4 Ways You Can Cut Your Spending With No Effort 

Saving money is not an easy task, but there are some actions you can take to help launch your savings today and help you along your financial journey. 

Saving money may seem like a daunting task, especially when you feel as if you are already living frugally just to get by. However, there are likely some ways you can start cutting back immediately that require much less effort than you would think. Identifying these easy cuts is a great way to start your savings journey with little initial sacrifice. 

Check Your Subscriptions

I am not saying that you should cancel that Netflix or Amazon Prime account that you enjoy, but it is worth checking to see how much you use certain subscriptions and ask yourself whether they are worth the monthly fee. There also may be a chance that you were paying for something that was just a free trial that you intended to cancel but did not. If you can identify these, this is literally free money that you can save overnight. 

Implement a “Time Window” before you buy online 

Most of us have probably had an experience where we went online, saw something that caught our eye, and immediately bought the item only to later regret it. To avoid this, create a strict self-imposed window of time in which you cannot buy any non-essential item. This should eliminate these kinds of purchases, as you will either decide that you do need the item (making it a much more viable buy), or that you never needed this in the first place (saving you money). 

Sign Up for Rewards programs 

Most places nowadays have some sort of rewards program which gives their customers a chance to save money as a “reward” for being loyal to their brand. However, many of us never think to sign up just because we tell ourselves that it won't make a significant difference. I suggest signing up to every rewards or loyalty program for the places we already shop frequently. This way, you are essentially being paid to shop where we already were going to shop anyway. 

Look into Savings Apps

If you want to take the human element out of saving money altogether, then you can always look into a savings app. Acorns, for example, is an app that invests the spare change on your purchases into its own savings account. For example, if you buy a coffee worth 3.50, it will invest 50 cents by rounding every purchase up to the next dollar. You may not feel the weight of this 50 cents at all while you invested it, but over time these small investments add up into a nice chunk of savings.