6 Handy Tips for Saving Money

Affiliate links may be used in this post. Ordering through these links may result in a commission, which helps pay for the cost of running this site and keeps the content free.

Tamara Allen is a blogger and entrepreneur that is passionate about all things money saving. Tamara and her husband Josh are currently living and exploring the outdoors in beautiful Denver. In their free time they enjoy being foodies and traveling to new places with the funds they have available through Tamara’s money saving and travel hacking tactics. You can learn more about these techniques through Tamara’s website.

Don’t we all wish we could reduce our spending? When I think of how much money we spend on a daily basis for just the essentials, it’s mind boggling. Well, thankfully, at least in some respects, it doesn’t have to be that way with these 6 handy tips for saving money.

• Loyalty Programs

Nearly every retail or grocery store you’ve ever heard of has some sort of loyalty program. These range from earning points on your purchases towards free goods to offering exclusive coupons to its members. Find out if your favorite stores offer a free loyalty program and learn how it works. My favorite grocery programs allow you to download available coupons on the app which will automatically come off your purchase when you scan your loyalty card at check out. Plus, earning those fuel points on your purchases are always helpful when it comes time to fill up your tank.

• Rebate Apps

These apps are pretty simple to use, and they’re free! Typically they offer cash back opportunities on specific grocery products. Once you purchase all you have to do is upload the receipt and voila, you have a credit on your account that you can cash out to your paypal or for gift cards. Some of my favorite apps include:

• Ibotta
• Checkout51
• Mobisave

• Online Subscription Services

These services help you to easily save money on repeat purchases by offering around a 5%-15% discount on a monthly subscription for that product. This is a great alternative for online shoppers and those looking for the convenience of home delivery while still saving a few bucks. My personal favorite service is Amazon Subscribe & Save for its overall low prices, large selection, flexibility, and ease of use. However, Target, Walmart, and Sam’s Club all offer very well functioning subscription services as well.

• Purchasing Discounted Gift Cards

Did you know there are websites that allow you to buy gift cards at a discount? These discounts can vary depending on the store, amount, and demand of the gift card, but can go up to around 25%. For example, I might buy at $50 gift card for only $45. This is great for those of us that frequently shop at the same stores all the time. We can purchase the gift card at a discount and use it towards the shopping we were going to do anyway, effectively saving ourselves some money on that purchase. Some of the best online gift card exchange sites include:

• Raise.com
• Giftcardgranny.com
• Cardpool.com
• Cardcash.com

• Online Shopping Portals

This is a great way to earn cash back on purchases you make online. Essentially these portals offer a certain amount of points or cash back on the purchase you make at an online store by clicking through their affiliate link on their portal. Shopping portals come in a wide variety, whether that be a straight cashback site like Ebates, or through your credit card loyalty program like Chase Ultimate Rewards, or even airlines and hotel chains like Southwest or Marriott. A great way to see which shopping portal is offering the highest incentive for the online store you’re shopping at is by searching at evreward.com.

• Coupons

Using coupons for your purchases will more often than not save you the most money. The problem is people don’t know how to use them effectively or just don’t think they have the time. The underlying strategy here is by using the coupons in conjunction with the lowest sale prices and stocking up on those items while they’re cheap. And while the organization and research involved with couponing sounds daunting, we are incredibly lucky these days to have the internet as a couponing database. This makes our end result so much faster and easier. As an example, I was able to save $2000 a year with a time commitment of only 2 hours a week. If this sounds appealing to you, learn more about how to effectively coupon on my website Two Hour Couponing.

Enacting just one of these tips will help you save a little bit of money now and a lot of money in the long term.

In what ways do you like to save money?