Drowning in debt, living paycheck to paycheck, needing every last dollar… Any of this sounds familiar to you? Struggling financially sucks! And if you’re here reading this it means that you’re looking for help to make it better! Taking control of our finances start with making better decisions and developing better habits. If you’re trying to achieve financial freedom, here are a ton of Money Hacks you’d wish you had known sooner! All of these financial planning tips provide you with ways to save money on a tight budget.
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Table of Contents
17 Genius Money Hacks You’d Wish You Knew Sooner
1. Make Money Shopping
You can actually shop online and get cash back by using Swagbucks. Yup, you read that right. It’s kinda like getting paid to shop, right?
So how does it work? You use the Swagbucks app or website to go to whatever site you want to purchase from. Then Swagbucks splits the referral fee with you. There’s no catch! Read more about Swagbucks to learn more.
2. Use a Spreadsheet Tracker
Keep track of your budget, bills, incoming money and all other aspects of your personal finance with a Spreadsheet Tracker. This will help you easily keep track of any dates, changes and an accurate balance with very little effort.
3. Improve your Credit Score
We all know the disadvantage of having to navigate life with an ugly credit score hanging over your head. Trying to purchase a home, trying to set up a business; it always rears its ugly head.
So instead of just accepting your low score as your fate, how about trying to increase your credit score?
Some sites that can help you determine your credit score AND give tips to improve it are Credit Sesame, Credit Karma, Quizzle, Identity Guard and Annual Credit Report. The best part is that they are all free.
Some of these give you a breakdown of why your score is low and what you can do to make it better. Others offer free credit simulators where you can make virtual financial choices and determine what impact it would have on your credit score BEFORE actually making these choices in real life!
You can also check out these tips on how to improve your credit score.
4. Another Get Paid to Shop Hack
This tip requires taking advantage of your credit card rewards. However, this is only a good idea if you can pay back the money you used from your credit card immediately so that you’re not in debt.
Only do this if you are not owing on your credit cards.
Related Articles:
29 Things to Stop Buying to Save Money
9 Simple Ways to Cut your Electric Bill in Half
How to Make Money using the Swagbucks App
25 Fail-Proof Frugal Living Tips to Drastically Reduce Your Household Expenses
5. Drop Rewards
Download the Drop app and earn rewards and gift cards whenever you shop online through Drop.
6. Make a few calls
If you’re paying off debt, you know that this can suck your wallet dry at times. Most of the times, high monthly payments on loans and credit cards are really because of extremely high interest rates.
Did you know that if you take a minute to call your banker/credit card company, you can request a lower interest rate? Even a slight drop in your interest rate can reduce your monthly payments significantly.
Give it a try!
Related: How to Save Money Fast
7. Get Cashback for shopping in-store too
Use apps to get cash back on items that you plan to buy in-store.
One such app is Ibotta. What you do is unlock rewards and rebates by completing little tasks in Ibotta before you go shopping. These include writing a comment about the product or reading a fun fact about it. Then the item is added to your list and you can get a cash back on it once you purchase it.
You can also use other coupon apps such as Ebates, Krazy Koupon Lady, Saving Star and Shopsavvy.
8. Be Organized
Keep all your financial information in one safe place. This can help you to track your progress using trends and your financial history. A good website that does this is Personal Capital.
Personal Capital allows you to easily link all your accounts and cards in one place to make reviewing financial statements and documents a breeze each month!
Their financial tools allow you to see all your accounts in one place including your net worth, investments and credit, a budget planner and cash flow, a retirement planner, a free portfolio review with a financial planner and so much more! It’s so easy to use, anyone can use it! Check out Personal Capital for more info.
Other similar financial management sites you can try include Mint (for US and Canada), Money Lover and Money Pro.
9. Use cash
This is good for two reasons.
One is that it helps you spend less than you earn and keeps you on track with your spending.
The other is that using cash can actually help you save money. Psychologically, something about having to take out that $10 bill from your wallet will make you reconsider if this is an item that you REALLY need.
10. Track Your Net Worth
Do you even know your net worth? It can be so empowering to learn your net worth and start on your journey to becoming financially free.
Net worth is simply the relationship between what you own and what you owe. To calculate, you can use one of the sites from #8 above or you can use good ol’ pen and paper and a calculator.
How to calculate your Net Worth:
- List all your assets (what you own) and the value of each. These include houses, cars, land, savings in your bank account, businesses, cash value on insurance policies etc. Add it all up.
- List all your liabilities (what you owe) and the value that you owe on each. These include mortgages, other loans and your credit card balance. Add it all up.
- Subtract your total liabilities from your total assets to calculate your net worth!
It doesn’t matter if you calculate and find that you’re in a really bad place, what’s important is that you’ve decided to turn your financial situation around and start your journey to financial freedom!
Pssst! Did you know you can save more money by meal planning? Meal Planning saves me thousands of dollars every year! Not sure how to get started? Grab a copy of my free Meal Planning e-guide below.
11. Use the Cash Envelope System
You can use the Cash Envelope System to stick to your budget. Here’s how this works. After creating a weekly sub-budget, you allocate money towards your various expenses, groceries, kids allowance, electric bill etc. You then put the allocated cash into different envelopes.
The trick is that you cannot use any money from your groceries envelope for anything else but groceries, and so on. It helps you to stay on track and stick to your budget.
If you don’t want to use actual paper envelopes, you can always invest in a pretty wallet with different sections (I love this one) OR you can use an accordion organizer.
12. Get your own Money Savvy Robot
Trim is a money savvy robot that can help you save money. In fact, Trim boasts of saving users over $1 000 000 in the last month!
What it does is analyzes your bills and spending, checks for recurring subscriptions, cancels subscriptions, negotiates bills, finds you better insurance and more. It will tell you of all the ways you can save money! How’s that for a financial personal assistant?!
Other apps that perform similar tasks include Truebill and Outflow.
13. Get paid to watch videos and play games
Get paid to watch videos, take surveys, play games and complete little tasks using sites like SuperpayMe, Rewarding Ways and Inboxdollars. You can make a few hundreds extra per month doing this.
14. Plan
Planning involves budgeting and meal planning. Doing this can literally save you thousands of dollars.
15. Cook at home
Combined with #14 above, you’ll be rich in no time!
16. Get your money back
Did you shop online recently? Did the item ship late? An app like Paribus can help you get back the money you paid for shipping. And if you bought an item and then the price dropped after you bought it, Paribus will help you get back your money. Sign up to see if stores owe you money, effortlessly.
17. Choose the Debt Payoff Method that works for YOU
Mathematically, it makes sense to pay off higher interest debt first so that you can save as much as you can on the interest. However, it can be easier (and more rewarding) to put your effort into paying off your smallest debt first, since this can be achieved much faster than the others, and as humans, accomplishments (no matter how small) motivate us to keep on working. You then move on to paying off your next smallest debt.
This method of debt reduction is known as the snowball method and many swear by this. The trick is to do proper research and figure out which method will suit YOUR needs and work best for YOUR personality.
So that’s it guys! These genius money hacks are sure to propel you forward on your journey to achieving financial freedom.
Are there any additional money hacks that you’d add to this list? Share with us in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!
***Before you go, are you looking to manage your money better this year? Sign up for my free 5-Days Money Management Course!***
Until next time,
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