032: Weird ways to save money

In this episode, I'll be telling you about some weird ways to save money! As always, these will be told in a story format, and this podcast is for practicing English, not for real financial advice! So remember to do your research online before actually doing anything!

Chapter Bookmarks:

00:00 Intro

02:25 At home

09:15 Phone and apps

19:00 Random stuff and closing out

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:25 At home
• 9:15 Phone and apps
• 19:00 Random stuff and closing out

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to Kuli English Podcast. It's me, your host, Chris. So today is episode 32. 

And for today's episode, I want to talk about something that probably everyone in the whole world, no matter who they are, knows and probably loves. And that is money. So money is really useful, right? Money, you can go to McDonald's and you can buy fries, you can buy food somewhere else, you can go to some kind of shop and buy clothes if you want.

Money is also what you use to pay for rent. And money is kind of what you need to do a lot of things in life. So everybody knows what money is. 

But today I'm going to be talking about weird ways to save money. And these are all personal stories, so things that I've actually done. And they're all kind of, I purposely chose them so that they're a little bit more weird, and hopefully they'll be a little bit more funny when you hear them. 

But I should mention that this podcast is not here to give you advice on money. So when I tell you these stories, just hear the stories and laugh. You can laugh at the story, you can laugh at me, it's okay, I actually can't hear you laughing at me. 

So feel free to make fun of me, do whatever you want, share it with your friends. But this is not advice for you. So the money stuff that I do, and the money stuff that I did in the past, it doesn't mean that you have to go and do it. 

I'm not telling you to go do it. I just want you to do whatever you want. So maybe that is doing nothing.

And so remember, with money stuff, you got to be careful. So if somebody ever tells you, here's how you make a lot of money, you got to take it with a grain of salt. Okay, so taking it with a grain of salt means you kind of don't believe it 100%.

So if somebody tells you some story, oh, this is how you make a ton of money. And then you just have to do this, you just have to do A and B. Then when you hear this, you think, oh, yeah, maybe then that's taking it with a grain of salt. So I want you to take all these pieces of advice with a grain of salt, but they're going to be so weird that probably you won't be doing them. 

So let's go ahead and get started after the short little break.

Okay, so let's go and get started and talk about saving money in weird ways. But before we start talking about saving money in weird ways, I want to talk about saving money in normal, plain ways. 

So like the one that probably everybody knows is turning off the AC or turning off the heater when you leave the home, especially if you're leaving home for a long amount of time, like going on a vacation or visiting your parents home or something like that's a very normal one. Everybody probably knows that. So I'm not really going to talk that much about it.

And of course, there are other ways, other normal ways, for example, like saving water. So, you know, like don't take showers for too long or something like that. But let's not talk about that because those are very normal ways. 

I want to talk about weird ways to save money. So when I tell the story, this is back from when I was a student in college. And when I tell the story, I'm hoping that other people from other countries will be saying like, oh, I can relate to that. 

Or, oh, I know what that experience is like. I know what that feels like because I did that too. But this next big one here, it's, it's getting free food at info sessions. 

So again, that's getting free food at info sessions. Now, what is an info session? An info session is like, it's kind of like a college recruiting event at college. So companies will come to the college and then they try to recruit college students for stuff, maybe for a job, maybe for an internship, or maybe they actually aren't recruiting and they just want to spread information. 

So it's an informational session. And so the way that this works is companies, they come to the college and they set up, right? And they have some representative, somebody from that company. So maybe the company is like XYZ and the company, some employee from XYZ will come to the college and they'll say, hello, I'm working at XYZ company and it's a great job and it's a really good company and I want you to come work here. 

And then students are probably going to be like, oh, okay. Yeah, sure. I don't really care. 

And so how do they get more students to come? And how do they get students to care? Then they have to give the students something that they want. So they give them free food. So then again, let's do the same story again. 

Somebody's coming for an info session and they say like, hi, I'm uhh working at XYZ company and oh, by the way, there's free pizza. So feel free to get one slice of pizza per person. And then everyone's like, oh yeah, pizza.

And then if there's pizza or like, if there's some kind of free food, then the students will come and then they come and the whole info session gets like full because everybody likes free food, especially free junk food like pizza. And I remember the most common ones were free pizza and free burritos. But anyways, these info sessions, they were like a big thing in college because people, I guess when they graduated from school, then probably they're going to go find a job, and companies, they all knew that. 

So they want to go to the college and they want to like get the students before they graduate. And then the students, you know, maybe they apply and maybe they actually don't even get in to get to the company, to get into the company, but it's okay because they got free food and everybody's happy. So getting free food was a thing, not just free food, but there's like different tiers of stuff. 

Okay. Sometimes they give you free stuff, but like the cheapest free stuff, the one that's not really worth anything. It's like free pens or like, I don't know, free erasers, like stuff that it's not really worth that much. 

And you can't eat it. But then, you know, as you upgrade there's stuff like a free water bottles or something. It's like, okay, that's not so bad. 

Maybe I could use a nice water bottle or sometimes they have even better stuff. They never gave out like, you know, free iPhones or like free computers or something like those are too expensive. So you don't get that. 

But the best thing you could possibly get is probably like free food because, you can't argue with free food. Okay. So that's like info sessions. 

And I also want to talk about like one more thing. I'm actually looking off to my notes here. And so like, you know, before this episode, I wrote a bunch of different like bullet points about like weird ways to save money. 

And these are all true stories from the past, or maybe I do it now. I don't go to the info sessions now because I'm not a college student anymore. But this section in this section that I'm talking about, it's called section two home stuff. 

And it's not really home stuff, but I do have one more thing, which is another way to save money, which is in college, like I used to eat like cereal. So if you don't know what cereal is, cereal is like, well, cereal is just cereal. It's kind of like this dry granola food thing.

And you usually eat it with milk. So you get like a bowl and then you put some cereal in and it comes from a box. And then you pour in milk, it's like two ingredients, cereal and milk. 

And then you use a spoon and you eat it up. And it's usually a little bit sweet. But for cereal, you need milk.

And milk has to be kind of fresh. Like you can't have milk that's, you know, been in the fridge for like three months, because then that's too old and it's not okay. So every now and then you have to buy more milk. 

So what's another weird way to save money? I remember in college, I lived on north side of Berkeley. And close to north side, there's like a convenience store that you could buy milk from, but it's expensive. It's going to cost like, you know, a dollar more than if you were to buy the milk at like a, at a grocery store at, at what we call Safeway. 

That's like one of the big chains of grocery stores or Trader Joe's. But if you buy milk from the supermarket, it's cheaper. So I always, I always walked all the way to the supermarket and not just, you know, like with nothing, because I had to carry a bunch of groceries back, right? So I would actually bring a luggage. 

So the luggage that I use to like move into college and stuff, I would take that to the supermarket, buy milk, buy other stuff, like whatever ingredients, and then fill up the luggage and then take the luggage back and take it and just like walk it back as if I'm moving every single time. And that took a lot of time, but I was able to save like a dollar every two weeks, every three weeks when I bought milk. And that one, I don't really do that anymore because now I don't think I really want to walk another extra like 15 minutes. 

It's 15 minutes one way, so it's actually like 30 minutes. I don't want to walk 30 minutes just to save a dollar. But, you know, the times have changed. 

And remember, when I say these things, they're just kind of stories. I'm not trying to give you advice. I'm not telling you to go walk 30 minutes to save a dollar. 

But anyways, let's take a short little break here, and then we'll move on to the next section.

Okay, so let's go and continue talking about saving money in weird ways. So this section here, I'm looking at my notes, and it says like app stuff, phone stuff. 

And I guess that's not really a good section name. It'll probably be a different name when I put it into a bookmark. And by the way, the bookmark in a podcast, so whatever medium you're using to listen to this podcast, so maybe you're using Spotify, maybe you're using Apple Podcasts, or maybe you're using this one called Overcast, which I've never used, but I see that a lot of people are using it recently. 

But in the podcast, like there's like sections, you can click to the next section. That's called a bookmark. So I always put bookmarks for like each break, the section after the break, like oh let's take a short little music break. 

And then the next section, I have like a bookmark, I always put those. So and then in YouTube, it also has it too, you can also click like a time stamp. So if there's something that says like 07:82 or something, or whatever, then you can like click that. 

That's not a good example. Sorry, maybe like a 04:51 or something. So four minutes and 51 seconds 04 colon 51. 

Then if you click that, it'll take you to that part. It'll take you to that part. So if there's one thing to recommend out of this whole podcast of how to save money, it's this tip right here. 

And that is using your credit card to charge your Suica card. And by the way, this is a Japan specific thing, because the Suica card only exists in Japan. The Suica card is like a transportation card. 

So you use it to like, it's like a prepaid transportation card. And when you go on the train, you scan it. And then when you get off the train, you scan it, and then it automatically calculates and it deducts from your balance. 

And the Suica card, you know, you used to have to charge it at the machine with cash. And but now you can put it on your Apple wallet, or you can put it on your Google wallet. And then from the wallet, you can charge it directly using your credit card or something. 

And if you use your credit card, then credit cards, depending on which credit cards they are, you get some percent back, maybe 1%, maybe 2%, and in some cases, maybe 3%. There's actually even more, you can get back like 12%. But that one is something that I'm not going to talk about. 

But anyways, that is like a really good way to save money. And I don't know if it's a weird way. But it's just really good, because you can use Suica card for like anything in Japan. 

So basically, you can use credit card, and you can get that one or 2% back in points. 

So actually, let's move on. Let's move on to this next point here, which is, I have this story about, well, I think I've talked about it before in this podcast, but Ootoya. 

So Ootoya is like a Japanese restaurant chain for like comfort, for Teishoku, which is like for Japanese set meals, I guess. And at Ootoya, like they have like an app. And because I ate there a lot, I like downloaded the app. 

And then something that was really disappointing is like when I opened the app, it says on there that like for every 500 yen you spend, you get one point. And then I was thinking, oh, that's pretty crap. That's pretty bad. 

Because you know, like even credit cards, credit cards will usually give you like 1% back, at the very least like 1% back. But Ootoya, for 500 yen, you get one point. So that's like 0.2% back. 

That's less than 1%. That's less than half a percent. So then I thought, okay, Ootoya, I like you, but your app like sucks. 

You don't really get good points. But I collected the points every single time because I thought, you know, why not? I thought it'd be funny to collect a lot of points that are not worth anything. And then so every single time I ate Ootoya, they always ask like, oh, Ootoya apuri arimasuka, like do you have the Ootoya app? And then I'm like, yeah.

And then I scan my thing. And sometimes I get like one point. Because if I ate 980 yen worth, then for every 500 yen, I get one point. 

But it's not two points, because for two points is 1000 yen. It was 980 yen. So then I only got one point for most of the meals. 

And then, and then one day I realized, oh, these points, it's not like one point is equal to one yen. By the way, one yen is around like one cent or something. But anyways, it's not one point is one yen. 

It's that you can use the points and get free stuff. So the Ootoya app, if you order like tofu, then like just a side order of tofu, then that costs three points. So it's not three points is three yen is three points equals a tofu thing. 

And then if you save up more points, if you save up like, I don't know, 12 points, then you can get something else you can get like a order of chicken or something for 12 points. It's not 12 yen. It's 12 points. 

So the point system at Ootoya is like a little bit different from other point systems. So I was surprised. Okay, so basically, let me summarize what I said so far. 

So I got this app, and then I collected a bunch of points, even though I thought the points were like worthless, I thought they weren't worth much at all. But actually, it turns out that they're worth a lot. So now I'm like super rich in Ootoya points, like I have over 100 points.

And remember, a tofu is like three points. So I could order like 33 tofus, and I could still have points left over. But it's fine. 

Anyways, that was just a funny story. And so I guess like, if there's anything to learn from this, it's that, you know, it's, it's fine to collect points, even if it's not worth much, you might be surprised, and it might end up actually having a bunch of like value to it.

And now, next, I want to talk about this one thing, which is probably also something that everyone has heard about. 

But so everyone knows about like, family sharing, right? So for example, if you subscribe to Netflix, then you can join like a family plan. And then sometimes you can have like other people join the family plan. So I pay for the family plan.

And then like my friend also joins and uses my account, and then they can watch Netflix for free. And the best deal is if I joined like a family plan, and you're not supposed to do this, but you have like 20 different people all share the same family plan. And then like, if they're all your friends or something, and you trust them, then you like send them the email, you send them the password. 

And then in some cases, you like charge them a little bit of money. And you're like, alright, so you got to pay me a tiny bit of money, because it's my like family plan or something. So it's not just Netflix, but you can do that for like, you know, Disney Plus, you can do that for like YouTube premium or something. 

But in the rules, it says you're not supposed to share with people that aren't living in the same house as you. And you know, most people don't live with all of their friends in the same house. So like, you know, family plan sharing, like I used to do that. 

But especially recently, like they started cracking down on it. So now I can't really do it anymore. But let me talk about one more thing. 

And this is like, you know, in the section of app stuff, phone stuff, sorry for the weird section name. But I have one more thing, which I did from I think after I graduated college, I did it during college. And then I also kept doing it after college. 

But this one is making new Amazon accounts. So if you don't know what Amazon is, Amazon is like a website where you can buy things online. And then when you buy stuff, usually, you have to order enough stuff to get free shipping. 

Or if you don't order enough stuff, then the shipping is going to cost a little bit of money. So maybe like, I don't know, $2, $3, maybe $4 for shipping or something. But nobody wants to pay extra money because everybody likes to keep their money, right? But so Amazon, if you join Amazon Prime, this makes it sound like such a commercial, I promise it's not a commercial. 

But if you join Amazon Prime, then you don't have to pay that shipping thing. But you have to pay the membership for the Prime. And then one thing that I realized was actually if you sign up for Amazon with like a student email, so some email from college, then you can get six months or I don't know if it's still the case now. 

But at the time back then, you could get six months of Amazon Prime for free. So what I would do is I would sign up for Amazon Prime, it was called Amazon Student Prime because you sign up as a student. And then you get the first six months free. 

And then after six months, then you have to pay like some kind of membership fee. So what I would do is I would sign up for the first six months. And then at month number five, I would cancel it. 

So I never reached like the sixth month, but I never had to pay. And then I made a new account. And then I used a new student email.

And I had a bunch of different student emails from Berkeley, from college, because they allowed you to make it if you really wanted to. So like, I made a ton of different Amazon emails, and a bunch of Amazon accounts. And then every six months, I would do that. 

But I think I would categorize this as like a weird way to save money. Because I think most normal people would probably just pay for the Amazon Prime membership. And also, there's kind of an inconvenience of changing the account. 

Anytime you set up an account, you have to like, you know, register the email, and you have to set a password. And then you have to like update the credit card information, update the shipping information. And then you have to like log out of the Amazon app on your phone, and then log into the new account with the new student email. 

And it's kind of annoying to keep track of all that. So it's probably not worth it. But again, I'm not giving you advice. 

I'm just telling you stories about weird ways that I use to save money. So maybe that's enough for now. Let's go and take a short little break. And then we'll come back.

All right, so let's make our way into this last section here, which in my notes, it says section four random stuff and closing out. So that's how you know, it's going to be the last section, and we're not going to have any more breaks.

But so I want to talk about this like random way to save money that I feel like weirdly proud of. So I feel kind of proud of it, but it's not something that I should be proud of. And that is not spending money in games. 

So when I say games, you know, there's a lot of different kinds of games. Sometimes people talk about games like drinking games or like board games or something. But I'm talking about like phone games. 

So not even computer games, but phone games. And what I mean by phone game is like you download like a free game on your phone, and then you play it on your phone, and then you do stuff. But because the app is free, then they have certain ways for you to, to like, you know, fall into situations where they want you to spend money. 

So maybe you're like fighting a boss or something. And then you die because, you know, you're not good enough or something, or maybe your, your character wasn't strong enough. And then the game will offer you, they'll say, Oh, do you want to pay 99 cents? And then your character will revive and you'll get the stuff and we'll give you lots of stuff. 

And then my reaction is always like, No, no, I don't want to pay. I don't want to pay money in this game. I'm not paying a single cent. 

And it's kind of weird because like, in a different situation. So for example, if I'm eating at a restaurant, and like, let's say that I ordered something like a set. And then they're like, Oh, for an extra $2, you can upgrade the fries to like truffle cheese fries or something. 

But you have to pay extra, you have to pay extra for like good stuff. And then when I see that situation, a lot of the times I think, Okay, yeah, that's fine. I'll pay the money. 

And then I do that for food. But then for games, I don't know why, but there's something about me that's like maybe a little bit cheap. But when I play this free game, I don't want to pay any money at all. 

And sometimes they're like, Oh, if you just pay 99 cents, then we'll remove the ads forever, or we'll give you like double something forever. And I always think like, No, no, no, no, I don't want to pay money. And then so, you know, like, there's like a cheap part of me that's like, I don't want to pay the money. 

And then a cheap part of me that's like, Yeah, I'm proud that I've never paid money for this kind of stuff. But at the same time, actually, I might not be paying money, but I am paying in time. Because these games, a lot of the times they have some concept called energy. 

So energy, you know, in real life, it's the same thing. It's like, Oh, if you feel a lot of energy in real life, then you can go out, you can go work out, you can do stuff. If you feel no energy in real life, you just want to stay at home and do nothing.

So a lot of the times in games, they have the same concept of energy. And what that energy means is if you have energy, then you can go and play more games, you can play more rounds or something. And then your energy will run out. 

And the energy refills over time. So maybe like every five minutes, you get one energy. And then if you run out of energy, you can either wait for your energy to naturally recover, which might take some time, or this is their chance to like sell you something.

So they say, Oh, if you pay 99 cents, we'll give you the energy that you need to play this game. And a lot of the times, it's not just 99 cents. They have two choices. 

They say, Oh, you can pay us 99 cents, or you can watch this ad. If you watch this advertisement, we'll give you free energy. And then so I always think like, Yeah, well, I don't want to pay money.

So I watch the ad. I watch the ad. So I'm actually paying in time. 

And you know, when I watch the ad, I'm not actually watching the ad. That's like a good chance for me to put down the phone and then go do some other stuff. And we'll clean up some stuff, do some laundry or whatever. 

Well, let the ad run on my phone. But it is like kind of a weird way to save money. Like sometimes I think maybe I should just pay 99 cents. 

If it's only 99 cents, maybe it's okay. But of course, it depends. You know, if you don't want to spend money, then don't spend the money. 

And if you want to spend the money, then maybe you can. And there's one more thing here that I wrote here. And that's a tip. 

It's such a weird thing to include in this episode. Because you know, this episode, I'm talking about weird ways to save money. But tip is something that's like, I think it doesn't really count as saving money. 

Like tip is something that I actually try not to cheap out on. So again, let me explain like a little bit of tip culture, because that probably comes from the US. But again, in Japan, there's no such thing as tip like you don't, you don't add a tip on top of food when you buy food, and it doesn't really matter. 

Like, it's just not here. But in the US, when you eat at like a sit down restaurant, so sit down restaurant, meaning like you go to the restaurant and you eat inside, so not take out, you don't tip on takeout, but you're eating in, dine in. And then you sit at the table. 

And then when you order, like you order through a waiter or a waitress, like you say it to someone, and then they submit the order. And that one is that's like a sit down restaurant. And at a sit down restaurant, you're usually expected to pay a tip on top of whatever the total is. 

So you know, if the total was like $10 or something, then you're supposed to pay an extra maybe 15%, maybe 20%. So you know, out of $10, that's going to be $1.50, or maybe $2. And then if it's 20%, it's kind of a big tip. 

If it's 15%, that's like a normal tip. And I mean, you can go lower, there's no rules that say that like, you have to tip at least a certain amount. But it's just kind of like an unspoken rule. 

If you tip a really small amount, like let's say like 1%, or you tip like one penny, like one cent or something, then that's kind of like, I think you're going to make somebody upset, you're gonna make somebody mad, maybe they'll come talk to you and be like, hey, why'd you tip so small? Or maybe they won't say anything, they'll just think, oh, wow, that's kind of mean, that's rude. But tip is something that I actually never cheap out on. So I believe, and this is like, it really depends on the person. 

Okay, so when I say this, these are my own personal opinions. It doesn't mean that this is how it is. But I believe that the tip stuff should be like some kind of optional thing. 

So if you're really happy with something that somebody has done, maybe in my case, I used to have this person who would do my guitar maintenance for me. So his name was Diego, and he worked at Santa Clara Guitar Center. And then he will do what he calls a tune-up. 

And then he does a bunch of maintenance things for the guitar. He'll polish the wood, he'll switch out the strings, he'll double-check the action and everything. And then since he did such a great job, and he did it really fast, then I would give a tip. 

And it's always a cash tip. And my goal is that he just puts the cash right into his pocket, and he doesn't have to share it with other people. But I've been a cashier before, and tips usually don't always go 100% to the person. 

Usually, you have to split with the staff. So if it's a food place, then a lot of the times, the tip is split with the cooking staff and stuff. But tips are something where if you cheap out on it, yes, you might save money, but other people are potentially going to be upset or hurt by it. 

So if you can afford it, don't cheap out on that. You can cheap out on things like not paying for games, or you can cheap out on other things. And the best thing that I had in this whole episode was talking about paying for your Suica stuff with credit card, because you get 1% or more back.

And so as we close out, I should also mention one more thing, which is, again, this whole episode, it's just me talking about weird ways to save money, but it's kind of like entertainment. So I want you to listen to it and laugh and enjoy yourself. But it doesn't mean that you should change your lifestyle, and it doesn't mean that you should copy me.

And in particular, you'll notice that I didn't mention talking about investing in stocks. And I also didn't talk about specific credit cards to apply for, because that will go down a different kind of category. So if I start talking about those, then those are things that I actually will recommend. 

But I don't want to recommend it in this podcast, because this podcast is just meant for talking about stuff in English, and also casually about funny stuff. I'm not here to actually give you financial advice. So if there's anything that you have decided to do after listening to this podcast episode, I hope that that's something that you decided on your own, and it's not because you're listening to me. 

It's just for entertainment purposes, and it's just supposed to be, oh, that's funny. Oh, wow, Chris was really cheap, or something like that. That's all I wanted. 

So with that, let's go ahead and close out. So thanks so much for listening to the end of this episode. 

This has been Kuli English Podcast, and we always come out with new episodes. I say we, but it's just me. I always come out with new episodes every Tuesday.

And, you know, if you are already supporting me, thank you. And if you want to subscribe, or if you want to follow, then feel free to do that, but you don't have to. And then if you want to share it with somebody that you think might, you know, might be interested, or if they want to practice their English or something, then definitely feel free to do that. 

But again, thanks so much for listening until the end, and we'll see you hopefully next Tuesday on Kuli English Podcast.