Saving money is very hard to do when you either have a spending habit or a very small budget to work with, or a combination of the two. It doesn’t have to feel painful to put money away. You can save money in ways that trick yourself into thinking you aren’t putting that much money away. Here are some ways to do just that.
How to Trick Yourself into Saving Money
Save all your change and only use paper money to pay for things. Saving change is an amazing way to save money that will not even be noticeable to your day to day spending. It can really add up quickly, too! My family has a family piggy bank jar that we all toss money into. Every few months, we count it out and take it to the bank. We have had over $100 in there before and didn’t even know it.
Do the 52 Week Money Challenge. While this is ideal to start at the beginning of the year, you can join in at any time and it still matters. Just save the number of dollars that is the same week of the year. For instance, the first week of the year, you would only save $1. The second week, $2. By the end of January, you will have over $10 in your savings. If you join in April, you will be at week 12, so you put $12 in your savings. Just keep doing this and at the end of the year, you will have over $1,000 in your savings! You can find a printable to keep track of your 52 Week Savings Challenge here.
Penny Challenge – If a dollar a week is too much to contemplate, try the penny challenge instead. On the first day of the year you put a penny in a container, on the second day you put 2 pennies in…on the one-hundredth day you put in 100 pennies or $1.00…on the last day you put 365 pennies or $3.65. It adds up to over $600.00. Keep track with thisprintable tracking form for the Penny Challenge.
Use placing a small amount in savings as just another bill you pay. It’s called “Paying yourself first”. Just add $10 or $20 or whatever amount to your savings as you are paying bills. Consider paying yourself as another expense, not an after-thought.
Save all $1 or $5 bills. Any time you get $1 or $5 bills, save them. You won’t notice much if it is just these small amounts at a time and they will add up very quickly. This is especially an easy way to save if you work a job that you get tips at.
Continue to make payments on loans after they are paid off. I don’t mean to the lender, but to your savings account. Set aside a period of time, say 6 months to a year, where you will make payments on time to your bank account for the same amount you were paying. At the end of the period, use it as a down payment on something else or spend it on another need or want.
If you shop at a grocery store that tells you how much you saved on the trip with either sales or coupons, set aside that amount when you go. After all, it was money you would have spent had it not been for coupons, so it should go into savings for something else.
Decide on a number. At the end of the week or day, look at your bills left in your wallet. If they are small ones, look and see if the number you chose is one of the bill’s serial ending number. If it is, into the savings it goes.
If you aren’t sure that you can commit to saving all of your $5 dollar bills or set aside a certain amount for savings each week, you might want to use a Budget Plannerto track your spending. It will help you identify wasteful spending, where you can make realistic cuts, and find money to direct to savings.
More Budgeting Tips
10 Tips for Staying on a Budget
101 Ways to Save $1.00 a Day
7 Little Ways to Save Money
How to Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck
8 Reasons Your Budget May Not Be Working
How to Budget for People Who Hate to Budget
How to Build an Emergency Budget on a Limited Income
Canceling unnecessary subscriptions and automating your savings are a couple of simple ways to save money quickly. Switching banks, opening a short-term CD, and signing up for rewards programs can also help you save money. Making a budget and eliminating a spending habit each day can help lead to long-term savings.
Canceling unnecessary subscriptions and automating your savings are a couple of simple ways to save money quickly. Switching banks, opening a short-term CD, and signing up for rewards programs can also help you save money. Making a budget and eliminating a spending habit each day can help lead to long-term savings.
However, one of the biggest motivators for saving money is having measurable financial goals, whether saving for a dream vacation or your retirement fund. Setting goals and attaching a timeline gives you a specific target to work towards and a structure for how much to set aside each month.
According to Priti Rathi Gupta, Founder of LXME, as a salaried woman, you can follow the 50:30:20 Rule, which is the golden rule of budgeting. It is a great idea to start with which allocates 50% of your income to needs, 30% to wants, and 20% to savings and investments.
The classic approach of doubling your money by investing in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds is probably the one that applies to most investors. Investing to double your money can be done safely over several years, but for those who are impatient, there's more of a risk of losing most or all of their money.
The premise of the 30-day savings rule is straightforward: When faced with the temptation of an impulse purchase, wait 30 days before committing to the buy. During this time, take the opportunity to evaluate the necessity and impact of the purchase on your overall financial goals.
Saving money is hard. One of the most common reasons is that you might not have a good enough reason to save. Maybe you're overly focused on the present, or maybe you simply don't know what you want in the future. Either way, you need to get a vision for what you want to achieve with your money.
Are you approaching 30? How much money do you have saved? According to CNN Money, someone between the ages of 25 and 30, who makes around $40,000 a year, should have at least $4,000 saved.
The zero-based budgeting process is a strategic budgeting approach that mandates a fresh evaluation of all expenses during each budgeting cycle. Unlike traditional budgeting, where previous spending levels are typically adjusted, ZBB requires individuals or organizations to justify every expense from the ground up.
What is a 'pay yourself first' budget? The "pay yourself first" method has you put a portion of your paycheck into your savings, retirement, emergency or other goal-based savings accounts before you do anything else with it. After a month or two, you likely won't even notice this sum is "gone" from your budget.
The goal is to pay yourself first by saving one hour of your earned wages daily. While you may have heard of paying yourself first by setting funds aside from every paycheck, the goal here is to pay yourself first from the first hour of earned income in a day.
Match each week's savings amount with the number of the week in your challenge. In other words, you'll save $1 the first week, $2 the second week, $3 the third week, and so on until you put away $52 in week 52.
Key Takeaways. The 50/30/20 budget rule states that you should spend up to 50% of your after-tax income on needs and obligations that you must have or must do. The remaining half should be split between savings and debt repayment (20%) and everything else that you might want (30%).
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