With the chaos of the stock market, some say consumers need to learn be more frugal and put some money aside.
Step one, "You need to know -- in order to save -- where your money is going. What you are spending it on," says Professor Patti Wooten-Swanson. "Keep track of all your expenditures. Substitute something less expensive for something that is necessary."
Here are some ways to do that:
Get rid of your pricey cellphone and the 2-year plan. Get a pay as you go plan.
"There are prepaid options," advises the professor. "For people with a modest amount of usage, it can be a good deal."
If you can't break your cellphone contract, you can try to sell the contract for your existing phone on a variety of sites such as CellSwapper.
Another cost savings: dump your residential phone lines and use an internet phone. The one everyone knows is Skype but there's also a newer service called Gizmo.
A final big savings: cut out your cable or at least cut it back to the basic service and use Hulu to watch videos online. It's full of current TV shows and streams movies all for free. And you won't even miss the Daily Show. Each new episode is on the site.
