Can you remember life before $100 sneakers and $5 coffee, when people actually lived on what they earned and still had a little something socked away for a rainy day? Here’s a few tips to make sure you have some breathing room until payday.

Track what goes out
That approach, save automatically and spend selectively, is exactly what money experts and consumer advocates advise. To accomplish that, here are 13 strategies for living well on less:

# Analyze your spending. Look closely at what you’ve spent for the last three to six months, says Ed Moore, CFP and president of Edelman Financial Services. “And look for spending (you) might regret.” As you examine your expenditures, ask yourself, “What dollars satisfied a need, what dollars satisfied a want and which expenditures might not have satisfied either?”

# Make a budget. “Without exception you have to do a written plan, called a budget,” says Dave Ramsey, author of “The Total Money Makeover.” Listeners to his national call-in radio show tell him once they make a budget, “they feel like they got a raise.” The reason, he says, is “managed money works harder.”

# Never pay retail. “Everything’s negotiable,” says Bach, who learned this money lesson from his grandmother. “Almost everywhere she went, she could talk the price down,” he says. And that’s still perfectly acceptable in many retail situations, he says.

# Try store brands. “Every time somebody goes to the supermarket, I want them to try one more store brand,” which Howard notes costs up to 40% less. “To get people to change everything isn’t possible. But to get them to change one item at a time is less difficult.” (You’ll find other ways to save in “20 ways to slash your grocery bill.”)

# Buy used. New is nice, but for the best buy, think pre-owned. Bach points to the classic example of a used car. After two years of depreciation, you can get a good, high-quality car at virtually half price, says Bach. “And if you ever do buy a new one, plan on keeping it five to 10 years,” he says.

# Pay cash. “When you spend cash, it hurts,” says Ramsey. “And you spend less.”

# Pick your credit card wisely. If you must use a credit card, make sure it’s one that gives you something. Look for a no-fee card with a rewards program. Mark Oleson, director of the Financial Counseling Clinic at Iowa State University, recently signed up for a AAA-branded no-fee card that rebates 5% of all gas purchases. The credits are applied automatically to his account every month. Now he’s getting $2 gallon gas for $1.90 without changing his buying behavior. (For an easy way to compare card rates and perks, try MSN Money’s Credit Card Analyzer. )

# Shop around for auto insurance. You want your car protected, but make sure you get the most cost-effective coverage you can. Howard recounts one ecstatic caller to his radio show who compared rates and sliced his annual premium by $1,433. “That’s the easiest money for someone to grab,” he says. Anecdotally, Howard says, the typical savings by shopping around for better auto insurance rates is around $1,000.

# Dial up phone savings. Your cell phone certainly comes in handy, but is your plan really worth what you pay? “There are lots of people who sign up for calling plans for cell phones who don’t need them,” says Howard. He says a more economic choice might be a prepaid plan.

# Change your mortgage payment method. Make biweekly payments instead of monthly house payments. You don’t change the amount; simply send in half a payment every two weeks. That means, says Bach, you make an extra payment every year and can slice nearly seven years off the average mortgage.

# Use family and community resources. This is something that a lot of new parents discover when faced with the cost of expensive baby goods that their child soon will outgrow. “Rather than going out and buying a new crib, this and that, there’s a lot of sharing,” says Chris Farrell, author of “Right on the Money!”

# Pay yourself first. Automatically transfer part of each paycheck to a retirement account before you get your take-home pay. “Learn from the government, which figured out years ago (people) can’t budget,” says Bach. His rule of thumb: Save one hour a day of your income each week.

# Exercise restraint. Finally, call upon your willpower when it comes to spending. Want to save money on your phone bill? Hang up. Want to use less gas? Stay home. Do you really need a bread maker when you have an oven? *

Msn news. “13 ways to live well on less” Msn.com. Retrieved from http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/savinganddebt/savemoney/p90801.asp

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