Five ways to save money without missing it

How to save money without missing it. Today I am going to share five ways to start saving without missing the money at all.  You are wanting to start a new business, course, or start Bookkeeper Training School, but you don't have any money.

Let me show you how to find some money without working a second job, or doing something crazy. And the best thing is you won't really miss the money at all!

If you want to start saving for retirement, build up an emergency fund, or save some extra money to pay off debt,  these five saving tips you can do are painless.

Save any newfound money

The first way I want you to do is to save any newfound money that comes into your life.

What is newfound money? 

Any of the following can be considered newfound money:

• Rebates
• Bonus check
• Money earned from working overtime
• Using coupons at a story that saves X amount of money.

When you get any newfound money, put it into savings immediately.  

Maybe part of the reason that you can make it is by using all those coupons and rebates. But if you can't afford to buy it without it being on sale, then you need to think about it. Many times you use the excuse of things being on sale to buy the item. 

Now there are things you need anyway. I'm a huge fan of the site "Ebates," now called Rakuten. I will go through this site anytime I need to buy groceries from BJs or shop at Target. This will get me a 1% cashback from them. I will then automatically put that into savings.

These small savings will build up over time. 

Another way you can save newfound money is by taking the money from a gift card and putting it into savings. How this will work is if you get a restaurant gift card, take the money that you would have spent on the food and put that into savings.

Don't look at newfound money as windfalls, rather look at it as shifting money.

In a nutshell, all newfound money is money that you get that you weren't expecting.  If you want to get ahead, that newfound money needs to go to savings.

Use a roundup program to save money

The second thing is to use a roundup program like Acorns.  What this program does is look at all the transactions from your credit/debit cards. It will then round up the transaction to a full dollar amount.   Any of that rounded up amount will be pulled from your account once you've accumulated $5.

You won't even notice when that money is taken from your account. Over time your money will grow.

I started using Acorns in 2018, and I just looked up my balance. I have $1,400 in my account. You might think that that's not a lot of money.  But I didn't have to do anything to save that.  All I did was set up the account. And then once I set up the account, everything else is automatic.

Cancel unused subscription to save money

The next thing you need to do to save money is to cancel any unused subscriptions.  Look through all of your paid subscriptions and decide if you're still willing to pay for them.

Go through your bank and credit card statements.  You also need to get all your utilities and donations.  Look at all the things that you spent money on in the past year. Then decide if you still want to spend money on those things. 

Next, create an automatic transfer out of your account for the amount that the subscription you are canceling costs.  So instead of the money going to Netflix, the money goes to savings instead.

On some subscriptions, you can actually save money by going from paying monthly to paying for it annually.  Whatever you save by doing that make sure you put that amount into savings.

Stop getting a tax refund to save money

Another way to save money is to stop getting a tax refund.  You will generally spend your tax refund on a large purchase, or on paying off some debt.  

The problem with waiting for your tax refund to pay off debt is that you are giving money to the government. You are paying interest on your debt when you could have kept that money and paid off the debt faster.

Sit down with the new W4 tool on the IRS website and see if you can get that refund down.  

Let's say you get $5,200 back every single year on your tax refund and you get paid every single week, that's a hundred dollars per pay period that you could be getting back in your pay. Or if you get paid every two weeks, that's $200 every two weeks. That's a lot of money.

Next, adjust your withholding.  You will need to fill out a new form to give that to your employer so that they can adjust your withholdings.

The less you get as a tax refund, the more money you can get each month. You can then save it or use it to pay down debt.  So stop getting a tax refund.

Save first, not last

You need to start saving first, not last. Most of the time you will save whatever is left at the end of the month.  The problem with this is that humans are really good at not having anything left over at the end of the month.

Figure out how much you think you can save. This should be easy for you to do since you have already been through all of your statements when you cut out your unused subscriptions,  

Write down all your monthly expenses and calculate how much that is. Then write down all of your income for the month and see what the difference is between those two numbers.

Hopefully, there's more income than expenses.   So whatever the difference is between your income and your expenses, then you need to automatically send that to your savings account at the beginning of every pay period.  

Example of how to save first, not last

For example, if you have $200  leftover and you get paid twice a month. Then I want you to do is take $100 out of each paycheck and put it into savings as soon as you get paid. Once it's comfortable for you to do that, change it to be done automatically.  The more you automate things the easier it will be for you.

What you really need to do is go to payroll and have them put a hundred dollars every single time you get paid into your savings. You can do this if you're an S-Corp. You can change your direct deposit so that it's split.

If you're an entrepreneur, you must be paying yourself on a regular basis. Have all the money go into your personal account. Then set it up so that the transfer comes out of your personal account and into your savings.  

Pay yourself first. Not last.