Crush all of your money goals with these five tips for a save money plan you can stick to. These money saver ideas are simple and very effective.
If you are like me you may have struggled with saving money. Maybe you get started and then get sidetracked with life. It’s easy to put off saving for another day.
One of the most effective ways to stay on track with saving money is to have a good plan.
After learning these five ways to implement a solid save money plan, you’ll be on your way to meeting your savings goals for an emergency fund, to travel, for a new car, or any goals you have for the future.
This post is all about how to start a save money plan for meeting your savings goals.
Table of Contents
1. Set Savings Goals
The first thing to get started with a plan for saving money is to set your goals. To get started you should identify the types of goals that you have, and what you’ll be saving for. There are two types of goals, short-term and long-term.
You should ideally have both long-term and short-term goals in your save money plan because you will need both at different times. You will want to ensure both are included as you proceed through the succeeding steps.
Short term goals
Short term goals can be for things that you’re going to use your savings on within a couple of years or less, such as:
- Car repairs
- Future car
- Vacation
- Medical procedure
- Clothing
- Christmas
- Gifts
- Home Downpayment
Long term goals
Long term goals are typically savings that require many years to accumulate, such as:
- Retirement
- Investments
- College Funds
2. Use a planner
Using a planner became key in my own journey to controlling my finances and saving money. Planners help you keep track of future events and purchases, as well as track past events and purchases.
Some ways a planner can be used to help with your save money plan is for meal planning, habit tracking, preparing for upcoming special occasions, and tracking bills and purchases.
My favorite way to use a planner is in the bullet journal style. I like to use the Moleskine Dotted Notebook for creating my planner. If you aren’t familiar with bullet journaling, you can read more about it here.
Bullet journaling requires setting up each page in your planner to meet your unique needs. If you want an “already done for you” planner, I have used the Happy Planner Notebook successfully before. This style allows you to customize and add your own pages if you want.
3. Make a budget
Creating a budget is a game-changer for taking control of your money. So often, the word “budget” is associated with restrictive living and sacrifice, but this just is not true. A budget puts you in charge of your spending.
My favorite part about using a budget each month is getting to decide what spending is important to me each month.
To create an effective budget for your save money plan, follow these 5 easy steps:
List your monthly income
List your bills in order of due date, such as:
- Housing
- Electricity
- Water
- Transportation
- Insurance
- Bills
List your monthly expenses, such as:
- Food
- Gas
- Eating Out
- Blow Money
- Entertainment
List your monthly savings
- Long term savings
- Short term savings (Sinking Funds), such as:
- Future vehicle savings
- Pet care
- Christmas
- Gifts
- Clothing
- Home Maintenance
Adjust your budget until you have all of your income distributed, and you have zero dollars left over.
[RELATED POST: The Importance of Budgeting and 7 Surprising Benefits]
4. Track spending
Tracking your spending is an important part of your save money plan. To keep track of your purchases,
I recommend tracking your spending daily, to always know how much money you have available, and staying on track with your plan.
Write down each expense for the day, and deduct that amount from your income. Write down which category that expense belongs to in your budget; such as food, housing, etc.
Keeping track of every expense that comes out of your account will help you stay focused on your plan.
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use Spending Tracker, I like to use this one.
5. Use cash envelopes
One of the best ways to avoid overspending is to use the cash envelope system. This has helped my family to stay on track with sticking to a budget.
For certain categories of spending, it works to withdraw the amount for that category and place that amount into a cash envelope. When you need to buy something in that category, you pay with the cash from your envelope. When all of the cash is gone from the envelope, then you stop spending in that category.
Here are the steps to using the cash envelope system:
- Identify a category for cash, such as groceries. In our example, we’ll say we’re budgeting $400 for groceries each month.
- Withdraw $400 and place it into a cash envelope labeled “Groceries”.
- Every time you go to the store and buy groceries, you pay with the cash from your envelope. IMPORTANT: You must make sure you know how much you can spend each week, so you do not run out of grocery money before the end of the month.
- Write the date and how much you spent on the envelope, to track your cash spending.
- When your envelope is empty at the end of the month, you must quit spending in that category.
6. Think of Spending Annually
This mindset shift can be incredibly life-changing when it comes to spending money. If you think of your purchases in terms of how much you are spending on that item every year, you can get a bird’s-eye view of your spending habits.
For instance, if you routinely stop for a drink in the morning on the way to work and spend $2.50. That spending can easily add up to $600 a year. Is that drink worth $600, or could you put together your own drink at home and use that money for something more worthwhile?
7. Cut Spending
So, if you want to create great progress with your savings goals, it’s a great idea to cut your spending. There are many benefits to spending less, including focusing on priorities, spending time on more worthwhile things than shopping, and living a life of contentment.
Some tricks for cutting your spending can include:
- Meal Planning
- Reusing Items in a New Way
- Using Grocery Delivery
- Packing Lunch
- Making Small Changes ito Reduce Bills
[RELATED POST: Save More Money with These 5 Unconventional Tips]
These step-by-step tips have helped me pay off over $107,000 in debt in the last few years, and save money for security.
I hope this helps you with coming up with a save money plan of your own so that you might meet all of your savings goals for the future.
Do you have tips that you’ve used with coming up with a plan for saving money? I’d love for you to share them in a comment below.
