How to Save Money Every Month in Little Ways
When you decide you want to save money and live a frugal life, it can be hard to know where to start. Today we are going to talk about how to save money every month. I’m going to share baby steps on how you can get started.
Maybe you’ve been thinking it’s time to manage your finances a little better. Maybe you want to stop overspending, and learn to live frugally. There are so many benefits to living within our means. It allows you to pay down debt, save money, and go to sleep with peace of mind that you are moving forward, not behind when it comes to your financial future.
However, if you have never lived much of a frugal lifestyle, it can be difficult to know what to do first and just how you can find ways to save money. You can get overwhelmed by reading articles of extreme frugal living and think it is just too hard to do. Trying to figure out how to save money every month may not feel worth it to you.
Just like anything in life, sometimes it’s best to take baby steps and ease into something new. That’s what today’s post is about. I want to share with you small ways you can start changing your habits and work towards a more frugal life.
You may not see a large increase in savings with these little baby steps, but the hope is that little changes will turn into big changes.
HOW TO SAVE MONEY EVERY MONTH IN LITTLE WAYS
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Hang 3 loads of laundry every week. Giving up the dryer might seem like too much work for you. But what if you committed to hanging just three loads of laundry every week, and using the dryer for the rest of your weekly laundry. We hang our laundry outdoors on a clothesline like this one, but we even hang it up in the winter time indoors using one of these dryer racks we purchased a few years back.
Limit your coffee shop purchases to once a week. If you love hitting up the drive thru for your morning coffee the thought of giving that up cold turkey can be difficult. I mean, I get it. I love a good cup o’ Joe. Instead of giving it up completely, decide that you will limit it to only once a week. Make coffee at home the rest of the week. If once a week is too extreme for you, just try cutting out one of your regular trips to the drive thru each week, until you are down to only once a week.
Switch to water to 2 of your daily beverages. Do you drink a lot of pop? Juice? Coffee? Does your daily beverage intake not involve a lot of water? Instead of giving up your flavored beverages completely, decide to switch out two of your drinks per day for water. It may not seem like much, but remember, it’s the little things that start spiraling into bigger changes.
Set your thermostat 2 degrees lower. I know that some people LOVE their house to be extremely warm. If you find yourself walking around in t-shirts in the middle of winter, consider dropping your thermostat 2 degrees lower than you are used to. You can also drop your thermostat lower while you sleep. These programmable thermostats are great for that kind of thing. Add a sweater and some slippers and you most likely will barely notice the change of temperature. In our house slippers, sweaters, and blankets when sitting on the couch are a regular occurrence.
Change out one prepackaged food item for homemade. More often than not prepackaged convenience foods are more expensive than if you were to make the same food from scratch. Consider switching out just ONE food item you buy prepackaged for a homemade version. Some ideas for this can be homemade hummus, granola, and yogurt. For a step-by-step guide on how to make your own yogurt, check out THIS POST I wrote.
Cut back on eating out just by one per month. If you eat out 8 times every month start cutting one out and only eat out 7 times. After you’ve done that for a month or two, drop it again. Eating out is hugely expensive and even decreasing the number of times you eat out per month just by one can put extra cash in your pocket.
Switch to generic brands for one or two foods you buy. Do you consistently buy name brand groceries? You can put money back in your pocket simply by switching to generic brands of food. Most of the time the quality is just as good as the name brand. There have been times I have purchased the name brand of a product I usually buy the generic brand for only to discover I prefer the generic brand. Now, this isn’t going to be the case for everything, and there are things I prefer name brand for, but overall my shopping cart contains A LOT of generic brand groceries.
Alternate buying new and used clothing. If you are used to buying all your clothes brand new, consider buying every second article of clothing you shop for from a secondhand store.
Do a one week spending freeze. A few months ago I wrote a post about how we do a spending freeze for the month of January every year. However, maybe not spending on anything but necessities for a month sounds too extreme for you. Why not start with a one week spending freeze? After you’ve done a one week spending freeze you can try a two week spending freeze, then a three week spending freeze, until eventually you feel like you can be successful at a one month spending freeze.
START WITH SMALL WAYS TO SAVE MONEY AND THEN MOVE ONTO BIGGER WAYS TO LIVE FRUGALLY
There are some people who may look at this list and think, “the minimal savings with those changes are not worth it!” However, little savings add up to big savings. More importantly though, is that when we learn to save in little ways we start to create healthy financial habits that pave the way for saving money in bigger ways.
Once you are successful at saving in little ways, more than likely you will want to continue to find ways to save. Those little steps will turn into big steps. After awhile you are no longer saving pennies, but dollars. And those dollars WILL add up.
If you are ready to start finding more ways to save than the ideas on this list, check out my post on 80 Frugal living Tips.
You do not need to feel overwhelmed at living a frugal life. Get started with baby steps, and then once you got those down you will feel more confident to make bigger changes. You might think your financial situation is too difficult to change but you need to start somewhere.
We stock up on clothing when we see a deal so this week when I saw jeans that are reg $36 a pair for $6.75 if I bought 8 I jumped on it and ordered them for my husband. We only needs to add two pairs to his closet right now and will save the rest for when they are needed. Last week there was a deal that included a free 6 pack of socks which are not needed right now but they are in the closet for later, too. Like wise on a deal on panties for me this week. I saved 70% by buying 7 pairs but only need two or three more right now. This saves us a ton of money and stress because our clothing budget is small. It also allows us to buy the brands that we like and not fork over a ton of cash.
We invested in a coffee maker that makes better coffee than anywhere in town so we have no desire to pay for coffee away from home. Our son has the same machine and we often talk about how much money we have saved over the years because we paid more up front. We rarely leave home in the morning without our insulated coffee mugs and our good coffee.
Wow, you got some amazing deals there!You definitely have the deal hunter thing down! We rarely buy coffee in drive thrus now too. For the Christmas season we have been buying the flavored syrup so we don’t feel like we are missing anything by not buying those expensive coffees at the coffee shops!
A very thoughtful and doable list! It’s not all or nothing, like I am used to do. I especially liked the idea of alternately buying new vv second hand clohes, exchanging a few items to generic brands, air drying laundry a few times a week and have water for meals twice a day…
Many people never save on anything and many frugal people save on everything almost all the time. (I am personally guilty of both, at different times.) Here, you have stricken a golden middle way. Which is totally doable and agreeable!
Yes, I tend to be an all or nothing kind of person sometimes too and I find sometimes that causes me to sabotage my own progress by saying if I can’t do it all, I’ll do nothing. I tend to do that a lot when I am trying to eat healthier. I am trying to teach myself that sometimes you can ease into changes you want to make in your life.
“sometimes you can ease into changes you want to make in your life” … I would like to put that behind glass and frame:)! Having that mindset makes things so much easier. Consistently living uberfrugally is a quite draining experience. In this way, though, you can live quite frugally and still have a little comfort during your week (like occasionally using the dryer or sometimes buy conveneince food). – I really feel so much better having read your post!
Yes! So much wisdom in your comment. It can be draining and having a little comfort can help you stick with it for the long haul. So glad you enjoyed the post.:)