Do you struggle to save money or find it unmotivated to delay your spending satisfaction just to sock away a few bucks? I can definitely relate and I sometimes have this same struggle with my savings too. It’s so difficult to save day in and day out and having to wait almost forever to spend some of your savings.
 

To get over this lack of motivation hump, I needed to find some simple, creative and fun ways to help me stay on-track to consistently save money. By composing this list of money saving tips, I am actually motivated and am curious to see how much money I can save with each idea. Hopefully, you’ll find a few of these money savings tips useful to boost your savings too.

10) The Extra Change Coin Jar

Before I discovered the usefulness of credit cards and their wonderful rewards, I was mostly using cash for my purchases. Whenever I make a purchase, I would hate to be rummaging through my pocket to see if I have the exact change and hold up the line. As a result, I would be carrying a pocket of change almost every day. This lead me to keep the extra change coin jar in my office and just dump all the changes in there whenever I get home.
 

From time to time, I would sit down in my office and just tally the change in the coin jar just for fun. To my surprise, I was able to find a couple hundred dollars in change a few times. If you still prefer to use cash over credit/debit card for your purchases, this can be a fun way to boost your savings.

9) Saving Your Favourite Bills

Do you have a favourite bill that you like? It can be any bills like the $5, $10, $20 or even the $50 bill. If you do have a favourite, then save at least one of those bills in an envelope whenever it comes into your possession. Every three months or so, take it to your bank and deposit the bills into your savings account. Let see how much money you can save in a year.
 

I used to be obsessed with mint condition bills or bills that are no longer circulated. Whenever those bills came in my possession, I was often tempted to save all of them. Till this day, I still have a few bills that are in collectible condition and are in consecutive sequences. I stopped collecting/saving them because I couldn’t deposit them into my bank account to at least earn some interest.

8) Rounding Up Your Purchases

In recent years, some of the banks have become quite creative to encourage their customers to save. Whenever you make a purchase on your credit or debit card, they can round up your purchase to help you save money. The amount that they round up will be automatically deposited into your savings account.
 

You can set this roundup amount to the next dollar or five dollars or even ten dollars if you really want to save more money. If you want to either cut down on your shopping habits or seamlessly save money, give this creative money saving tip a try.

7) The Spaving Account

The word Spaving comes from the combination of spending and saving. I came across this wonderful saving idea from J. Money at Budgets Are Sexy. In essence, a Spaving is money that you would have spent anyway, but somehow you didn’t spend it and end up saving it.
 

Here is an example of Spaving. Let’s say that one day, you are on your way to lunch. Suddenly, you bump into a good friend and decided to have lunch together. When the bill came, your friend offered to pay for your lunch. As a result, you saved the lunch money that you would have spent it if you didn’t meet your friend that day. If you deposit that amount of money into your savings account, it becomes your Spaving.

6) Save Your Credit Card Rewards

Most of the credit cards out there have some types of rewards. It’s either cash back, reward points or travel miles that have monetary values. When you charge your purchases on your credit card, you’ll earn a percentage of your purchases. To encourage consumers to use their credit cards, many credit card issuers don’t charge an annual fee and offer lots of extra perks and rewards.
 

This saving method is an effortless way to save as you don’t have to do anything extra. For me, I charge the majority of my purchases to my credit cards to earn as many points and cash back as I can. The caveat is that you have to always pay your bills on time and in full every month. If you are not, then no points or rewards are worth the interest that you are paying on the balance of your purchases. Don’t use a credit card if you can’t bill your bills in full every month.

5) The Good Money Habit Jar

Have you heard of the “swearing jar”? I am sure most of us had encountered it at some point in our lives. If you haven’t, then it’s a pretty simple concept. It’s sort of a punishment for the person that has a foul mouth. Every time this person swears, he/she has to put some money into the jar. This will discourage that person from swearing.
 

The concept of the good money habit jar is very similar to the swearing jar. I just like to call it the good money habit jar because I want to provide positive reinforcements instead of punishments. This concept will help you save money regardless if you are good at it or not.
 

For the good money habit jar, you’ll have to choose an activity that you need to improve upon (ie, stop smoking, no shopping, late bill payment, etc.). Everytime that you conduct that activity, you’ll have to put money in the jar to remind yourself that you need to do better. Now you’re saving money. If you cease to conduct that activity, you’ll be saving money too because that activity cost you money. Win-win.

4) Setting Goals

How would you like to buy whatever you want or go on that awesome vacation without feeling guilty about the cost? It’s pretty easy, if you set a goal to save for whatever you want and pay for it with your saving rather than using debt for the purchase, you don’t have to feel guilty at all.
 

If you’ve always wanted to go on that luxury cruise, it can be done. Find out what the cost is, set your saving goal and start saving. Once you’ve reached that goal, you can start booking that cruise and enjoy. It’s that simple. Nothing is more rewarding than to be able to save for something and being able to enjoy it without going into debt.

3) The Random Fun Fund

If you want to have some fun, surprise and challenge yourself to save, try my “Random Fun Fund” saving method. First, choose a fun activity that you want to do, like going to a football game, a concert, a short getaway or whatever activity that you want to do. You get to spend the Random Fun Fund on this activity once your fund is able to pay for it.
 

So how do you build up this fund? Let’s say that your activity costs about $1,000, and the goal is to do this activity within the next year. So you choose a minimum and a maximum amount that you can easily save per day. Taking this example, I’ll pick a minimum of $3 and a maximum of $10 per day. So within a year, you’ll save at least $1,095 (= $3 * 365) or a maximum of $3,650 (= $10 * 365).
 

Here comes the fun part. On a daily basis, you’ll randomly generate a number between your minimum and maximum amount. Whatever random number you get, you save that amount that day. If doing it daily is too much, you can pick one day of the week and just generate seven random numbers and save the amount. In a year, you’ll be guaranteed to be able to afford whatever fun activity that you wanted to do.

2) The Allowance

When I was young, I rarely receive an allowance because money was pretty tight in my family. As an adult, I felt a little deprived of the little things and happiness that money can buy when I was a kid. To make it up, I can give myself an allowance with my own money. This money, I can set aside to do whatever I please or I can save it so that I can one day give myself a huge allowance. You can definitely feel like a kid again and get to spend this worry-free money once you saved for a year or two.
 

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1) Pay Yourself First

Last, but not least, hands down the best way to save is to pay yourself first. This is the most efficient and effective way to save and your money will grow and grow over time. All you have to do is allocate a small percentage of your pay (start with 1%) and direct it to your saving or retirement account. Once you are comfortable with not having access to that money, slowly increase the saving percentage. In a few years, you’ll be saving thousands or even tens of thousands.

My Two Cents

Saving money doesn’t have to be a chore. It can be fun and exciting if you find the right motivators and methods to save. Try one or two or as many of these money saving tips as you want. You’ve nothing to lose but everything to gain.
 

So readers, which of these ten money saving tips is the most motivating for you to save? Do you have any motivating money saving tips that you can share?