Saving Money on a Budget #FinancialWellness Week

When you think of saving money, you probably think of saving money for a trip or that big ticket item you've had your eye on. But when you're on a super tight budget, you start thinking of saving money for emergencies and Christmas. Here are some ways you can save a little money each paycheck:

Keep a jar of pennies! If you take a look around, you will see pennies everywhere. It just seems so disposable, but they are very valuable! Take a big jar and label it "Penny for your thoughts". Every time you start thinking about spending money on something you don't need, put a few pennies in there. At the end of every month, count it. Once that jar becomes full, you can either take it to Coinstar (or your local bank if they offer coin cashing services) or get another jar. If you decide to cash in your coins, try and save it for emergencies. You will be amazed at how much you have saved!

Use envelopes! A great way we keep a tab on they money is using separate envelope for each expense. We have "food", "bills", and "left over" envelopes. When we get the bills, we put them in the "Bills" envelope with a complete total. We keep a weekly grocery list in the "Food" envelope, and a note of how much is alotted for groceries that week. When we get paychecks, we put the amount of money we need for a certain bill or groceries into that envelope so we know exactly how much we have left. Then we put what money is left over in the "Left Over" envelope so we are not tempted to spend money that we need for groceries or bills.

Use coupons whenever necessary. Groceries have gotten so expensive that it makes it harder to save money at the market. So if you have a printer, print out coupons just for the products you use at home. In fact, we only used a couple of coupons that last time we were at Walmart and we saved over $10! If you don't have a printer, you can always print the coupons at your local library.

Write out your grocery list. We have tried buying groceries that would last a month, but when something unexpected came up (hospital visits or someone gets sick), we didn't have money to get medicine or anything else we needed. So we decided to keep buying groceries on a weekly basis. You are able to find the deals you need and the coupons you need.



What are ways that you save through out the year?