6 Unconventional Ways to Save Money as a Freelancer/Sole Proprietor

If you are a freelancer or a sole proprietor like me, you are always looking for ways to save money and cut costs.  Most people tend to look for ways to shave business expenses to reduce overhead.  I take things a step further and try to reduce my living expenses as well.  My thought process is that if I need less to live on, I can free up more money to invest into my business or reduce the amount of panic that sets in during “lean” months.  As a creative, I find it fun to see how I can apply my creativity to save money.

Cable Television – “Cut the Cord”

Before I decided to freelance full-time, I kept all of my receipts in a shoebox for a month.  At the end of the month, I went through it to see where my money had really gone.  One of my biggest bills, next to my rent and car note (at the time), was the cable bill.  I’m not going to say how much it was, but I was spending way too much money to primarily watch networks that are free over the air (NBC, ABC, CBS, etc.).  There were a few shows that I liked that were cable only channels, but the bulk of my TV watching was spent on “free” channels.  So that is the first bill I cut.  I let go of my cable TV subscription and bought a set-top device, a Roku.

There are several set-top devices on the market that use apps to stream content to your TV.  Amazon just recently released one, the Fire TV here.  Apple makes an Apple TV and Google has the Chromecast that you can plug into your TV.  I have been rocking with a Roku, two actually, for years now and I love it.  I have a subscription to Netflix, which I use to binge watch “older” seasons of shows, documentaries and movies.  I also have a HuluPlus subscription that I use kind of like a DVR to watch shows that come on after my bedtime (ahem, Scandal) at my leisure.

Recently, I started having problems receiving my over the air channels; but never fear, Aereo is here!  Aereo is not available in all TV markets yet and they are currently in a court battle with the cable networks.  However, it has been a great way for me to watch the free over the air channels that my antenna is unable to pick up through my Roku.  I pay for these three subscriptions, but the three of them together come out to less than $25 a month.  That is much, much lower than what I was paying the cable company for channels/content I was barely watching.

Set-top devices are not just limited to those Apps; there is a plethora of apps and content that you can stream.  The biggest hurdle for me was learning to be ok living without “The Housewives of…”

Telephone – “Death to the Landline”

I have not had a landline since I was in college, more than a decade ago.  When I was in undergrad, I had a cell phone with an unlimited in-coming calls and unlimited text messaging plan.  I cut off my landline and would call people, ask them to call me back, and hang up.  That was the beginning of the end of landlines for me.  I currently have a smartphone with an unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls and unlimited text messaging plan.  I actually do not talk on the phone very much and I am usually on a wifi network when I am checking email, browsing the internet or doing anything else that requires a data plan.  Because of this, I have the smallest data plan and minute plan available.  Since I do not talk on the phone very much, I have a TON of roll over minutes if I ever needed to use them.

I’ve had my phone for a few years now and I am no longer under a contract.  I am looking at purchasing a new or used smartphone outright and taking it to another carrier with a no-contract, flat rate plan.  From what I have seen in my area, most of the no-contract, flat rate carriers are piggy backing off of the major carrier’s cell phone towers and the coverage is the same, but cheaper.  Purchasing a smartphone outright will be a bit expensive, but an investment that will allow me the flexibility to not be tied down to a carrier for years and save money in the long run.

Grocery Shopping – “Off the Beaten Path”

During the time that I was looking to slim down my living expenses, I decided I also needed to slim down something else – myself.  Going through my receipts made me realize that I spent entirely too much money eating out and it was showing on my height challenged frame.  I decided that I needed to start eating at home and eating better as well.  However, eating healthy is expensive, right?

While I cannot say that it is cheaper to eat healthy at home vs. eating fast food, I can say that I have found ways to cut down on that cost.  The first is in the way that you eat.  I primarily eat “seasonally,” meaning I eat what is in season at the time.  The reason for this is that it’s cheaper.  Seasonal produce is cheaper when it is in season for your area because the store does not have extra expenses to import the item in.  Creativity comes into play for me to find different ways to fix that produce so that it does not feel like I am eating the same thing over and over.

Another cost saver for me is meat.  I do not eat a lot of it.  It’s cheaper not to do so.  I do eat it occasionally, but it is not an item that appears often on my weekly grocery-shopping list.  I also shop off of the beaten path.  I tend to stay away from the larger grocery store chains and shop at local farmer’s markets or in “ethnic” or international stores.  I find the produce to be cheaper there and the meat as well.  I can also find good prices on healthier oils like olive, grapeseed or coconut oil; and on grains and legumes.

Gym Memberships – “The World is my Playground”

I have had gym memberships that I sometimes used or didn’t use over the past decade.  When I decided to make a lifestyle change to get healthier, I renewed my membership and worked with a trainer for a while.  When I decided to freelance full-time, that was an expense that I decided to cut and I took up running.  Thanks to my handy-dandy smartphone, I can track my time, distance, and listen to music as I run.  I also use abandoned parking lots, playgrounds and school campuses to run stairs, jump rope and perform exercises using my body weight.  The world has become my playground and I have fun surveying the landscape to see what I can come up with for a workout.

I get crazy looks sometimes and I almost jump into traffic every time someone honks a “greeting” as they drive by, but it’s all free and you cannot beat free.  When it is too cold or wet outside for me to get a workout in, I turn to my Roku and HuluPlus or Amazon Prime.  Yoga, Aerobics, Dance, Jillian Michaels; they are all on there for the choosing and right in my living room.

Shopping – “The Online Frugalista”

I consider myself to be a “frugalista” and I like to find the best deal for the things I need to buy.  I find that the best deal is often online.  It took me a little while to get used to buying something and not having it right now in this moment to use.  However, getting a deal and saving some money makes up for that.  If you need it, there is probably someone online selling it.  They’re probably also on Amazon or eBay.

I tend to buy more things from Amazon because I am a Prime member,which gives me free 2-day shipping and access to their Prime streaming library, which has an app on my Roku.  Bonus!  The prime membership recently went up from $79 per year to $99, but they have also added a few perks to the membership with a streaming, ad-free music service.  The first year I had the Prime membership, I did an evaluation to see if I was really saving money, and I was.  I’ve also found items that I am not able to find “on the ground” in a brick and mortar store on Amazon, at a low price, and with my free 2-day shipping.  Since I am into healthy living, I can make cheaper purchases than I could at a store dubbed as “Whole Paycheck,” or Whole Foods.

Wardrobe – “Let’s Get Thrifty”

I used to be a lot bigger than I am now and the healthy lifestyle I currently live has the side effect of weight loss.  Needless to say, over the past several years, I have needed to buy a whole new wardrobe at various stages of that weight loss.  Enter the thrift store…and a sewing machine.  I am not a seamstress, but I am short, like every pair of pants that I have ever bought in my entire life need to be hemmed, short.  “Petites” or pants made for short people, are too short on me, go figure.  So I have to buy regular length pants and get them hemmed.

That is initially what I bought the sewing machine for, to hem my pants.  At $8-$10 a pair it was getting quite expensive when you need to replace your entire wardrobe.  Once I started buying my clothes from the thrift store, hemming a pair of pants cost more than the pants themselves!  Shopping at the thrift store is a bit of a process and not as easy as shopping in a regular retail store.  It requires a bit of patience to pick through racks of clothes to find that one nugget of gold.  That is, if you do not want to look like you shopped at the thrift store.  My patience is rewarded when someone pays me a compliment on my outfit and I know the entire getup probably only cost me $5-10.  Talk about a “Look for Less!”

I’ve been doing the majority of these things for almost 4 years and an unexpected result in addition to the money savings, is that I feel happier and not deprived.  I actually feel that I have become less materialistic and have a greater appreciation for the little things in life that I may have taken for granted previously.  While I may not have seen the latest movie or the season finale of a popular show when it happened, I do not fret.  As hokey as it sounds, while that was happening, I turned a pair of shorts into a skirt!  Cha-ching!

Do you have some tips or ways to save money as a freelancer/sole proprietor that you would like to share?