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[DJ]

Cooking at home can save you hundreds of dollars. Stews especially give you a lot of bang for your buck, and a single pot can keep you fed for two or three days if you keep it in the fridge and only heat up small amounts you're going to eat immediately.

Also, I see your car is the second item on the expenses list. Just how essential is it to you? If work is within biking distance, you may want to consider selling it. Even if it's not, you could sell it and get a cheap low-consumption car like a Yugo or something.

Oh, and avoid credit cards like a plague. They're all horrible ripoffs, and should only be used when all other options have been exhausted.

[Chutney]

Oh, and avoid credit cards like a plague. They're all horrible ripoffs, and should only be used when all other options have been exhausted.

You could do that, or you could get a bunch of credit cards, and never use them, like I do.
I feel like I'm doing some great protest, making them waste paper, ink, and postage mailing me bills every month that tell me I owe them NOTHING, and they're making no money off of me. If enough people got enough credit cards...maybe we could...maybe we could stop them...

[JoshuaFH]

Using a credit credit every now and then is actually a good idea, because, you see, if you never bought anything off credit, then your credit score remains dismally low because you haven't proved to any lending agencies that you can repay debts, and thus, in the future, if you need a loan, you might not be able to get it because of your low credit score.

I'm not saying to use your credit card for everything, just maybe a pizza every now and then, ya know, something you can pay off rightaway.

[DJ]

Tony the Loan Shark doesn't care about your credit rating, and the interest rates are similar.

[JoshuaFH]

Loan sharks are bad ideas anyhow...

[HAMMERMILL]

Yeah, credit cards are iffy. If you think of them as "free money" you will absolutely regret using them.

I almost never use my credit cards and my credit rating is crap because of it. If you don't use it, they scale down your credit limit untill the card is almost useless anyways. The main reason to keep a credit card around is to repair your car if it breaks down and you cannot immediately afford a mechanic or some emergency like that.

[smokingwreckage]

Never buy lunch, take sandwiches. Never buy softdrink, drink cordial. Never buy morning or afternoon tea, take an apple and a flask with coffee. If you buy lunch snacks and coffee daily this can save you a mMetric shitload of cash. That's about 2.5 Imperial shitloads.

[Puck]

Always keep in mind:

toilet paper has two sides!

[Heron TSG]

no.

[JoshuaFH]

Durable paper towels can be washed and reused!

You don't NEED heating! Just wear a big coat all the time!

It's alright to only take showers every other day!

Working overtime is a luxury, abuse it!

[Leafsnail]

But then again, if you don't have money, it should be really obvious that you shouldn't buy things you don't need

And yet, when you talk to people, you find that common sense is far from common.

[Footkerchief]

Cooking at home can save you hundreds of dollars. Stews especially give you a lot of bang for your buck, and a single pot can keep you fed for two or three days if you keep it in the fridge and only heat up small amounts you're going to eat immediately.

This.  Always cook for multiple meals, so that you minimize the overhead, of which there can be a lot with cooking.  Use the leftovers for lunch -- don't bother with dedicated sandwich ingredients like deli meat.  Learn to enjoy beans and rice.  Beans that come dry in a bag, preferably in bulk, not the canned kind. 

[Duke 2.0]

 Buy rice in international food stores. They often have better prices on rice, veggies and fruit.

[Idiom]

Vegetable stews are surprisingly delicious and difficult to botch. I've found I can get enough protein in there to be filling with certain beans and the likes. I'm stretching whatever was on sale from the butcher and am still very satisfied with it. Time consuming though compared to the microwavable meals I'm used to.

The car is a very nice Honda. I'm very fond of it and wouldn't think of selling it because I'm all across town a lot. Gas costs melded into the total car cost is why the car is far up the list. I still haven't paid it off yet and could have if the bottom hadn't of fallen out from my job.

[Leafsnail]

Yeah, when looking for cars, you probably want something reliable and reasonably cheap to run rather than fast (probably what you've got).  We used to have a Peugeot 205, and in spite of it looking like a piece of total junk, and it costing £700 (yes, really), it ran for 5 years without any serious breakdowns.  Ah, I miss that car.  The seats were very comfy.