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If you’re like most people, you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s just the sad truth.
And that probably means you’re looking for ways to save money on a tight budget.
Because let’s face it — most likely you have already done all you can to learn how to budget right and worked to simplify your life to cut costs as well.
But when you’re on a bare-bones budget as it is, how can you still cut costs without really making things unbearable?
What you really need are some simple ways to save money that will feel so simple and obvious that you’ll probably kick yourself for not doing them sooner!
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What Is The Quickest Way To Save Money?
Well, I’m gonna drop a real truth-bomb on you here.
The ABSOLUTELY easiest way to save money is to stop spending it.
I know, I know. That’s what everyone says, but we can’t just STOP spending money altogether.
Since that’s entirely impossible to do, the next best plan is to automate your savings. I’m not going to get into any sort of budgeting percentages here or advise you on how to invest or anything like that.
Instead, I’ll tell you to pick a reasonable dollar amount that you can comfortably put aside each month. Maybe for now it’s only $25, and maybe you’re doing awesome and can find $250 in the budget to set aside.
As long as you aren’t compromising things like debt payoffs and actual bill obligations, then setting aside cash via an automated bank transfer is the BEST way to ensure you’re actually saving money each month.
(Trust me on this — don’t even just “earmark” the money in your budgeting app without moving it, or you’re running a REALLY high risk of spending it without thinking. Have a separate savings account JUST for cash savings and move the money there.)
But you and I both know that saving $25 or even $100 per month isn’t really going to add up to much by year-end.
Enter some simple actions and swaps that WILL help you to actually save money each month. Over time these little changes can continue to add up to more money saved.
Creative Ways To Save Money On A Tight Budget
This list of frugal ways to save money at home isn’t meant to be an ultimatum, but I do hope it gets you thinking and making changes in your everyday life to start seeing a difference.
1. Buy store/generic brand items.
Yes, we all have our favorites items that we always buy. Yes, manufacturers give us coupons, hooray!
But do this experiment: choose a handful of the items that you ONLY buy as brand-name, and buy the store brand equivalent too. Do a side-by-side blind comparison for taste, function, whatever it may be.
Off-brand cotton swabs work just as well as the “real thing,” chocolate syrup is chocolate syrup, and brand-name salad dressing is not worth the extra money in most cases!
Have you ever done the math to see if the coupon is even making the brand-name item cheaper than the store brand? (Most likely it isn’t — by total price nor by unit price.)
You’ll save a ton of time by not worrying about coupons — time much better spent on things like cleaning and decluttering your house, spending time with your family, or even making some extra income if you’re game!
2. Shop at a bakery outlet or ask the bakery in your grocery store.
We’ve got a bakery outlet store in our city, where you can grab some more expensive brand-name products (bread, cookies, rolls, etc) for seriously discounted pricing. If you’re the type to make multiple stops on a shopping trip, see if there’s an outlet around you.
If not, then wherever you do you grocery shopping ask if the bakery section has a “day old” selection. The one smaller market store near us always sold off yesterday’s fresh loaves of Italian and French bread for $1 when I was a kid, versus the $2 regular price.
We never noticed enough difference in texture to complain.
3. Buy end-of-shelf-life meats.
We have learned that some of the stores near us will discount their per-pound meat prices when the items get within a certain time frame towards their sell-by date. It can be as much as half off sometimes!
One store also discounts the meats near the end of the month, regardless of sell-by dates, just to try to push sales before the month closes.
*This advice is obviously one of those “proceed with caution” tips, because obviously you want to still make sure you aren’t buying spoiled foods. If the meat looks discolored or funky (or has a smell), skip it!
4. Use foaming hand soap and foaming dish soap.
Stop and think about this with me for a second, I’m serious.
We use method hand soap, so that’s my example for comparison, mmk?
The gel (thick) soap refill and the foaming soap refill bags are the same size, in fluid ounces.
They also cost the same.
They both advertise roughly 3 refills of their soap pumps.
But here’s a little secret: if you water down the gel/thick soap in a foaming soap pump, you end up with foaming hand soap and I’ve honestly lost count on how many pump refills that makes, but it’s likely 3-4x as much just based on the fill line on our foaming soap dispenser versus the total fill volume of the entire pump!
I used to buy about one bag of soap per month for our house, and now we go 3-4 months before needing a refill.
Why on earth are you still buying watered down gel soap as your foaming soap???
We just recently tested this theory with dish soap too and guess what…it’s still just as effective for washing dishes, as money-saving as watering down the soap, but a LOT less likely to end up on your clothes as it shoots out of the soap pump totally out of control.
You can get your hand and dish soap refills delivered on a regular schedule by joining Grove Collaborative — and for the same prices as in-store!
5. Ditch the liquid detergent…and the dryer sheets.
Admit it — when the jug is empty, you don’t leave it upside down for the days and days it takes for that thick stuff to ACTUALLY run down to the opening, do you?
(Me either.)
What should you use instead?
Enter: the EcoEgg Laundry Egg and a set of wool dryer balls.
The EcoEgg Laundry Egg can be purchased for about 210 loads for about the same cost as the average jug of liquid detergent that only does 100 loads (you can also buy it for 720 loads). It washes just about the same as the liquid detergent but WITHOUT harsh chemicals and NO measuring — just toss it on top of the clothes and go!
After you’ve got the egg itself, the refills are even cheaper still!
Using wool dryer balls in your laundry will actually save you money in two ways:
- The balls will absorb moisture, shortening the necessary drying time.
- You’re not buying chemical-laden dryer sheets that leave scent residues on your clothes…that you’re just putting into the garbage anyway.
If your sheets and towels come out slightly static-y (we use 6 wool balls and there is occasionally mild static for linens if it’s there at all), just give them a good quick snap and you’ll be good to go! You can also add a few drops of lavender essential oil to the balls for a light scent if you must. <br>
BONUS savings: you’re generating less garbage/recycling, so you might even be able to cut down on purchases of garbage bags or even your refuse pickup costs!
But still, the cheapest option for literally thousands of years is to hand your clothes on a line outside to let the sun dry them (and whiten whites, for free)! #ecofriendly
5. Use subscription services when it makes sense.
Not everything you sign up for will save you money, especially if they have pricey membership fees to go with it.
But sometimes it’s worth it, and you CAN save money with them.
The favorites in our house are:
- eMeals, to help us do better meal planning and avoid even a $5 freezer pizza in a pinch.
- ButcherBox + Instacart, to help me avoid “window shopping” at the grocery store and spending extra money that I shouldn’t!
- Grove Collaborative, so that it takes less time to shop and KNOW I’m buying the products I want for my family that DON’T have fewer chemicals and are more eco-friendly.
Click here to read about all of the subscription services that are worth it, in my opinion.
6. Start a compost pile.
I know this doesn’t work for everyone due to their yard or town limitations, but if possible, it’s worth doing.
I’ll simply share how this helped us to save money:
- We waste less food because no one really wants to boot up and truck back to the pile in 3 of the 4 seasons around here (spring and fall = rain + muddy lawn; winter = frigid + snow)!
- We generate less garbage and can reduce our pickup service to the biweekly instead of weekly pickup to save money each month.
- We don’t need to buy fertilizer or soil for our flowerbeds or vegetable garden each year, because we end up with GORGEOUS soil right in the pile.
- Instead of scrapping every bit of food we cut off and don’t eat, we’ve started to experiment with regrowing food from scraps. (In my kitchen window at the moment you’ll find a couple of celery stalks regenerating nicely, forever-growing green onions, and now I’m testing cabbage as well, to name a few!)
- It gets us in the mindset of using the compost, which means we do make sure to try and grow a successful garden each year, thanks to our compost, and we save even more money by not buying veggies in the summer!
I won’t even get into the benefits of taking a regular little walk outside (because nature makes us happy, it’s true), the advantages of this forcing you to get more into gardening (and how dirt itself makes us happy), or the fact that garbage bags are a stupidly expensive thing for what they are…
7. Make your own specialty beverages.
Making coffee at home is obviously the go-to advice here, but I’ll gladly tell you that it’s BAD advice if you do it by purchasing pre-filled K cups. The cost per cup is OUTRAGEOUS compared to buying a bag of grounds.
Instead, splurge on the fancy coffee flavor you want, in bag form or bulk, and use refillable K cups.
Cleaning the grounds out of those refillable K cups has been the bane of my existence for a long time, so it might literally have made my life when I found K cup pod FILTERS. #gamechanger
They’re cheap enough that it gives you the convenience of those prefilled pods when you’re in a rush, but with a far lower overall cost. On a busy weekday morning, it’s awesome to not have to scrape out grounds to wash the pods! <br>
(If you’ve got more time on your hands, buy generic coffee pot filters and just cut them to a smaller diameter circle. I just don’t have the time for that anymore between 2 kids and a business to run!)
Another beverage change to make is that you NEED to stop wasting money on soda and sparkling beverages.
Besides being better for your health to ditch the insane sugar levels in soda, you can save SO much money by making your own soda and sparkling water at home with a SodaStream.
We don’t do the soda flavors ourselves, but it’s been an absolute budget saver to not have to buy sparkling water for my husband anymore! Totally worth it to have the extra bottles for the fridge, too!
(Pro Tip: you don’t need to buy a new CO2 cartridge every time, you CAN get refill pricing at some stores in person!)
Find a good homemade hot cocoa recipe so that you can stop spending absurd money on what really are super cheap ingredients!
8. Negotiate utilities and switch to solar power, if possible.
Take a deep breath, I’m not suggesting you get panels installed on your roof.
We were able to switch out our supplier and “go solar” which HAS made a big difference in our power costs. In the summer when we aren’t heating our house (so natural gas use is nearly zero), our power bill is about HALF of what it was from before we made the switch.
Call your utility company and inquire if they have any programs you can join that will save you money — solar power, wind power, possibly even water power may be available to you!
9. Burn more candles.
I’m not even joking on this one.
I regularly grab clearance price big candles at the stores and snag $2-$5 3-wick candles at the thrift stores.
In winter months in our house, we burn a bigger candle (usually a 3×4-inch pillar or slightly larger) in the kitchen to create a “hot spot” in the room where the kids and I spend most of our time.
(I’m still using leftover candles from our wedding decorations back in 2011…these are the pillar candles we used and they have a great burn time!)
This lets us keep the thermostat at a lower temperature during the day (and our utility costs lower as well) because let’s get real — I don’t have any reason to keep 4 bedrooms and a home office all that warm when I’m not even using them during the day.
Once kids are tucked in and cozy, we’ll sometimes light one on our family room coffee table while we unwind and read. Makes for a nice cozy “mood” in the room as well, and helps us stay more connected in our marriage, even if it is a primitive “stay warm by sharing body heat” instinct, haha!
10. Negotiate other costs as low as possible.
Cell phones
When was the last time you called your cell phone provider to ask if they had any loyalty discounts? Or checked that they hadn’t restructured their plans (yet again) and now the same amount of data is cheaper on the new plan?
Side note: I recently switched to Visible which is owned and operated by Verizon. While it’s not PERFECT data/streaming everywhere I go (in more rural areas), it IS nice to have unlimited data for just $40/month! For my use, and in town where I live, it’s been just fine!
Car Insurance
When was the last time you called your car insurance company and double-checked your rates, or called around to other companies for quotes?
Did you know that your rate is partially based on the mileage you drive per year? As a stay-at-home mom, I rarely leave my house, so I’m on the absolute lowest mileage bracket. That saved us at least $100 per year from when I was working and commuting on a daily basis!
Cable/Internet
Do you still have cable? Drop it, seriously. Try Vudu, Tubi, Crackle, PlutoTV, or a TV antenna and watch what you can for free. Heck, even YouTube has entertaining and even educational content on there, so maybe spend your free time learning something instead of watching some pointless sitcom!
(Or if you’re like me, read more books instead!)
You may NOT need the internet tier you’re on either. Did you know that most streaming services don’t even require much more than 0.5-1 MBPS speeds as their minimums to have functional service? Our options were 3 MBPS or 100 MBPS, so it’s not always possible to decrease speeds in a family household. But trust me, you don’t need 300 MBPS speeds!
How To Save Money And Live On A Tight Budget
You may have heard me say things like this before, but I’m going to say it again anyway:
Give yourself permission to slip up.
It’s HARD to keep doggedly trudging forward to try to save money when you’re on a tight budget. Seriously.
You’re bound to slip up. You’re bound to overspend here and there. You’re bound to just get burnt out after months of trying your hardest to stay on track and hyperfocused.
I will not be the one who tells you it’s ok to eat out at a restaurant once a month because you “deserve” it. I won’t tell you it’s ok to buy new clothes unless you literally have no underwear without big holes in them or something.
But I WILL tell you to find little ways to MAKE. YOUR. LIFE. HAPPY.
DIY some decor just because. Go lay in the backyard and watch clouds with your kids. Give yourself permission to have a CHEAP (and preferably free) date night with your husband, because he matters too.
We’re trying to get you living your better days today, remember? They can’t be better if you’re wearing yourself thin and beating yourself with constant worry and demands on yourself.
Make sacrifices where you can, and hold tight to the few necessary things that bring you true happiness, in moderation.
You’ve only got one life, and being happy matters most of all.
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