How To Save Money By Creating Healthy Habits
It might seem like one of those resolutions you never accomplish, but it is easier than you think.
It is the beginning of the year again and we look back to our last year’s achievements. And then we take a look at last month’s spendings. We have spent money on presents, wrapping paper, great quantities of food that we eventually threw to the garbage, parties and all kind of other stuff that helped us survive or celebrate the holiday season. But we all know that December is an exception to the rule and now we are back to normality or on our path to improvement. We are now setting goals for the new year, we are prioritizing our tasks, organizing our schedules, ourselves and our budgets. And year after year, many of us want to save money. We draw this beautiful resolution on our new diaries and bullet journals, we write it on motivational post-its and on smartphones. But how can we actually save money? And how can we do this through healthy habits?
Organizing the spendings
This is the first advice and it is the most important. It is actually essential because without this organization it will be almost impossible to accomplish your goal. What it means and how you can do it?
Organizing your spendings means noting down everything you spend. You can use an app or a notebook, but I recommend an app because it is easier and the whole point is to have categories in order to have an overview of where your money goes to. There are numerous free apps on the internet in which you can insert your income, the source of the income and then the expenses. They usually have categories like rent, food, education, personal hygiene, medicine etc and also options to add new categories depending on your needs. I use Money Manager because it is very easy to use, but there are plenty to choose from offering more or less the same options. The most important thing for me is to have the option to create my own categories to be sure I have an accurate and complete overview of where and how I actually spend my money. This step does not mean that you are organizing your budget, writing how much you need to spend on a certain thing or deciding how much you want to spend for another. It just means noting down every cent you are actually spending so that at the end of the month — or whenever you feel like it — you can view your chart/list and see where your money went and where you could actually and realistically make some savings.
It came almost as a shock to me when I realized I was spending 19 per cent of my income on transportation. Only 2 per cent of my income was actually going to the monthly metro subscription. The rest was going to car-sharing services I was using in many situations that could have easily been avoided.
Stop Being Late
Since one of my discoveries was that I was spending money on Ubers, I tried to analyze my behaviour and see why that happened. And there were many situations when I used Uber because the public transportation in my town was no longer available or because I was very tired and I wanted to get home faster than by changing three buses. But there were also situations when I was taking taxis or car-sharing services because I was late for work and other appointments. I don’t know if time is money or not, but I do agree that being on time is a great quality and that we should appreciate other people’s schedule and not appear late. By waking up earlier or starting to prepare ourselves for the party/event in time, we avoid the risk of being late and we might be able to use the cheaper means of transportation. It meant a lot to me to see how much I could save by being on time. It was not only about avoiding the taxi fares that could go quite high, but also about having time to eat breakfast at home, which is a much cheaper and healthier choice. It also means having time to prepare lunch for work or for your children at school instead of giving them money. When we are late to the airport, we might forget to pack important stuff that we will then need to buy from the new town where we landed, adding some extra costs that could have easily been avoided.
Go shopping when you are not hungry
Nothing new here, we all know that. But if we really want to spend money, we should strive to eliminate as much as possible the situations when we enter a supermarket hungry. When we do that we have the tendency to buy as much as possible, not thinking about what we actually need, have or plan to cook. We also usually buy something to eat right after we get out of the supermarket to satisfy our cravings, adding an extra, usually unhealthy snack. It might seem like something not very important, but we should not underestimate the consequences of this behaviour. A study shows that people who are hungry are more likely to take financial risks than people with full bellies. It might seem like an exaggeration to say that it is a financial risk to go with an empty stomach to the supermarket, but if it becomes a habit, it will certainly be visible in our bank accounts.
Start cooking
Some of us like cooking, some of us totally dislike it. But if we want to save money one of the best things we can do is to prepare our own food. Not only a much healthier option, the food we cook at home is also a cheaper choice and it helps us save a lot of money at the end of the month. There is no shortage of recipes on the internet and it is accessible to find simple or fast recipes if we do not want to spend our whole evening in the kitchen. But I learned that the advantages of cooking are not limited to health and savings. This activity helps our mental state, family life and our general well being. And most importantly, it can be creative and playful.
Tip 1: Use the leftovers by creating new recipes with them. From yesterday’s grilled chicken, you can now make tagliatelle with chicken and parmiggiano. The secret is to not get bored and explore the possibilities you have with your home ingredients.
Tip 2: Create your small garden for kitchen herbs. Instead of buying fresh leaves of dill, basil or whatever herb you want to use for refining your dish, cultivate your own. It is a small investment to buy them in a pot or you can plant the seeds. This way you can enjoy fresh, delicious herbs all year round and it is way cheaper than having to buy cut and washed herbs that get rotten very fast.
Engage in more outdoor activities
Being outside, jogging or simply walking are important activities for our physical and mental health. They are also free activities. We could save money and take care of our fitness by going outside more. It is not necessary to buy expensive gym subscription to take care of our bodies. And enjoying the fresh air is way more satisfying than staying in a gym full of sweaty people. Outdoor activities mean more than taking care of our body weight. They can also be cultural and entertaining. We can visit the old historical streets of our town, discovering the old secrets, exploring the stories we once read. Or we can go to the nearby parks and forests to admire the plants and creatures living there. It can easily turn into a hobby, but even if that does not happen, outdoor activities are refreshing and a better option than visiting local shopping centres or going to the movies.
Read more …. from your local library
Reading has many advantages and is one of the greatest activities we can do in our free time. Spending our time reading can also help our piggy bank. Instead of paying our subscriptions for numerous streaming services, we can read more. And reading from the public library is free. It is also a better solution for our environment than cutting trees. There are also online libraries where you can find free ebooks and you can buy second-hand books from the internet, antique stores or local vintage markets. Reading does not have to be an expensive activity and although I do recommend you buy books occasionally, you can actually save money by reading books instead of scrolling social media pages, full of ads.
Clean your wardrobe regularly
According to Credit Donkey, the average family spends $1,800 on clothing per year. If we were to clean our wardrobe more often, we would discover that much of the items we buy are already in our closets and in good condition. We often buy things only because we like them and think we need them. Cleaning our wardrobe regularly helps us understand what we really need to buy when it comes to clothing. It is also a great occasion to get rid of the things we no longer wear. We can donate the clothes that no longer fit us or that we stopped liking and we can even use the old fabrics of old clothes (that are not in good condition for donations) to recreate new items of clothing or other DIY projects.
Use natural ingredients for your skincare
Cosmetics can be quite expensive, especially when buying qualitative products. Fortunately, nature offers us a great number of ingredients that are both edible and fit for our skincare routine. This means that we do not have to pay exaggerated costs for a body scrub or for our hair’s shine. Some of these magic things are already in our houses, like coffee and honey, two ingredients that have great proprieties for our skin. But we can also buy natural oils and all sorts of butter and create our own lotions to pamper ourselves. All these options are way cheaper than buying the final products from the store where we mostly pay for the brand. Although we cannot replace all cosmetics with home-made ones, we can save money by researching the many benefits of natural products.
Saving money can be quite easy if we understand that much of what we need for our happiness and well-being are simple things. A walk in the park, a nice book and a dinner cooked with our families are not sacrifices, but great habits that can also help us save money. Being organized, keeping track of our spendings and enjoying nature’s gifts help us be more aware of the impact we have on our environment. Last year started for me with analyzing my spendings and continued with adopting these habits. It ended with small, but tangible accomplishments and with more savings in my bank account than in all my previous work years.
