How to Start Saving Money Fast When You Stop Buying These Things (Money Rules + Personal Finance Tips)

When you are not conscious of your spending, your bank account tends to runs on empty. If you want to make progress on your savings goals, start with better spending habits. Here are some things you definitely want to stop buying.

1. Stop Buying Debt

Debt is not free. Debt comes with a monthly fee in the form of interest. If you carry a balance on your credit card, that borrowed money costs you interest every month.

Pay down your debt. The faster you pay down your debt, the less you will pay in interest. Every payment you make towards your debt = paying less interest.

What can you do to stop taking on consumer debt? Consider cutting up your credit cards. Use a cash-only system. Budget! Do what you can to stop buying debt. It’s too expensive.

Copy these habits of people who never overspend!

2. Eat Out Less

Food is generally the most expensive item on any budget. Just one stomach can cost over $300/month to keep full. And that’s just going to the grocery store.

So it only makes sense that restaurant food would become outrageously expensive. Dining in a restaurant, you aren’t just paying for the food. You are paying for the chefs, the wait-staff, the space rent, the utilities! Then you throw in a well-earned 20% tip.

Open up your bank statements and calculate how much money you spent last month at restaurants, bars, coffee shops, etc. It will do your bank account good to be aware of the cost of eating out.

• Related: Live Frugally On One Income: 43 Simple Hacks

Use these genius money saving strategies to live on next to nothing!

3. Stop Paying for Unused Subscriptions

A study estimates Americans waste $364 a year on entertainment subscriptions THEY DO NOT USE [source].

Cancel your unused subscriptions, and stop throwing away your money.

Review your credit card statement each month. See if you pay for any subscription service you might have forgotten you signed up for. Cancel those services!

You could be doing these bad money habits without even realizing it!

4. Stop Buying Single-Use Plastics

Naturally, single-use plastics have taken over: plastic sandwich bags, K-Cups, water bottles, grocery bags.

There’s not denying their convenient! But it can do our wallets (and the planet) good to switch over to reusable products.

Head over to Etsy for reusable products so you can save money (and the environment).

• K-Cup coffee filters
• Sandwich bags
• Grocery bags
• Produce bags
• Swedish Sponge Cloth

If you’re struggling to save money because of your income, you need these money saving life hacks!

5. Stop Buying “Stuff”

Look around your home. How much stuff have you accumulated? How did it happen?

Well… it feels really good to buy stuff we like. “Treat yo’ self,” they say. There’s no denying that buying “stuff” is tempting.

That’s not to say there is something wrong with personal spending. But if that personal spending goes unchecked, “stuff” drains your bank account. (Not to mention, “stuff” becomes clutter in your home and causes unnecessary stress.)

Here are two ways to keep yourself from buying too much stuff:

1. Give yourself an allowance
2. Buy items that serve a purpose

Give yourself an allowance. Set a discretionary spending budget to keep track of your personal spending. Also, let your allowance be a rollover budget– if you have money remaining at the end of the month, add it to next month’s budget. That way you can save for big ticket items.

Buy items that serve a purpose. Before you buy an item, ask yourself a few quick questions. Does the item add function to my life? Does it have a place to be stored in my home? Will it become clutter?

If an item isn’t going to make your life more productive or efficient, that’s an immediate question that you should probably put it back on the self.

When you limit spending to items that are functional, you save money. And your life slowly becomes more organized and efficient. You accumulate tools to help you navigate simple tasks faster and with ease. It’s satisfying to buy items that serve you.

• Related: The Top Money Saving Products on Amazon

✅ Simple money saving hacks to lower your monthly bills!

6. Stop Paying for Multiple Streaming Services

You have so many choices: Netflix (see our Netflix Hacks), Apple TV, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, ESPN+, and CBS All Access. Individually, they don’t cost much, but together you can pay close to $1,000 a year.

Why pay $1,000/year when you only watch one show at a time? You only need to pay for one or two streaming services at a time. Choose to save hundreds of dollars every year. Rotate your streaming services.

• Related: 5 (genius) Hacks of the Super Frugal

7. Stop Buying Processed Foods

Packaged food isn’t as cheap as you might think.

If you want to cut down your grocery bill, try buying whole foods.

Fresh vegetables are very cheap. When you know how to prepare fresh veggies so that they’re delicious, it’s satisfying to eat them until you are full! This strategy is good for your health, and it can save you a lot of money!

Load up on broccoli, cauliflower, and green beans. Cover them in avocado oil. Add salt, minced garlic, and some chili powder. Roast them in the oven for 30 minutes at 425F.

Whole foods sound more expensive, but they are absolutely not. Another way to save good money on chicken is to buy the whole chicken! Individual cuts are priced at a premium. For more tips on whole-food eating, check out our favorite food blog, neutraleating.com.

8. Stop Trying to Buy Happiness

The mind is funny. It tells us it can be happy… just as soon as it gets x, y, and z. That would put you in the perfect position to be happy for the rest of your life.

But the mind is never satisfied. The mind will always place new conditions on your happiness. Realize how easy it is to follow this mirage to the end of your life.

We have to see the mind for what it is. It is a tool. It uses comparisons to help us make plans and solve problems.

But the mind also uses comparison to convince us that we don’t have everything we need to be happy. We see people on social media with all their stuff, and their money, and their special experiences and their “genuine” happiness.

Of course our mental dialog is going to turn on us. It going to tell us that things should be different. That where we are isn’t enough. That we ourselves are not enough. It is this mental dialog is that distorts the happiness that is already here.

So a good way to let your happiness shine through is to shut down destructive mental dialog. Notice your comparison thoughts. Notice the frustration of wanting things to be different.

The best way to quite mental dialog is to bring your attention to present moment experience. Feel yourself breathing. Breathe more deeply so that it is easier to feel yourself breathing. It is this act of bringing your attention to present moment sensation that silences mental dialog.

Every time you train your mind to notice and silence those negative thought patterns, your inherent happiness shines through a little more.

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