15+ Old-Fashioned Money Saving Tips (To Bring Back Today)

There’s no school like the old school—because sometimes, the best money-saving tips aren’t found in apps or finance books, but in how our grandparents did things.

In today’s fast-paced world, we often trade our money for convenience and the rush of joining in with consumerism. 

We grab takeout instead of cooking, pay for subscriptions we barely use, and we buy clothes we don’t need without realising how those small costs add up. 

But what if slowing down just a little could save you hundreds—even thousands?

These timeless, old-fashioned money-saving tips still work like a charm today.

Making time

A key thing that forces me to spend more is pressures on my time. 

Go back 50 years and you had one parent who worked and one who managed the home. Let’s face it, that person was usually the woman. 

Now not only do both parents tend to work in order to pay the bills, and because having a career is something all adults value, but we have lots of other drains on our time. 

Television went from being a handful of channels to limitless with multiple streaming services and more hours of entertainment than you will ever be able to get through. 

We all have smartphones that suck us in to scrolling through endless social media posts, videos, and shopping apps. 

It is incredibly difficult to claw back time in this modern age, but it’s important to try because pressures on your time make you spend more. 

You spend more on convenience food because you have less time to cook. You replace stuff instead of mending it. You buy the first thing you see rather than looking for ways to get it cheaper or even better, free. 

Here are some ways you can claw back time: 

• Batch cook on a Sunday. Plan your meals, and get them prepped on Sunday afternoon ready for the week ahead. This way you avoid losing time to supermarket trips and cooking from scratch. Jamie Oliver had a new cookbook out recently, when does he not, and he was saying that statistics tells us people have never cooked less than they do now. We need to get back to cooking somehow, whether that be by finding time elsewhere in our day to do it or batch cooking. 
• Delegate tasks. The mental load and the practical load are both time consuming. Wherever possible, delegate out jobs. Get your kids involved with very basic chores. 
• Wake up earlier. Using an extra 30 minutes in the morning to get meal prep tasks done can save you a ton of time later, especially if you have kids needing to be fed early evening and you’ve been at work all day. This can stop you from spending extra cash on convenience food. 
• Use a to do list. A to do list isn’t just satisfying to get through, but it can also help you arrange your priorities. Split your list into red and green categories. Red must be done today, green could wait until tomorrow. 

Cooking basic dinners 

With the explosion of cookery shows, books and recipe influencers, dinner has become an increasingly complex affair. I get why, I am often so bored by our usual range of meal ideas and the range of ideas out there is amazing. 

But a basic dinner costs less and can be just as tasty as something incredibly elaborate. Jacket potato with baked beans for example. Sausage egg and chips, sausage and mash, gammon and chips, cottage Pie, soup. These are simple to make and cheap too. 

Try to switch it up so you have at least one or two old fashioned basic dinners a week. 

Simplify your grocery shop

The supermarket of 50 years ago looked vastly different to what it does now. Today the choice is overwhelming and as a society we are buying far more food than we need to, with 10.7m tonnes of food sent to landfill in the UK every year.

That is money down the drain, or in the landfill if you want to be literal about it. Either way it’s not in your pocket. 

To simplify your grocery shop: 

• Make a list of what you actually need. 
• Avoid convenience foods – sometimes these are necessary and not too much of an added expense, it depends on what it is and your circumstances. But often they are way more expensive than doing it yourself. For example pre-cut chicken, pre-marinated barbecue meat. You can save a lot on sandwich meat if you buy a whole gammon joint, cook it and slice it at home compared to buying packs of sliced meat. 
• Reduce the number of snacks you buy. The snacks market has exploded. When I was little and I was hungry I had a banana shoved at me and do you know what, I like bananas. Cheap snacks include nuts, cheese, hard boiled eggs, crackers, fruit. 
• Make a meal plan to use up everything you buy. 
• Shop seasonally. Food that is in season will be vastly cheaper because it is easier for the supermarket to source. 
• And finally ensure you are storing your food appropriately in order to preserve it. Seal up bags of flour and rice, and freeze any food you will not use before its use by date. 

Grow your own food 

If you can grow your own food then potentially you may save hundreds of pounds a year on groceries. 

Growing your own not only gives you delicious food to eat, but also a hobby.

Even just growing your own herbs can save you money on your weekly food shop. 

Alternatively if you are not so green thumbed then picking your own produce at a local pick your own farm can work out cheaper than going to the supermarket. 

Own fewer clothes 

Clothing production has doubled since 2000 and the UN estimates that people buy 60% more clothes and wear them for half as long as they did in 2000. That’s just going back to 2000, that doesn’t even seem that long ago to me, a child of the 80s. Imagine how dramatic that data would be if we compared it to the 50s?

The fact is we are buying way more clothes now than our grandparents did and we are not keeping them anywhere near as long. Fast fashion means that our spending on clothing is wildly out of control, which is bad for the planet and it’s bad for our bank balance. 

Instead of being a slave to trends, try to build a capsule wardrobe, which is basically a small collection of versatile, high-quality clothing pieces that all work well together. Think timeless staples instead of trendy one-offs. The goal is to own less, but wear everything more often.

Here’s how it saves you money:

• First, fewer impulse buys. When your wardrobe is intentional, you’re not constantly chasing sales or trying to fill “style gaps” with random pieces you’ll wear once.
• Second, you invest in quality over quantity. That $80 pair of jeans that lasts 5 years ends up costing less per wear than five $20 pairs that fall apart after a season.
• And third, it reduces “decision fatigue.” You’re not wasting time (or money) figuring out what to wear, which means less stress—and fewer panic purchases.

And finally, shopping at charity stores has become even easier thanks to online marketplace apps like Vinted and Ebay for secondhand clothes. There are so many bargains to be found. Some of them brand new or hardly worn. 

Shop the old school way 

When you do come to shop for new clothes, a good way to reduce spending is to force yourself to shop the old fashioned way, in person. 

Shopping for new stuff has never been easier. Instead of having to travel to a shopping centre you can now shop from your sofa, your desk, the bed, the car while waiting to pick up the kids, the bath and even while you’re taking out the bins. 

Instead of online shopping, try committing to shopping the old fashioned way, by visiting shops and considering purchases before you buy. 

Doing this could help in two ways. First of all it slows down your shopping and decision-making. Secondly, physically seeing touching and trying something is far more useful than seeing a photo of it. 

Touching paper 

You’ve heard of touching grass, where you take time away from the online world to enjoy the great outdoors, but what about touching paper?

Go back about 70 years and all spending and tracking of money was done on or with paper. You had physical money and you kept track of your spending using receipts and with an on paper household budget. 

Cash budgeting has seen a resurgence in recent years as household budgets are tight and using physical money rather than digital banking can make it much easier to keep an eye on all of your pennies. 

So consider trying to switch to cash budgeting for things like your groceries.

And keep track of your spending using a spending diary or a budget tracker. I have a free one linked in the description below. 

A budget tracker can be a great reality check. You can physically write down what you think you’re going to spend, and then the reality of what you did spend. The difference between those two things can help you re-evaluate your spending habits and make changes for the better. 

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without

Because we are living in a time where casual spending is so normalised, it can be natural to discard something and replace it rather than spend time fixing it. But this approach costs money over time, even when the items are low value. 

Where you can look after your clothes. Wear an apron to cook. No I do not suggest for one second you should transform yourself into a 1950s housewife. But what this tip is good for is protecting your clothes so that you don’t get splashed by oil and other stains that are tough to treat. 

Learn how to sew on a button, there are plenty of YouTube tutorials for this, as well as tutorials for fixing holes in fabric. 

With make up and beauty products, we have gone from a simple skincare routine of washing our face and moisturising and applying sunscreen to 10 or 15 step routines. Simplify your routines to what you genuinely need, by the time you’ve applied your 5th serum it’s probably not going to be doing much.  Before you buy anything new, use up the equivalent product you already own. That goes for eyeshadows, lipsticks, foundations, moisturisers. 

Line dry your clothes 

We do not own a tumble dryer and apart from having crunchy towels it really doesn’t cause us too much of an issue. A tumble dryer costs around £1.20 per cycle, say you use it twice a week, that’s £124.80 a year. 

Not using a tumble dryer is kinder on your clothes, so they will last longer. We are just coming up to that time of year when drying outside is possible, so get a clothes line or airer and pop your laundry outside instead of using your dryer. Even just doing this every other week can save you money. 

Embracing a simpler life 

Let’s be real—social media has a way of making us feel like we’re always behind. Behind on trends, behind on lifestyle goals, behind on what we “should” be buying. Every scroll shows someone with a perfectly styled home, an overflowing closet, or the latest gadget we suddenly think we need.

Chasing that lifestyle can cost you, not just financially, but mentally too. This is a pressure that simply did not exist just a couple of decades ago. You didn’t have people you don’t even know showing off their consumption on a daily basis in your face, the only people you may compare yourself to was your near neighbours and friends. 

Old-fashioned money saving isn’t just about clipping coupons or cooking at home. It’s about choosing a simpler life. A life where you spend with purpose, not to impress. Where your value isn’t measured by how “aesthetic” your coffee table looks or whether you’ve got the newest phone.

We can apply this approach to so many things, our wardrobe, our home decor and how we celebrate the holidays. 

You used to have one box of Christmas tree decorations that had been in the family for 20 years and you loved getting it out year after year because it’s that sentimental feeling of seeing those decorations again and the memories attached to them. 

Today, there are new trends in festive decor every year and an abundance of stuff to buy in the shops to create the perfect Christmas look. Buying new every year has become a normal thing, rather than hanging on to the sentimental items of our past.

When you stop letting social media define your idea of success, you free yourself up to focus on what actually matters: time, peace of mind, and financial freedom.

Stop having clear outs 

I am a big fan of decluttering. It’s a great way to learn what you have, organise your home so you can find the things you need and it can also make you a little extra cash. 

However as with almost anything, if you take something to an extreme it can stop saving you money and start costing you money instead. 

If you are clearing out last month’s purchases to make way for this month’s purchases, you’re just engaged in a cycle of disposable consumerism. You may think you’re donating clothes to help others or selling them to prevent environmental damage and waste. Really all you’re doing is buying stuff you don’t need. 

Plus, reselling doesn’t recover what you spent — especially once postage and fees are deducted.

Shopping as a necessity not entertainment 

Shopping did not used to be entertainment. It was something you did when you needed something. 

Today browsing stuff online has become a leisure activity. Buying things has become a way to stave off boredom or show others how well we’re doing. It’s become all about emotions, rather than being about necessity. 

This is why people buy 60% more clothing than they did 50 years ago. It’s not because they need all that extra stuff, it’s because it’s become the norm to have more. 

Find other ways to entertain yourself that do not involve shopping. 

Today we have so much choice for how to entertain ourselves that it’s almost too much. As a result attention spans have shortened. There’s still market for long form content, but we have a whole internet to skip around and that increases the chances of us being exposed to adverts and influencers encouraging us to spend. 

So what can we do to try and limit our exposure to those temptations and as an alternative to shopping for fun? Take advantage of free entertainment. It’s everywhere, but it’s drowned out by the noise of monthly subscriptions for streaming services and people trying to sell you cool stuff. 

For me podcasts are such an incredible form of free entertainment, and there’s one for every mood I’m in whether it’s true crime, news and current affairs or funny interviews. 

I like to listen to them while doing simple chores like laundry or tidying. You’ll still get ads, but spending more time focused on one form of entertainment will limit your exposure. 

And don’t forget about libraries for free books. If you struggle to find what you want to read there, try second hand. Either on Amazon or Vinted, both offer brand new releases at discount prices. 

Why not try a no spend weekend to try and reset your habits when it comes to spending in order to have fun. 

Manage your home finances like a business

I think because credit, overdrafts and buy now pay later schemes have made it so easy to overspend, we’ve kind of lost touch with managing our finances. No business survives by winging it month to month, so why should your household?

Go back 70 years and people managed their budget with precision because they really had to. While today cash budgeting is challenging because so many places require online payment, standing order or don’t take cash, we can draw inspiration from the idea of living within our means.  

Managing your home finances like a business is more exciting than it sounds. If you get a grip on your finances by figuring out what you earn, what you owe for essential bills every month and what you want to spend your money on for fun, then you have a balanced budget, you avoid debt and you get to enjoy the fun stuff guilt-free. 

Follow the cash rule 

Buy now pay later schemes can encourage you to spend money you don’t have on stuff you don’t need. It’s presented as a convenience, allowing you to spread the cost of stuff. But when you over-rely on buy now pay later, eventually those repayments can catch up with you and if you’re not careful, you may fall behind. 

Instead, if you want something, spread the cost by saving for it over the course of a number of weeks. Save now, buy later. You won’t get instant gratification, but you will gain peace of mind that you don’t owe anyone anything. 

If it’s something you don’t really need, factor it into your budget and split up the cost into manageable savings you set aside every week or month until you have the money to pay cash. 

Make hay while the sun shines 

This saying isn’t just about farmers, it’s about foresight. 

I often am fascinated by the financial habits of young celebs and pro footballers. These case studies are filled with cautionary tales. They spend their late teens and 20s living a life of luxury thanks to the high salary their career provides. 

But they work in industries that won’t necessarily pay them forever. Job security does not come as standard with these careers. 

The lucky ones will be able to transition to something else lucrative, like presenting or influencing. 

What about the others? It’s been reported that 40% of footballers may face bankruptcy within a few years of retiring from the sport. The reason? They spent years spending what they earned, not considering that their decade or so of high earnings needed to last them a lifetime. They did not make hay while the sun shone. 

Even though the life of a footballer is hard to relate to, I think we can all take something from that because job security is not a luxury anyone has. It’s important to take advantage of favourable circumstances while they last. Even if your current job feels stable, life can change quickly. 

I use periods of higher income or lower expenses to: 

• Build an emergency fund
• Invest in my pension 
• Invest in index funds

Not spending to solve problems that don’t exist 

Advances in technology mean there is a solution for everything, even stuff that you never considered a problem like turning on a light without having to stand up or reach over. And obviously those solutions cost money. 

Plus the way big tech companies ensure they continue to make profits is to not just sell you one ultimate gadget, but to sell you an upgraded version every 12 months. 

After a few years your phone feels slower, software updates cease to work on older models, charges get changed, so we’re encouraged to buy the latest version as it will be faster and do more. 

With tech it can be difficult to forego all upgrades thanks to the way tech companies make devices obsolete over short periods of time. We can always resist the temptation to buy every year though.

Plus there are some things we can avoid upgrading, such as furniture. We’ve had the same bed for over 15 years and it’s still absolutely fine. Our bedside tables were looking tired so I painted them instead of replacing them. 

Things like white goods can last over a decade as long as you keep cleaning the filters and maintaining them well.

Some gadgets are simply about getting you to spend, to solve a problem you never had in the first place. Embracing a simpler life, where you don’t jump on the latest fad gadget will save you money. 

Make do with what you have 

Ever make a meal plan, buy the ingredients, then decide you don’t feel like eating that? Yeah, me too. 

The modern conveniences such as food delivery and more supermarkets and small corner shops mean it’s never been easier to do top up shops. Every day. Multiple times a day. The old fashioned way was to simply buy what you could afford, and use it all up. Every bite. 

It’s easy to make a meal plan, it can be really hard to stick with it. But that’s the most important part of meal planning and cutting back on food waste. 

One way to ensure you will stick with your meal plan is to be realistic about the food you like to eat. Make a meal plan that you actually like the look of. Have a master list of meals you will actually enjoy. Don’t commit to cooking a new recipe that you’re lukewarm about and buy all the ingredients, only to decide actually you had a hard day and you want something you actually like. It’s great to add new recipes and healthy recipes, but just be sure your willpower will hold out once you’re tired and hangry. I’m reach that point at around 5pm. 

Speaking of making do, try to use the ingredients you have in, rather than going out to buy something specialist. Do you need garlic olive oil, when you have a clove of garlic and some normal olive oil at home? Do you need specialist chilli flakes when you have chilli powder in the cupboard. 

If you loved these old school frugal tips, check out this ultimate list of 70 money-saving ideas.