I heard a great little piece of advice while listening to talk radio in the car on Sunday. 

Susan Kaplan, a financial planner and one of the hosts of The Money Show on 96.9, recommends that, whenever possible, you “do it yourself, make it yourself,” whether it’s your own coffee instead of the drive-thru, your own lunch instead of getting it to go, washing your own car or whatever else you can think of.

She says, and I’m sure it’s true, that it’s all the little things we spend our money on, versus the big things, that keep us from having what we want or getting what we need.

The problem with spending money on little things is that we never get to the big things that make life sometimes feel special, such as vacations or a nice outfit, because we’ve frittered it away.

So my new motto is make it yourself . . . and let’s see how much we can save rather than waste. All those cups of coffee and drive-thru car washes might be keeping us from that dream cabin on the lake.

Here’s another little tip I just discovered for saving a little every day. All those text messages can really add up, especially if you don’t have a plan.

Did you know you can send text messages from your computer to people’s cell phones? I just read about it on Oprah.com. Click on the link I just provided and it give you full instructions (you basically just type the person’s cell # into the “to” field of your email program).

This is also cool if you want to get a message out to someone fast who’s not at their computer or you don’t have time to get into a long conversation with.

Am I wealth of money saving tips today or what?! And I’m also so proud of myself for becoming so tech-savvy…

Ever since I had my baby and stopped working full-time, I’ve been trying to find every little way possible to save money.

I’ve become sort of a couponaholic, obsessed with downloading coupons from the Internet. OMG, you wouldn’t believe how much free money is out there. This probably sounds like a tacky infomercial, but it’s totally true.

I downloaded a browser bar that alerts me every time a new coupon becomes available. All you do is click on the coupons you want and print them out.

I’ve saved up to $30/week on brands and items I normally buy, like Kashi, Luna Bars, Organic Valley milk, Pampers, etc.

Go to couponmom.com or coolsavings.com AND you can also visit the individual web sites for your favorite brands–I get lots of coupons there too.  Some sites ask you to fill out quick surveys for manufacturers’ coupons and free samples of products (I received $10 in the mail from Kashi just for signing up with them).