Tips to cut your expenses

Tips to cut your expenses

Whether you’re a university student working a part time job and trying to meet your weekly expenses, or a family with larger grocery bills, cutting down those monthly expenses can do wonders to your financial situation! Without keeping a keen eye, it can become very easy to increase your expenses as your income increases, resulting in not achieving better financial outcomes despite earning more and more money. So to help this process we have compiled a list of tips and tricks to help keep these bills to a minimum.

 

Do a budget

This should always be the starting point of any financial plan and will help put pen to paper as to where you money is going and help highlight the areas of large expense that  can be further examined.

 

Limit that take-away coffee

Let’s face it, Melbourne’s coffee culture is the best in the world. So I know you don’t want to miss out on that, but cutting out just 3 coffees a week could save $55 per month.

 

Meal preparation

Not only is it great for your health, but saving $15 every week-day on eating lunch out, equates to $3,900 per year!

 

Review your insurances

No-one likes paying insurance, but its even worse if your overpaying for insurance! Shop around for a better deal on the insurance that you pay for your; car, house, contents, life & income protection, health insurance, etc.

 

Consolidate your debts

Can you consolidate your higher interest debts into a lower interest or interest free option so that you can pay down the principle faster?

 

Look at the subscription services

It’s very easy to have 5 streaming services for those lazy weekends and multiple music streaming services. Have a look at which ones you are using a whether you really need it.

 

Put a spend limit on eating out/entertainment

Budget fatigue is real and trying to stick to a budget that doesn’t allow any entertainment is not sustainable. However having a weekly spend limit is imperative!

 

Cycle or walk to work

Another tip that is not only great for your health, but also for your back pocket!

 

Limit the fashion spend

You don’t to spend a lot of money to look great! Look for deals and make sure that you are always setting a weekly limit as to how much you can spend on clothes/shoes.