette.
These sites are very easy to use and allow you to make great savings on your restaurant outings.
From now on, going to a restaurant blind must be prohibited: first check that good deals are available!
I have already heavily addressed the issue in a dedicated article. In particular, I mention in detail the following points:
— How to never pay bank charges again thanks to online banks.
— How to get a high-end blue card, even if you don’t have a high income. Do you earn more than 750 euros per month? So, with online banks, you are eligible for gold cards.
— How changing banks can earn you 80 euros , paid by the bank when you open an account.
What is true in banking is found in insurance. And especially life insurance.
The same observation stands out: traditional banks have to bear structural costs that Internet players do not have to bear. It’s the same thing for insurers.
The consequence ? Much lower costs, and much higher profitability.
In the field of life insurance, my favorite is Linxea.
I also invite you to compare with the rest of the online life insurance market, in order to find your insurer.
In this area, the Internet revolution has worked miracles.
You can compare everything in one click.
But we can go even further…
… by logging directly into the airlines’ intranet database .
Thus, you can compare the price of a ticket offered by the airline directly, without going through an agency such as SkyScanner or Opodo who will want to be paid for the connection.
This is the ITA system.
Recently acquired by Google, it is a price comparator invented by engineers at MIT.
Curiously, no one ever mentioned it. And yet, it fetches its flight information directly from the companies’ intranet databases, and at the same time gives you the net price of a ticket: that is to say without the commission that an Expedia or an Ebookers would take.
Thus, Google ITA appears at first glance like any comparator:
You enter your dates, your destination, and the number of passengers.
Within seconds, Google ITA connects directly to the companies’ systems and gives me the best price I can find, commission-free:
72 euros for a Marseille-Barcelona with Vueling.
For example, I do the same search with a classic tour operator, eBookers.fr:
The same ticket, the same day, at the same times, with exactly the same company is displayed at 87 euros. Or 15 euros commission for eBookers.
It’s still 17% of the ticket price that I save , for the same service, under the same conditions.
Google ITA is therefore the only booking engine on the web that allows you to see prices, without commission by travel agents.
The only problem…
…it’s impossible to book a ticket on Google ITA.
Indeed, it is only a search engine and is not intended to make sales.
The solution ? Switch to the consumer version of the engine , named Google Flights.
At first glance, it is a completely normal plane ticket comparator:
Except that when I enter my information, I find my ticket, offered for sale at 72 euros:
So I saved the 15 euros commission , thanks to Google Flights. By clicking on Book, I am then redirected to the Ibéria site which sells this ticket for Vueling.
And it’s as simple as that to buy plane tickets at the best price.
For cheaper accommodation, the solution is called Airbnb, VeryChic or Voyageprive.com.
On Airbnb, by using magic like sponsorship, you can travel for really cheap. Here is an example:
.It’s Airbnb’s affiliate program. The conditions are clear and written black on white.
No hidden fees, no scams.
Regarding VeryChic and VoyagePrivé, these are two large sites that use the same model as Groupon: they dangle wholesale orders from hoteliers who in exchange accept significant price reductions.
The difference here is that these two sites only position themselves on high-end establishments. There was recently the Carlton in Cannes at a bargain price.
It is therefore ideal for staying in luxury hotels, which would have been unattainable at the public price.
The magic of cash-back sites
At the beginning of the year, I wrote a lot about these famous sites and the opportunity they represented. I explained how you can easily get a refund for part of your purchases.
A few months later, the observation is still the same: the cash-back sites are a hit and allow me personally to recover a significant sum every month.
To summarize, here’s how it works:
— You find something to buy on the Internet (for example a hotel night on Hotels.com)
— Instead of buying it directly from the site, you first go to cash-back sites
— On these sites, you will find a page reserved for Hotels.com: by clicking on the link given to you, you are redirected to Hotels.com and can complete your purchase
— A few days later, the cash-back site pays you part of your purchase (up to 10%)
It’s magic, and it doesn’t cost more.
Thus, these 7 items of expenditure allow you the same thing: reduce your costs, without altering your standard of living. By combining them, you will keep thousands of euros per year in your pocket.
With this, your first step towards mastering your expenses is underway, which will guide you little by little towards the ideal path to becoming an investor.