Earning more income is one way to accelerate your journey towards financial freedom.
However, that is not the only way. The other main way towards this goal is by reducing your expenses.
This can be easier than increasing your income. Since you will see the impact of some of the measures as early as possible.
In this blog, let’s consider 10 ways to reduce spending and walk towards financial freedom.
By the way, if you have missed my previous post on how to increase earnings, please find it here.
Monitor spending
If you have no clue as to where your money is going and are left with nothing at the end of the month, the first thing to do is to monitor your spending daily.
You can make use of some of the free apps that are available or even make use of an excel application that is available on your computer.
If you are unable to use digital tools, the next best thing is to write it down in a book.
Remember to capture the date, the amount spent and also a description of what you purchased and where you purchased it from.
At the end of the month, you will have an idea of what are some of the bigger outflows you had for the month. Do this constantly for 2 months at least, to track the regular expenses that happen all the time.
Once you have this insight, re-visit the items and check what is the spending that can be eliminated/slowly eliminated from the list.
Create budget
Once you have a clear idea of your normal spending habit, use this information to create a budget for the months ahead.
Continue tracking the expenses as you did in step 1 (once you do the tracking for 2 months, this should already become a habit).
At the end of each month, compare your current month spending against the planned expenditure for the month and check where things have gone out of control and put in measures to prevent this from happening the next month.
Ps: I will write a separate post about how to prepare a budget properly with more details in the future, stay subscribed and you will receive notification on my upcoming posts.
Create shopping list
Have you been in a situation where you went to the shopping mall to buy one thing and you come back with a trolley/car trunk full of things?
If this has happened to you before, you are not the only one.
This is what happens when we go shopping without a clear list, while walking down the aisle of the shopping mall, you will see things that look like you are missing them and get the feeling that you require the item.
This is a mental trick used by the supermarket too. They arrange the high margin products at the entrance of the shop and your most relevant items like staples at the very back of the shop. This way, they ensure when you see almost all their products and add them to the card while on the hunt for the dailies.
Keep this in mind when you go shopping and always remember to go with a shopping list and strike off the items once you have added them to your carts.
Go home with lesser unwanted items.
Look online for discounts
Before you purchase big-ticket items like furniture or home appliances, remember to check out online to see if any promotions are happening.
With ever-increasing competition, you could find deals online and there are many shopping events around the year, like new year sales, Christmas sales and even cyber Monday and Black Friday sales.
Think twice before you check them out from
The shopping cart ya. Think rationally as to whether you require the item even if they are on sale.
Delayed gratification
A lot of times, we will buy things on impulse. Without thinking through whether we require it or not.
Sometimes these purchases were induced by peer pressure.
If you come across a product that you think you need, give it at least 3 days to think if you require it. in case this is needed, you can proceed to buy it after the 3rd day.
If possible, delay the purchase of those Shiny gadgets you have been eyeing for some time. This also prevents us from losing interest in it soon after we buy it.
Look for trade-in deals
This is applicable more for the electronic gadgets before you go shopping for a new laptop/mobile phone for upgrading – consider checking with them to see if there are any trade in discounts.
If there are, get discounted on your new purchase with the gadget you may throw into the garbage bin otherwise.
Re-evaluate monthly subscriptions
The other thing you can do is to revisit the different payments you are making on a monthly/yearly basis. More often than not, you may realize that you are paying for some subscription that you have signed up for, using your credit card in the past.
If there are such spending, consider if you still need to keep it going, if not pick up the phone and call to cancel/do it at the websites if there are such options available.
Compare your options
Always remember to compare the costs of products and services at different stores, I’m very sure that you will find that some items are cheaper at a particular shop than the other stores around.
Also, do check out the prices for the house brand items, these are mostly cheaper compared to the other branded items.
If you are not too picky about the taste of the chilly sauce from a specific brand, go find the alternative and save more money.
Signup for memberships
If the ships have a good deal for memberships, consider signing up for them to enjoy discounted purchases.
Some stores even have special deals on your birthday month and so on. Eg: freebies from the movie theatre.
DIY – Do it yourself
If you are keen to learn new skills and save some money along with it, learn how to chase your bulbs/fix the clogged sink.
For other slightly difficult tasks, there are even YouTube videos teaching you how to perform some of the tasks.
If you like to fix things as I do. You can consider buying/renting out a tool kit to do the basic handyman stuff while saving some money.
Conclusion
Above mentioned 10 items are only some of the methods you can adopt to ease up the impact on your wallets.
You may already be doing other steps too, share with us in the comment section below. This may help me and others who read the post.
As I always mentioned in my previous posts, all the points mentioned above may not help everyone. Since we all have our unique circumstances, think through and carefully consider what works for you and what doesn’t.
I hope these steps will help you save a little more towards your financial freedom goals 🙂