Top 10 Brilliant Money Saving Tips to Know ASAP

With how the economy is right now, money saving tips and tricks are what we need. Here are the top 10 brilliant money saving tips you’ll want to know about ASAP. These top money saving tips will help you learn how to save money if you’re new to it, or even save extreme amounts of money if you’d like. Whether your financial goals are to save for an emergency fund, pay down credit cards, make significant savings for a big purchase, or something else, these brilliant money-saving tips will help you get there. Let’s get to it!

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Brilliant Money Saving Tips You Need to Know

This post on the top 10 brilliant money saving tips will answer the questions:

What is the 30 day rule?
How can I teach myself to save money?
What is the 50-20-30 budget rule?
How can I save extreme amounts of money?
And more!

1. Top Money Saving Tip for Everyone: Automate Your Savings

A barrier to many people saving money regularly is remembering to do it.

The way to save a lot of money over the long run is to remove thinking and remembering from the act of saving money.

An easy way I have found to do this is by using the Acorns app. Automatic transfers are a great way to reach savings goals.

You won’t even notice that you’re saving money, but you will be saving money regularly.

Using Acorns to automate savings is one of the top 10 brilliant money saving tips because over time this saved money really adds up.

If you save just $5 a day and invest in in an account with a 10% annual return, after 30 years you will have $330,000.

That’s with saving just $5 a day, a little bit of money.

Daily saving (and investing) is powerful stuff over time. Yes, even in a tough economy (this is not the only tough financial time there has been!).

Try Acorns for yourself here.

2. Switch to a High-Interest Savings Account

Most savings accounts offer interest rates that are hardly better than stuffing money under your mattress and hoping it will grow.

Save Better offers high-yield savings accounts that will actually grow your hard-earned money. Plus the minimum opening deposits are as low as $1, so there’s no excuse that you don’t have enough money to start a better savings account.

You can take a look at the different savings accounts they offer from a variety of banks and see which one is the best fit for you.

It only takes a few minutes to set up a high-yield savings account, instead of a basic checking account or low interest saving account. Prioritize this so that you grow more money passively over time.

Isn’t that the holy grail of wealth – setting up passive income? Passive income = free money.

Get your savings doing more for you here.

3. Money Saving Tips and Tricks for Long-Term: Save Money on Insurance

Saving money on recurring expenses deserves to be among the top 10 brilliant money saving tips.

Life insurance is incredibly important to have, and essential if you have kids or other dependents.

There are more low-cost life insurance options that are really comprehensive.

If you don’t have insurance yet, or you feel like you’re paying too much for insurance, take a look at Bestow. They will give you a free quote based on your age and other factors, and you don’t have to do any medical exams (wahoo!).

It is well worth a look to reduce your recurring expenses. This is easy to brush off for later, or forget to do, but it’s to our benefit to try to lower these expenses ASAP.

Saving $50 a month over time means a savings in 10 years of $6,000! What could you do with an extra $6,000?

See how you can lower your insurance here.

4. Try the 30 Day Rule

What is the 30 Day Rule?

This simply means that whenever you want to make a purchase that is non-essential (we are not talking about food or basic clothing here guys), you wait 30 days before you make the purchase.

A less extreme version of the 30-day rule is sleeping on impulse buys before actually buying them. In the daylight, a lot of those late-night impulse purchases won’t look so appealing or worth the money.

The 30 Day Rule is one of the top 10 brilliant money saving tips because it cools down the desire to buy.

Many of us buy out of boredom, sadness, loneliness, and other reasons, not because we actually NEED the thing we want to buy.

By adding time to the desire to spend, especially when it’s as long as 30 days, you likely won’t even remember most of what seemed so important to buy.

By buying far fewer non-essentials, you will have more money left over month after month. Or possibly even money left over for the first time, instead of going further into debt each month.

Number 4 of the top 10 brilliant money saving tips can make a huge impact on your financial future by changing your spending habits.

Watch this quick video for one of my favorite ways to save money:

5. Downsize Your Vehicle

With the cost of gas skyrocketing, it makes sense to ditch the gas guzzlers for smarter and smaller vehicles.

If you need a truck for your job, or you need a minivan because you have a large family, that’s one thing.

But too many of us have gotten used to bigger and bigger vehicles.

They cost more money to buy, more money to maintain, and more money in fuel. This adds up to less money left over to save in your bank account.

For many people, this is an extreme money-saving tip. We are so reliant on our vehicles, and often our big vehicles. But look at other countries around the world, in Europe and Asia, and the size of the vehicles they drive. It is doable; we just have to change our mindset.

Also instead of buying a new car, consider buying a car that is 2-3 years old.

So if you ask how can I save extreme amounts of money? One answer is to downsize your vehicle, and invest the saved money. You can also take the difference of your gas savings each month and deposit that money into a high-interest savings account.

Related post: 7 Tips You Need to Save Money on Gas.

6. Use the 50-20-30 Budget Rule

What is the 50-20-30 budget rule? (It’s also sometimes referred to as the 50-30-20 budget rule.)

This is a budgeting rule where you split your paycheck into three categories:

50% goes to needs and essentials (lattes are not essential)
30% goes to wants (lattes)
20% goes towards savings (preferably to a high-interest account or investing)

The 50-20-30 budgeting rule can work really well for some people. It’s nice to have categories and amounts already decided for you.

If your income is $50,000/year (take-home), the amounts would be:

$25,000 towards essentials
$15,000 to non-essential expenses
$10,000 towards savings

For people that live in expensive cities like San Francisco and New York, spending only 50% on essential expenses like housing, food, and transportation just isn’t going to cut it.

If this is your case, you can decide on your own amounts for each category, based on your income and essential expenses.

Many people really need the structure of a budget to keep their money goals on track, which is why this is one of the top 10 brilliant money saving tips.

To help you set up a budget, I created a Minimalist Budget Binder – you can grab that here.

7. Increase Your Income and Save the Additional Money

If your income is low, you’re going to have a hard time saving money. Most or all of your money will go towards essentials, and there won’t be anything left over to save.

If this is the case, you have two options:

Ask your boss for a raise (it’s a great time to ask for a raise)
Start a side hustle

In both cases, take ALL the extra money you make and put it either to pay down high-interest debt, or save it. Yes, all the extra.

If you’re wondering how can I save extreme amounts of money, this is how. Increase your income, and save all the extra money.

If you’re comfortable with investing, instead of parking your money in a savings account, you can read my lazy way of investing here.

Here are ideas for side hustles you can start to make extra money:

Walk dogs/dog sit for Rover (if I didn’t have a geriatric cat I would do this!)
21 Ways to make money with your phone
Start a Facebook side hustle
Make money selling used cell phones, cds, dvds, LEGO, books, video games
Make money writing short romance novels
Become an Instacart shopper
Deliver food for Doordash
Take surveys

8. Give Yourself an Allowance

Give yourself a weekly allowance, just like you give your kids an allowance (except yours can be more money).

This is similar to #6 of the top 10 brilliant money saving tips but it’s even simpler. Even if you don’t want to commit to doing a full budget every month, you can give yourself an allowance or “fun money” as my mom calls it.

My parents have given themselves a weekly allowance since as long as I’ve known them (so like, birth). The amount has changed over time to keep up with inflation.

But this is money that is outside of all the essential and non-essential things that are planned into the budget. If they want to spend their allowance on fancy sushi that week for date night, or my mom wants new mascara from Sephora, then they spend it.

If it’s Friday and they have already spent their weekly allowance (they pay themselves on Sundays), then tough. They don’t dip into their other budget categories to spend more money on wine or lattes. Oh the self-control.

But this means more money is saved each week, year after year, which is why it is one of the top money saving tips.

For more smart financial lessons millennials can learn from boomers, read this post.

9. Meal Plan to Slash Your Grocery Bills

One of the top 10 brilliant money saving tips has to involve food and the grocery store.

Food is an expense we have every single day, and will every day into the future. Food is usually the third highest of the monthly expenses for most households after housing and transportation.

A major way to save money on groceries is to meal plan. When you go grocery shopping, take your grocery list, and buy what you need to make the meals for that week.

You will shop for better deals, and leave the impulse buys at the store. You also won’t have all these random leftover ingredients that you meant to cook but didn’t that week (and then they went bad).

Meal planning will save you thousands of dollars on food over time.

If you love meal planning or if you are new to meal planning, I created the Ultimate Meal Planning Guide + Planner for busy families. It has everything you need to organize your meals, your pantry, fridge, freezer, plus 40 recipe ideas, and brilliant tips to save money on groceries. It’s seriously the bomb!

If you want a super basic done-for-you meal plan, try out the $5 Meal Plan. This link will give you a free trial to see if you like it.

Another way I have saved money on food is one that really surprised me. I started getting meal kits from HelloFresh, and I thought for sure it was going to cost more money.

I initially tried out HelloFresh because:

I was curious (I kept hearing about it)
Save time on dinners
To get myself out of a dinner rut (I was getting bored of our dinners)

One thing I did not expect was to save money with HelloFresh. I found I didn’t have any food or ingredients wasted; I wasn’t throwing out food that had gone bad in the fridge. And we were eating better (more veggies!).

If you are interested in trying out HelloFresh meal kits, use this link for a BIG discount.