Money is an essential part of life. Almost all our basic needs depend on it, shelter, food, clothing – these are the things that we need and we must have the means to acquire them which is by having money. However, not many realizes that saving money is a habit that we must learn to build early on. The earlier we practice the habit of saving, the more things we can achieve. Doing so will help us achieve more than just the basic needs. We can learn to enjoy the finer things in life and provide more than just the bare minimum to our loved ones. Travel, food, or buy your dream home can be one of the things that you can do. But how do we make it a habit? In a time of digitalization where trends easily catches our eyes and hearts, trying to keep money unspent can be challenging. Here are our tips on how to save money, effectively.
1. Setting a budget
Knowing how budgeting works is one of the first things that can help you start saving money effectively. The first thing to do when setting your budget is to set a savings from you bank account. You also need to identify your needs and wants. Needs as the term itself, are the essential things you need in your daily life. Wants on the other hand are the things that are not necessarily needed, but only bought for leisure or comfort.
Setting a budget means allotting money for your needs and making sure that there is enough money to be used for necessities. You can think of this as drafting a plan on where your money should go. Doing this does not always mean that you have to strictly stay away from things that only bring leisure. In fact, budgeting can help you maximize your available money and see if you have an extra for a “want”.
To sum it up, when you set a budget, it means that you have to make sure you have enough for your needs and at the same time, you have a limit for wants. This psychological trick will help you think that you only have to spend a certain amount of money on a monthly basis and allow you to identify your spending habits which will help you put more money on your savings account.
2. Keep track of your spending
Along with the first step on how to save money effectively, setting a budget and identifying needs and wants should be accompanied with this second step, keeping track of how much money you spend.
Yes, you’ve already identified your needs and wants and see how your spending habits are doing. But, admit it or not, sticking to the budget is not always easy. For the first few months, you might notice yourself overspending a lot, if not, a little. That’s okay, it’s where discipline will start. That’s why you should keep track of your spending to achieve that savings goals.
By using your set budget and keeping track of your spending, you should see what part of your needs and wants you overspent. Overspending is when you spent more than what you actually intended to. Is it on food? Internet? Is your consumption on those heavier than usual? Keeping track of these things will help you avoid them the next time. It is also recommended to keep track of your separate savings account. Checking account will help you see your progress.
3. Planning meals ahead
These days, we’re encouraged to stay more at home for our safety and good health. However, contrary to what is expected – eating more home-cooked meals, the number of food deliveries increased. This was especially observed during the ECQ. Some restaurants upgraded their services to provide food delivery even during ECQ or at a time that there are travel restrictions. Food delivery services were promoted here and there with accompanied promos or discounts. But this is still more expensive than simply eating at home.
Planning meals ahead is one of our money saving tips. This will help you avoid getting swayed by these food delivery promos. When you have your meal planned out, at least for a week, you will have your mindset to it and avoid food deliveries or takeouts that are expensive.
But of course, with the help of budgeting, you can still help yourself get deliveries or take-outs from time to time.
4. Water-only challenge
Let’s face it, the emergence of milk teas or fruit teas has made it difficult to stick to water nowadays. Most people, when they receive their paycheck, they try to award their selves with milk tea. Not only it is expensive, but frequent consumption leads to unhealthy weight gain.
Trying this water-only challenge can not only help you save money but also keep you healthy. You can try to fit it in your “wants” section of your budget, but trying to avoid it for at least a month or 2 is also a great ways to save money.
5. Try to live a minimalistic life
Along with the emergence of milk tea and food deliveries, the number of online shoppers and parcel deliveries also spiked. Being restricted to go out of our homes, strolling in malls, or travelling outside the city, people needed to find other ways to entertain themselves at home. Simply watching a movie or trying to cook a new recipe is no longer enough as these restrictions lasted more than a year already.
With that, online selling and buying surfaced as a trend both on social media and various e-commerce platforms. Online shopping has now become a way for people to let off steam or entertain their selves.
Online shopping provides convenience that physical shopping does not have. Such as cheap prices and frequent discount sales, plus if you buy big items, it gets easily delivered right to your doorstep. There are cons as well but e-commerce platforms and online market place took this opportunity to heightened their promotions and entice people to spend money on online shopping.
Learning to do online shopping is fun. But being enticed frequently on discounted items does not always do well on your finances. We might find our self buying things we don’t actually need.
6. Practice Delayed Gratification
All of the steps mentioned above on how to save effectively will be heightened if you practice delayed gratification. Practicing delayed gratification means learning to discipline yourself on things that are categorized as “wants”. You can do this by delaying or resisting the wants that you are attracted to. Milk tea, food take-outs, and deliveries, online shopping – these are the things wherein you must practice delayed gratification.
Once you start doing so, you will learn the discipline of not being impulsive and instead learn that things of great value take time and you must wait for them.
Delayed gratification is also one of the skills you must have to be successful. In this case, you may use it as a way to save money effectively.
7. Stick to the plan
We hope that these tips will help you on your money-saving journey. However, if you don’t try your best to practice them all together, it might be useless. At the end of the day, these are just guides, it all boils down to the execution you will be doing. List them down and stick to the plan is one of the best ways to achieve results. It might be challenging at first, but as time goes by and with discipline, budgeting and saving money will be a piece of cake.
BRIA Homes is a subsidiary of GOLDEN MV Holdings, Inc., .one of the largest real estate companies in the country. BRIA Homes is primed to bring quality and affordable house and lot packages and condominium units closer to ordinary Filipino families. This is the goal that drives every single employee in the company, for which the ultimate fulfillment is seeing a client happily moving into BRIA’s homes.
To know more, visit their website at www.bria.com.ph, like and follow “Bria Homes, Inc.” on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Spotify, Viber Community, Telegram Channel, Kakao Talk, LINE and WhatsApp, or call 0939-887-9637.
