100 saving and self-sufficiency measures for the family budget

A hundred saving measures: from the toilet to the cat's food

A half-empty bottle of shower gel, topped up with water, lasts several more showers. A bottle placed in the toilet cistern reduces each flush. A roll of rubber draught excluder stuck to the frame cuts out cold and noise. With materials like these —and 92 numbered proposals, eight fewer than the hundred promised— a list of 100 saving and self-sufficiency measures was born, aiming to stretch your salary to the end of the month.

The premise is simple: whoever signs it claims that where before they couldn't make it to the end of the month, now they even have enough to save. The compilation crosses the domestic (low-energy bulbs, tap filters, fighting with the fridge), the financial (renegotiating the mortgage, insurance comparison sites) and the uncomfortable: one-minute showers, turning off the shower while soaping up, turning off the heating and relying on blankets throughout the house.

Where to cut on electricity and water bills

The energy section is the densest. Switching to a time-of-use tariff and concentrating washing machine, dryer and dishwasher in the marked hours; lowering all blinds from eight or nine at night in winter to retain heat; bleeding the radiators; cooking with lids on pans and using pans the size of the burner; not putting hot food in the fridge; washing with cold water. None of them costs money and all reduce the bill.

There's also the administrative chapter: applying for the bono social (subsidised electricity tariff) if you're entitled, changing car or home insurance after getting quotes from several comparison sites, and using the water that the air conditioner releases to mop. Some recall that their grandmother, without being poor, rarely turned on a light: austerity as a habit, not as a punishment.

The pet front: cheap kibble, expensive vet

Where the tone heats up is in spending on animals. Some defend adjusting the food, while others warn that cutting there ends up costing at the vet. The repeated calculation: 10 kg bags for about €54 that last between six and seven months, versus cheap food that ends in kidney operations. Some do the math on everything: antiparasitics, litter, poo bags reusing supermarket ones.

The majority view is blunt: if you can't keep the animal on decent food, don't adopt it. Another recalls that becoming a member of an animal shelter costs about €30 a year and pays for itself after two purchases. In between, a case: someone who boasts of not having set foot in the vet except for some ear parasites.

Renegotiating debt, threatening to cancel and taking money out of the bank

The financial section is the one that generates the most replies. Calling the operator and threatening to cancel to scrape a discount; doing the same with insurance; renegotiating the mortgage with the withdrawal of funds as a bargaining chip; paying the road tax in the cheapest municipality; noting every bill in a single notebook. The list even proposes exchanges in phone booths and parking meters.

Distrust sharpens here: the money that individuals save ends up in the banks, so some propose simply taking it out of the institutions. Against that, a recurring counterpoint: measured, minimal consumption is more revolutionary than writing on the internet what one does, because if the political class disappeared tomorrow, money wouldn't rain down from heaven on citizens.

How far to tighten without breaking quality of life

The most repeated reply is from those who ask: is this living? Giving up bars, cutting your own hair at home, timing your shower to the minute. Some call that extreme lonchafinismo (extreme penny-pinching) and note that it borders on saving for saving's sake. The defence is direct and unadorned: there are those who don't have enough to eat and those who have just been evicted, so the comment offends more on their behalf than on the list's author.

Even so, the inventory keeps adding up. Insulating with rubber draught excluder on doors and windows, buying a second-hand scanner, bringing back the wood stove in houses with a chimney. And it closes with the figure that throws you: someone who switches heating for firewood talks about €300 less per month, while a modest aquarium consumes about €3 per month. Tightening your belt, seen in detail, starts to look like a strategy and not just a bad time.