Sometimes just saving some money isn’t enough, and you really need to bare down and save more money for big goals or expenses. These five unconventional tips can help push you through for bigger savings.
Sometimes making small changes to save a little extra money each month is helpful for meeting small goals, but occasionally, saving a little isn’t sufficient.
There can be times when you need to save more money for large goals or for substantial upcoming purchases.
These 5 tips are designed to make a significant difference in the amount you can save each month.
This post is all about how to save more money and five unconventional tips for doing it in a big way.
Table of Contents
Stop Eating Out
This first tip for how to save more money can be a bit painful. As someone who loves to eat out and hates cooking, eating at home every night can seem daunting.
However, if you track your out to eat spending each month, between coffee trips, lunch and dinners, you could be looking at spending close to $1000 or more a month.
Just to put this spending into perspective, instead of a $5.00 coffee at Starbucks, a cup of coffee at home averages about $.16. Instead of a steak dinner at an average priced steakhouse for $21.00 or more, a steak dinner at home averages around $12.00.
Eliminating these meals can lead to substantial savings each month, and an enormous amount of savings over the course of a year.
Besides just traditionally cooking at home each night, here are some cost effective alternatives that I like to use:
Trade cooking nights with friends or family.
This is one of my favorite ways to switch up eating at home. One night a week, you cook dinner for a friend or family member. Then a different night of the week, have them cook for you both.
We are a family of 4, but we often do this with my parents or my grown daughter and her family.
This is a great way to not only free up a night of cooking, but you also get the added benefit of spending time with someone you care about.
Use a meal prep service
This method may not save you any grocery money, as most meal prep services cost the same or a little more than doing your own grocery shopping, but it’s still typically cheaper than going out to eat.
By having your meal items delivered to you, you eliminate the need to go to the grocery store, which can also cut out impulse purchases. It’s very easy, as almost everything you need for a complete meal is already at your fingertips come dinner time.
Meal prep your lunches on the weekend
One of the best ways to avoid eating out at lunchtime is to bring your lunch to work. The hard part is either remembering to do it the night before or having to get up early to prepare it in the morning.
A great solution to this is to do one meal prep on Sunday for the whole week.
There are many great resources out there for meal prep, but the one I’m trying right now is The Meal Prep King cookbook. You can find it here on Amazon.
Create a crock-pot menu
If you’re like me, cooking every night can seem like an overwhelming task, but you can break up the number of days that you have to spend over the stove by periodically making crock-pot meals.
I like these simple and no hassle meals for three reasons:
- You can prepare multiple crock-pot meals for the month at one time and put them in the freezer until you’re ready for them.
- You can toss most recipes into your crock-pot in the morning before work and when you return, it’s all ready to eat.
- Leftovers… even when I’m feeding my family of 4, most crock-pot meals make enough for leftovers.
I’m currently trying out this Taste of Home Crock-Pot cookbook for some new recipes, if you want to try it out with me.
Do a No Spend Month Challenge
Doing a no spend month can be a great way to really save more money. From the name of of it, you might think that you can’t spend any money during the month, which would be impossible, but that is not the case.
Successfully participating in a no spend month does have some loose rules to follow, though. The goal is to stop spending on everything except for your essentials, like food and housing.
The type of expense that you want to eliminate would be your discretionary spending, like on clothes, home decor and other “wants.”
Many people who do this challenge use up food that has been sitting in their refrigerator and pantry before buying more and create lists of fun and unique things to do at home during the month.
Try using these No Spend Challenge trackers to stay motivated with your pursuit of savings.
Ditch Your Car Payment
This way to save more money is one that many people believe isn’t even possible. Many people live with the belief that you’ll always have a car payment. This simply isn’t true.
The average monthly car payment in the US is a whopping $568 a month. Even if your car payment isn’t that much, imagine what you could do with that money over the course of a year. It would really add up.
Five years ago, I chose this path and sold my 5 month old Chrysler Town and Country to a dealer for a $3000 loss and found a used car to drive for less around $3000.
Without my $540 van payment and other money that I made selling things around the house, cutting my grocery bill and out to eat spending, I was able to pay off all $6000 in two months. I then had $540 more per month to use for other goals.
Since this time, we’ve only paid for cars in cash, and we save all of our money that we used to pay on car payments. All totaled, we save $785 per month that we used to spend on car payments. Multiply that by 5 years, and that is significant savings.
My suggestion is to ditch your car payment as soon as possible and drive something you can pay for in cash. Doing this will make your ability to save more money right within grasp.
{RELATED POST: 11 Simple Ways to Save Money Today}
Cut Your Grocery Bill
Cutting your grocery bill can seem like a daunting way to save money, but many times we have more food stored in our refrigerator and pantry than we use in a month. You can leverage this extra food for saving on your grocery spending.
Two other ways you can easily save more money on your grocery bill is to always plan before shopping and by using an online ordering feature.
By creating a plan before you go shopping, you can eliminate purchasing items that you already have at home. You can also remove the need to return to the store for items you forgot.
Another benefit of creating a shopping plan is that you already know what you’re going to cook, and you don’t buy extra items that run up your bill.
If you utilize an online ordering feature at the grocery store, you can also eliminate impulse purchases. One of the easiest ways to drive up your grocery bill is to spend on random things that don’t match your plan.
I’ve also found a great perk to the online ordering is the ability to see exactly how much you’re spending before you pay.
Almost every week when I do my grocery shopping, I end up removing unnecessary items from my cart to make sure I’m making the best choices.
You can try out one of these suggestions right away and see how it can help you to save more money.
Live Debt Free
Now, this way to save more money is not possible overnight. It could take months or a couple of years to clear your debt, but eliminating all debt allows you to save more money than you ever could with other suggestions.
By eliminating debt, you have the opportunity to use all of your monthly income to reach your goals.
According to one source, the average house payment in the United States hovers between $1275 and $1751 a month. What would you do with an extra $1200 to $1700 a month?
“What would you do if you had no payments? Anything you want.”
-Dave ramsey
Of all of the potential ways to save more money, ultimately paying off debt could by far make the most impact in your ability to save. While becoming debt free requires a lot of sacrifice and self-control, I promise you that it is 100% worth it.
I recommend following Dave Ramsey’s Babysteps for getting out of debt. They include:
- Have a $1000 baby emergency fund
- Use the debt snowball to pay off all debt
- Fully fund your emergency fund with 3-6 months of expenses
- Invest 15% of your income
- Fund children’s college
- Payoff mortgage
- Live and Give like no one else!
If you’re looking for a detailed step-by-step plan to get out of debt, I highly recommend the program that I used to payoff over $107,000, Financial Peace University.
I hope you’ve learned ways to save more money with these five unconventional tips.
Do you have other ways that you’ve used to save more money in your life? Please share them in a comment below.
