Some money-saving tips are obvious, like flying coach, cutting back on eating out, or ditching expensive bad habits like smoking. Some ways are uncommon enough to be impractical for consistent savings like choosing cheaper hotels on vacation or buying a used car rather than a new one — great advice, but it’s not going to help keep your monthly expenses in check.

In fact, you may be wasting money in extremely common but often overlooked ways. Here’s a list of 5 things you probably didn’t know you could save on and how you can stop wasting your money one them.

1. Buying brand name products

Store and generic brands have to be one of the most underused ways to save money across a range of products. From food, to skincare, to over the counter medicine, chances are your local grocery or drug store has a store brand for them or sells a generic version. Check the labels; in most cases, the ingredients are pretty much identical, but you don’t have to spend money on the big brand names.

Also, if you have prescriptions, you can sometimes ask your pharmacist for the generic version of your medications. They work just the same as the brand name, and can save you quite a bit of cash if your co-pay is high.

2. Paying someone else for simple car repairs

Basic car maintenance is something fewer and fewer of us learn, perhaps due to our increasingly busy lives and the preference for someone else to do maintenance work. But, assuming you own a car, money is flying out your wallet if you take your car to a shop for every little complication. Several of the simpler car problems don’t take a professional mechanic to fix, and even routine maintenance tasks can be performed at home. The great thing about the Internet age for car-owners is that there are all sorts of easy and helpful instruction videos out there.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can just start whacking at your engine with a socket wrench, but you definitely have more ability to tune up your car for cheap than you think you do.

3. Only using credit/debit cards

Convenient? A bit. Ignorant bliss? Definitely.

If you almost exclusively use your card to pay for things, it’s a lot easier to spend more than you intend to because you aren’t seeing the money. You just press some buttons and boom, purchase made. You might not be so liberal with your funds if you had to watch the cash leave your wallet. If you use mobile banking or money management apps to keep on top of your finances while still using your card, and it’s working, keep doing your thing. For the rest of you, you might want to consider weekly or bi-weekly trips to your bank or ATM and withdrawing a fixed amount of cash for your spending.

4. In-game purchases

As a semi-recovering Candy Crush addict, I know how hard this habit is to break. But those 100rs or 80rs purchases here and there WILL add up, and you’ll suddenly be looking at your bank statement with a whole lot of shame and regret. Remove your credit card info from any sites or apps where you play games, and if you get really frustrated by a level you just can’t seem to beat, Google a how-to guide. (After finding some really effective ones for Candy Crush, I feel really dumb about buying those power-ups.)

5. Disorganization

Being disorganized has cost you money at some point. Losing chargers and cables, misplacing expensive jewelry, forgetting where you left your keys and having to pay a locksmith to get into your house or car. If the mess itself hasn’t motivated you to declutter and get organized, link back on all the times you lost or misplaced something and ended up spending money in some way because of it. Then think of how many of those times you ended up finding the missing item later and realizing you spent that money for nothing. Yeah, I thought that might get your attention.

ENJOY SAVING!!!

BY HARSHVARDHAN SINGH.