There are many ways to save money and there are many books that have great ideas. I highly recommend these books for helping you save money from everyday low cost items to your most expensive item of paying your home mortgage:

Save $169,611 With Just One Phone Call

My background is in financial investing and I frequently use compounding interest calculations. However, some people may not understand the power of compound interest. Compounding interest is the mathematical magic that can turn a hundred dollars of savings today into thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I don't want to bore you with compound interest calculations but if you really want to read about it, check out: How Compound Interest Works.

A few years ago, I was looking at my auto insurance bill and was asking myself the question. Do I really need this? I was paying $315 a year for collision, and $169 a year for windshield replacement. I've never been in a collision, that was my fault, in my entire life (I was hit a couple of times by other drivers though). So I thought that since I'm such a careful driver and that my vehicle was an older model, it just wasn't worth it.

I had also never had to replace a windshield in my entire life and found out that it would cost $300 to replace my windshield, if I needed to. At $169/year for windshield insurance, I would have to replace my windshield every two years to justify windshield insurance. That seemed ridiculous!

So I called my insurance broker and removed both my collision and windshield coverage. That was 13 years ago. I still haven't had a single accident and I have a crack in my windshield but it's below my field of vision so I haven't had to replace it. I estimate that I've saved about $7,000 since then. I will probably be driving for another 30 years at least, which means that over 43 years I will have saved about $23,000 using simple math.

But wait! Let's do a more accurate calculation. If I was still paying for this extra insurance, the insurance companies typically increase their annual premiums by 5% a year. But if I don't pay those premiums and put those inflation adjusted premiums into the bank each year and earn 5% annually, that compounds to:

• $7,884 over 10 years
• $25,684 over 20 years
• $62,755 over 30 years
• $169,611 over 43 years

Let me repeat that. You would save an astonishing $169,611 over 43 years of your driving life, by simply making one phone call to your insurance broker.

There are so many more ways to save hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime. Imagine if I gave you a tip to save $100 in groceries every month. Using the same logic as the insurance calculation, that $100/month grocery savings compounds to over $61,000 in 20 years time.