Rising prices have a lot of people getting creative about how to hold onto more of their money. If you’re not careful, your everyday expenses might be eating away at your budget faster than usual and undermining your progress toward your savings goals.
If your money seems to be disappearing before you can think about stashing it away, one option is to get back to basics. Try these simple tricks to save more money.
5 Ways To Try To Save More Money
Here are five simple ways to try to cut your costs, save more money and reach your savings goals faster.
1. Cook at Home
If you have a habit of eating out for several meals each week, work toward tweaking that in favor of cooking at home more often or choosing lower-cost options. Look back at your transactions for the past month or so to get an idea of the amount you’ve typically spent on eating out, and work on a plan to stash that amount into savings each month instead.
Cooking at home doesn’t have to mean putting in lots of extra work or taking all the fun out of your meals. Look for low-cost frozen or boxed ready-made meals that satisfy your need for variety and a range of cuisines.
If you’re responsible for cooking for a family, look for easy, quick and low-cost recipes from sources like Yummy Toddler Food and $5 Dinners.
2. Ride Your Bike
How much are you spending on gas and vehicle maintenance to get to work, take kids to school or run errands? How much do vehicle loans cost your household each month?
Consider leaving the car at home, downsizing or ditching one (or all) of your cars altogether and opting for alternative transportation whenever it’s practical. Can you carpool with neighbors, ride your bike or take public transportation?
Going totally car-free might not be a viable solution for many households, but you might find more opportunities to ditch the gas guzzler than you expect. If your family downsizes from two cars to one, for example, that may mean hundreds of dollars each month you can put toward your savings instead, plus lower insurance, maintenance, and gas costs. Even if that’s not practical, being intentional about using your car for fewer trips could help you put back an extra $20 or $30 each week, which may mean a significant extra fund to put into savings each month.
3. Skip the Office
Consider going even bigger than alternative transportation — ditch your commute altogether. If you’re serious about how to save more money, working from home is becoming a popular and viable alternative in many jobs. If you work for a company that requires you to come into the office some or all work days, it could be time to think about finding a job that is remote, or asking your current employer for more remote time.
Working remotely helps you cut transportation costs, of course; that’s less money spent on gas, vehicle maintenance and replacing a vehicle. But not going into an office every day also means you don’t have to maintain an office wardrobe or buy meals away from home. Cut those costs from your budget and you may be able to funnel a greater amount of money into your savings. The savings from just one more remote day may really begin to add up.
4. Automate Your Savings
Another way to save money is to do it without thinking about it. If you earn plenty to cover your bills and just don’t know where all the extra goes from every paycheck, automating your savings could help you get ahead.
Use our Savings Goal Calculator to help estimate how much you need to save each month to reach your savings goal, and split it into the number of paychecks each month. Then automatically deposit that amount into savings with each paycheck.
If you’re paid by direct deposit, this may be easy to set up through your payroll provider (or ask an HR rep to help you out). If you’re paid with a paper check, get in the habit of splitting it between accounts when you deposit it. Or schedule an automatic transfer from your checking to your savings account a day or two after each payday, once you know you’ll have the funds available.
Sending money into your savings account automatically gets it off your mind, so you can work toward your savings goal without thinking about it. And keeping it out of your checking account may mean you won’t be tempted to spend it.
5. Use a High-Yield Savings Account
You could move toward your savings goals faster if you make your money work for you. Depending on the interest, you could do that by sticking it into a high-yield savings account, which will pay you interest on your account balance.
As your savings grows, the amount of interest you accrue grows with it. And that interest gets added to your balance and it accrues interest, as well! That’s how you harness the power of compound interest to save more money faster.
With interest rates on the rise lately, now is a great time to open a high-yield savings account and take advantage of compound interest for years to come. Ready to get started? Click here to open a Quontic high-yield savings account in minutes.
