If you’re trying to save money for a home, car, vacation, or emergency fund, it’s important to come up with ways to save as much money as possible. After all, things aren’t getting hard in today’s world — we must ensure that we have enough money in case anything happens to us.
Beyond just preparing for a worst-case scenario, it never hurts to have a little extra money stowed away. Regardless of your reasoning for wanting to save more money, below are six smart ways in which you can save more money.
Eat out less
Indeed, we all love food. And cooking all the time can be a massive pain if you’re someone who finds themselves busy all the time. However, eating out is pretty expensive and you could save a lot of money by cooking your meals. Even if you don’t want to cook every day, cook on a Sunday for the entire week — or even most of the week — and treat yourself on Friday or Saturday. Food expenses can rack up quickly, so be sure you’re using coupons wherever possible or accumulating reward points so you spend less at the grocery store. Be a smart shopper and think of any way in which you can save money on food (legally, of course).
Reduce Alcohol Consumption
Drinking at restaurants or the bar is very expensive, as paying $5-$10 per drink can add up fast. Even buying alcohol from your local shop can be expensive. Alcohol isn’t a necessity and if you feel like you’re spending too much money on it, you’re likely also doing harm to your body. For starters, stick to going out for drinks once a month or so. Also, try to reduce drinking at home.
Alcohol isn’t cheap unless you go for a nice $10 bottle of red and make it last. Many love enjoying a nice glass of wine with their food — or even after a meal to relax. However, don’t let it empty your pockets. If you find it’s becoming a major expense, cut back.
Reduce Monthly Subscriptions
We all love our Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, VPN, Tinder Plus, and other subscription services. However, a lot of these services can cost at least $10 a month. When you’re paying for two or three every single month, costs stack up fast.
To reduce your costs, limit yourself to two or three core subscriptions that you know you can’t live without — and get rid of the ones you use less often. The cost you’re paying for them probably isn’t worth how much you’re actually using them on a daily basis.
Start Tracking Monthly Expenses
Ultimately, the best thing you can do to save more money is to start tracking all of your monthly expenses. More specifically, create a monthly budget and start grading yourself on how well you stay within it.
Most people will quickly find that they need to improve their use of credit cards. After all, it’s so easy to spend money on credit cards, even if you know you can’t pay them off in a timely manner. If it helps, reduce the limits on your credit cards so you don’t feel tempted to rack them up on things you probably don’t need.
Added, budgeting can save you heaps of money because you know what you plan to spend your money on each month. It makes it easier to know how much you can allocate to a savings account regularly and how much you’re likely to save over a specific period of time. Yes, you can’t account for every expense — life happens and things pop up. This is why you should give yourself a buffer so that if anything does come up, at least you’re still staying within your budget and on track with your savings plan. If you need help creating a tracking sheet, Microsoft Excel is a great application where you can create a budget using spreadsheets.
Set up Automatic Savings
Most banks’ apps offer automatic savings features, so utilize it as best as you can. What’s awesome about this feature is that you can have your app automatically tack on a percentage to every purchase you make and it puts that extra percentage into a savings account or a savings vault.
You can even ask your bank to transfer 5% of your paycheck into savings every month automatically. Similarly, you can pay your bills automatically every month to reduce chances of late penalties. When banking in Windsor or banking in Evans, these features are likely to be available at just about any bank you walk into. Beyond helping you save, these types of automation can also save you countless headaches.
Uber Instead of Owning a Car
Owning a car is not cheap. Car payments, gas, car insurance, sticker renewal, maintenance and repair, and everything else that comes with ownership of a vehicle can be very expensive. If you feel like you’re spending all of your money for a vehicle you hardly use (maybe you don’t drive as much as you thought you would), then getting rid of your car in favor of Ubering or taking public transportation can be a good way to save money.
Ridesharing as a service has blown up tremendously over the last few years as most millennials don’t want to carry the burden of car ownership; it’s become more of a liability as the cost of ownership is expensive. Other than ridesharing, other ways to save on transport including biking or walking.
Take Away
Everyone wants to be comfortable, but if you want to save for your next dream purchase, some sacrifices may be in order. Yes, we all love eating out, using monthly subscription services, driving our cars, and treating ourselves on occasion, but these things can get in the way of our dream purchases.
To immediately start saving more on a monthly basis, start tracking your monthly expenses to see where you’re spending the majority of your money. Then, one by one, try eating out less, drinking less alcohol, getting rid of unnecessary monthly subscriptions, setting up automatic bank transfers and payments, and opting for cheaper means of transportation, wherever possible.