It's often those little purchases that tend to add up over time. That's when I found out I'd spent over $100 in the prior month on magazines alone. *Magazines!* Many of which I had not found time to even read. I'd had no idea, as it was just $4.99 here, $6.99 there, but it all adds up. There were many other purchases that only stood out when I was looking at them on my computer screen. At that point, I knew something had to be done.

Take the magazines, for instance. My favorite back then was *Wired.* I would buy each issue at the bookstore whenever it came out. Then I realized I could pay $10 for an annual subscription and save the extra money! That's what I do right now and each issue downloads to my Kindle Fire Tablet, which is a heck of a lot better than picking up a paper copy.

A little slice of heaven...

I began checking the unit cost in stores. Many times, it's cheaper to get the large items and buy in bulk than the smaller snack packages. I love Herr's Sour Cream & Onion potato chips "crisps" to you Brits for some strange reason. :) Guess who gets the giant bags now? Me! If I'm ever on death row, for my last meal I'll ask for a Wendy's Quad Baconator cheeseburger, Haagen Dazs Choclate Ice Cream and a big bag of Herr's, and some french onion dip. To Go...

Scott Toilet paper, which is $1 for one roll or $3.79 for four rolls, but if you get the giant pack of 20 rolls (in 5 packages) for just over $13. Why pay more? I won't buy another brand, Scott is simply the best. Any savings can go powering up more LEO and HIVE.

Money for the taking

My school offers free money every semester for students that apply. All that needs to be done is to make an application with a short essay and there's a good chance you'll have free money in your bank account. We're told it's like this at colleges everywhere, with millions of dollars left unclaimed. Despite being told about this, many students don't bother filling out the paperwork.

I was awarded over $2000 in scholarship money this year alone, including a $1000 scholarship as I was the only one who applied for it... Isn't that crazy? On a campus with thousands of students, they posted signs in all of the buildings and sent out mailings, but no one bothered to apply. They offered a workshop about this and told us that any monies not disbursed this year, will just go to waste until the next year in the hope that students will make another attempt at them then. The scholarship lady told me to give it a shot and I was happy to oblige.

The important thing is to be smart and not waste your funds on things that you don't need. That software provided me the means to prune the wasteful spending habits I'd acquired and begin again in a smart way. Part of putting my money to work for me, now allows me to support other content creators on the blockchain by increasing my upvote. What are some of the things you do to stretch your budget and better manage your money?