5 Easy Ways to Save Money

Do you have financial goals ? Is it for retirement, education, health, emergencies or other personal goals? To achieve all your financial goals start saving money and make it a habit. Saving is very essential to ensure financial security  and it ease your worries towards the future. Starting is the hardest part, you can start by saving ten percent of your income each month or if it is harder, you can start from few pennies and as time goes by, it can be your habit to save consistently. 

 

Here are simple ways on how you can save money and achieve your financial goals:

1. Make a Budget - First thing to consider in making a budget is to record your expenses to have a basis on how you will budget your money every month. Try recording your daily expenses for one month and organize it per category like groceries, utilities, personal and other expenses. It will help you track all your expenses and when it comes to budgeting this will be a great help in avoiding overspending and cutting the unnecessary costs. After creating your budget stick-to-it or if necessary make some adjustments that will not affect your goal to save.

2. Buy Items that Only Needed - Plan your purchases in advance. It is advisable that you listed all those items that you most needed to avoid overspending and getting impulse purchases when going to grocery. When you know and created a list in advance, it will be easier for you to get all items you needed as you will go directly to the grocery section where the items are located and not be tempted to buy other items which are not on plan. Also, it help to save time which you can use to other productive things. In buying items you can purchase those that can last longer, on sale or discounted and buy in wholesale if possible.

3. Collect your excess coins - This is one of the best ways to start saving. This is the first way I personally practice to save money. Every time I have an excess coin on my pocket I put it on a jar and after a long run without noticing it you already save a reasonable amount of money were you can buy items you needed or add to your savings account. If you have kids you can teach them to collect all their excess coins everyday, this will be a great way for them to know the essence of saving money and how it can affect their lives in the future. That's why I am grateful that my mom taught me that simple technique of saving.

4. Automate your savings - Online banking is really a big tool that many banks offers, aside from the fact that you can check your accounts anytime you want, transfer funds, pay bills and other financial transactions, good news you can now automate your savings. I find this product very useful as you can schedule an automatic transfer every payday. It's a great way to save as you can forget your savings and can only remember during emergencies. A very convenient way of saving !

5. Utility Savings - Utility expense is one of the portion of our budget that sometimes unexpectedly eats most of our monthly budget, the good thing is that we control this to happen. We can use and apply a lot of tips and tricks to cut our utility expenses and save more. Some just need common sense like turning off the lights when not in use, unplug all those stuff that you're not using, don't use your air-conditioning that much and try to figure out what consumes the most and utilize it.

Photo Courtesy: Pictures of Money