37 Ways to Give Yourself a Raise in Your Budget (#27 is Crazy!)

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Budgeting is tough! Did you know that only 1 in 3 people actually prepare a detailed monthly budget?

Yep, according to Gallup.com, those are the sad statistics that unfortunately lead a lot of people into financial distress.

And with prices consistently going up due to inflation, we’ve got to do everything we can to not just have a budget, but to perfect the budget. You have to know where you can cut expenses and save money.

So in this post, we’ll be going over 37 different tips that you can use to tighten up your expenses, trim your budget, and start winning financially. Let’s check out the list!

37 Ways to Give Yourself a Raise in Your Budget (#27 is Crazy)

1. Just using a budget

You might not think that this first tip needs to be on this list, but just like I said in the first paragraph, 2 out of 3 people don’t use a budget at all! Honestly, that’s not shocking to me. A lot of people that I know hate to look at their finances because “budgeting is hard,” they have a lot of debt, or they just don’t care. Not a good spot to be in.

But you can change that for yourself. If you don’t use a budget, it’s time to get your act together. Just using a budget can help you keep track of your income and expenses, not borrow money, save money, get out of debt, and much more. A budget makes you pay attention to what’s going on.

The budget is not a way to limit you, but to help you control your money and where it goes. It’s YOUR money, so why not keep more of it by actually using a budget?!

2. Extreme budgeting

If you already do a monthly budget, here’s a good tip for you if you want to help to save more money: extreme budgeting. This concept is simple and involves you taking budgeting to a whole ‘nother level!

Extreme budgeting is when you keep an extremely close eye on every single expense down to the penny. I also keep track of our family budget almost every single day. I used to check and update every day, which normally allowed me to keep a close eye on our expenses so that we could continue getting closer to those elusive financial goals.

This one isn’t for everybody, but can be extremely helpful over the short term span of 12-18 months while you’re saving up for something, paying off debt, or getting your emergency fund fully funded. Once you achieve your goals, you can back off and just follow the next tip on this list.

3. Use a “Zero Dollar” budget

A zero dollar budget is hands down the best budget you can use to budget your money. Why? Because it zeroes out your income and your expenses, gives every dollar a job, and doesn’t allow for any wasted money. No wasted money means you’re immediately going to notice that you have more money than you realize.

The idea is that you zero out your money every single month. Take your income and subtract all expenses (including some fun money and the money used to save/pay off debt with) so that your total left over equals zero. Then you stick to that budget like glue for the month.

I personally use a zero dollar budget and stick to it pretty steadily through the month. As things come up, you can adjust accordingly. But try to stick to exactly what you’ve got on that zero dollar budget.

If you’re not wanting to be an extreme budgeter like I was, you can just stick to the zero dollar budget and this will allow you to still be very intentional with your money.

Quick note: a zero dollar budget is not the same as living paycheck to paycheck. You’re just simply using every dollar of your money to pay bills, spend, save, AND pay off debt (if you have any).

4. Paying off debt

The quicker you pay your debts off, the quicker you’ll notice that you have more money in your budget to work with. I HATE debt for many reasons, but mainly because it robs you of your money and keeps you from being wealthy. Don’t continue falling into the debt trap. Pay your debt off so you can use that money for saving, investing, and having fun.

5. Pay yourself first

This isn’t just a budget tip, but an overall wealth building tip in general. Paying yourself first simply means saving, investing, or paying off debt as soon as you get your paycheck. Take a certain amount out of your check right when you get it and apply it toward your financial goals.

Paying yourself first always allows you to follow through with saving, investing, or paying down debt AND it forces you to live off the remaining income. This is great for your budget. But be careful to NEVER use credit cards or financing to supplement your income once you start paying yourself first.

6. Set some financial goals

Having financial goals is extremely important because if you don’t have any financial goals, what are you REALLY working toward? Just to make money and spend all of it? I mean YOLO, right?! Well, technically right. But you should always have some sort of financial goal to better your life and something to work toward. Even if they’re small goals.

Here are some examples:

I want to have no debt in the next 12 months.
I want to have a fully funded emergency fund in the next 15 months.
I want to buy my next car in cash.
I want to retire early by 55 years old.
I want to be a millionaire by 50 years old.
I want to help my child go to college without loans.

Pretty easy so take a few minutes and try to think of at least 3 goals and write them out!

7. Cutting cable TV

This tip can easily save you over $100 dollars per month or $1200 dollars per year. And that can be a nice addition to the spending or saving category in your budget.

If you haven’t already done so, it might be time to cut cable TV. A lot of TV services will advertise good prices like 39.99 and 49.99 per month and then jack up their prices year after year. In just a couple of years, you could be paying a ridiculous rate per month when you really don’t have to. Time to cut this out!

8. Cut down on subscription services

Be careful whenever you pick up a new subscription service. Because you may already have a few of them and $4.99-9.99 per month doesn’t really seem like a lot of money. Well, it isn’t until you’ve got 7-10 different subscription services on your bill.

If you have Netflix and Amazon Video, you probably won’t be paying that much per month. It’s fine to have a couple. But if you’ve got Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock TV, Paramount TV, Apple Music, Spotify, Xbox Game Pass, a cloud storage service expense, and 6 other monthly subscription services, you have TOO MANY.

You don’t “need” all of those. Plus, you’re probably spending more than $100 bucks per month. Cut some of your streaming services out and you’ll find some more money in your budget.

9. Negotiate your service expenses

Another fantastic way to find over $100 plus dollars in your budget per month is to negotiate as many of your expenses as possible. So you’ve already cut cable and cut down on your subscription services. Now you can start calling around to cut your costs down on your home internet, car insurance or other insurances, and any other expenses that you can find to negotiate.

10. Packing your lunch

While I was paying off debt, a packed lunch box usually meant that I was saving around $10 dollars or more per day on food. Packing your lunch can easily save you over $100-200 dollars (or more) in your monthly budget.

11. Stop eating out

This tip, and the last one, go hand in hand. The cost of everything is going up. And that means you’re getting hit twice as hard at fast food restaurants since the cost of food is going up for them. They’ve got to make a profit so they charge just a little bit more as well on top of the extra they’re charging you for the rising food costs. This means you should probably just cut out fast food entirely. It’s overpriced AND unhealthy.

If you just absolutely HAVE TO eat out, try to cut back a little bit. I’ve gone down to one meal per week (usually on Monday which is my busiest day of the week). I used to spend $300-400 dollars per month on fast food. But now I try to keep it around $50 bucks a month. If you’re intense with your financial goals, though, that $50 dollars per month is about $600 a year.

12. Meal prepping

Another thing you can do to really help out the budget is meal prepping your food. The key is to make enough food to eat off of for an entire week. You prepare a bunch of meals to eat in a couple of hours (preferably a Sunday afternoon), and you make sure to eat all of that food during the week.

I love meal prepping because it’s normally very cost-effective, it doesn’t take but a couple of hours, the food you make is often healthier, it can save you during the week when things might get crazy, and it will help you save A LOT of money. At a minimum, this could help save you $100 dollars or more per month.

13. Make coffee at home

My wife LOVES Starbucks and other local coffee shops. But it’s costly in your budget. Now I don’t mind if she indulges in some coffee to help “soothe her soul” or whatever else she says when I tell her it’s too expensive, but I mean, the stuff is like $6 bucks per cup. It’s not that much if you only get it once or twice a week like my wife. But that $6 dollars can add up to a lot of money if you’re buying a cup every single day. $6 dollars per day is $180 dollars per month and $2,160 dollars per year.

If you’ve ever heard of the “Latte Factor,” it’s a simple concept that says if you invested what it costs for a latte every single day, it could make you rich. Well guess what? $6 dollars a day invested for 40 years at a 10% rate of return is almost $1.2 million dollars. How do you like that coffee now? My wife would say, “I still love it.” She loves saving money but she loves her coffee, too.

I like Moneyunder30.com’s “Latte Factor Calculator” that you can check out here. That’s how I figured out the number in the paragraph above. Enter your own numbers and find out what your dollar amount per day on food, energy drinks, or other things are costing you.

14. Grocery shop smarter

A common budget buster can easily be the cost of groceries every month. Pair that with insane inflation and your grocery budget could easily double if you don’t carefully watch what’s going on.

And there are A TON of awesome tips for saving at the grocery store, but here are just a quick few:

Shop for store brand items over name brand. You’ll save 25% or more in these items.
A quick trip with no cart usually means you’ll end up with less items. If you need to run in really fast for 2-3 items, skip the cart. You’ll find that you always stick to your list if you have to carry those items (instead of being able to throw a bunch of stuff in the cart).
Say “NO” to extra food you don’t need.
Lastly, don’t grocery shop while hungry. Eat at least a small meal before you shop to avoid hunger buying.

15. Try a cheaper grocery store

If you shop at Harris Teeter, Whole Foods, Lowes Foods, or any place where the prices have been inappropriately inflated due to how “nice” the store is, it’s time to move on. If I can get the same quality food for 50% of the cost at those other stores, that’s a problem.

Change your your routine and try out Aldi, Lidl, Walmart, Food Lion, or any other store that is fairly cheap in your local area. We usually shop at Food Lion and Aldi and keep the grocery budget decently low.

16. Buy clothes from the thrift shop

Now I don’t get everything I buy from thrift shops, but this is a fantastic way to save a BUNCH of money on your clothing. And it’s not just Goodwill that has deals. Their are a lot of local thrift shops opening up all across the country that offer used things at steep discounts.

One local store in Greensboro, NC, offers extremely nice but gently used, name brand clothing for almost 1/10th of the tag price. My wife LOVES that shop. She has probably saved upwards of a thousand dollars or more on clothing there, while only spending a few hundred dollars over the course of a few years.

If you’d like to buy some new clothing for yourself, I’d recommend the following:

Target has very nice clothing at decent prices. If you do shop here for clothes, set a budget limit and try to find the sales.
Walmart has decently nice clothing at relatively cheap prices. I buy a lot of my workout clothes from Walmart.
TJ Maxx, Ross, and Marshall’s all have really great deals on clothing but not always what you’re looking for.

17. Try buying stuff gently used

Clothing isn’t the only thing that you’re able to get used these days. Buying used things isn’t new, but a lot of people don’t realize how many places and online marketplaces offer used stuff.

Here’s a quick list of places where my family buys used stuff:

Goodwill
Yard sales
Craigslist
Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Groups
EBay
Mercari

And there are quite literally hundreds of others of places to buy used everything, from tech gadgets to clothes to whatever you’re into. Buying stuff new is overrated. Get stuff used and save hundreds to thousands per year in your budget.

18. Sell your stuff

One immediate way to give yourself a raise in your budget is to start selling your stuff. Whether you’re purging your home, getting rid of some things that your family doesn’t want, selling off those unneeded recent purchases, paying down debt, or getting your emergency fund completed, this can be a fun way to make $100+ dollars a month for a few months.

As I’m writing this, my wife is currently in selling mode and has already made about $100 bucks this week. Now obviously this isn’t sustainable long-term unless you’re a yard sale flipper, but it can still make you a decent chunk of money depending on how much stuff you have. We’ve made at least $1200-1500 dollars in the last couple of years just selling our stuff.

If you’d like to perfect the art of selling stuff online, check out Gighustlers.com’s post here.

19. Cut your gym membership

Now before I dive into this one, I want you to know that I’m an advocate for being healthy and going to the gym. I try to go 4-5 times a week because I like working out. And I don’t think you should really ever cancel your membership if you actually use. You SHOULD always strive to be healthy and fit.

But if you just absolutely don’t use the gym, or it tends to be a pretty rare occurrence, you probably should go ahead and cancel your membership. Besides, $30 bucks a month is $360 dollars per year that could go towards your financial goals. Again, though, I want you to go to the gym. But don’t just keep it around to make yourself feel good. That’s dumb.

You could also trim down this membership to a cheaper gym if all you do is lift weights or do cardio. Some membership costs are absolutely outrageous to me. I would NEVER pay $50-100 dollars per month to do the same workout that I could do for $15-30 dollars. No way. You shouldn’t either. Cancel that membership or find something cheaper.

20. Lower your cell phone bill

A really great way to save about $50-100 a month or more in your budget is to switch to a different cell phone carrier. There are a lot of big companies like Spectrum and Google getting into the cell phone game and they’re offering the same or similar service (using the same cell phone towers as other established companies) for much lower costs.

We’ve yet to give this a try since we’ve had such great service with Verizon. But as the years go on, the costs have gotten more expensive and their customer service and overall wireless service hasn’t been as good. So we’ve seriously considered switching. If you do this, your service might not be as crazy fast, but you’re also not paying outrageous prices for your cell phone.

21. Reduce energy costs

There are hundreds of ways to lower your home energy costs.

Here are just a couple:

Switching to cheaper lower-wattage light bulbs.
Taking shorter showers.
Using Energy Star products.

If you’d like to see 47 other ways to reduce your home energy costs, check out familyhandyman.com’s post here.

22. Compare gas prices

Gas is expensive these days. With sky high inflation, too, we need to do everything we can to lower whatever costs we can. And that means saving at the gas pump. Hopefully by the time you read this, gas prices have let up. But I’m not feeling too hopeful these days.

One of the best ways to find the cheapest gas is to use the GasBuddy app. This app finds the cheapest gas, the closest gas, or the cheapest gas compared to how close it is to you. I like that feature.

There’s also another app that I like to use called GetUpside. But I’ll talk about that one in the cash back apps tip at #25.

23. Use loyalty cards

Loyalty cards can save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per year in your budget. Loyalty cards usually either give you discounts on items, shop and earn money down the line, or reward points toward free items after a certain amount of money spent.

For example, we use our Food Lion card to get us discounts toward our overall shopping trip and for occasional shop and earn dollars off of your trip after spending certain amounts of money in different food categories.

I also use my Chik Fil A and Chipotle loyalty cards to get a free meal after a certain amount of dollars spent. Now obviously it takes a lot of money to get a free meal, so don’t abuse this. It’s easy to spend $120-180 dollars to get your free meal if you eat out enough. I just buy my 1-2 (at most) fast food meals per week and when my points eventually add up after a few months, I get a free meal.

24. Carry cash

This tip can be a HUGE money saver if you’re not quite as disciplined with your finances. There are numerous studies, including this one here on Fundera.com and this one here, that show that you’re more likely to spend more money with you card than with cash (first study) and that you’re more likely to pay for something if you have a credit card over having cash (second study).

On Fundera.com, the statistics they gathered from Experian credit company show that the average cash purchase is only $22 dollars and the average credit card purchase is $112 dollars! That’s why you should carry cash!

I also like this post here on art of manliness.com called, “5 Reasons a Man Should Still Carry Cash,” that outlines a couple of reasons why it’s important to still carry at least a little bit of cash on you.

25. Use cash back apps

Cash back apps can be pretty awesome if you know which ones are actually worth using. Some of them, including money-making survey apps, are just huge time wasters and you’ll barely make anything from numerous hours spent on them.

Some good cash back apps include:

GetUpside – I love GetUpside. This app gives you get cash back on your gas and it also helps you find the cheapest gas. You don’t make a whole lot of money overall, but I’ve earned almost $400 dollars on this over about two years of use. You can also cash out every $15 dollars.

Ibotta – a great app that gives you cash back after you shop for groceries and upload your receipts. Again, you’re not earning that much, but my wife has earned almost $100 bucks and you can cash out every $20 dollars.

Rakuten – this app used to be called Ebates and lets you earn some cash back when you shop online on various different stores. They claim to offer cash back at 3,500 online stores and a 1-3% cash back percentage on qualifying purchases.

Overall, you may not earn that much money back, but they could be a decent way to make a little bit of extra dough every so often. So why not?

26. Use coupons

If you can still find decent coupons, this can be a good way to save an extra $20-30 dollars or more per shopping trip. We don’t use coupons as much anymore because all of the company coupons kind of suck, but we still look and find coupons every once in a while. We used to coupon all the time, but the amount given in coupons these days has been much less. Still a good option, though.

27. Try the No-Spend Challenge!

The no-spend challenge is freaking awesome. It’s pretty tough, but if you can do a few weeks or a few months, this could be a crazy way to save A LOT of money!

The no-spend challenge is simple and is just what the name implies: no spending (aside from normally due bills and groceries to eat). This challenge is something that you can do daily, weekly, or monthly and is a great way to work out your frugal muscle.

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.

Now, when can I do the no-spend challenge? Anytime you want! 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 extra money do you want to have in your budget?!

If you’d like to learn more about the no spend challenge, check out this post here on the savvy sparrow.com.

28. take advantage of the library

I LOVE the library because – as long as you return stuff on time – everything that you can rent is FREE. Free books, audiobooks, ebooks, Books on tape, DVDs, and many other things. This can save you hundreds of dollars per year if you take advantage of your local library.

29. find free or cheap things to do in your city

If you simply Google, “free things to do in (your city),” or, “cheap things to do in (your city),” you will get a decent list of free or cheap things to do that won’t break the budget.

Also, if you have an awesome local zoo, children’s museum, or science center, I highly recommend getting a season pass if you have kids. This is going to cost you a little bit up front, but can be something really fun to do a bunch of times throughout the year and usually pays for itself in about 3-4 visits. We buy the yearly pass every year at the Greensboro Science Center and it is SO worth the price.

30. try to find free or cheap hobbies

Another great way to save some money in your budget is to find free or cheap hobbies. One of my favorite things to do is playing disc golf. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s similar to ball golf, except you use a frisbee and a metal basket instead.

All you need to play is a couple of discs, a bag, and you’re good to go. Almost all the courses are free and it’s super fun. I liked it so much that I ended up building a whole website about disc golf. Check it out below ⬇️:

DiscgolfNOW.com

Other cheap hobbies include:

Fishing
Archery
Gardening
Photography and…
Cooking

Cut out the expensive hobbies and save yourself some money in your budget!

31. DIY everything

If you’re really into saving money, you need to learn how to do everything yourself. From fixing things in your home to repairing holes in clothes to making gifts, learning how to DIY (Do It Yourself) can save you A LOT of money!

Here are a couple of things that we have DIY’d in the last year:

Front headlight: Dodge gave us a quote of $60 dollars for the headlight and $130 for the installation of a single bulb. I paid $30 for the headlight and did it myself, in 5 minutes, for free.
Toilet fill valve: the plumber quoted us a couple hundred dollars and so we bought the universal fill valve at Lowes for like $15 dollars and replaced it ourselves in about an hour.
Homemade gifts and baked gifts: my wife loves making gifts and baking stuff for people as gifts. This has saved us hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars over the years.

Whenever we can DIY something to save a little money, we try to do it!

32. Make gifts (or don’t buy them!)

If you’re the person that always buys gifts for every single friend and family member, it might be time to stop doing that. With everything getting more expensive these days, it’s tough to buy a decent gift under $20 dollars. Multiply that times 10-15 people and that’s $200-300 dollars a year. If you want to keep doing this, that’s fine. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that people don’t care as much about gifts as they do contact, communication, and time spent together.

If you have a large family, consider doing a Secret Santa during Christmas time or only buying gifts for the kids of your family members. Because parents don’t really need gifts. I would rather my son get a few gifts and watch his joy and happiness over me getting a gift and him only getting a single gift.

So don’t fall into the gift trap.

33. Use dryer balls when drying clothes

One way we’ve cut down a few dollars in our budget is by using dryer balls in our laundry. These balls work similar to dryer sheets without the ongoing costs and added chemicals that dryer sheets produce.

Dryer balls cost about 10-12 dollars on Amazon and usually start saving you money in only a couple of months of weekly use. And they last for a LONG time. We’ve had some for two years now that still function well. All you have to do is add some essential oils onto the ball and they will scent your clothes however you want them to.

Grab the dryer balls that we use here on Amazon.

34. Cut budget categories down by a few dollars each

One way that I’ve personally tried to save extra money in my budget is by cutting certain categories down by a few dollars each month. I don’t always do this for every single thing in the budget. But I try to focus on a few different categories each month. For example, the energy bills, my portion of the spending category, and the fast food budget.

I just try to spend a little bit less in each of the categories that I’ve highlighted for the month. These might be categories that we went over a little bit in how much we spent or they could be categories that we’re just trying to cut back on a little bit.

When costs start going up, and I’ve had to adjust our budget accordingly, we will start looking at all the categories that have gone up due to inflation and try to see how we can cut those back down. It’s tough, but all you can do is try.

35. give yourself a “personal spending” category

One easy way to not only help out your personal budget, but keep yourself from overspending, is to give yourself a “personal spending” category. I add this into my budget every single month now so that my wife and I can use it to buy anything we want with no questions asked (as long as it is within the allotted amount of money).

Depending on how much we make in that given month, it may be $150-300 dollars. Now, we’ve paid off all of our debt and are being very intentional with what we make, so it’s perfectly acceptable to do this. If you’re deeply in debt, I would give yourself a small amount to spend and use everything else to pay down debt.

36. Say “NO!”

“NO!” is one of the most powerful words in the whole world. It’s also one of the absolute least used words when it comes to most people’s poor personal finance. If more people learned how to say, “NO!,” to themselves, they would be in a much better spot financially speaking. Because most people don’t say this to themselves whenever they want to buy something. A lot of people just buy what they want all the time and leave themselves broke. It’s pretty sad.

Instead, if you learn to be extremely disciplined with your money, and tell yourself, “NO!,” more often, you can achieve ALL of your financial goals and be able to buy whatever you want down the road.

“Live like no one else so that later you can live like no one else.” -Dave Ramsey

37. Always remember to “live below your means”

If you don’t do anything else right financially, simply living below your means and saving up your money for your entire life could probably net you a decent nest egg. But it’s extremely important to live below your means so that you can hit your financial goals and perfect your budget. Living below your means is a perfect way to end this post because it’s perfect for helping you find more money in your personal budget.

Now imagine if you lived below your means, perfected your budget, AND practiced the other 15 financial lessons in this post here on my site!

You don’t need to be perfect

Your budget doesn’t have to be perfect for you to achieve all of your financial goals. You just simply need to do a budget and do the best you can with it. Save what you can, make sure your debt is all paid off, live below your means, and always be intentional with your money. If you do those couple of things, paired with good budgeting, you’ll surely achieve all of your financial goals and be able to live the life you want. I know that you can do it!