Talk to any financial expert, and they’ll advise you to not only generally save but also to have savings accounts for retirement, emergencies, and more. While this recommendation is wise, the pressure to save can be a demoralizing and slow process that chips away at your motivation. To help, we’ve put together two easy but smart saving strategies that get fast results.
Smart Saving Tip #1: Spending Freeze
Anyone who’s ever lost their phone understands that after the initial annoyance dissipates, you begin to appreciate the peace and focus its absence brings. You’re more productive, observant, and engaged without the siren cell song distracting you. Think of a temporary spending freeze as the same kind of opportunity.
With this smart saving strategy, you only spend money on what you have to, like bills and your mortgage or rent payment. Additionally, choose a reasonable period of time in which to do your spending freeze. Seven days is a good place to start.
Eliminating spending often allows you to discover resources you didn’t know you had. Without your usual grocery store runs or food delivery, you’re forced to use food items sitting unnoticed in your freezer or pantry. If you don’t know what to do with random ingredients, plug them into a recipe generator to see what dishes you can make. Necessity is the mother of invention, so use your creativity to find free replacements and alternatives. You may end up integrating them permanently!
Tip #2: Eliminate Wasteful Expenses
How often have you signed up for a “free trial” only to forget about it and accrue charges? Subscriptions to streaming services, magazines, apps, news outlets, and more have a way of escaping our notice. Even two months of their cumulative costs can amount to a sizable chunk of change.
You can eliminate the waste by canceling services yourself or utilizing a budgeting app like Rocket Money, which identifies and presents all of your subscriptions in a single list. After you select the ones you want to offload, they cancel them.
Smart Saving is Simple With DEXSTA
At DEXSTA, we understand that starting your smart saving journey can be overwhelming. That’s why we offer helpful tools like purchase limits on credit cards, automatic transfers, high-yield savings accounts, and more. Explore our Banzai financial literacy courses to learn even more about how to achieve your goals!