Last month we challenged you to haggle everything, and some of you saved hundreds. We’re impressed. This month, we have a guest. Jim Wang of Wallet Hacks joins us, and we challenge you to use his “Upgrade and Save” strategy.


We’ve told you about this strategy before, but we’ll let Wang explain how it works:

Upgrade & Save is simple. Sometimes you save more by upgrading something instead of cutting it down to the financial bone. We’re trained to think that if we want to save money, we should cut, scrimp, or make do with less. Sometimes it pays to spend more to buy higher quality, so you replace something less often, or make good decisions more convenient, so you avoid the bad financial choices.


A classic example: internal modem rental. Many ISPs charge you a monthly fee for renting their modem, and as Wang points out in his original post, the modem isn’t great. You can buy your own and save yourself some cash over time. Wang lists a few more examples in his original blog post, but the idea is the same. Instead of looking for things to cut (which we’ve already done), try looking at the expenses you can “invest” in to save money over time.

The goal is to save. The upgrade is just the icing.

There’s a big caveat here, though. Some people could use this method as an excuse to spend money on stuff. So keep in mind: the goal here is still to save. The upgrade is just the icing.

You can get started by taking a look at your budget and expenses to see where you could save with an upgrade. Are you in? If so, tell us how you plan to upgrade and how much you expect to save for the rest of the year. We’ll check back in at the end of the month.



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