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Money Saving Tips: How We Save Over $14,000 Each Year (Minimalism + Live Simply) // Ready for some great minimalism tips that will help you save a lot of money each year? Check out these 8 money saving tips and ideas to help you live simply, cut the overspending so that you can start working towards your financial goals. I’m breaking down the exact expenses we cut or lowered to help us save over $14,000 a year.
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Are you curious how we saved over $14,000 this year
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Well in this video I'm breaking down the 8 simple money habits that we changed over the
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past year that has racked in over $14,000 worth of savings. Let's jump right into it
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Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Meredith Rines
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I'm a certified financial planner, a budget strategist, a working mom, and I love helping
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families learn how to budget their money so they can start paying down their debt and
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living a life they've always dreamed of. On this channel I like to share weekly videos with you so that you can learn new money hacks
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and other tips to better protect, plan, and prosper with your family
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So make sure you hit that subscribe button so you never miss a new video
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In this video I'm going to help you lower your monthly expenses so that you can really
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rack in the savings year after year. Like I said, we saved over $14,000, yes $14,000 this year alone with just a few simple changes
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in our daily lives. I'm also going to share with you how you can grab my budget success checklist
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It is my 9 step go to handy dandy guide that can help you kick off the new year and save
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exactly where your money is going. I even include a budget template in this 9 step guide so that you can hit the ground
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running with no problems. The first thing we did is we cut the cord
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We got rid of cable and satellite in our lives. We invested in an Amazon Fire Stick
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We were already Amazon Prime members so we were already out that expense and we traded
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in our $130 monthly bill for a one time $40 purchase of an Amazon Fire Stick
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Overall that is an $1,800 savings each year. The second thing we did is we stopped buying books and audios and things like that
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For a while my husband was driving back and forth over an hour each way just to go to
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class every single day. We opted that instead of investing in the subscription services and other audio books
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or just books in general for me because I do enjoy reading, we got a membership to our
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public library. That is a free membership and they have apps such as Hoopla
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I know other libraries use other apps but ours uses an app called Hoopla
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You can get audio books for free and you can also check out books for free and get books
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on tape. We opted to do that instead of having to buy or rent or do other subscription services
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each month. I estimate that to be over $250 maybe close to $300 worth of savings each year because
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we're not having to pay those prices. The third thing I did, I unsubscribed from all of those promotional emails
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All the emails that you get every single day when you first wake up. You get the email from the clothing store, from the shoes store, from the home store
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from all these different stores. Giving you incentives to buy, promoting you to buy and it's just a huge temptation that
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we did not need. I unsubscribed from a ton of those emails
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I also found a service called unroll.me and I'll put a link down below of it
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Basically, I can funnel all of these subscription emails into one daily digest and they'll send
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me a daily digest of the unroll emails that go into this and I can easily see them all
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in one screen. I can click the ones I actually want to read and for the most part, I end up just deleting
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that email as well because I'm not missing it. That has really helped stop the impulse temptation shopping, especially during the holiday season
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when you're getting blasted with multiple emails every single day from the same company
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all the companies, every company. So I unsubscribed from those promotional emails
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I estimate that savings to be about $500 a year. When I talk about estimating the amount that we're saving, that really is a true estimate
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I did go back and look because we do keep our budget and our chief financial officer
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budget template. So I could easily go back and look at those miscellaneous expenses and this is about how
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much we spent within previous years. So I'm assuming that we saved that amount this year
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The fourth thing we did is we really, really buckled down on our meal planning
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We decided that this year we really wanted to get better at eating healthy, get better
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at eating at a dining room table as a family together. So we really had buckled down on our meal planning
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We meal plan for about two weeks at a time. So that way I'm only going grocery shopping like a big trip every two weeks
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And we have really done well with this. Now we're not perfect
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I do meal plan for about six days a week. So that means I'm planning for 12 out of 14 days every single two week period
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Now those other days are usually spent with eating leftovers, maybe going out with family
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or friends or maybe just going over to my parents' house for a family dinner
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So we're not necessarily eating out every single time that we don't meal plan, but we
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do occasionally eat out and it has really been a huge money saver for us
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I've also found that I am sticking with my grocery budget a whole lot easier when I meal plan
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I've opted to start using the Walmart grocery app so that I can really keep track of how
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much I'm spending before I even get up to the checkout, the cash register
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I know exactly what I have in my cart because it subtotals in the app for me
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That has been a game changer because I'm not impulse buying. I don't have a toddler in my cart going, mommy, mommy, and pulling snacks down
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I don't have a husband, you know, adding things to my cart. I don't add things to the cart because I found that I was always going shopping right after work
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As soon as I got done, picked up our son, I would head to the grocery store. I would be starving
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He would be starving. We would make poor decisions. I'd forget half the things on my list
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I'd add things that I didn't even really need or want and they would go bad and we were
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wasting a lot of money. I estimated from what we spent last year and how well we're doing this year that I have
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saved over $2,400 in just opting to meal plan and using the Walmart grocery app instead
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of trying to go grocery shopping when I'm tired and hungry. The fifth thing that we've done, it really is in conjunction with meal planning, is that
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we are not eating out half as much. So we are eating out only that one time each week, if that
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In reality, I want to say we're eating out two or three times a month instead of two
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or three times a week. Yeah, it was pretty bad. So by doing that, we're saving so much money
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Because if you think about when you guys go out to eat and your family goes out to eat, you have to buy a meal
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Your husband buys a meal. Your kids get meals. Even if they share, it's still a meal
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Everyone has to get drinks. Sometimes you get appetizers and it really adds up
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For our family of three, it can be anywhere from $40 to $50 after a tip just to eat out
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at a decent restaurant, like the Mexican restaurant up the street that's not even a five-star restaurant
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Just a normal restaurant. It costs us anywhere from $40 to $50
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That's crazy when you're doing that two or three times a week when you can barely afford
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to pay down your debt. We have been meal planning. We have been eating out less
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So not only have we been saving a ton of money at the grocery store, but we've been saving
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a ton of money by not eating out. You would think that if you're not eating out and you're not buying the food at the
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grocery store, how are you eating? Well, we're buying better food at the grocery store
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We're buying in bulk so that we can meal plan and meal prep to make our meals stretch
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So by not eating out each and every week or as often as we were, we're saving about $2,000
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a year. The sixth thing we're doing that I've talked about in another video, so I will link it
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for you, is that I make our meals super, super easy because I am like most of you
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by the time I am done for the day, I am done
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I don't want to cook a huge meal. I've started using our slow cooker
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If you have an instant pot, you can use that as well. I use our slow cooker so much in the summer, in the fall, winter, spring, all year, every
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week, I'm using my slow cooker. I tend to cook two, maybe three meals a week using our slow cooker and that is enough to
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feed us for the whole week. I'm not using our stove or our oven as much as I used to and that's saving a lot in our
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electricity, it's saving a lot in just the meal prep itself, it's saving a lot in food
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waste because I can just put it in the slow cooker. If I make too much, I can freeze it if we're not going to eat it within a day or two
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So we're saving about $250, I would estimate, in electricity bills and also just food waste
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as well each and every year by opting to make meals easier on us
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The seventh thing we've done is we use an in-home sitter. We do not take our son to a structured daycare each day
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And really that started out as a necessity. I couldn't find a daycare that had an opening for a newborn
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When our son was six months old, I finally found an in-home sitter that had an opening
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I had friends that knew her through church so I felt very comfortable using her
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And I took our son and he has fit in beautifully with her and her family and it's just worked
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out very well. So he's been going to this in-home sitter since he was six months old
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He will be three in just a few months and it's kind of crazy to think that they've been
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in our lives this long and what we would have done without them. But yeah, so I don't go to a structured daycare
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I go to an in-home sitter. When he's old enough for preschool, we will switch and do that
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But right now that is a huge chunk of money. Around here, an in-home sitter costs less than half of the structured daycare
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Yes, they don't have the learning that they get at a structured daycare for the most part
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However, he is loved and they do fun activities together and my son is not behind so I don't
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have to worry about him starting preschool and not having any of the basics down because
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me and my husband and the rest of our family, we work with him on a consistent basis to
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make sure that he is not behind. But that savings of going to an in-home sitter is over $5,700 a year
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The final, the eighth expense that we save a lot of money on is Christmas and birthdays
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I don't go crazy at Christmas. I don't go crazy for birthdays
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I just know that being together and just being as a family is usually good enough because
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that was important to me as a little girl. Yes, I like stuff and I like gifts and I want to give gifts to my kid and as he gets older
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I know it will be harder to stick within a smaller budget, but right now I can savor that moment
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We spend not very much. I put together a whole blog post that I'll link down below for you that kind of goes
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through how much we spend on birthdays and Christmas for most of our family and it really
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does detail exactly why and how much we spend and how we're able to save so much
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On top of that, I also use our credit card reward point
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We use our credit card for gas and groceries and then we pay it right off, but to us that
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is what's easiest. And so all those reward points that we rack up all year long are then used to pay for
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Christmas and it has actually worked out perfect this year where I ended up having some extra
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reward points left over that we didn't even need for Christmas gifts
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So it totally worked out, but I don't spend a ton on Christmas and I really do work on
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that budget. Last week I posted a holiday savings tips where I kind of break down how I create my
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holiday budget and what all I include and how I track everything to really make sure
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that we stay within that budget. That is what I go to. That is my go to to help us
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That savings on making sure that we stay within our Christmas and birthday budget is well
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over $500 each year, if not more than that. That's just what I estimate from before I started using the Christmas budget to where
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I am now and with our birthdays and the guide that we created
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It's about $500, sometimes more depending on how much I was spending the year before
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how many new people come into our family, how many people are born, how many new kids
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are coming in. So sometimes that budget does go up because my sister just had a little girl this year
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so obviously she was not planning for it last year, but she's included in the budget
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this year, but I still saved over $500. So I want to know, comment below, let me know one expense that you're going to really work
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on in the next couple of weeks in the upcoming year to cut back to start saving more money
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Leave a comment, let me know what that one expense is. So now you know exactly how we save over $14,000 each and every year, how we're doing it, why
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we opted to start saving that money and start changing just a few of our habits and how
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it has really helped us. I also created a video a few weeks ago that I talked about our top five monthly expenses
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and all this money that we save each and every year, that's why we're able to spend that
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money on retirement, on our son's college and paying down debt is because we cut back
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on some areas in our lives that we really didn't need to be spending that money on and
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now we can put that money to better use. Also if you want that budget success checklist, I will link that in the cards up above and
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down below. So grab that is my free nine step guide. It will really help you figure out where your money is going so that you can get a better
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handle on reaching your goals. Let me know if you have any questions down in the comments below and I will be happy
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to answer you. Don't forget, I encourage you to hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss a
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new video
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