5 WAYS TO SAVE MONEY IN 2019

I have been reflecting on our budget as we are getting into a new year and thought I would share with you all a few things that we have implemented the last several years that has been a game changer in allowing us to save for our goals. Some of these I'm sure you have heard before if not all of them but I feel passionately about them I wanted to refresh your memory.

1) CANCEL SUBSCRIPTIONS:

I'm sure you have heard it all of the time but canceling unused or unnecessary subscriptions can save you a lot of money. I would highly encourage you especially if you are on a debt free journey to really evaluate every single subscription and determine if it is being used or needed.

My husband and I recently did this again and determined that we needed to cancel our gym membership. With the season of life we are in right now we just were not using it enough for it to be worth that payment each month. I will say that I do hope that we can get into a rhythm where we can revisit this and go back but we needed to make that call and choose to save the money now until we know we will be able to use it. So instead of wasting that money we have reallocated it into one of our savings goals.

2) SAVE BEFORE YOU BUY:

I know that these days we are all about the immediate. We have become less patient as a society and I think that especially correlates with purchases. However if you wait and save before making a big purchase it can save you big in the long run.

For example if you were to buy immediately say on a credit card you will wind up paying more for said item then you would if you paid for it in full. You can also keep you eye out and watch for sales then snag it at a cheaper price. Waiting and saving will also cause you to think more about the purchase and cause you to reflect on if it is a purchase you really should be making.

Practice your patients and save before you buy. My husband wanted a new TV but instead of rushing to the store he saved for months saving up his spending money in order to purchase the TV he wanted. He very easily could have used money from our account but that money was already allocated towards other goals so he practiced patience and was able to pay in cash for his new TV!

3) USE CASH:

If you aren't living under a rock I'm sure you have heard of Dave Ramsey. Well Dave is all about the cash and I'm with him on this one! There is so much more emotion involved when you pay with cash then there is with handing over a credit card. Since you can feel it in your hangs it is a lot more painful to part ways. I know that when I use cash for my day to day spending I don't spend quite as much as I would using my debit card. You can also often times get certain discounts if you pay for something in full using cash.

This past year I have been using a Savvy Cents wallet as my cash envelope system and love how it has the accordion section where I can section out my different budgets. You can also use just simple envelopes and write on the envelope what the budget category is.

4) TRACK EVERY DOLLAR SPENT:

This one is going to be key especially with using cash. You need to know where you money is going in order to be productive and establish saving goals. Don't let you money tell you what to do, tell your money what to do.

You can do this many different ways but my favorite way to track our spending is by utilizing EveryDollar. It is an amazing budgeting website and app. The main point of the app is that you literally allocate every dollar earned.

I will dive into this deeper in a future post and video but essentially you need to go through and mark down your income earned and then write out all of your expenses then create budgets by grouping like expenses. Once you have your budget categories set up you need to establish your budgeted amounts. The goal is to assign every dollar that comes in to a budget category and to zero out your budget.

5) CHROME EXTENSIONS HONEY AND EBATES:

For the last few months I have been using a few chrome extensions that have helped me save money and get cash back.

Do you search for coupon codes when shopping online? Well then you should look into Honey the chrome extension as it does the searching for you. All you have to do is download the chrome extension and then whenever you are shopping online when you are in checkout it will notify you if there are any coupon codes for that website, activate the extension and it will find the best coupon code for you. It eliminates the need for you to search for coupon codes as it will find the best one for you.

The other chrome extension I have really been liking is EBATES. EBATES is a cash back extension, so anytime you are shopping online you can get the chance to receive cash back on your purchases. If the site you are shopping on has a cash back offer it will pop up and all you have to do is press activate, you will then get cash back checks from EBATES it is as simple as that!!

For a bonus $10 cash back through EBATES you can use my referral link.

I hope you enjoyed these 5 money savings tips for 2019! Let me know in the comments below what are your financial goals for the new year?