17 Personal Finance Tips to Beat Inflation: The 2022 Guide

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Inflation sucks. That’s just plain and simple. The even crazier part of inflation is that it’s going to keep getting worse over time. The dollar is going down in value.

Although it doesn’t matter when you read this, as it stands right now in 2022, inflation in the United States has hit a historic 40-year high and aims to keep going. Now this won’t continue on forever, but still, inflation is hitting everybody’s purse and wallet at the moment.

Normally, inflation hovers at around 2% on average per year. We can handle that. With increased inflation, comes increased prices and increased salaries. The word “inflation” only comes into our conversations when we’re having more thoughtful conversations about being underpaid or arguing the finer points of returns in the market.

Higher inflation is different, though. Because our salaries don’t go up enough to cover those rising costs. And that’s when we all start to struggle a little bit. But today we’re going to go over some ways that we can beat inflation. The following 17 tips will help you get through this tough period of inflation and get you into a better mindset when it comes to your money.

These tips will help bulletproof your finances and improve your ability to control the little bit of dough you’ve got left. Alright, let’s check out those 17 tips.

17 Personal Finance Tips to Beat Inflation

1. Curb your spending

When inflation starts to hit us, the prices of everything will go up. That’s obvious. But what isn’t obvious is that this can really start to hurt your finances if you continue spending at the same pace. You have to curb your spending. It can be as simple as just spending a little bit less money than normal.

When times are especially tough, you need to limit your wants in order to keep your spending in check. You’ll have to pay for necessities and bills but try to simply think about cutting back on a few things that you don’t absolutely need for that month (or that period of time). There’s a huge difference between wants and needs. So you have to understand that up front and use some discipline on the backend to limit yourself. A $7 oat milk frappuccino is not a necessity. Coffee can cost as cheap as .10 to .20 cents a cup if you make it at home. And my wife makes killer specialty coffee drinks for $1 or less at home in her Express Keurig.

Lastly, we’ll talk about it a little later in this post, but using a budget to track your income and expenses is an absolute necessity for your personal finances. Inflation or not, you gotta’ have a budget. Check that out in tip #12 on this list.

2. The no spend challenge

I love the no-spend challenge. If you’ve never done one, it’s time to give it a try. I almost called this challenge simple and easy, but I quickly caught myself. This challenge is simple but it is definitely not easy, even for the most financially-disciplined people.

The no-spend challenge is just what the name implies: no spending (besides your normal bills that are mandatory). It’s something you can do daily, weekly, or monthly and is an awesome exercise in frugality that can really help you develop the part of the brain that controls spending and being frugal. If you’d like to learn more about the no spend challenge, check out this post here on the savvy sparrow.com.

Now obviously you can buy groceries and other necessities along with your normal bills. But you try to save as much as possible over a certain period and you don’t buy ANY wants. Everything that is a luxury or that can be cut out is cut out.

No spend challenges are perfect for those months when you’re running a little short (or those entire years where inflation is absolutely destroying your finances!). All you have to do is choose a time period to do your challenge. The daily challenge is pretty easy, the weekly challenge is a little bit harder, the monthly challenge is pretty dang tough and the yearly challenge is insane. Your pick. How fast do you want to fix your finances and beat out inflation?

3. Save up for bigger purchases

Inflation is causing everything to go up in price…even those bigger purchases that we often have to make. For those purchases, we have to find a way to save up for them so that we aren’t breaking the budget when we finally have to pay up.

Now in general, I recommend using a sinking fund, which is a fund to save up for bigger purchases, to pay for those big ticket items. This can be as simple as an envelope at home that you continually put money into or a savings account online. Hell, stuff that cash under your mattress if you want to. As long as you are saving up for those purchases, do it however you want to.

For example, Christmas can be paid for from January to December and you can have a fund set up for this. $50 bucks a month for 11-12 months is $550-600 bucks. Easy to do and it won’t hit you all at once.

Need tires in the next five or six months? Save up $100 bucks a month until then and you should be good to go when you need tires.

Want to buy a nice car with no debt? Save $500 dollars per month for 3 years and you will have $18,000 dollars for something awesome. Do it for 4 years and you will have $24,000 for something even better. And 5 years of saving that amount will net you $30,000 dollars for an amazing new car. Meanwhile, drive your clunker around until you have the cash to get yourself something nicer. Don’t forget that we never recommend buying a brand new car until you’re a millionaire. A gently-used, two-year-old Honda or Toyota runs just fine (and you’ll have no debt!).

Lastly, we see that the sinking fund is smart because you’re not taking a hit for your big purchase all at once in your budget. Bigger purchases are even more expensive now so this tip is especially important. Use a sinking fund to save up for those big purchases and do yourself a huge favor during these turbulent times of sky-high inflation.

4. Negotiate your expenses

This isn’t just a great tip for when inflation is hitting, but yet another tip to use when you’re just trying to cut expenses back and save money. If you really want to cut some costs down, you need to negotiate as many different expenses as possible. Normally, most people will have at least two or three things that they can trim down in this category.

Ranging from your tv service to streaming services to car insurance, there’s a ton of different expenses that you can haggle and negotiate down.

Want cheaper tv? Call them and threaten to cancel and go to the other providers in the area. I’ll bet you get a better deal. Want cheaper insurance? Call an insurance broker who can shop around and get you the best deal for whatever you’re looking for.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to do this and could easily save you $500-$1000 dollars per year depending on how many things you’re able to cut down on. Try it. You’ll have more money in your pocket and a better grip on your finances.

5. Cut out some of your subscriptions

Another fantastic money saving tip, and one of the first things you should consider cutting when trying to trim down your expenses, are all of your subscriptions and streaming services.

Subscriptions can really start adding up when you’ve tacked on like five to ten (or more) different plus subscriptions and streaming services. Add that onto to tv and internet costs and you won’t be saving any money.

The first thing that we personally cut out years ago is home tv. That’s was insanely overpriced and one good way to add about 100 dollars to our budget. I just recently cut a few more things out. We have Netflix, Prime video, Hulu, and Disney Plus. We didn’t need anything else but had added on Paramount Plus and Peacock Premium (NBC’s streaming service). On top of that, we had a free trial of Discovery Plus and Apple TV. So we were living the streaming high life for a few months.

Well, with inflation causing everything else to go up, I couldn’t continuing paying for all of those services. So the free trials ended. Then I cut out the Paramount and Peacock streaming services. They’re awesome but unnecessary. Our family has Netflix and Disney, so we hopped on with them to save a little bit of money and we were stuck with just Prime Video. We realized we had Hulu for free through our Verizon plan. It’s okay to have a few of these. But to have seven to ten or more is a bit ridiculous. In the end, you won’t be saving much money.

So, you see, you’ve got to trim those subscriptions down or they can start making your expenses go up and up. If you’ve got a bunch of services burning a hole in your pocket, assess what you actually use and cut some out! Your wallet and your budget will thank you.

6. Save at the gas pump

It’s no secret that gas prices have gone up in the last few years. They started out at a low of about $1.99 in 2020 and have increased dramatically to well over $4 dollars per gallon. With everything getting more expensive, you’ve got to find a way to cut costs wherever you can and I’ve got a couple of ways you can do that at the gas pump.

First, if you don’t have to drive to work, try to use alternative methods of transportation like riding your bike, walking, public transportation, or Uber/Lyft (use this one sparingly as these rides have gotten more expensive).

You can also avoid driving as often as possible to save some extra dough. Have nights IN instead of nights OUT if you can. If you can use any of the alternative methods of transportation, why not save a dollar or two?

And if you have to drive, or you just want to get out and do stuff, try using a money-saving gas app to help you save a few cents at the gas pump. Two that I use are GasBuddy and GetUpside. Here’s how I do it in a quick summary:

I use both apps together to find the best deal. GetUpside finds deals and gives you cash back after each time you pump gas. You can cash out every time you hit $15 dollars. Gasbuddy finds deals on gas including the cheapest gas in the area and cheapest gas compared to closest distance (which is a really handy feature). I compare both and try to find the cheapest gas, within a few miles, and that will also get me a few cents back on GetUpside.

With both of those, I’ve saved thousands of dollars over the last decade and have earned over $400 dollars on GetUpside in the last couple of years. It’s not much on each fillup but every little bit counts when inflation hits hard.
And we all know that inflation is hitting us the hardest at the pump.

7. Save at the grocery store

The other part of my budget that’s getting completely destroyed is the grocery category. Because everything, including food costs, have seen prices go up exorbitantly. But if there is one category that you can cut costs and save money in pretty easily, its the grocery budget.

Here are a couple of ways to do that:

First, use coupons if you can find them. Coupons have saved us thousands of dollars over the years.

Second, try store brand over name brand. Easy to do and a lot of foods taste the same if not better.

Third, don’t go to the grocery store while you’re hungry. You WILL overspend, guaranteed. Then you might just go get fast food afterward. Just eat a small meal before you go to the grocery store and you will easily stick to your list.

Fourth, make a list of meals you’re going to meal prep and buy food to make those meals.

Fifth, make a list and stick to it when you get there. It’s easy to keep grabbing stuff that you want (especially while hungry) but you have to stay disciplined.

Lastly, don’t shop at those expensive grocery stores like Whole Foods, Lowes Foods, and others that mark up their products to double or triple what regular stores sell at. You don’t need whole organic French pressed almond butter for $10 dollars. Regular JIF peanut butter for $3 bucks is completely fine. In fact, for $10 bucks, you can get a huge tub of that stuff!! Try Food Lion, Aldi, Lidl, Trader Joes, or whatever decent quality grocery store you have in the area.

So you can see that it’s pretty easy to use a few simple tricks to save money in your grocery budget. Do what you can to save and make an effort to be more disciplined. This will undoubtedly help you all the time, not just while you’re trying to fight high inflation.

8. Cut out fast food

This is a tough one for most people. Because fast food is quick and easy. When you really need to save some dough, cut out fast food completely. This is one of the easiest ways to save money when inflation hits. Even though prices at the grocery store seem to be shooting up as well, fast food restaurants still have to make a profit. So they gouge you every chance they get. I mean, my normal grilled chicken meal at Chik Fil A is now over $12 dollars! Um, no thank you.

The prices are insane so cut this out of your budget (or at least try to cut back). Here are a couple of ways you can do that: get more groceries, meal prep, and try to find cheap dinner recipes online. Those couple of things have helped me save thousands AND pay off a lot of debt.

9. Save on clothing

Finding ways to save money on the clothes you buy is always smart, even when inflation isn’t a problem.

So here are a couple of rules that I personally have for buying new clothes:

Buying full price, name brand clothing from expensive outlet stores is just dumb in general. Don’t do that. There’s no need to spend $40-50 dollars OR MORE on a t-shirt and way more than that on other new clothes when there are a lot of stores with reasonable prices all around you.

If you do want to buy new clothes, Target is decent on their prices. But I suggest setting limits on how much you spend and trying to find sales. Walmart is a great place to find cheap, decent-quality clothing. I get a lot of my workout clothes from there because it’s just so inexpensive. Ross and TJ Maxx always have insane prices but they don’t always have what you want. Those places are cheaper, though.

You can also try shopping at consignment stores and goodwill. They’re super cheap and you can always find good-quality used clothes at these places.

When it comes to shopping for clothing, if you’re not trying the no spend challenge, the deals you can get at these places are amazing and will definitely help you battle sky-high inflation. If you’ve got to get clothes, get savvy and find the deals. Because they’re out there just waiting for someone to grab them.

10. Buy items in bulk

Buying in bulk is a great way to save money any day of the week, high inflation or not. Buying in bulk simply means buying in larger quantities which is often cheaper for you (because it’s cheaper for the company).

Be careful, though, because it’s not always cheaper to buy in bulk. Simply do a little bit of simple math to estimate how much each item costs or how much it costs per ounce. You might pay a little bit more overall, but if you can get more items at a cheaper cost, that buy may be worth it. I know this will take a little bit of work but is a great way to help you save a little bit of money when times are tough.

11. Learn about personal finance and understand your own situation

I love personal finance. I mean, I have an entire blog dedicated to it. But not everyone loves personal finance and that’s okay. That doesn’t give you an excuse to completely disregard your own finances. Even if you hate it, you need to know what’s going on with your money! You work your butt off for that money and if you don’t keep an eye on it, it just leaves your wallet and you have no idea where it went. That’s NOT okay, especially today, with how crazy inflation has become.

With that being said, everybody’s financial situation is unique. That’s why they call it PERSONAL finance. This is why YOU have to know about your own finances. Not knowing about your finances can crush you in the long run and can be extremely stressful during bad economic times like when inflation is the highest.

As far as understanding your own personal finance situation, the first thing you need to do is figure out where you spend money. This will help you see your expenses and what all is happening with inflation. Track all of your expenses for an entire month.

Next, figure out EXACTLY how much debt you have. EVERY SINGLE CENT. Write that down from smallest debt to largest debt. I don’t care how scary or uncomfortable it is. You have to know your expenses and how much debt you have.

Once you do those two things, you should have a pretty accurate picture of your finances (and how good or bad they may be). Just understanding your finances, your debts, and your money will help you get on track to become a better money manager and will help ease the pain that inflation is causing.

12. Get on a budget

So you already completed the tip above, which is to start understanding your unique financial situation. Great start! Next up is to take control of your money and create a budget.

A budget is extremely important, not just for times of high inflation, but for your finances in general. The beauty is that when you start paying attention to your finances, this in itself will give you a “raise” when you start tracking your money and realize exactly what you can cut out and save money on. But you have to track every single dollar.

Now this seems extreme, but aren’t you willing to do something extreme to improve your personal finances in these extreme times? Inflation has been ridiculous so why not start watching where your money goes.

For those against budgets, let me help you:
a budget is telling your money what to do so that your money doesn’t control you. A budget is also permission to spend what money you do have! The budget will help you understand how much money you make, how much money you can spend, and how to ultimately live below your means. Having a budget can change your entire life if you do it correctly.

13. Get your debt paid off

Once you know your expenses, understand how much debt you have, and have a budget created, the next thing you have to do to beat inflation is to pay off ALL of your debt. That’s really important if you want to have more money to work with in your budget.

But if you don’t do anything else on this list, just getting your debt paid off can easily help ease the pain of inflation. Because the less debt you have, the easier it will be in any economy and with any amount/percentage of inflation. When you’re in debt, you’ll feel inflation the most because you’re broke and don’t have a lot of extra money.

Once you’re completely out of debt, inflation, no matter how bad it is, becomes nothing more than a minor inconvenience. For example, my family has all debt paid off. Inflation sucks because we have to spend more money on stuff and the expenses have continued to increase. But we aren’t hurting and inflation is just really annoying at this point.

So get all of your debt paid off FAST. The quicker your debt is paid, the easier it will be for you to forget about inflation!

14. Emergency fund

Having an emergency fund is one of the most important things you can do for your personal finances. It can also help you in your fight against inflation by just being some extra emergency insurance money sitting in a savings account.

It’s important that you follow the couple of steps above: know your expenses, understand how much debt you have, create a budget for your money, and then crush your debt. After that, you need to complete this next step – save up 3-6 months of your total monthly expenses in a savings account and use that money ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES.

If you still have a lot of debt, you need to put a $1000 dollar starter emergency fund in place. Once you’re out of debt, full fund that sucker! This is basically a cash insurance account to help you tackle emergency expenses that come up. Did you catch that? Emergency expenses and emergency expenses only. This money is not for that surprise Christmas that popped up on December 25th or the tires that your car needed (and that you knew about for 3 months).

No, the emergency fund is for when your tire blows out and you need to replace it immediately. Or for when your transmission fails and you can’t pull $1000 out of your normal expense checking account. Or when your A/C unit needs $500 bucks worth of work in the middle of the summer. Those are emergencies. Don’t justify any unnecessary expenses for that emergency money.

The emergency fund is one of the best ways to ensure you don’t go back into debt or deeper in debt from where you are. I call it “emergency insurance” because it helps to cover those crazy emergencies. It can also help to give you peace of mind through rough times like when there’s ridiculous inflation and when the economy isn’t doing well. You have to have a rainy day fund because it’s going to rain. Emergencies happen. So do something about it. Create your emergency fund immediately.

15. Continue investing!

Inflation is pretty scary. And it’s even worse when the economy is tanking at the same time. But we always get through it. So don’t freak out. It will be okay.

Please make sure, though, that when times are tough, you don’t pull out your investments and you don’t stop investing. Now I do recommend pausing your investments for a short period of time while you get out of debt. But if you’re already there, KEEP INVESTING! You have to fight that high inflation to continue growing your money!

Minor inflation is not necessarily a bad thing. Costs do go up some, but that means companies are growing. If you’re investing into mutual funds or other multi-company funds, you’re investing into companies that are growing, which means your money will most likely be growing as well. It’s hard to think of it like that when the economy is not doing well but just keep doing it. Wealthy people continue investing steadily over many decades causing their wealth to skyrocket. All because they stayed in the market and kept investing…over and over and over. That’s how you beat inflation and get rich.

Investing is a roller coaster, and in the words of Dave Ramsey, “The only people who get hurt on a roller coaster are the ones who jump off.”

16. Ask for a raise or find a new job

One of the best ways to help yourself out when inflation is hitting the hardest is to increase your income. Now even if you’re frugal, and you don’t live an extravagant lifestyle, you can still be affected by inflation. Because like I said earlier, you normally don’t get raises that keep up with inflation under normal circumstances.

So that makes this the perfect time to ask your workplace for a raise. They know that inflation is hitting hard and, if they can afford it, and you’re a hard worker, they might just feel obligated to give you a decent raise (or at least something to help you out). But I wouldn’t ask if you haven’t done anything to really deserve it. If you’re a really hard worker, go for it. You may be an asset that management wants to keep around!

If your job doesn’t want to give you a raise, ask for some overtime hours. That’s benefits you in two ways: it shows them that you want to work even harder for them AND you will get paid some extra cash.

You might also start looking around for another job that pays a little more. This could be the perfect time to increase your income and move on to something bigger and better. Who knows? Maybe you could get some better benefits, too!

17. Hustle to increase your income

We already talked about how increasing your income was a huge way to help with the inflation headache we’re all dealing with. So let’s talk about the side hustle!

If you already have a decent job, the easiest way to add on a side hustle is to just get an extra job somewhere else. Some people have two or three jobs just to bring in the most money they can. If you’re able to handle it, work as much as you can!

Finding a true side hustle, though, is the best way to bring in more cash. This could be anything from dog walking to cutting grass to selling/flipping stuff online and everything in between. Me and my wife have tried many different side hustles over the years and they’ve always paid out cold hard cash. My wife loves yard sale flipping and I love cutting grass. I’ve also started multiple successful online blogs that have almost doubled our annual income. All of that has earned us tens of thousands of dollars in extra income.

Overall, it doesn’t really matter what you do to bring in more money. Just get to work. That extra income you bring in will help you battle sky-high inflation and improve your personal finances. Whether you get a raise, work overtime, get a new job, add on more jobs, or find a side hustle, the extra income will always help you out in the long run.

Summary

I’ve already said it: inflation sucks. But with the 17 tips we listed above, you can take control of your money and turn your finances around. Once you can get a grip on the money you have, inflation will turn into something that’s simply an inconvenience to you rather than something to completely panic over.

We can’t control inflation, but we can control how we spend, save, and earn. That’s a fact. So take all of this and go crush your finances. Because it’s time to beat inflation and make it an afterthought.