15 Money Saving Tricks: Clever Ways to Grow Your Savings by $6,000 This Year

Life happens. Every day, we face a multitude of challenges and unfortunate events.

According to a recent study by Bankrate, only 39% of Americans can cover a $1,000 emergency. The situation is dire and sad.

Here are 15 easy tricks that will help you save more than $6,000 this year.

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Millions of people are currently cutting the cable and moving to streaming services. Companies like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video have hundreds of millions of subscribers.

A study done in 2016 showed that 20% of people subscribe to multiple streaming services with the average person spending $10 a month on each service.

Subscribing to multiple streaming services makes sense. Who doesn’t want to watch House of Cards on Netflix, Handmaid tales on Hulu, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime?

Here is a solution. Team up with three friends or family members and subscribe to each of these services.

By doing this, you will be able to save $10 every month or $120 every year.

Make Your Own Coffee

An average cup of coffee at Starbucks costs about $4.

What you might not know is how cheap it is to prepare the coffee. In fact, the real value of the cup of coffee is less than 30 cents. Another thing is, the cup of coffee you buy at Starbucks is not different from the one you make at home.

So, if you make one cup of coffee every day, doing this will save you $1,460 every year.

Buy Cheap Wine

A study done in 2012 found that more than 60% of Americans buy wine. Another one in 2015 found that millennials are responsible for 50% of all wines bought in the country.

The average price of a bottle of wine is $37. However, studies show that the cost of wine does not determine its quality.

In fact, a study by the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) found that most cheap wines are better than most premium ones.

So, if you buy one bottle of wine every month for $37, you spend about $445 annually. If you decide to pay the recommended $15 for the same quantity, you will spend $180 and save $265.

Do your House Cleaning

We all hate cleaning our houses and doing the errands. To solve this challenge, companies like Angie’s List and TaskRabbit help us by providing thousands of people to do these tasks.

The average price of cleaning an average family home is about $120.

Let’s face it. If you want to save money, cleaning your house is not a difficult task. In fact, it takes less than an hour to do a thorough cleaning for an average home.

Therefore, if you hire these services once per month, you spend about $1440 every year. Doing your own cleaning can help you save on these costs.

Use AirBnB when Travelling

Hotel rooms are expensive. For example, the average price of a hotel room in New York is about $263 while that of San Francisco is about $273.

What value do you get for all that money?

If you are a regular or occasional traveler, you can save a lot of money when you decide to use AirBnb for your accommodations. In Airbnb, the average price of a spacious room or house in New York is $200, and that of San Francisco is $190. If you do your research well, you can book these rooms for much lower prices.
So, if you travel to New York once every year, using an Airbnb can save you more than $60.

Use Uberpool

The average distance of an Uber ride is about 12 miles.

So, when you are making these trips, I doubt whether comfort and luxury are your top priorities. You simply want to arrive at your preferred destination faster.

In most cities, Uber provides several packages such as Uber Pool, Uber X, Uber X VIP, Uber XL, Uber Black, and Uber SUV.

When you want to move from One World Trade Center to Trump Tower, an Uber Pool ride will cost you about $14 while an Uber SUV will cost you $73.

Do you really need an Uber SUV for this distance?

Therefore, if you take this trip once a month, using the Uber Pool will save you more than $700 annually.

Do your Groceries

Meal Kit companies are all over. What a typical marketing pitch companies like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron make is that using their services is cheaper than doing your own groceries.

On average, Blue Apron charges customers $10 per meal. A family plan option costs $60 for two recipes per week, which translates to $240 a month.

According to the USDA, a family of four with a moderate cost plan spends about $850 a month on food. This shows that in total, buying your own groceries will save you thousands of dollars every year.

Use Your Bank’s ATM

How many times do you withdraw money from your bank? Every time you do it, ensure that you use an ATM provided by your bank.

On average, the price of withdrawing funds from an off-network ATM is about $4.57. On the other hand, using your bank’s ATM will cost less than a dollar to withdraw money. Some banks offer these withdrawals for free.

Therefore, if you use your bank’s ATM once per month instead of an off-network ATM, you will save more than $50 per year on these costs.

Wash Your Car

Every year, more than 17 million cars are sold in this country. According to the Census Bureau, Americans spend more than $5.8 billion every year at car wash businesses every year. An average wash costs about $10.

Therefore, if you take your car to a car wash three times every month, you spend about $30.

If you are on a budget, you can save all this money by washing your car yourself. On average, you will take less than 30 minutes to do a good wash.

Doing this will save you $360 every year.

Give up the Lottery

We all want to win the lottery. On average, Americans spend more than $80 billion every year trying their luck. An average adult spends more than $300 every year on lotteries.

Let’s face it. Your chances of winning in lottery are slim. Statisticians put the number at one is to 292 million people.
Just give it up and save or invest the $300.

Wait Before You Buy a Phone

Smartphone companies like Apple and Samsung have almost become religious organizations to many people.

Every year when Apple launches its new iPhones, many people wait in line for hours to be the first buyers. Others pay thousands of dollars for people to wait for them.

Fact is, you can buy the same phone a few months after launch and save money.

For example, when Samsung launched the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, it listed the price at $950. Three months after the launch, you can buy the same phone for $650 on Amazon. That is a whopping $300 saving.

Use Amazon Prime

Amazon has become the biggest shopping company in the country. People love it for the variety, pricing, and speed of delivery.

Amazon offers Amazon Prime, a service that costs $12 a month. If you are an avid Amazon user, paying for this service will save you a lot.

For example, it will save you hundreds of dollars in shipping cost, music, and movies. On music, if you are a prime subscriber, it will cost you $2 less than when you are not a subscriber. Annually, that is a $24 saving, and you don’t have to subscribe to other music streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify.

Don’t Pay Trading Commissions

If you are among the 52% of Americans who invest in the stock market, you likely spend more than $4.50 per every trade. If you buy stocks or ETFs three times per month, that is $13.5 or $162 annually.

Luckily, there is a way of avoiding paying all these funds on commissions.

A company like Robinhood provides investing services similar to those offered by other brokers for free for an unlimited number of trades.

Using this company will save you, $162 annually and potentially make you more money since you will be investing more times.

Go for Unbranded Products

Assume you are given two similar t-shirts. One is unbranded, while another one has a Hugo Boss logo. The unbranded t-shirt sells for $20 while the Hugo Boss t-shirt sells for $50. Which one will you choose?

A good number of people will go for the $50 t-shirt. The assumption is that the Hugo Boss t-shirt is better in quality than the unbranded one.

This assumption is mostly wrong. Remember, most t-shirt companies source their products from Asia, and the quality is usually the same.

Studies have shown that buying unbranded products can save you more than 25% of the total cost.

Cancel Subscriptions you Rarely Use

Online companies use a trick to get you sign up. They offer you a free monthly trial.

The problem is, most people forget to press the unsubscribe button when they finish their trial. For example, many people will start a free trial for WWE during the WrestleMania event in April. After this, the subscription costs $10 a month.

If you don’t unsubscribe, it will cost you $120 annually for a service you don’t use.

To solve this problem, you can use a company like Trim, which helps you manage your subscriptions.

Bottom Line

In total, using this strategy will save you more than $6,000 every year without affecting the quality of your life.