9 Essential Money Saving Tips to Live By

This post is all about the 9 essential money saving tips to live by.

Knowing how to manage your finances is an extremely important skill to have. When you know how to appropriately manage your money, you are able to avoid debt, reduce financial stress and reach your financial goals!

Since I feel like we don’t learn enough about the importance of making smart money and financial decisions, I wanted to share a few money saving tips that you should live by! Some of these tips are ones I’ve been implementing my entire life and some I’ve more recently incorporated. But, they are all tips that you can start implementing immediately!

If you are new here and haven’t read my 15 Money Saving Hacks post, I recommend doing that! I share tons of small every day money saving tips and ways you can decrease your expenses immediately! And for those of you who have student loan debt, click here to learn my 8 simple and practical tips on how to decrease your debt fast!

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links which means I receive a small commission if you make a purchase from one of my links. Thank you for supporting Sunday Mimosas Blog 🙂

Keep reading to learn the 9 Essential Money Saving Tips that I live by and you should too!

1. Do Not Spend More than You Make

Your expenses should be less than your income. This one may sound obvious, but I have to say it! I’m sure there are plenty of you who don’t have a budget or track your expenses. Which means, you don’t know how much you’re actually spending!

Before you do anything, sit down and look at all of your expenses for the month compared to your income. Make sure those expenses are less than what you’re bringing in. If they’re not, start looking at what expenses you can cut back on! If you need help, here are 15 things I stopped buying to save money FAST!

If you’re looking for a way to track all of your finances, monthly bills, expenses, income and debt all in one place, download my free monthly budgeting document here! This digital budgeting sheet has been a game changer for me and has helped me pay off over $38,000 worth of debt in the last two years!

2. Always pay in full when you can

It’s actually cheaper to pay your bills in full. Don’t use a payment plan to pay for clothes or furniture or other similar items. Pay the full price up front! And if you’re not sure whether you have the money to actually pay the full amount, then you probably shouldn’t buy the item in the first place (in most cases).

For example, when I pay my car insurance, I pay for 6 months up front, instead of paying monthly. This ends up saving me $89, plus more on fees! I did the same thing with my gym membership and ended up saving over $300. Don’t give away extra money!

3. Get price adjustments on your purchases!

Once you buy an item, check back within the next week or so to see if it went on sale. Some stores have price adjustment policies that you can only get an adjustment within a certain amount of days. If that’s the case, instead of getting an adjustment, just re-buy the item so you can get a better price.

There are even apps that can track your purchases and update you when something you bought goes on sale. I haven’t used anything like this before, but it might be something worth looking into!

4. Make sure you’re earning cash back!

If you are going to shop online, at least earn some cash back while you’re at it! You can earn money back on almost all your purchases through sites like Rakuten.

I have Rakuten as an extension to my browser, so when I make purchases online, Rakuten automatically applies the cash back! Cash back can save you a lot of money! If you’re getting cashback from Rakuten and 1-5% cash back from your credit card, it can add up!

Sign up for Rakuten and get $20 added to your account. You will earn 1% to about 10% cash back on everything you buy. It’s totally free and an awesome way to earn cash back on almost every purchase!

5. Stop paying other people to do the work for you

If you need to replace, repair, or build something, do it yourself if you can. If you are paying for services just out of your own laziness, stop! Some things that need to be replaced or repaired are actually pretty easy to do yourself. Just watch a YouTube video or Google it.

We could have had someone build our tv stand for $150, but instead we decided to build it ourselves. Yes, it took a little longer, but we saved ourselves some money and it was kind of fun!

There are so many little things that we can do ourselves that we rely on other people to do for us. If you are someone that always calls someone else to come fix something for you, next time, check to see if it’s something you can do on your own first!

6. Buy Quality over Quantity

This tip kind of depends on the item you’re buying. But, most times I recommend buying fewer, better quality items instead of multiple cheap items.

With cheaper, lesser quality products, a lot of times you have to replace them more frequently. Maybe they break or just stop working altogether. I just feel like you have to spend more money to keep replacing the item and it would make more sense to spend a little more money to buy something that will last.

Personally, I would much rather have one quality item vs. a ton of cheaply made things. I’m not saying buy the most expensive item out there, but just make sure you are looking into the quality of every product you purchase.

7. Don’t buy a new product until you use up what you currently have

So many times a new product comes out and we feel like we have to have it. Companies do a really great job at marketing their products to make them seem like you NEED the product in your life immediately. Most likely you don’t. Before you purchase a new foundation, a new perfume, a new moisturizer, etc., use up the product you currently have at home.

If you buy a new product before using up the one you currently have, most times you won’t finish the old product. Maybe that’s just me! But I’m sure other people do this too. To avoid wasting products, only purchase new items when you are almost done or completely out of something.

8. Don’t buy anything the first time you see it

This is something I’ve more recently incorporated into my life and it’s been working really well. If I see something I like at the store, like a new top or a pair of shoes, I don’t buy it right away. Instead, I go home, wait about a week or two. If I absolutely cannot stop thinking about it and I need to have it, then I’ll go back and buy it!

This strategy has saved me a decent amount of money. Most times, I’ll completely forget about the item within a couple days. If I forget about it, then obviously I didn’t need it in the first place!

9. Buy classic/timeless styles vs. trendy

When it comes to buying clothes, I try to buy pieces that won’t go out of style and that will last me more than a year. This is something that I’ve learned over the last year or so and it’s been very beneficial when I’m shopping for clothes.

Before I buy the item I ask myself, “would you wear this next year?” If I don’t think I’m going to, then I won’t buy it. If I do really want to try out a trend, I usually buy from retailers like SHEIN, so I’m not spending a ton of money on something I won’t wear next year.

Trends are super fun to try out and incorporate into your closet, but they go out of style so fast. Which means you usually don’t end up wearing them for more than a season or two. So spend your money on items that you know you will wear in the foreseeable future!

Lastly, if you’re looking for another creative way to save some money fast, try doing a no-spend challenge for a month! I’ve done multiple this past year and they’re eye-opening.

Click here to read more about the reasons I decided to do the challenge, the “rules” I set for myself, the difficulties I faced, and how you can do one too!