October - December 2017 •
The Lion King
• 15
or making physical visits. The internet
is filled with limitless opportunities. You
can eliminate cost of buying newspa-
pers, paying TV bills, buying CDs as the
internet provides much better alterna-
tives at a much lower cost. Also, you
can opt for cheaper data plans with
lots of bonus giving you much more
resources to benefit from.
5. MAKE YOUR OWN MEALS
Many of us like to buy meals from fast
food retail outlets. Asides the negative
health benefits of these “delicious”
meals as many of them come with
unwholesome ingredients like excess
salt and preservatives or artificial fla-
vourings with long term adverse effect
on our health, these meals do not
come cheap. You can agree with
your spouse to make various meals
over the weekend, pack these and
bring to work. Not only are home-
made meals cheaper, it is easier to
measure calories and ingredients we
take in from meals we prepare at
home by ourselves for those that need
to monitor food intake for health rea-
sons whilst also saving money.
6. LEARN HOW TO BARGAIN
Some people are naturally good at
bargaining. I have a colleague that
actually bargained on an ice cream
deal at one of the top class confec-
tionary shops the other day despite
their “so called” standard prices. Can
you beat that! So try to up your nego-
tiation skills and never take an offer
up without stating your own terms first.
You will find that with this attitude, you
can increase your savings by getting
things at much better rates than some
would imagine.
7. ASK FOR DISCOUNTS
People don't really ask for discounts
when shopping for goods and servic-
BUSINESS
es. I recall the other day I stopped at a
supermarket to do some shopping. On
an impulse I asked one of the atten-
dants for a discount considering I had
bought quite a number of items and
my bill was running high. To my pleas-
ant surprise I was given a 5% discount
just for asking. Remember you are the
customer and you are the one parting
with cash. The worst answer you can
get is a polite no. So there is no harm
in asking for a discount anytime you
shop.
In conclusion, we must remember that
although some of these practices may
help us save a little in the short term, it
is the consistency over time that helps
us save significant amounts of our
hard earned money.
