In another age, they’d call them “acts of frugality,” but today they’re known more suavely “money hacks.” Hacking through those extra, nearly invisible expenditures in the minutest of ways can save money every week and thousands of dollars per year. These hacks are everywhere, all the time.

Look for these hacks all around you; if you’re lazy, the items list number 52 – hey, you can do one a week! – and arranged by location for convenience’ sake. Heed these simple tips and if you’re careful, you may just have surprising extra money in 2008.

On the internet:

1. Craigslist pays, part I

Sometimes people simply give things away – especially large appliances – because they don’t want to move them. On a ‘site like Craigslist.com, these can be sold. You can grab $100-150 for that free appliance inside of 24 hours, and all it will cost you in a tiny bit of time and some money for shipping.

2. Go hunting

The proper money hack always seeks coupons. Believe it or not, there are as many online as in the old reliable newspaper, you just have to apply some judicious use of search engines. The best thing to do is to set up the purchase online, open a second browser, and search for the retailer you’ve chosen. A couple of sites that deal with coupons, coupons and more coupons are DealCatcher.com and “Coupons and Coupon Codes”. Mouse clicks equal dollars!

3. Comparison shopping: easier then ever online

If you ever buy anything online, take a few more minutes before mindlessly typing in www.amazon.com again. Bookmark large comparison sites – www.ableshopper.com; dealnews.com; www.froogle.com; mybargainbuddy.com; and www.mysimon.com – and use them.

4. Get money back from Amazon

Sure, everyone in the civilized world has heard about Amazon.com, but who knows about RefundPlease.com? You should. RefundPlease.com is a website featuring Amazon price guarantee. Many online retailers who deal with Amazon offer cash back on past purchases – typically within the last thirty days – if that item has dropped in price since the purchase. As a bonus, RefundPlease is free to register for.

5. Check out Google checkout

As simple as the search engine that made it famous, Google checkout can bag you $10 just for signing up. Just click here. Money hacks don’t get any simpler than this.

6. Craigslist pays, part II

The three magic words on Craigslist? “Or highest bidder.” From one professional hacker comes the simple recommendation that, when posting to the free section, just simply tack those three little words onto the end. “We’ve found that people will offer payment for an item we just wanted gone…” he writes.

In grocery stores:

7. Chill out

Buy a deep freezer if you have space in the kitchen. You can make freezable items a medium-term investment: More sale items can be frozen and used later.

8. Bigger isn’t always better, part I

We all know the mentality: the 20-ounce size costs $3.59, while the 12-ounce size is $2.49. That’s less than 18 cents per ounce versus more than 20 cents per ounce, so to save money buy the bigger size.

This is simple consumer mathematics, even sometimes taught to pre-schoolers, but think about the realistics for a moment. If your family eats homemade Chinese food three times a year, what’s the point in getting a 40-ounce bottle of the stuff? You’ll throw away what’s left should it go bad and than have to purchase it again.

9. Don’t buy bottled water

Bottled water, or as one academic recently called it in The Journal of Consumer Culture, “the pure commodity in the age of branding,” has been experiencing exponential growth and is now a $10 billion a year industry in America alone. Why? Today, bottled water costs more than gasoline, bottled water provides no extra nutritional value, is environmentally unsound, most American residences have perfectly potable water coming out of the tap, and the entire industry based on simply pulling water from the ground has been called a scam. Save money: Drink tap water!

10. Where’s the beef?

Perhaps less should be on your plate. At least one government study showed that Americans spend up to thirty percent of the food budget on beef. Considering the dodgy health risks of beef, you’re probably eating too much anyway.

11. Don’t bring the children

Easier said than done, right? Well, not only will you accomplish the task quicker, you’ll avoid spending extra on stuff “seen on TV” to salve a tantrum – a.k.a. impulse buys.

12. Watch those non-grocery items

Let’s talk about non-grocery items. Even if you don’t make a list (see above), go grocery shopping when hungry (see above), and don’t plan meals (see above), one golden money hacking rule is easy to follow: Don’t buy non-grocery items at the grocery store. Buying cosmetics at the grocery store and chocolate at the pharmacy can add up over the year’s course.

13. Eat before you shop

As simple as simplicity itself: Don’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry. Doing so is an excuse to buy junk food, eat more of it in the store and cause you to wonder why you bought so many damn Twizzlers when you get home.

14. Make a list

Again, in the attempt to steer clear of the dangers of impulse buying comes another suggestion. Make a list. It’s a focal point to keep you in the correct straight and narrow aisles. How do you best make a list?

15. Plan your meals

Remember how important focus is. That’s it, really.

16. Go natural

Health issues aside, there is some debate about prices of health food vs. those of standard grocery-store fare, but in the case of the typical organic shop’s “buying in bulk” method vs. prepackaged, the organics may be a winner. While natural foods stores always have such items (we’re talking mundane items such as unpackaged pasta or coffee), they may be more expensive. However, such items are often available at other outlets.

In other stores:

17. Time is money

This hack could also be labeled “buy early.” And out-of-season shopping should not be limited to getting Christmas gifts in July or buying swimsuits in September. When, for example, is the best time to buy baby clothes? Or airplane tickets? Or a new car? Check out this excellent list at the aptly named SmartMoney.com, and plan ahead.

18. Free video rentals!

Blockbuster introduced a swell free-rentals promotion in December, perhaps to steal a bit of business back from Netflix. In December, by bringing a Netflix envelope flap into Blockbuster and presenting a Blockbuster membership card, an instant free video rental could be had. The video chain has just extended the offer to at least through February 21 but this could stay a perpetual deal for a while.

19. A big hand for secondhand

How can you not love secondhand shops? Even if you don’t buy anything, the retro chic factor is high and hilarious. Secondhand is particularly good when you get the shopping itch, because it is ultimately impossible to know if anything is worth buying at all! And if you do find something, it will be just perfect and inexpensive. Really.

20. Small hands also give secondhand a big hand

Rhetorical question: Why would anyone buy baby clothes new? Face it, new parents, these are clothes meant to be abused with spit up and various other fluids while the child grows so quickly, he or she won’t wear that cute little outfit more than, say, twice. Ever. Go to the secondhand shops and then go back when baby’s outgrown them. You’ll be surprised at the quick turnaround. Or you can ask around to your recently child-bestowed friends. If their little ones are just a few months older than yours, well, that’s a motherlode. Be sure to be good and pass ‘em on, too.

21. Secondhand toys, too.

Two years of age and under is ultimately way too young to appreciate the status of an expensive name brand toy that goes along with the hyped-up animated film of the year. Between a short attention span and straight-up not knowing any better, that child that can be entertained with a tag on the mattress will love any brightly colored tactile object regardless of price. If you must buy new, check out the thoroughly child-addicting educational “Baby Einstein” video series, which features simple, engaging and inexpensive toys; dealers are listed at the end of the program and at the Baby Einstein site.

22. Shop tax-free

Though 48 states still have sales tax, some fifteen offer tax-free days or tax-free weekends, with most coming in August. That’s an automatic savings of at least five percent in most cases, so plan accordingly.

23. No impulse buys

“I can resist anything but temptation,” says a character in Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” thereby arming our century with some sweet bon mots to spend more money. One website calculated that up to ten percent of your food shopping budget alone is impulse purchases.

So, the point here is … put that item back! OK, ask yourself first, “Do I really need this?”

Then put that item back!

Bigger isn’t always better, part II (see point XXX)

The same goes for medicine, even more so. Writes one hack, “Unless you have a large family or a documented need for more, think small. … odds are you will have plenty left over to pour down the drain when the expiration date comes around.”

24. Generic is good

According to various sources, about half of all prescription drugs have a generic equivalent, have the exact same active ingredients, are just as safe as traditional prescriptions, and – guess what – are almost always cheaper.

25. More free stuff

And while you’re at the doctor’s office talking about changing or refilling a prescription, ask for free samples.

26. Seasonal sales: Cheap but tricky

Clothing shoppers out there are typically clever enough to wait for the seasonal sales, but ironically end up spending more than they would in a normal shopping day. Ever shopping but ever applying sobriety are the folks at The Clothing Chronicles, who ask you to consider five key questions: Does this fit into my existing wardrobe? Does it fit me properly? Does this fill a void in my closet? Will I maintain the fabric? Does this fit into my budget?

Impulse buys are the enemy here and quick consideration of these questions can avoid many an over-purchase, to be sure.

27. Work that store financing

Here’s a complex but lucrative hack from MSN Money and “Sneakers”: “Whenever I buy a big ticket item, I make sure I have the cash to pay for it. Then I wait for store financing offers … I opt for the financing, put the cash in a CD that matures just before the end of the promotional period, and pay it off before the deferred interest becomes due. It’s like a free loan from the stores and I can earn interest while I enjoy the item!”

28. Outsmart the advertisers

See that poster over there that says “4 widgets for $1”? Make sure that the widget isn’t normally priced at 25 cents per or you’ve just been scammed…

29. Credit card beats debit card

If you have a choice between use of credit card and debit card, go with the credit card. Though the Federal Reserve itself noted that only between 10-15 percent of consumer bank customers have debit card fees, do you really want to play the odds when the fees can be simply avoided?

30. Play the day after

If you must play with credit cards, play with them directly after the card’s closing date. The charge then is bounced to the next month’s bill. Combined with the extra time given to pay after the closing date, you’ve just gotten yourself a loan for at least one month, and possibly 45 days.

31. And if you’re really brave…

If you’re really brave and have multiple cards, you can bounce payments from one card to another and increase that “loan period” by months. When the bill for card A containing the charge made 30 days previously arrives, pay it with card B. No interest fees are accrued on card A and you’ve bought more time to pay for the big-ticket item while your own savings accumulate interest. It must be noted, however, that this method can lead to some serious debt accumulation. Danger, Will Robinson! Proceed with caution.

At home (and in the budget):

32. Turn off the lights

You need another argument for turning off the light when you leave the room? Check this out: A recent University of Virginia study showed that the university consumed some 14.3 tons of coal. In a week. Just in terms of leaving the lights on.

If global warning isn’t enough to warn you away from over-consumption, just think of the household’s cost. And by the way, forget about standby if you’d like to save money (and energy). British studies show that households over there spend £37 (approximately $72) while “saving” in standby modes.

33. Prepay

Not everything, but everything you pay less frequently than once a month – taxes, gifts, vacation, insurance, car repairs, home repairs, and such. Add some percentage (make it at least 10 percent) and have the appropriate amount deducted from your pay automatically every ‘check. No worries and odds are there will be extra cash at year’s end.

34. “Leverage the competition”

In other words, bargain via telephone. MSN Money writer Liz Pulliam Weston tells the illustrative story: “I had to do slightly more negotiating with my television provider. I pointed out the competition was offering a nice package of channels for just $40 a month for a year and asked them to match it. … My phone rep put me on hold for five minutes, then came back with a package of discounts that shrank our bill to $47 a month, which included some free premium channels and two TiVo subscriptions.”

35. Annual fees: The enemy

Even if you pay your credit card on time every month and avoid interest charges, you still have to pay. And make no mistake about it: Annual fees make up, in and of themselves, a financial industry. Consumer Action News calculated back in 2004 that credit card fees were cost cardholders $13 billion annually, and the average annual fee that year was $37.33. But do you really have to pay? No you don’t. If your cash-back card won’t waive the annual fee, a couple of clicks can find some who will.

36. Round up

This ranks among the easiest of the money hacks. Every time, you write a check, round it up. It doesn’t matter if the sales total was $30.02, it goes into the checkbook as $31. When you balance against the bank statement, just don’t pay attention to the amounts of the checks, just the cancelled checks themselves. One persistent hack after 1000 transactions, has run up more than $500 in free money. Sweet.

37. Better yet, have Bank of America round up for you

First launched in fall of 2005, Bank of America’s interesting “Keep the Change” promotion was extended in February.

With this program, it’s ridiculously easy to make a little extra cash with no

effort. After signing up for Keep the Change,

the amount of every purchase made with a Bank of America Visa check card

is automatically rounded up to the nearest whole dollar and the difference is transferred from the customer’s checking account into their Bank of America personal savings account. (If you don’t have one, B of A will create one for you for free.) On top of this, Bank of America matches 100 percent of the Keep the Change transfers for the first three months of enrollment and match five percent thereafter up to $250 annually.

If interested, though, you’d probably better enroll now, as the intellectual property company Every Penny Counts Inc. has filed a lawsuit against B of A for the program, charging an infringement of the Rounder Patent, or U.S. Patent 6,112,191.

38. Two accounts are better than one

One great money hacker with a large household makes an excellent recommendation in that two separate accounts should be kept; he labels them “bills” and “spending.” Into the bills account goes half the amount of monthly bills plus $100. This results in a deposit of over twice as much as necessary, a winner all around: surprise expenses can be covered, interest can be made, and the “state of financial malaise halfway through the week” is avoided.

39. Filling out line 71 of that 1040

The Internal Revenue Service reckons that the just-introduced Telephone Excise Tax Refund bit of the federal income tax return will be the most popular ever, with some 160 million tax filers eligible. The refund option is designed to refund previously collected long-distance telephone taxes and is offered to individuals, businesses and tax-exempt organizations for a total of up to $60.

40. Watch less TV

Or at least watch fewer channels. Isn’t it funny how Pink Floyd’s 1970s lament “Got thirteen channels of s— on the T.V. to choose from” became “forty channels…” in the 1980s, “200 channels…” in the 1990s and now “400-500 channels.” Do you really need such a large channel package? Shedding channels – most of which you don’t watch anyway – can reduce your cable bill by at least $20 per month. You’ll still be able to watch as much as you want, and you won’t even miss the decrease in “options.”

41. Look at your cell phone plan

Again, it’s easy advice that isn’t followed often enough. My own personal story has my fiancée, who had been charging her cell phone as a business expense. When we had to switch billing on the phone, we found that she had been paying twice as much as necessary, because she had stuck with a plan from 2003.

42. Make friends at $10 a head

Bank of America has another intriguing way of bringing formerly untouched customers into the fold. The “Campus Edge Checking” program offers college students a bonus of $10 for each classmate he or she refers into the program. If that referral is also eligible for a credit card, it’s $20. You’re buying the beer, dude.

43. Consolidate

You knew you should have done it long ago, but no doubt there’s still time: consolidate your school loan. Basically every school has some information on consolidation; alternatively, you can get to work consolidating existing loans or research currently available plans at a ‘site known as SimpleTuition.com or any other of dozens of such homepages.

In the car:

44. Buy regular

Regular gas, that is, because unless you’ve driving a vehicle with a special high-performance engine, you don’t really need premium gasoline at all. As the fact man Cecil Adams wrote in his syndicated “Straight Dope” newspaper column, “today’s fuel injection systems precisely meter the fuel-air mix, resulting in fewer unburned hydrocarbons and less carbon buildup.” Plus, Adams presents a swell argument: Buying a $6 bottle of carbon treatment is cheaper than the $150 extra he calculates you’ll pay out in a year with premium gasoline.

45. Keep your tires properly inflated

One blogger calculated that Americans could save “$7.6 Billion every year, and reduce 52 billion lbs of CO2” simply through properly inflating tires on your car. Said blogger looked at his own car’s tires, found them to be 8 PSI under proper pressure and calculated losses of $35 in gasoline alone per year.

This hack is about to become even more effortless than actually having to check tires with a pressure gauge yourself. Not only does the EPA recommend having proper tire inflation, but soon, it’ll be the law. In 2008, all new cars will be required to have a low tire-pressure gauge.

46. Reconsider cheaper car insurance

Two stops to save money: Geico. Progressive. These folks are willing to deal.

At the bank:

47. Don’t use another bank’s ATM

Many have known about this simple hack for years and the Senate banking committee was investigating the fairness of ATM fees at least as far back as 1998.

Some aren’t listening, however. A study undertaken by Bankrate.com in 2005 proclaimed ATM fees to hit a record high with no signs of slowing. In that year, the average fee charged for using another bank’s ATM was $2.91. As the maximum of ATM fees when using your own bank is around $1.50, you can see how this adds up: Bankrate estimates that over $4.3 billion in fees came from using other ATMs alone. Unfortunately, an effort by U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D.-Ill.) to make ATM fees illegal back in year 2000 went nowhere.

48. Free checking – you should be able to get it

Most banks have free- or at least reduced-rate checking, and credit unions typically require a minimum balance of next to nothing. There’s no reason to pay any more than necessary for the average checking account, which according to Bankrate’s comprehensive study of 2005, now requires higher average minimum than ever and is still the lowest interest rate in the bank.

49. Speaking of checks…

Another easy one: Buy standard-issue checks. These are usually absolutely free, and you’ll save a good $20-30 dollars if you pass on the pretty Vermont landscape or the cutesy Garfield design.

On vacation and elsewhere:

50. The world’s cheapest souvenir

Now this is an excellent way to save money “buying a little something” for folks when you’re on vacation: Look for the penny-pressing machine. They’re everywhere at tourist spots, and the “elongateds” fan club can probably even give you some guidelines as to where to find them. And all it’ll cost you is 51 cents per, typically. One guy even used it to propose. Cheaper than a diamond ring, to be sure…

51. Trade those magazines

Magazines are mostly intellectual junk food for the literate – you go into a shop, ogle the racks of choice for a while, marvel at how expensive they’ve gotten, decide to splurge anyway, plunge through the material, and pitch it aside when done. Now, if you’re not going to save it or read it again, why spend so much money? Trade ‘em. They are even elaborate ways of creating library-like exchanges but hey, anybody’ll trade magazines, right? You can either read more or spend less!

52. Kick the (fill in the blank) habit

According to an article published in Forbes in October the five most expensive addictions – that’s right, it reads “addictions,” not habits – are alcohol, smoking, drugs, overeating, and gambling. While the expense of no. 3, drugs, is mostly caused by youth, surely you must participate in one of the other four. And couldn’t you cut down on that a little…?