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Is your budget just not cutting it? Do you need to figure out how to save more money and cut costs? Here are 5 tricks to saving money starting with your purpose, diving into cooking and even the softwares I use to save money on autopilot.

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Looking for ways to save money so you can do those things you’ve been dreaming of? Maybe traveling, paying off your loans or vacationing on a cruise? 

In this episode/post I share 5 money saving hacks so you can cut back, save money on purpose and be free to do what you want to do in the future.

5 Tricks to Saving Money:

Before we dive into these tricks you really REALLY need to have a budget. If you don’t know where your money is going every month then you won’t be able to actually save money!

If that is something you need help with go check out this Budgeting 101 blog post where I share how I create my budget and stick with it!

<< Read Budgeting 101/or Listen HERE!>>

Now onto trick #1

1.Know where you spend TOO much & have a purpose

Now that you have a budget and can look through it let’s specifically look at the categories that are not the vital ones.

For example vital budgets are rent, electricity, food, gas, etc.

We are trying to look at where you spending the most money that is optional like eating out, shopping at Target and on.

After find where you are spending the most money, and before we see how we can cut back, I need to think about something.

Why do you want to save money?

I need you to get really specific. Do you wish to go on vacation? Not stress about living paycheck to paycheck? Have enough money to invest? Go debt free?

Think about it and come up with your own unique purpose and why. That is what will drive you to saying no in the moment when over spending can come easily.

Write it on post it notes. Don’t drive to Target. Avoid shopping when you are bored. Really lean into your bigger long term plan so you can say no in the moment.

2. Use all your FREE resources first

Are you living in college? Do you need furniture for your apartment? Ask mom. Go through the basement. Ask relatives and friends about anything they are getting rid of.

Do you constantly buy new books at the bookstore? Go to the library! Reserve that book online and go pick it up! It’s like Christmas to me and I am saving money for those books I HAVE to own. You can do it too.

3. Use Honey

Honey is a browser extension that will go through promo codes for you when you are checking out, surf the internet for better deals on specific products and even let you price watch a product.

If you like shopping online ANYWHERE you have to use Honey! It can save you so much money!

Here is a photo of it when I was shopping on Amazon. It even shows me whats on sale and what coupon codes are available.

See I’ve been watching to buy a Nutribullet on Amazon and this is what honey looks like! It even shows the history of price drops for the product showing me how much I could save if I wait!

<<Just go ahead and go sign up HERE!>>

4. Learn to cook and eat at home

I realize a lot of people will actually hate this one but it can save you SO MUCH MONEY! It costs 10 or MORE per person to go eat out. Every once in a while is totally fine but multiple times a week will eat up ALL your budget.

So first you gotta learn to cook at home and this scares a lot of people but it is WAY easier than you would think.

I learned to cook by being thrown in the deep end. I moved to Ukraine with NO IDEA how to cook whole foods. They don’t have grocery stores like ours but a lot of booths farmers market style. At these booths you have to tell what item, how much weight then pay. That was A LOT of Russian for someone who didn’t speak any ?

One month in and I almost starved. I learned real quick after that inital hump.

I am going to share a few secrets.

Start with one dish. You are going to make this dish several times until you aren’t stressed about it and it tastes pretty good. A gerat example of this is chicken and veggies. Simply buy frozen veggies and use lemon pepper on the chicken on the stove and BAM you can cook one meal.

The goal is to have 7 meals you can rotate through at home without stressing about them. I heard this as a mom hack once and even though I only feed one mouth I’ve been working on my schedule to save me time and money.

Figure out how many times you eat out every week then cut it down. Don’t allow more than a few times and keep that purpose for your savings on the forefront of your mind.

Another little hack for this is to order your groceries ONLINE and pick them up at Walmart. I’ve been loving this lately!

<< Get $10 off of your first order at Walmart Groceries HERE! >>

5. Look up & cut your recurring payments

You are probably spending a lot of money on services and subscriptions you don’t even know about.

Go back look through this month’s transactions and figure out what are subscriptions.

After that find ways to cut them back.

Do you need audible when the library has overdrive?

Do you need Netflix when your family has an account?

Are you a student? You can save at Spotify and Itunes music!

CUT CUT CUT.

Save that recurring money!

If you cut out Audible thats $15 a month or $180 a YEAR! That’s a one way flight to visit a friend!

Now before you go I have a few extra hacks/softwares worth mentioning:

The first is Ibotta. With this app you can save money on groceries. You get cash back on items you are already buying!

It’s like if you bought milk and Ingles you can look at Ingles and get .50 cents back. If you look at the app and decide what brands you buy you can get so much back!

Also if you sign up with this link you get a bonus $10 for FREE!

<< Sign up for Ibotta HERE! >>

The other software is Rakuten.

This is similar to Honey in the fact that it works across the web but you get cashback instead.

When you sign up with Rakuten you get $10 as a bonus right away too! It’s like free money, why pass it up!

On the day I wrote this post these are the double cashback shops you could get if you bought the things you were already going to buy on their site!

They include popular stores that you probably shop at like Old Navy, Gap, & on.

It’s just a free way to get money back!

<< Join Rakuten HERE and get $10 for free! >>