5 Deceptively Easy Ways to Contribute to Your Savings

With inflation rising faster than the sun and wages falling faster than a lead balloon, almost everyone is looking for ways to trim a budget and save wherever possible. Reducing the number of bills and/or the amount due compose only one half of the equation, though. Simply reducing bills allows the mindset that you have more pocket money to spend. Instead of just cutting bills, which is important—there’s no denying that, use these easy ways to contribute more to your savings for better overall financial health.

Purchasing Trends

Track every cent you spend: Never leave a store without a receipt. Carry pen and paper to note the snack you bought from the vending machine. Be sure to note the date, the time which aids in spotting spending trends, the item purchased and its cost.

When you do buy something, use cash or a bank debit card that can be used in the purchase as a credit card: Studies have proven time and again that we spend up to 20 percent less when we use cash than we do with actual revolving credit cards.

Using a debit card limits your spending to cash equivalency. Note if your debit card is automatically incurs a transaction fee: Either avoid that retailer or consider it a cash-only location.

Whole Dollars

Save your change every day. Even if it’s just a few pennies, empty your pocket or purse of every bit of coin in it and keep in a jar. At the end of every week, roll it as necessary and take all of it to the bank to deposit. While you’re there, ask for more free coin roll paper; they’ll be glad to keep you stocked.

Before you leave the bank, enroll in a “round up” program if your bank has it. Any purchase you make with your bank card is automatically rounded up to the nearer dollar, and the change is automatically deposited in your savings account. After only a year in such a program, you’d be very surprised how much that one option can save you.

When you purchase with cash, don’t use the coin change you get in return; pay yourself the same way the bank card program does and add all your daily accumulation to that jar for weekly deposit.

Bulk v Unit

Don’t buy designer water, especially by individual bottle. If you don’t like the taste of your tap water, purchase a filtering system: It’s exactly what many designer water products have done to them, just on a larger scale. Fill your empty plastic bottles with filtered tap water and refrigerate. For a refreshing change of flavor, you can add a few drops of lemon juice, unsweetened kool-aid or other low-calorie flavored powder. Every time you pull out and drink a self-filtered water bottle, pay yourself the dollar you just saved. Even allowing the filtering cost, that’s about how much you saved by bottling your own. (You can even use those designer bottles to fool your friends. We won’t tell.) Just be sure to pay yourself that money and not the retailer!

Buy soft drinks by the case. If you like it enough to buy it singly, save money and buy it by the case, which is cheaper per unit than even a 6- or 12-pack. Pay yourself the per-unit price every time you save on the full case. Ditto, any single unit-versus-bulk unit purchase, like cigarettes. Whenever you guy a carton instead of a single pack add that $5 difference to your deposit jar.

Multiple-Level Savings

For every day you either walk, ride a bike or take public transportation instead of driving your car, pay yourself $1. That’s the least you’ll save on gas and still allows for the bus fare or new tires for the bike or a new pair of walking shoes once a year.

Contact your insurance agent and notify him of your reduced vehicle use and mileage: Pay yourself the difference in auto insurance premiums. Consider raising your deductible to further reduce your premiums. Then first pay yourself that deductible difference to ensure you have it always available, then pay yourself the additional difference in premiums.

Once each quarter pay yourself an extra $25 for the oil change you didn’t need, $25 for the brake adjustment you didn’t need and $25 for the antifreeze, windshield fluid and tire tread you didn’t use.

Sharing and Teaching

Be sure to let others know how your savings master plan is progressing. You don’t have to tell them exactly how much you’ve saved—they may ask for a loan if they knew, but if they’re interested in learning how you’ve done it, pay yourself a $50 bonus as a referral fee.

Even if they want to car pool instead of taking public transportation, it counts: Regular, reliable ways to save money is the key. Perhaps alternating weeks of driving and riding or simply contribute to a fuel fund if one prefers to drive often would work. So long as all people involved in the car pool agree, and expenses are reasonable per person—and you spend less than you would driving yourself, pay yourself the difference between independently driving and car pooling expenses.

Summary

These five easy ways to contribute to your savings account only touch the surface of possibilities. Each time you think of an idea, pay yourself a $10 bonus, then each time you use an idea, pay yourself for your brilliance: Consider it a royalty payment!


Holly Miller from Coupon Croc. Protect your investments and your finances by purchasing adequate insurance coverage. Visit us and save on all your policies with The AA discount codes.

One thought on “5 Deceptively Easy Ways to Contribute to Your Savings

  1. I have always disliked advice like the “Whole Dollar” advice above. These “spend to save” methods seem counter-productive as they incentivize the exact thing that works against your goal. Plus, if you’re making enough purchases that you’re actually saving a decent amount this way, you should probably reevaluate your spending.

    I don’t use a debit card, just cash and credit. Between both methods, I typically have fewer than 30 TOTAL transactions in a given month, nearly all of which are on the weekends from running errands. At most that could save about $15 a month; if you follow the article’s advice to go to the bank once a week to turn in coins, you’ll cost yourself a lot more than that in fuel and wear costs.

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