Life Changing Hacks Every Girl Should Know To Save Money

Contributed by Vyshnavi Gudivada Girls, you can save your money and the planet at once! / Hacks for girls to save money + planet. Okay so, every person can save the planet but I, being a girl, want to contribute more towards a better environment. There are so many ways if you want to begin saving money or to protect the environment like, switching off electrical appliances when no in use (saves our pocket and energy is conserved) and by carrying our own bags to the supermarket ( by not paying extra amounts for the plastic bag which is non biodegradable and causes plastic pollution - don’t tell me that you have not seen the amount of plastic that was thrown out by the water bodies during the floods in Kerala recently). However, there are a lot of things that we GIRLS ONLY can do to protect our planet and out pockets :p 1. SWITCH TO MENSTRUAL CUPS On an average, women menstruate for about 30 years on an average Anddddd..... 30 years * 12 cycles per year = 360 cycles (minimum number of cycles, since a woman’s body if full of surprises and might surprise us more than once a month sometimes :/ ) 360 cycles * 5 days per cycle = 1800 days ( of menstruation in one entire life, again 1800 days is the minimum number) And on an average if you are using 4 - 5 pads a day, you are using about 7200-9000 pads in your life time (and again, thats the minimum number) And now calculate the amount of money you spend on pads per month and multiply it with 360 Ex - I spend about 200-300 per month. 360* 200 = 72000/- 360* 300 = 108,000/- These numbers are insane (and is again the minimum amount) And a menstrual cup costs only about 500 INR and lasts for about 10-15 years without any trash being produced. Whereas imagine 9000 used pads being disposed at once. Pads aren’t even completely biodegradable and can cause toxic shock syndrome. Imagine the amount of money you would be saving and the amount of trash you wouldn’t create. Just google about how to use menstrual cups and then buy them. They are easily available online. 2. STOP BUYING SINGLE USE COSMETICS Makeup items that are only meant for a single purpose, like, make up removers, shimmer powders, creams that only provide one benefit, etc are just pointless! We can remove make up using coconut oil and save like 200 bucks without compromising on the quality. Removers like micellar waters have been proven to cause cancer. Why buy a stupid stand alone sunscreen lotion and again a separate BB cream, when you have stuff like tinted sunscreens and coverage creams with sunscreen formula in them. You could easily save about 300 bucks here ;) and reduce a lot of plastic in which the creams are packed in.

3. HOME REMEDIES > STORE BOUGHT Before buying any facial creams, powders or products for your skin, look inside your kitchen. You might already find tonnes of healthy ingredients for your skin and hair rather than processed and packaged stuff that contain toxins and come in non-biodegradable packaging. Ex: You can make your own body and face scrubs with sugar, oats, honey, coffee powder and real fruit rather than stuff that contains a picture of the fruit only. You could save any amounts from 100’s to 1000’s of rupees because theres no limit to the number of things that are available in the market and beauty and skincare is a very monetize-able market in this age when everyone wants to look good in their #nofilter pictures. 4. First hand vs Sharing/Borrowing. Share your clothes with your girl gang and borrow their clothes as and when needed. This way, you’ll never have a limited wardrobe and you won’t have to go shopping for every occasion. You all know the amount of money you could save ;) Maybe you could just rent out your clothes for money and make some easy bucks with certain terms and conditions. Tonnes and tonnes of water goes into the production of every inch of a cloth. And with increasing micro plastic in clothes, its very important to dress very consciously.

5. Multi-use clothing, shoes, bags instead of a fancy thing that won’t be used regularly. On any given day I’d prefer spending 2000 INR on a branded jeans that I can wear to college/office/parties than a 2000 INR worth bold red coloured dress. I could wear the jeans how many ever times and not be guilty of repeating it, but I wouldn’t be happy if I can’t wear that red dress again since everyone has made a note of its color already. I would spend money on regularly used clothes, shoes and bags rather than spending thousands on a sweater that I won’t wear after the winter is over or pair of painful yet stone studded heels that I won’t wear twice an year. It's just pointless. The cost per use of an item must be taken into consideration before carelessly buying anything.

6. Want VS Need Try to understand if what you want to buy is an actual need or a prestige good or do you just want to own it. Its possible that you want a particular thing because of the way its represented in the advertisements. Being a student of advertising, I very well understand how the agencies manipulate the audience into becoming potential buyers. So, think before you buy anything. Be very clear and specific. Have a clear image so that you don’t settle for anything less than what you wanted. This way what you buy will always be utilised well and not end up being in trash.

So ladies, keep these 6 things in mind so that you don’t ever go broke or regret your purchases - I’m sure most of us regret buying that particular thing which we never even used :/ So lets be smart and conscious shoppers :) <3