8 Quick Ways to Save Money Fast

How to save money fast?

In order to meet your financial goals, you will most likely be constantly evaluating your budget to see how you can save money in order to prioritize it for use in other areas. Perhaps it might be essential to balance your budget so that you aren’t living in debt! Today I’ll review a few fast ways to reduce your spending so that you can get more money now. This list may seem overwhelming to some of you. In that case, you should not tackle all of these at once! Start small. Pick one or two to focus on at a time, and you’ll quickly start reducing your budget and increase the money in your pocket!

1. Stop shopping for fun or out of boredom.

Seriously, I just said that. Many of us develop what I consider a bad habit of shopping for fun. I remember the days when I would go to the store for something to do, and I would come home with my new clothes and home decor. My life today includes me doing things I value more, like hanging out with my family, gardening, or writing this blog. If you shop for fun and work on changing this habit, you might be able to save quite a bit of money fast from your shopping budget.

2. Start a “no-spend” challenge.

A no-spend challenge involves you not buying specific items for a set period of time. Let’s just take clothing as an example. The savings potential here could be really high depending on your current habits, and how much you value your wardrobe selection and its size. 

If you can stop buying nonessential clothing purchases, you could have huge savings fast. I know, this may sound pretty harsh to some of you! But, take some time to consider how much you currently spend per month on clothing. Then, reflect on your most recent purchases. Are these items that you needed or wanted? If you buying many “wants”, then perhaps it is time to stop or slow down those purchases so that you can meet your financial goals. You may want to look into some of the “no-spend” challenge groups to keep you motivated. It can help you save money when you have the support of a community.

It also helps greatly if you only buy what you love. To me, there is a big difference between being frugal and cheap. I don’t like to buy cheap clothes, I like to buy quality items that I love and will have for a long time. Having this mindset ensures you aren’t shopping to replace it next month or the month after. So, keep this in mind when you have a clothing “need” or have the extra cash to buy a “want”.

Some online sources estimate the clothing category can range on average from $50 – $150 per month! Let’s say you currently spend $100/month. If you cut this in half, or completely, you potentially could reduce your expenses by $50-$150. That could be a good start to a Roth IRA or extra payment on your credit card–whatever your goals are right now!

3. Resist the click. 

When you are on social media, resist getting sucked into media marketing. If you aren’t seeking these purchases intentionally, then you most likely don’t “need” them—resist the click! 

4. Stop eating out (as much).

I know this seems really hard. However, there are many great at-home alternatives. Consider how much you might be able to reduce your food budget by meal planning. If you at least cut your outings in half, you could save in big ways. For example, if you currently eat out once per week and spend $10 a meal, you could cut $20 per month. Now, let’s look at another example if you have a family of five (like we do). If we order out, we spend typically $30. Let’s pretend we order out once per week. We would be spending about $120 per month, but if we reduced this every other week, we could cut $60 per month. As you can see the savings start adding up really fast, especially if you are going to restaurants and bars!

5. Cancel cable. 

Seriously, you can live without cable. I dare you to try! Go ahead and cut cable! What is the worse that could happen? Just try it for two months and see how it goes. When we cut cable, we purchased a digital antenna (for about $50) and were able to get about 10 stations for free. This is a fast way to save lots of cash!

It’s been 4 years since we canceled cable. It saved us $80/month when we first canceled it and with today’s prices, it would be even more. I have three small children and we adults wanted some type of additional entertainment, so we added Hulu for about $6 per month. Streaming TV can save you money!

6. Cancel a subscription service (or two).

I’m going to guess that you have at least one subscription service that you don’t use or is redundant to another one that you have. Companies are moving their services to subscription services so that they can have a constant monthly revenue stream. But what that means for you, as the consumer, is that you forget that you even have it and more of these tend to creep into your budget.

There are so many different types of subscription services but I’ll just focus on video-based content. Do you have Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, Prime, etc? Do you really need all of these? Are you actually using all of them? Try cutting just one of these services as another quick way to get more money in your budget. If you have a service and feel like you must keep it, then I recommend canceling the others.

If you can eliminate at least one of these packages, you can reduce your budget in this category by roughly $5.99 to $15.99. I would guess that you probably can cut out another one, so potentially you can cut $12-$30 from subscription services. To fast money fast, this is a guaranteed instant saving!

7. Plan your grocery list and be a frugal grocery shopping. 

Your grocery purchases can have a significant impact on your expenses. The best thing to do to help reduce expenses is to make a plan and stick to it, this means meal planning!  When you are planning your meals, it is easier to shop and it makes it easier to avoid costly restaurants and take-out services. Doing this each week is a fast way to save potentially tons of money.

8. Try cooking or baking something new—from scratch—that you typically buy premade.

I love to cook but I understand that not everyone does. There are also many people who think that they can’t because they don’t know how or don’t think they are good at it. Can I just challenge you to make something from scratch that you currently buy prepackaged? How about pancakes? Pesto Pasta? Oatmeal? Breakfast sandwich? Granola? Sheet pan chicken? Mac and cheese? Meatloaf? French fries? Cookies? Stir fry? I’ll write more about this one later but those are a few ideas to try. You can reduce your food budget by significant amounts if you learn to cook or choose to cook more, from scratch.

You can do this!

Subscribe