Everyone is always looking to save money! Whether you are struggling financially and you need more money to live a little easier, or you have enough money to live, but you’re looking to save money for your future, or a vacation, or whatever it may be! No matter your position, here are six ways to save money each month!
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1. First and most importantly, set up a budget plan.
To see where you can save money, you have to first see where you’re spending it. Write out each expense that you have, along with your total income. Say you or your family makes 60k a year, at your job, but you also have a side hustle, or various forms of random income, include it all in your budgeting!
My favorite way of seeing my budget is by creating a spreadsheet, then you can add to it and it will automatically calculate your totals for you! You can use Excel, and if you don’t have Microsoft and don’t want to pay for it you can use Open Office, it’s free and it works just as well.
We LOVE this awesome (and totally affordable) budget planner! See what you can completely eliminate
2. See what you can completely eliminate
Most families have quite a few expenses they can completely eliminate. If there are things that aren’t totally necessary, but you can’t live without, try to find a cheaper alternative.
A few examples of luxuries you can likely give up to save money are:
- Cable
- Premium music streaming services (Pandora, Spotify, etc.)
- Landline phones
- Bottled water
3. Pay for what you can in cash
It’s good practice to pay for a lot of your variable expenses in cash, like date nights, dining out, allowances you give yourself, and one HUGE one is GROCERIES! Most families have no idea how much they spend on groceries each month. When you use a card, you don’t really acknowledge how much you’re spending.
fTry giving yourself a set amount every month, then carry cash, and try to stay under budget, and have some cash left over. Keep that cash for the months you need extra money for groceries.
This envelope budgeting book is GREAT for using cash and keeping it organized by category.
4. Meal Plan
Meal planning is like, the secret weapon for saving money on food every month.
If you don’t have a plan for what you’re going to eat, you won’t know what to buy at the store. And if you don’t know what to buy at the store, you end up with a bunch of random stuff that doesn’t quite end up making a full meal.
Another tip to save money each month while meal planning is implementing for meatless meals, as meat can be quite pricey!
5. Transfer your debt to save on interest
If you have a decent amount of credit card debt, look into transferring it all to a card that has either a lower interest rate, or a card that has a long period of no interest.
If a credit card isn’t an option, try looking into a debt consolidation loan.
Look different types of credit cards, and what situations they benefit the most.
6. Create a bunch of different types of accounts
This technique has REALLY helped my family. By creating separate accounts to put your money into, you can always make sure you have enough for bills, activities, and emergencies.
Here are some of the different accounts we have:
Car insurance (our insurance is billed yearly, so we put away money each month for when it comes)
Car registration/repairs
Emergency fund
Home repairs
Vacation fund
Mortgage payment
Bills that charge to the credit card (I total what all the bills that charge to our credit card add up to, and I put that amount into this account so that I can transfer it to my card at the end of the month. This is a great way to make sure we’re not charging to my card more than I can afford to pay off each month.)
What are some things you do to save money each month?
Related Posts:
17 Tips for Saving Tons of Money and Getting Out of Debt
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Kayla is the content creator over at motviationformom.com. She is a wife and mother who loves to share all of the tips, tricks, and life lessons that she has learned over the years with all of her readers. Her primary focus is on children’s education, motherhood, and healthy family relationships!
This was a good read! I agree that cutting back on meat is a big budget saver. It is a difficult transition, but worth it.
Yes, it’s definitetely difficult! I feel like soo many of my recipes have ground beef, which is of course super expensive!
Thanks for sharing! I agree that it is best to divide up how you are saving your money. Sometimes, it looks like one big chunk, but I know it is purposeful!
Agreed! Dividing it up makes it easier to not spend it because it doesn’t look like a bug chunk of money! (:
We try to meal plan each week – I agree it helps a lot! We also cut cable about 5 years ago and we really haven’t regretted it. There are so many other ways to watch TV!
There really are! My family barely even has time to watch tv anyway!
This was an interesting read! I super need to save money right now, so might try some of these techniques.
Yes try them and let me know if it works for you!