Save That Money: How to Save Money Fast and Automate It

Summary: Saving money can be hard and sometimes it feels like you’ll never get ahead. But saving money doesn’t have to be hard. We will show you how to save money fast and automate it to make the process easier and less painful.<br> Most of us want to save money fast, and we know how to do it. But there are ways to make saving money faster and easier.<br> First Thing’s First<br> You can’t effectively save money fast without a <a href="https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/budget-categories/">budget.</a> If you don’t know how much is <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/24/pf/financial-mistake-budget/index.html">going out</a> each month, you don’t know where your <a href="https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/plug-your-spending-leaks/">spending leaks</a> are. So if you want to know how tpao save money fast, setting up a budget is the first step.<br> “Some of us have several dozen spending categories to account for each month, from gym memberships to magazine subscriptions, and even those smaller expenses can really add up.<br> That’s why having a budget is crucial. Without one, you won’t know how much you’re spending, and you’ll have an even tougher time identifying opportunities to cut back. On the other hand, if you list all of your expenses out line by line and total them up, the numbers won’t lie. You’ll see exactly where your money is going, and from there, you can find ways to free up cash to increase your savings.”<br> Go to <a href="https://www.listenmoneymatters.com/go/mint/">Mint</a> and create an account. It’s free and easy to use. Once you have at least a month’s worth of data in your account, take a look and see where you are bleeding money.<br> The Nuclear Option<br> Mint is wonderful, but it can’t stop you from spending money. If you are budgeting with Mint and still spending too much, there is a much more drastic budgeting option that might work better for you.<br> The envelope system can help you save money fast when other budgeting methods have failed you. The envelope system is straightforward.<br> For each budget category that you can spend cash on, you write the category name on an <a href="https://amzn.to/2kdTnLe">envelope</a>. Of course, it won’t work for things like your rent or mortgage or utilities, but those aren’t the categories we overspend on.<br> <a href="https://amzn.to/2kdTnLe"></a><br> You allocate a certain amount of money for each category for the week or the month. Take the total amount of money out in cash and divide it between the envelopes. So if your food budget for the month is $100, you put $100 in the “Food” envelope. You put $50 in the “Gas” envelope and so on.<br> When an envelope is empty of cash, you are done spending in that category for the month. That’s it.<br> I don’t love this as a long-term solution because you lose certain protections when you spend cash that you would have when using a credit card and even a debit card. And if you lose cash, there is no way to recover it. But as a way to discipline yourself to stay on budget, the envelope method really can’t be beaten.<br> Cutting Spending<br> Once you see your monthly transactions, there are some easy things you can do to cut spending. Whether it’s at the grocery or around the house, if you want to save money fast, you have to cut down on spending.<br> The Usual Suspects:<br> These are the things most of us overspend on. Luckily, they are also some of the easiest categories to cut spending in.<br> Food<br> This is a big one. Most of us spend way more than we need to for food whether it’s groceries or eating out. You can quickly cut down your grocery budget by meal planning, using a slow cooker to batch cook, and eating everything in your kitchen before bringing any more food into the house.<br> We all have miscellaneous things hanging around that we haven’t used for some reason. Enter a few ingredients you have on hand into