Saving money can be incredibly difficult, but more and more of us are now looking for ways to build our savings and spend less money in our day-to-day life. We know that it’s much easier said than done, but with our four favourite ideas, you’ll see your savings growing in no time!
- Set yourself a budget
Spend some time and create an outline of your income along with your outgoings. A spreadsheet is a popular way to organise your finances, so you can easily see each section and add in different tabs to split different costs up, and you’ll likely immediately spot ways that you can start to reduce your spending in certain areas craigslist free stuff.
Start with your essential outgoings, such as your rent or mortgage, then council tax, any insurance, and costs that you cannot change. You can log these in your spreadsheet and then look at what you’ve got left for the month that will cover your utility bills, your food costs, and any other payments that you might need to make. Often, there are several ways that you can cut these costs down – consider changing utility providers that can lower your monthly rates or start meal planning and prepping each week to reduce your weekly food costs.
If you’re not too sure where you should start, a good option is to simply log how much you spend and what on for a month; often, we don’t realise what we’re spending our money on, but once you can see clearly where your money is going you can look at how you can reduce in areas, especially if you find that you’re making a lot of impulse buys.
- Do some research
From time to time, homes need some updating, and if you’re looking to do some redecoration on a budget, you’ve still got several ways that you can do so. By doing the work yourself, you can lower your costs, especially if there are some jobs that you can easily manage to do on your own.
A really popular way to decorate on a tight budget is to lay some new vinyl flooring. Wooden patterns in a dark grey shade are a very desirable option, but there are plenty of patterns and colours that you can choose from to find the one that will suit your home the most. Doing this is a really smart way to make your house look more attractive, too, especially if you’ve been wondering, “how can I sell my house fast?”. You don’t have to spend lots to get your home ready for sale, and you can find all sorts of helpful suggestions online to inspire you and find the perfect design for you.
- Cancel any unnecessary subscriptions
A huge amount of us are signed up to various subscriptions, so whether you’re using Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime, or any other service that has a monthly cost, you can look at how to reduce them. Some families choose to share profiles that can help to reduce costs, or you can choose to switch to a lower-priced subscription. While this saving doesn’t seem like a lot, it will add up over time and become more noticeable!
Don’t forget that some of these subscriptions will still save you money, though, especially if you use something like Amazon Prime and are regularly ordering items that you need, which will cost more in delivery if you cancel. Make sure that rather than simply cancelling your subscriptions, it will save you some money to do so. Instead, you can assess what you’re ordering and how regularly you are and consider if you really need them or if you could be saving money by reducing this instead.
- Look out for bargains
A lot of the time, buying things are inevitable, but you can almost always find ways to reduce the costs by searching around and buying the things you need when they’re on a good offer. There are multiple times a year where sales hit, and prices drop, especially around the Christmas period, around Easter, and Black Friday or Cyber Monday in November. If you know that you’re going to need or want to make a big purchase, such as some new furniture or maybe white goods, trying to shop during these prime sale times can help to save you a good amount of money.
In some cases, you just aren’t able to pick and choose when you replace things, especially if something essential has broken down on you. If this happens and you can’t find a good sale to take advantage of, you can look at online sites that will automatically crawl for discount codes when you buy things, like Honey. This is an easy-to-use browser add-on that will pull any codes that you can use when you go to checkout, which will help you save money without doing a thing!
- Save up your change
There are various apps that will do this for you, especially with more and more of us going cashless and no longer carrying cash around. These apps will round up when you buy things to the nearest dollar and put the change directly into a savings account. At first, you’ll only see a small amount here and there, but when you buy things every day, this quickly adds up.
You can also increase the amount that saves, so if you spend $6, the remaining $4 goes into your savings. If you’re looking to save more, this can be a great option, but make sure that you’re not being too restrictive, as long term, this isn’t a sustainable method.
The key to being able to save money is to find ways that work best for you. If you’re losing motivation, try to focus on what you’re saving for this will spur you on and keep those savings growing!
