13 Tiny Ways I Save Money Every Month

I'm all about saving money in different little teeny tiny ways that can help really boost either your savings or just the amount of money that you're bringing in each month I want you to stick around to the end of the video and keep track of the ones that you're currently doing and the ones that you haven't so that we can get a tally at the end let's do this hey guys it's Justine with debt free Millennials the channel to help you crush debt Achieve Financial confidence that leads to more fun and fewer payments so let's just hop into this list because I feel like any time of year is the great best time of year to instill these little teeny tiny money saving habits the first one is to automate your contributions whether you are saving for a new car down payment an emergency fund anything that you're saving for automatically have those transfers set up from your checking account into a high yield savings account so that you just feel good that you know that that is done and you don't have to manually remember to transfer that savings number two is buying generic labels I primarily do this with things at the grocery stores such as canned goods or different food items like graham crackers comes to mind for my toddler it's like she doesn't know the difference between honey made and the generic and neither can I so this is a great way to save money every single month and I love doing this for clothing dupes I love following Face First fashion on Instagram because she finds all of these really like nice clothing brands that you think are like brand names on Amazon on target but they're not and she gets them at a discount while still looking really fashionable and expensive or Luxe so definitely check that out number three utilize gift cards to bolster your budget I love using the fetch Rewards app so what you do is you scan any type of physical receipt that you might have from shopping groceries even gas receipts so save those at the pump anytime you scan and upload those receipts into the app you get rewarded points then you can stack up those points and then redeem them for gift cards I love doing this I've been using fetch rewards for years if you want to earn some bonus points on top of scanning your receipt and earning points from that use my code that's on the screen follow the link in the description box and you'll get some bonus points for utilizing this I think this is of the easiest ways to bolster your budget and also utilize some really fun gift cards like to Target in Amazon Starbucks number four budget for your lowest income this works especially well for those who have inconsistent income months the benefit of this is that you'll be able to budget for that lowest amount meaning that you won't outspend what you're actually bringing in and then you'll get a bonus when you hit those months where you have higher income you'll likely have a net left over meaning you have more Choice with your money now you'll need to do an average of the last 3 to 6 months of actual take-home pay to get an understanding and a baseline of what you should be budgeting for number five utilizing Facebook groups to save on baby items what you're going to do is you're going to go over to Facebook and then you're going to type in the search bar buy nothing and then your town name so buy nothing San Diego buy nothing Hawthorne you're going to look for that Facebook group and I guarantee you there's a buy nothing Facebook group in your area I've been seeing them all over I joined one here in Kansas City I was in one in La they exist across the country I found in up a baby car seat somebody was giving away for free it had not been involved in any accidents and there was the expiration date was still valid this retails brand new for $329 somebody was giving it away for free in LA and I snatched it right up so you can find some really amazing things not just baby items but any type of item that you might be looking for it's just a matter of going on to Facebook scrolling through the post and seeing what catches your eye number six take advantage of credit card rewards I love using credit card rewards to redeem for free travel all the time my favorite credit card to take advantage of a really robust Rewards program is the Chase Sapphire preferred now there is an annual membership fee of $95 a year but it gets gets you access not only into this Rewards program but there are so many benefits to this card I want to talk specifically about the rewards because it does favor dining and travel anytime that you are purchasing restaurants airfare you're booking a car you get extra 3x times the points on your purchases which then those points stack up and you can redeem for free travel Kyle and I did this and booked a ton of flights when we were in Europe in 2019 more recently we had actually cashed in a ton of points to go to Spain spoiler alert Spain isn't happening but we're getting our points back so it's a really easy way to bolster Your Love Of Travel if that interests you and you want to get some bonus points and you're interested in the Chase Sapphire preferred then hit up the link below in the description box to see if you can open account and get those bonus points for free number seven use Facebook Marketplace to buy and sell Furniture I'm going back to Facebook Marketplace because I feel like they've just become the king of these Buy sell apps and buy sell platforms right so here's a tip on selling furniture I love selling furniture on Facebook Marketplace you're going to take at least five photos I love to see a lot of photos think about it from a buyer perspective the more photos I see the more likely I'm going to inquire about that specific item also utilize the video feature this is somewhat new but if you can take a detailed video just think about panning with your phone very slow up and down that furniture item so people get a really clear view make sure that there's nothing in the background so they can get an understanding of what this piece looks like in natural life videos go a long way and make sure that you're putting more than two sentences in the description we want to know the history of it we want to know Dimensions where can I pick up do I need a truck or SUV to haul this thing if you are buying furniture a pro tip here is look up if especially if it's a brand name look up to see what that item retails for brand new I found this beautiful white dresser with gold knobs and gold legs it was so cute for my baby's nursery and it said Rachel Ray on the inside of the door I was like I didn't even know Rachel Ray made Furniture I looked it up and it retails brand new for over $1,000 that's because this piece is made of solid wood like it is real wood I know this because my husband and his bestie were like hauling it up the stairs they're like holy crap this is heavy and so I got it for $400 that's in savings of $600 just by buying on Facebook Marketplace highly recommend number eight eat readymade freezer meals I love doing this especially for busy weeknight dinners or quick breakfast now I like to utilize things like Aldi breakfast sandwiches you can actually get a pack of four for $529 or going to Costco you can get a two pack of their cauliflower pizzas if you're like cauliflower pizza don't knock it until you try it's like the crust is even better than a regular crust you can get a two pack for $111.99 the benefit of doing this and stocking your freezer with items such as these is it keeps you out of ordering from Uber Eats and door Dash and paying those expensive delivery fees and those service fee charges on top of the food order and by the way by the time that you are ready to eat like Prep Prep there's no prep time there's like lit literally the pizza's in the oven the breakfast sandwich is in the microwave that is so much faster than waiting on an Uber Eats driver to come deliver your food think about it have this stuff in stock ready to go number nine switch cell phone carriers now I've talked to a ton of people who have cell phone data plans that are anywhere between $6 and $90 per month it's way too expensive now if your device is paid meaning you are not on a device payment plan you completely own your phone outright it is time to switch cell phone carriers I love utilizing mintmobile as my lowcost cell phone carrier I pay $30 a month for an unlimited data plan and if you are a new user that you want to switch over to Mint they are running a deal I hope they're still running this deal right now if you click the link below you can get any cell phone data plan for $15 a month that is unheard of by the way mmobile Taps into the T-Mobile network so anywhere that there's T-Mobile service there's going to be mint mobile service and Ryan Reynolds owns the company so if you're a Ryan Reynolds fan then come join okay this one this one's for homeowners but number 10 this this like blew my mind that this is how expensive this was doing your own pest control and lawn care so we received a quote from a pest control company saying that they wanted to have us pay $160 per quarter to set rodent bait traps and then they wanted to be paid $300 a quarter for just general pest control are you freaking kidding me so we're paying over $11,000 in the year just to keep pests away from our home what we end up doing is we bought our own has control products and we also bought our own lawn meler because if you've been following the channel for a while then you probably know that we've been in apartments for like over 15 years basically basically since college and so we never had to do lawn care so we actually bought a lawn mower off of my parents and then we got our own pest control products off of Amazon looking at Instagram reels figuring out what's working also home defense is an amazing product to keep bugs away you can buy that at Walmart for like $ 20 $30 it's going to last you easily over a year you spray and then you're done yes it is going to take you some time to do it yourself but the cost savings is there so if you have this in your budget take a hard look at how often you're utilizing this and saying like is this worth it can I actually even temporarily remove this from my budget and start diying my own lawn care and pest control so that I can fuel my other financial goals I'd say that's a win-win number 11 back to my homeowners wave escrow and move that money into a high yield savings account so did you know that you can wave escrow yes you can you can actually go over to your mortgage lender and ask for that escrow to be waved and instead of paying it into that escrow account you are going to just transfer automatically transfer that's that goes up to tip number one of tiny ways to save money transferred into your high yield savings account that's earning 4.2% with Ali Bank currently at the time of this recording it could have changed by the time this video drops but check out Ali Bank in fact if you use my link below and you are a new Alli customer you're opening up a new eligible Ally account you can get 100 bucks fueled to your savings account so there we go $100 there plus the 4.2% interest plus the interest that you're going to earn on that money and then you go when time is due to pay your property taxes and your homeowners insurance Insurance you go ahead and pay it number 12 this is kind of a departure from home ownership and just general self-care if you like gel manicures and you like doing gel nails do them yourself at home now I was a little intimidated at first until my sister showed me how to do this but it really is just so nice I will never go back to doing gel manicures at a salon I save myself easily $50 every single time I do my own nails so you can buy and I highly recommend that you look at the Beatles gel polish kit you can buy them on Amazon or directly from their storefront they have the best colors follow them on Instagram they have the best tutorials the nail polish actually stays on this I'm think I'm going on 2 weeks for this that I did myself and you can get an entire kit plus like 50 colors for 40 bucks on Amazon I'll link that below if you're interested if you are like h i could be down for that and you can learn how to do your own gel nails it's trust me you'll never go back and number 13 is to monitor your spending if you know how much you spending in the month you create more awareness and it's going to change your buying Behavior so I love doing this not just if if tracking your spending in all areas across the month or across the week is just too disturbing for you to even get your mind wrapped around focus on your most trickiest areas so for me that would be like shopping or restaurant spending being mindful of how often I'm going out to eat or going into places like Target and Amazon what I've been doing is I created this very simple daily expense tracker notebook you can buy this on Amazon I'll link that below um but this just keeps you intentional it literally has a template just a blank expense tracker log and what you can do is you can take one of these spreads and then label it Amazon or label it eating out whatever it may be and then you can start listing out every single time you spend in this area you are going to write it down and you're like really Justine I'm going to be writing down every single time yes you are because this is how you make changes and this is how you create awareness when we have it tucked away in a credit card statement or a bank account statement we have to log into those things right when we have it in a notebook and we have it right here on our desk we're going to see that we're going to be more intentional when we write it down and the reason why you want to be intentional with your spending is because you have other financial goals you don't want to keep blocking yourself from reaching debt Freedom or reaching your home ownership goals or reaching to start a family when you've got things like Amazon purchases and another Starbucks date logged in here and you're like oh my gosh that money could have been spent on my actual like core values so this has been so so helpful okay I want to know at this point which items have you been doing to save money or which one are you going to try and you haven't heard of let me know in the comments below so that we can all make those tiny money-saving habits a reality and make it a routine if you like this video give it a big thumbs up and I'll catch you in the next one [Music]