Unplug the TV and cancel the dish, cable, or whatever you are subscribing to. There is plenty of free content online that you can enjoy to replace it. (this saved me over $60/month) Once you get used to living without it, you won't miss it. I certainly don't.
Get rid of all the extras on your phone service that you really do not need or use. Do you need call forwarding, distinct ring, voicemail, etc? Are you really using them enough to justify the costs? Are there replacements that would make more sense, like maybe using an old fashioned answering machine instead of voicemail? (there is no monthly fee for using an answering machine)
Speaking of phones, do you really need both a landline AND a mobile? A lot of people are saving money by dropping their landline and using strictly their mobile.
If you like to read, get and use a library card. Never buy a book you don't plan on reading more than once. Reference books make sense to purchase, fiction does not. Whatever books you do buy, try to get the best deal on them, even buying used books if they are cheaper. Swapping the books you don't want for ones you do, (like on bookmooch) makes sense, too. I know people that are paying a lot more in rent just to house their enormous book collections, because of the need to have extra rooms just to store all those books. If they got rid of the books they are never going to read again, they could move to a smaller cheaper apartment.
There is so much good free music out there that one doesn't need to ever buy another CD for as long as they live. Services like Pandora, Last.fm, and Garageband make it easy to listen to stuff you will actually like, without spending a dime. And last.fm and Garageband are capable of filling your hard drive very quickly with a ton of free MP3's. (I have downloaded almost 15G of free music, close to 3000 songs, since October!)
Learn to sew. Even if you never become good enough at it to make all your own clothing, at the very least you should learn to repair what you have. If you can fix it, why throw it away and buy new? A couple of spools of thread and a pack of needles is a lot cheaper that a whole new wardrobe.
When you buy clothing, go for quality. Buy clothes that will last for many years. And if you buy classic styles, they will be as fashionable today as they were 20 years ago, and still be in style 20 years from now. And don't shun the thrift stores and rummage sales. You can find some real bargains on what would normally be very expensive stuff, for pennies on the dollar, sometimes with the original price tags still on them.
You can substantially cut your electric bill by doing the following:
An empty refrigerator is
very expensive to run! Fill the excess space in your refrigerator and freezer with bottles of water. This will keep it colder, longer and reduce the frequency and duration that the compressor has to kick on to keep it at the desired temperature. This single tip can cut the electric bill in half, for some people. Also clean the coils on the back and keep them free of dust.
Start buying your light bulbs by lumens. Wattage tells you how much electricity it will use, but lumens tells you how much light you will get for that electricity. It is possible to buy lower wattage bulbs with the same amount or higher lumens if you compare brands. Use table lamps to light the area of the room you are in with lower wattage bulbs, rather than the ceiling fixture with 6 bulbs that lights the entire room.
Use a clothes line instead of a dryer. I have an extra shower bar in my bathroom that goes across the center of the tub, specifically for hanging wet clothing so they don't drip on the floor. (I prefer not to hang my clothes outside and have them fade from the sunlight and get all full of pollen & pollution)
Use a coffee maker that doesn't have a heating element under the pot and brews the coffee directly into a thermal carafe. This can keep coffee hot for hours without using any extra electricity. Bonus is that it also won't cook your coffee or evaporate it.
Use a non-electric carpet sweeper for quick daily maintenance cleaning and only use the vacuum cleaner once a week or less.
Use that electric blanket only to preheat your bed. Shut it off once you climb under the covers.
Get rid of the screensavers and use power management to shut off the monitor.
And finally,
invest in a
used copy of
The Tightwad Gazette and make it your money saving bible and keep reading it over and over again. The information in its pages can enable anyone that lives below the poverty line to have it all and live like a king (this is not an exaggeration!), so imagine what it can do for you.