You wait until payday, the money comes in, and the money disappears. But where does it go? The most obvious places are bills, mortgage payments, car payments, insurance, etc. But, a chunk of the money goes towards miscellaneous things that you didn’t necessarily plan to spend money on but you do anyway. What’s missing here is a regular stream of savings. There are many tactics you can apply to your financial plan to stop overspending and start saving. Some of those tips include having fewer cards, automating savings, setting a budget, saving change and cutting down on eating out. Let’s talk about how you can implement these tactics.

Having fewer cards

This happens to the best of us. We might stop by our favourite grocery store and get offered a card that will help us collect more points to spend at that store for simply spending money. Another card gives you points for getting gas or eating out, you know the drill. Having too many cards will make it hard to manage your finances and will have you spending more money on credit than you had intended to. Cut those cards and manage your finances better.

Automating your savings

Ever heard of the saying “out of sight, out of mind”? The act of automating your savings will make it easier for money to end up in your savings account and not rely on you going in and making the transfers yourself. Knowing that a chunk of money is going into savings every paycheck is a good feeling and if you have some extra money to spare, you can always make those transfers yourself.

Setting a budget

It’s hard to know how much you will be able to put away in savings if you don’t know what you have. Create a budget with your biweekly or monthly expenditures and see what you’re left with. Based on that, you’ll go back to tip #2 and automate that amount of money into your savings. It’s easier to set things up this way than having to be stuck transferring money from savings back to your checking account.

Save your change

There are lots of apps available that will automatically take small increments of money and deposit them into your savings account. These bits of change can add up over time and make all the difference in your savings. These apps typically round up purchases to a dollar — think about what that means for your weekly spending on groceries, errands, etc.

Cut down on those expensive coffees and restaurants

Buying a coffee machine and coffee you enjoy drinking will always be cheaper than spending $3-$5 on coffee every day. Think about it… a coffee machine can end up costing you about $200 to buy and pods will cost you at the most $1.50 a cup. If you spend $5 a day on coffee, that’s $150 a month vs. a one-time investment of $200 and $30 a month on refills. You tell me, which option is better?