The state of your personal finances reflects your habits and behaviors. If you are not satisfied with the figures in your bank or savings account, you need to adjust your spending habits. This will allow you to regain good budgetary management and save money to invest in your life projects.
If you are wondering how to save money, or even better, how to save money daily, this article is for you.
You will find 11 good financial habits to apply in your everyday life to save money quickly without even depriving yourself or realizing it.
Table of Contents
1. Make an excellent homemade coffee
A little cafe here, a little cafe there. Even if the expense at the moment is minimal ($1.50), it can quickly rise to $500 per year. Imagine if you could save this amount of money in your savings account.
Learning to love your home-style coffee is an excellent way to save money quickly. There are several solutions for this:
- Make your coffee at home
- Buy a reusable cup to bring your coffee to work
- Bring your instant coffee to work
- Switch to tea
- Stop drinking coffee
Finally, I strongly recommend steering clear of capsule or pod coffee machines, which can be costly and environmentally unfriendly. I’ve been using a French press for years. It doesn’t need any filters and brews me a delicious cup of coffee every morning.
2. Write down all your expenses to save more money
To save your money and want to spend it less, an excellent way is to keep an expense log. For a month, write down all your daily expenses: shopping, morning coffee, mascara after work, drinks with friends, and Saturday jeans.
By keeping this logbook for a month, you will realize several things about your savings and your expenses:
- Where does your money go?
- The sum of your expenses in different categories compared to your income
- Your bad spending habits
- Your spending pattern
- Your monthly savings rate about your income
What I particularly like about this spending log is that you will want to spend less and less. Let me explain. You have to write down your future expenses; unconsciously, you will want to do something other than it. And that’s a convenient tip for saving money daily and replenishing your bank account and your savings account (or even your life insurance, if you save this way)
So, if you’re wondering how to save money daily, even with a small salary or income, this habit is for you!
3. Buy meals (and not just food)
I’m sure you’ve already made these two mistakes while shopping for food:
- Go shopping at the supermarket when you are hungry
- Going shopping with no idea what you want to eat
These two mistakes are the main reason you spend too much money on your food budget. If you’re wondering how to save money while shopping, you’ve come to the right place.
First, you should never go food shopping on an empty stomach! NEVER. We know how it ends well (trolley filled with pasta, chocolate, and biscuits).
The second thing you should never do is go shopping to “buy food.” No, you have to go shopping with a list of recipes in mind. This way, you can buy ingredients to cook these recipes. Thanks to this tiny detail, you will be able to:
- Buy only what you need
- Don’t blow your shopping budget
- Do not store food beyond your needs
- Don’t waste food
To go further, please list your menus for the next 7 days and do your shopping respecting what you have listed. If you need help finding fun recipe ideas for the whole family, look at Pinterest.
4. Switch to green housekeeping: green savings.
Cleaning products are a recurring monthly expense that can quickly become expensive. In addition to their price, they harm our health and the planet. So, I advise replacing your essential products with more economical, eco-friendly products.
How to save money? Use eco-friendly, multi-purpose, and economical cleaning products like white vinegar, baking soda, or lemon.
For green cleaning novices, here are the functions of each essential:
White vinegar: disinfects, deodorizes and removes limescale
Black soap: degreasers, removes stains, and cleans
Baking soda: deodorizes, cleans, and scrubs sink, faucets, stoves, and bathtubs.
Soda crystals: Remove stains
Sodium percarbonate: degreasers and whitens
Lemon or citric acid: descales, cleans and deodorizes
With these 6 ingredients, your entire house, your laundry, and your dishes will be clean—enough to increase your savings rate while taking care of the planet.
5. Delete unnecessary subscriptions
If there is one expense item that can drag down your monthly and annual budget, it is unnecessary expenses—the ones you make but don’t use. So, look at your bank account statements from the last three months and delete all unnecessary expenses (gym subscription, unused insurance, magazine or newspaper subscription, beauty box, etc.).
If you are wondering how to save money quickly, it is best to adopt this reflex and read this article.
6. Unsubscribe from newsletters and Instagram accounts
Have you ever bought something that you ultimately didn’t like? Many of our purchases are made under the influence. Every day, we are pushed to take out our credit cards and buy things that don’t interest us that much.
This does not help our savings rate or other savings vehicles. So, if you want to free yourself from this pressure to buy, I advise you to put an “ad stop” on your mailbox and unsubscribe from all commercial newsletters that you may receive. Do the same with the Instagram accounts that encourage you to buy. In the long term, you will feel much more peaceful.
Cleaning up your money and budget will drastically reduce your purchasing requests and your desire to spend. This approach also benefits the planet by reducing the resources and energy required to send you an email or an advertisement.
Remember that all the money you don’t spend is money you can save and invest in your life projects.
In addition to unsubscribing from purchasing influences, you can also get used to saying “no” to the influence of those close to you. If you don’t want to go shopping, eat out, or buy jeans, say “no.” Enough to instantly increase the percentage of your savings.
7. End your addictions and save money without thinking about it
Addictions are expensive. Whether it’s shopping, alcohol, cigarettes, or online training, any addiction can quickly dig a big hole in your budget, even more so when this habit has been with you for a long time.
The first thing to do is to identify the bad habit.
Nothing could be simpler: look at your bank account statements and identify all recurring “pleasure” expenses by estimating their amount over the last three months. If you are more visual, I advise you to represent this amount with a diagram by comparing it to your monthly budget and income.
Then, take the problem at its source and try to understand your behavior:
- Where is she from?
- When and with whom do you spend this expense?
- What does this expense bring you?
- How do you feel when you spend?
At the same time as this introspection, you can replace this bad habit with a substitute that you like just as much, but that will cost you much less or even be free.
Here are some tips to help you find economical substitutes and increase the amount of money available in your savings account:
- Shopping trip: clothing exchange, second-hand purchases
- Outing in a bar: Chilling at home with some pre-dinner drinks, sports session, watching a film on Netflix, working on your project, determining your life plan and your goals
- Smoking: playing sports, calling a friend, sewing, cooking, planning future projects
- Coffee: tea, homemade orange juice, etc.
This is what I call the method of substitutes. It’s up to you to find your best substitute based on your addiction to save money by quietly changing your habits. Once again, tell yourself that all the money you don’t spend is money you can save to finance your life projects. So please don’t waste your income anymore; only direct it towards what’s important to you!
8. Choosing to drink tap water: economical and eco-friendly
Drinking tap water is an excellent way to save money. Ditch sodas and soft drinks for your health, your bank account, and even the planet.
Tap water will allow you to save money quickly by eliminating an expense that can be avoided. If you don’t like the taste of water, I advise you to filter it directly from the tap or add ceramic pearls or activated carbon.
It seems trivial, but the savings rate between a household that drinks bottled mineral water and sodas and a household that only drinks tap water can differ. Good habits allow you to save money on your income.
9. Leave your car in the garage (or almost) to save money.
An excellent tip for saving money quickly is not using your car (or almost). Bicycles, buses, trains, and trams are very good economic substitutes. In addition to clearing the roads and taking time for yourself, you will also save on fuel.
And while your car is quietly waiting for you in your garage, you can rent it to individuals who need it. Look at Getaround and see how much money you could earn daily if you rent your car.
By renting your car, you could make the purchase, technical and fuel costs profitable, and even generate passive income.
10. Go out without money and increase your savings rate instantly.
An excellent habit to get into immediately is going out without money: no wallet, cash, or credit card. The interest of this approach is to see this outing as a meditative exercise. Be aware of all the potential expenses surrounding you and everything you can do for free.
Saving money and saving money is also a state of mind. Don’t hesitate to ask yourself why you want to save money. By finding a solid reason, you will be much more motivated to continue and appreciate going out without cash.
To help you in this process, here are the free activities that you can do at any time:
- Bike outing
- Picnic
- home movie
- Board games
- Go to the library
- Go to the pool during free swims
- To go to the museum
- Sew
- To learn a new language
- Chat with friends
- Make a plan for your future life plans
- Sort your closet
- Getting started with DIY
- To dance
- Call friends
- Plan your long-term goals
- ….
11. Make a budget and plan how much money to save now
If you want to save money every day and every month, the best way is to create a budget. Rather than subjecting your cash, you will organize it according to your needs, life plans, and situation (income, debts, credits, overdraft, investment objectives, savings, etc.).
For each expenditure item, determine a forecast budget with expenditure envelopes. This way, you will know how many agents you have, how much you can spend, how much you can allocate to your credit or overdraft repayments, and how much you can save for your life projects. You can distribute all your expenditure items by percentage to identify your spending, saving, and investment trends.
Nothing is better for peace of mind and lightening the mental load than knowing exactly where you stand regarding your finances. So don’t wait any longer—start making your budget.
Save money every day with 11 habits to adopt right away!
You now know my 11 favorite habits to save money and save the amount you want in your bank account to invest in your life goals.
