13 Ways to Save Money That'll Make You Say "I Should've Been Doing This the Whole Time"

I may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

Hey guys, this post adds to my previous post that gave you 15 ways to save money and invest it. These 13 ways are even easier and you can apply them to your lives instantly. If you haven’t tried some of these out yet, please let me know your thoughts in the comments!

With that being said, here are 13 more ways to save and invest more money that’ll have you saying you should’ve been doing this the whole time. If you follow these strategies, you’ll help yourself tremendously if you put extra cash into an S&P 500 index fund over 40 years even without including dividends being reinvested.

Related posts:

And the 13 ways are:

Iron your own clothes instead of paying for drying cleaning

I’ll admit, I haven’t gotten there yet, and it’s only because I’m so bad at ironing and it takes me so long to not have a crease in a random spot in my shirt or pants
Trying to iron 4 pants in one night frustrates the hell out of me! Which is why I try to get away with using the Downy wrinkle releaser I freakin’ love this thing
But if you’re better than me, at $1.50 a shirt dry cleaned plus $4 for a pair of pants getting dry cleaned about once a month, I’m shelling out $500 a year
If I saved and invested every year, I’d have $114,292 extra, so I need to get better with that

Eat out less

I know people who not only buy lunch every day but eat out for dinner on average 3 times a week because they’re too lazy to make their own food
The average household spends $3,008
My girlfriend and I rarely go out to eat and if we do it’s on average once a month
We save a tremendous amount of money which is why I’m able to save over 30% of my income, it makes all the difference
Even if you saved and reinvested half of the $3,008 every year for 40 years, it would turn into $342,876

Stop going to happy hour every week

In NYC, even if you went once a week, you would probably be spending at least $5 a drink and let’s be real, you’re not buying only one
If you go out every week and get 3 drinks each time, after a whole year, that adds up to $780
You could have $178,295 extra in 40 years from an S&P 500 index fund instead!

Get a Crock-Pot

I LOVE my Crock-Pot, my girlfriend always makes fun of me
But it saves me so much time more than anything else
You can find it on Amazon for a great price
- It’s currently the best deal of all Amazon sellers
- And how did I know that? My awesome Honey plugin
All I do is prep at the most 20 minutes on most meals and let the Crock-Pot do the remaining job the rest of the day
And it makes the apartment smell really good!
Use this to help you eat out less and get that $342,876 extra for your retirement fund

Chegg

- I used Chegg throughout my whole college career
- Without Chegg, I would’ve had to shell out over $1,000
- You can save up to 90% on textbooks it’s incredible
- Returning the books is also free as long as you remember to use their prepaid shipping label
- The best part, in my opinion, is you can always extend a rental without any hassle
- If I had thought to invest the $4,000, 40 years later that would’ve turned into $59,898

TravelPirates

- TravelPirates offers great deals on vacations all over the world including all-inclusive vacations
- The only catch is, the deal applies to select airports, so if it’s not an airport close to you, you’d have to take an extra flight, so if that’s the case I don’t know how worth it that would be
- But obviously, if the airport is by you and the deal is during a month you’d like to take a vacation, I’d give it a shot even if you only use it once a year and save $100
- You could turn that into $22,858 with an S&P 500 index fund at a 7% performance rate, not too shabby

Take a staycation

Sometimes I love these even more because I don’t have to shell out hundreds, (or one time over $1,000) for a vacation
I take at least one staycation a year, probably saving me on average $800 or so
And each time I make sure to invest the difference into my S&P 500 index fund or when a stock I’ve invested in is at a great price, I’ll put money into it
That $800 put away every year can turn into $182,867 at the average market rates after 40 years

Gym membership

Get rid of it
They’re scams, there’s no need to have a membership to a gym when you really think about it
You pay to use all of the equipment every day and you use a fraction of it even if you do go to the gym every day
In some cases, you could save $120 a month by doing a workout at home
That’s $1,440 a year and $329,161 after invested for 40 years!

Learn to Cook

Same idea as eating in, but instead of having to rely on someone else to cook for you, when you’re home alone you’ll know how to whip something healthy together real quick
It’s way better than eating Cup Noodles or mac and cheese from a box every night
The best way I think to get started is to use the Crock-Pot above
You only have to prep the meal and then let the Crock-Pot do the rest for the next several hours
Once you feel comfortable from there, do your own thing!

Buy generic instead of brand name products

I always see people showing brand loyalty when I go to a CVS or Walgreens
They don’t even realize the store brand generic stuff is literally the same exact thing, just cheaper
If you don’t believe me, look at the ingredients, they’ll be listed in the same exact order as the branded product
Examples of this are DayQuil and NyQuil, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, etc.
I end up saving I’d say at least $10 every week maybe more I don’t know
That’s $520 a year and $118,864 over 40 years invested in an S&P 500 index fund

Walk to work when you can

This is huge for me
I save money by walking the rest of the way to work instead of taking the subway both ways for 2 stops just over 13 blocks
Because I take a separate train before the subway, I’d have to swipe my card again to get on the subway, screw that
That’s $2.75 each time, so $5.50 each day
If I did that consistently for 48 weeks out of the year, I’d be throwing away $264 a year
That doesn’t even seem like much, but that compounds into $60,346 over 40 years
And this was just ONE of my coffee habits

Refinance student loans

Read my post on SoFi to see why I love it so much
Refinancing on top of cutting the payment plan down from 10 years to around 3 and a half saved my girlfriend thousands of dollars and all of those years dealing with debt
There are other options out there, but we had such a great experience with SoFi I highly recommend them

And there you have it!

What are you doing to save money that seems obvious to you, but your friends aren’t doing?

Like what you read?

Join all of us to get the latest posts on how to make, save and invest more. It's the only way to your financial freedom. In addition, you get the FREE Coffee Habit Worksheet to track your minor spending and see how it's really costing you over the long-term.