Five Ways to Cut Back on Spending TODAY

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It can be intimidating to start cutting back on your spending. I get it! But we’ve all got to start somewhere, so we want to share five ways to cut back on your spending today!

Are you ready to cut back on spending? Here are five tips to get you off on the right track so you can cut back on your spending habits TODAY!

If you’ve been here before you might know that my husband and I are currently living on just one income – his teaching salary. And South Dakota teachers are the lowest paid in the nation, so we need to be smart with our money. We’ve been saving money for years now, but we had to start small so it wasn’t such a shock to our system. Here are the five ways we cut back on spending to start off small:

1. Drink water

We started cutting back by not ordering pop or drinks while at restaurants. Granted we don’t go out to eat too much anyway, but this one little change can save anywhere from $5-20 each time you go out! Water is good for you anyway, so this wasn’t such a hard adjustment to make.

2. Take your lunch to work

Eating out every day gets expensive! That’s why my husband and I (when I was working outside of the home) took lunch to work each day. Even if we had found a cheap lunch deal for $5, that’s $25 a week or $100 a month – for just one of us. If we both pack lunches daily we can easily save $200 a month.

If you’re not willing to make this adjustment right away, just start small. Pack your lunch one day a week. After a month, pack lunch two times a week. Slowly build up until you almost always (or always!) take your lunch to work.

3. Wait to buy items

The next time you’re going shopping and you feel an impulse buy about to happen, ask yourself – “Do I really need this?” If the answer is not an immediate yes, leave it there. Think about it for 2-3 days. Chances are you’ll realize you don’t really need it or that you already have something at home that will work in its place. You’ll be saving yourself money each time you are able to do this!

4. Stop the ads

This may sound simple or even silly, but stop looking at ads! Even if you don’t subscribe to any newspapers or magazines, you still get swamped by ads each day – free spam mail, e-mails, ads on websites, and more. Quit looking at them. When you don’t see the ads, you don’t even think about what you’re missing. But – honestly – you’re probably not missing anything anyway. So you’ll be eliminating more junk from your life and having time for the things you love, like family, friends, and hobbies.

5. Meal plan

My husband hated the idea of meal planning when I first suggested it. He was just sure that we weren’t going to have any food in the house and that he would starve. However, he soon realized that we had less junk in the house, so we were saving money and he was following his health goals. Plus the money we save ($100 or more each month) allows us to put more into retirement and our travel fund. You can read more about how we meal plan here.

Those are five ways to cut back on spending today. I’m not saying you have to tackle all of them at once, but it’s certainly not going to hurt you in any way to give at least once of these suggestions a try.