Saving money is an important financial strategy that everyone can benefit from. At first, saving can seem daunting, as it’s commonly thought of as simply saving $X from your paycheck every month. This isn’t always easy, especially if you live paycheck to paycheck.
While this is a perfectly valid way to approach saving, it’s certainly not the only way. The truth is that there’s a multitude of small ways to decrease your spending every month that can add up to substantial savings over time.
In this article, we’ll cover a number of useful tips that you can use to control your spending and get your savings on track.
Use a Budget to Save and Track Your Spending
For most people, it can be helpful to first assess your current spending. You’ll want to go through a few months’ worth of bank and credit card statements and get a clear picture of your monthly expenses. Once you know what your cashflow looks like, it’s possible to take several steps that can save you money:
- Pick a Budget Plan: Picking a budget to implement is often the first step to achieving real savings. There are many different plans available, such as the popular 50/30/20 budget. In the end, most budgets divide your spending into the categories of needs, wants, and savings, making it easy to determine where you can make cuts to expenses or reign in overspending.
- Set Savings Goals: Setting goals and benchmarks for your savings can motivate you to stick with your plan. Savings benchmarks can clearly indicate if you’re on track, whether you’re saving for a dream vacation or retirement.
- Build an Emergency Fund: Building an emergency fund should probably be your first savings goal, and for good reason! An emergency fund can actually save you money by preventing you from needing to use a credit card for large, unexpected expenses, which saves you money on interest.
- Save Your Change: Rather than leaving your spare coins to languish in your couch cushions or car console, designate a spot where you collect them, such as a coin jar. Whenever the jar starts to get full, you can deposit it into your bank account.
Use Your Bank Account to Save More
Even the type of account or way in which you use it can help you save money. By understanding the different types of bank accounts that are available and how they work, you can put your money to work making more money and reach your savings goals even faster.
- Use a High-Yield Savings Account: This type of savings account has a higher interest rate than a traditional savings account, and it’s the perfect place to keep your emergency fund. These accounts make accessing your money easy (important during an emergency), and as long as the funds stay in the account, they earn interest. Even better, they’re FDIC-insured and low risk compared to investment accounts.
- Take Advantage of Compound Interest: When an account offers compound interest (such as most savings accounts), it means that the interest you earn will also earn interest. This is essentially passive income and is a great way to grow your wealth. As the balance in the account grows, the amount of money you can earn from compound interest can become substantial.
- Use Automatic Transfers to Save: By using automatic transfers, you can have money transferred to your savings as soon as a paycheck deposits into your checking account. This ensures that you save the amount you intend from each paycheck, and it prevents you from even thinking about spending the money.
- Get Into Investing: Once you’ve built an emergency fund, consider opening an investment account to grow additional wealth and work toward your long-term savings goals, such as retirement or an education fund for your children. While investments are subject to stock market volatility and are therefore higher risk than savings accounts, they also offer the potential for substantially higher returns, especially when you invest wisely with advice from an experienced financial advisor.
Save on Household Expenses
Of course, what you choose to spend money on is a big part of savings. You might be surprised at how much you can save simply by paying attention to what household items you buy.
- Use Meal Planning to Reduce Grocery Spending: You might be surprised by how much you’re currently spending on grocery store impulse buys. Plan out your meals and snacks ahead of time, then stick to the shopping list when you’re at the store.
- Watch Your Energy Usage: Turn off lights, ceiling fans, and other devices when no one’s in the room. Stick Energy Star-certified appliances to to maximize your energy efficiency. While you can’t avoid the electric bill, it is possible to reduce this expense when you’re mindful of your energy consumption.
- Try DIY Home Repair: Minor home repairs can be surprisingly easy to take care of yourself, saving money on expensive contractor fees. Things like interior painting, patching holes in dry wall, and replacing light and plumbing fixtures are all things the average homeowner can handle with a bit of research and the right tools.
- Cancel Unnecessary Subscriptions: If you go through your bank statements, you’ll likely see several recurring charges related to subscriptions or memberships you no longer need or use. These might be gym memberships, app subscriptions, or things like beverage-of-the-month clubs. Perhaps you’re currently paying for five separate streaming services but actively using only two. In the end, paid subscriptions and memberships are often an easy place to make cuts and find savings.
- Use Coupons: It might sound cliché, but coupons truly are a great source of savings for household products and groceries. For example, many grocery stores offer free loyalty programs and apps that provide coupons regularly. You can even combine meal planning with the coupons currently available so that your meal plan for the week focuses on foods you can get the best deal on. It’s not uncommon for grocery stores to offer enough coupons that you can regularly decrease your grocery bill by more than $20 per trip.
Cut Spending on Transportation
You probably drive somewhere nearly every day. However, the fact that we drive so much also means that finding ways to decrease transportation costs is a great way to save.
- Use Regular-Octane Gas: Most cars are designed to run just fine on regular fuel (octane 87). This means that you can save money by purchasing regular octane gas rather than premium when you fill up (unless your car specifically calls for premium).
- Carpool or Use Public Transportation: Odds are you have a coworker you could potentially carpool with to get to and from work. If that’s not an option, you might consider using public transport, such as the bus. Both options tend to be less expensive than driving yourself. Plus, you can save many miles’ worth of wear-and-tear on your vehicle, which can save you on maintenance costs down the road.
- Skip Motor Vehicles Entirely: Depending on how far you need to travel, simply walking or riding a bicycle might be a legitimate option. You won’t have to spend money on gas, deal with traffic, or find a place to park! Of course, there are also health benefits to walking and cycling.
- Shop Around for Car Insurance: Take the time to regularly shop around for lower rates on car insurance. You won’t always find something, but always keeping an eye out means you’ll find money-saving opportunities when they appear. You might also be able to save money by bundling your auto insurance with your homeowners policy.
Save by Reducing Debt and Avoiding Interest
Paying down debt and avoiding interest are actually key to successful savings. After all, debt repayments are effectively money you could have saved (and potentially made more money from with compound interest), and interest payments are additional money spent on top of that.
This means that having a plan to pay off your debt is essential to your savings plan.
- Focus on High-Interest Debt First: For the purpose of paying off debt, a good rule of thumb is to treat any interest rate higher than seven percent as high-interest debt. Paying down this type of debt is a great way to save as it reduces or eliminates the interest payments you’ll need to make in the future.
- Explore Debt Consolidation: If you have to make multiple credit card and loan payments every month, it can really take over your budget and limit your financial flexibility. In this situation, it’s worth considering debt consolidation through a mortgage refinance or personal loan. When consolidating debt, you borrow money to pay off multiple loans or cards. The goal is to move your debt to a lower interest rate and consolidate to one lower monthly payment. This frees up money in your budget and allows you to work on your other financial goals.
- Consider a Mortgage Refinance: Most mortgages are long-term 30-year loans. This means that average interest rates will fluctuate a great deal during the term of the loan, periodically providing you with opportunities to refinance the mortgage loan into a lower interest rate, saving you money. By keeping an eye on mortgage rates, you can take advantage and save money when rates dip below your current interest rate.
Hit Your Financial Goals with Multiple Ways to Save
Achieving your financial goals is essential to making your dreams a reality. With so many ways to save available, it’s really just a question of what works best for you and your situation.
Hancock Whitney can provide you with the accounts and financial tools you need to hit your savings goals. Reach out to us today or apply for an account online to get started.
