4 Major Money Saving Tips

David Sawallisch
3 days ago
5 min read

Most budgeting advice starts with guilt.

“Stop buying lattes.”

“Cut out takeout.”

“Cancel Netflix.”

Basically: ‘Have you tried being miserable?’

But when I look back at the biggest financial shifts in our lives, none of them came from cutting out joy. They came from rethinking the big categories — the ones everyone told us were “just the cost of being an adult.”

Housing.

Transportation.

Food.

Taxes.

These four levers quietly shape your entire financial life. And once we learned how to bend them, everything changed. This is our story — complete with questionable cars, accidental house hacking, and a tax bill that made me briefly consider living in the woods.

1. Housing — The first lever we pulled, and the one that made the most meaningful change. I didn’t set out to be a “house hacker.” Honestly, if you had said that phrase to me back then, I would’ve assumed it meant breaking into houses with a laptop. It started out of necessity — I had rented a two‑bedroom trailer in a small Minnesota town that felt too expensive to carry alone. So,

I rented out the second room. Suddenly, my rent dropped by half. And instead of feeling deprived, I felt brilliant.

Like I had discovered fire (the burning kind not financial kind). Or coupons. Later, in Beijing, I shared a two‑bedroom place with another expat named Austin. He became a friend, and again, the savings were huge. It wasn’t glamorous — unless you consider mismatched furniture and a bathroom door that didn’t quite close “glamorous” — but it worked. And it planted a seed:

Maybe housing didn’t have to be the immovable giant everyone said it was.

Then came the moment everything clicked. During the COVID years in Sanya, China, we lived in a resort town. Our rental had an extra bedroom, and the landlord didn’t mind us listing it on Airbnb. We figured we’d get a few bookings. We were dead wrong. The room filled constantly. Some guests booked simply because they wanted to meet an American. We’d sit around the table talking about life, culture, food — and meanwhile, that one room was covering a massive portion of our living costs (sometimes more than rent and utilities). When we eventually moved back to the U.S., we carried the lesson with us:

housing is flexible.

There are dozens of ways to reduce the cost — renting out a room, sharing a place, choosing a duplex, or simply living smaller than the average American footprint. You don’t have to do all of them. You don’t have to do any of them forever.

But once you see housing as a lever, you never unsee it.

2. Transportation — The day we realized our old cars were our secret weapon. I’ve watched so many friends walk into a dealership, sign a six‑year loan, and drive off smiling. And I get it — new cars feel good. They smell good. They look good. But they cost a fortune. And not just the payment. Not just the interest.

But the insurance, the tabs, the repairs, the depreciation — all of it. Meanwhile, we are driving two old pieces of junk. One car cost $2,750. A month later, it needed a $700 repair. That hurt. I remember sitting in the mechanic’s waiting room, staring at the bill like it had personally insulted me. But after that? It ran for three years with no payments. The other car was a hand‑me‑down from my grandparents. It needed

$1,200 to get road‑ready. After that, repairs were maybe $500 once or twice a year. And here’s the funny part: Those cars became characters in our lives. The $2,700 car had a mysterious caution light that came and went depending on the weather. The hand‑me‑down had a push button start that only worked if you hit the dashboard in just the right spot. They weren’t glamorous, but they were ours — and they were cheap. And the savings were real: Insurance — Older cars are dramatically cheaper to insure. Tabs — Newer cars come with higher registration fees. Repairs — New cars still break, but the repairs are expensive and complicated. Even if we spend $1,000–$1,500 a year on repairs, that’s still less than two months of a typical car payment. Driving older cars wasn’t glamorous. But it was one of the most financially freeing decisions we ever made.

3. Food — The lessons we learned from a village kitchen (And how Powerplate Savers was born) Food is the category everyone starts with when they think about budgeting. But for us, it became a story about culture, simplicity, and learning from Winnie’s childhood. In her village in China, meals were built around staples — rice, vegetables, noodles. Meat was a luxury, used sparingly and stretched across multiple dishes. Nothing felt heavy. Nothing felt wasteful. Everything felt intentional. When we started cooking together, that philosophy naturally became ours. A pound of hamburger didn’t mean one meal. It meant two or three.

Frozen vegetables weren’t “less than.” They were convenient and cheap.

Simple meals weren’t boring. They were grounding. And here’s something we learned along the way: Simple meals with fewer ingredients mean fewer spices, fewer sauces, fewer random items that sit in your pantry for years.

You save money not just on food — but on all the extras that come with complicated recipes. And of course, there’s the Powerplate. When I worked at the restaurant, I’d bring home the “Chicken Powerplate” — a simple dish of chicken, vegetables, and rice. We’d stretch it into multiple meals. It became our go‑to budget hack. And eventually, it became our blog name. Powerplate Savers wasn’t just a catchy title.

It was a philosophy: Take something simple. Stretch it. Make it work for you. Food budgeting wasn’t about cutting joy. It was about cutting waste — and rediscovering the beauty of simple meals.

4. Taxes — The invisible giant we finally learned to tame. Taxes were the last lever we discovered — and the one that surprised us the most. When we lived in China, we had the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. We didn’t owe U.S. taxes because our income was earned overseas. It was simple. It was automatic. We didn’t think much about it. Then we moved back to the U.S. Our first year home, we paid over $5,000 in taxes. It was a shock — the kind that makes you sit down and stare at the wall for a minute. Suddenly, taxes weren’t invisible anymore. They were loud. They were painful. And they were eating a massive chunk of our income. So we got to work.

We read FIRE blogs.