Most people wish they could retire early and enjoy their money when they’re still young. We all do right?
However, the majority don’t know where to start. A solid retirement plan doesn’t have to start with millions of dollars. The best way to save up is to start today with as much you have and let the miracle of compound interest do it’s thing for you.
This guide gives you 5 ways to get you closer to early retirement by saving more money each week.
Save More Each Week and Retire Early
1. Tighten Your Shopping List
Going out grocery shopping can be a fulfilling experience until you overshoot your budget. The best way to avoid overspending is to create a weekly budget.
a. Stick to Your Budget – Make a list of essentials and go straight to the items you need to buy. No matter how tempting it is, don’t buy non-essentials.
b. Look for discounts – Further, always check for discounts when grocery shopping. Use an app like Catch to help you know when there are offers in your favorite shops.
c. Can your own food – You can also avoid buying canned foods. Why don’t you shred your own lettuce and freeze it?
2. Lower Your Bills and Other Costs
The money you spend on subscriptions and other costs could be taking up most of your income. Monitoring this money weekly could save you some money to put into your retirement fund.
a. Phone bill – If your monthly phone bill, like most Australians, is about $29 and you’re looking to cut down this cost, you could shop around for a cheaper phone plan. For instance, you could move to a plan under $20 a month and save the extra $9.
b. Internet subscriptions – On average, family’s spend $69 monthly in Australia hence $828 yearly. You can cut down on this expenditure by decreasing your internet speed or finding a better provider.
On days when you’re checking mail or other light surfing, decreasing the speed could shave some money off your weekly expenditure.
c. Transport costs – If you want to find money to put in your early retirement fund, spend less on petrol.
Several petrol hacks can save you more money. You can use fuel vouchers. Coles, for instance, gives you discounts of up to $0.12 per litre. All you have to do is sign up for membership.
You can also carpool to work with friends or colleagues and save the money you could have spent on petrol.
Besides, you can save money by riding or walking to the office on some days if you don’t live far from work.
3. Monitor Eating Out Habits
a. Carry a packed lunch
As fun as eating out everyday sounds, it can dent your pocket, leaving you with nothing to save.
Suppose you buy food for $4 daily, that comes to $20 per week. In a year, you could be spending $1,040 on lunches.
What if you spend half of this amount on packed lunch per year? You would have at least $500 to save towards your early retirement.
What’s stopping you from carrying food from home? You could have good reasons like the morning rush hour or not having enough food to pack.
But, you can still hack this by packing your meals the previous day. Planning will also give you time to prepare separate meals daily to avoid monotony.
b. Take advantage of office meals
If you work in an office that offers you food and beverages, eat at work. Stepping out to eat with your colleagues or ordering pizza will set you back a few dollars unnecessarily.
On the days you don’t like what’s on the menu, carry packed lunch.
4. Switch to Paying with Cash
It may not be practical to pay for everything in cash. However, there are some categories where you can avoid credit or debit card payments.
Why cash? If you’re an impulse buyer, card payments make it look like you have more money to spend than you do.
How to go about it:
Withdraw the cash from your account
For the cash-only system to work, you should withdraw the money from your account at the beginning of the month or payday. If it helps, request the teller to give notes of $10s or more, which are easy to separate.
Use the envelope system
At the beginning of every week, you can separate the money you need into different labeled envelopes.
Remember that you must stick to the amount in those envelopes because you can’t draw money from another category once it runs out.
Change accordingly
To ensure the system works efficiently, monitor your envelopes at the end of every week. You might find that the grocery envelope always has extra while you never have enough for gas.
This means you need more on the gas side and less for the grocery budget.
5. DIY Hacks
DIYs not only teach you some valuable skills but can also help you save more money weekly and retire early.
Some of the things for which you call a technician in your house, you can quickly fix.
Additionally, there are cool everyday use things you can learn how to make on Pinterest.
Some examples include self-care hacks. It’s nice to go to the spa or salon once in a while, but you can also do it yourself at home.
Women can spend an average of $700 monthly on beauty expenses which works out to $175 a week. Buying some quality beauty products online can still help you do the job more inexpensively.
You can also make some laundry detergent and avoid those costly trips to the store. For instance, using vinegar and water to clean glass can save you from buying a $3 product in the supermarket.
So, there are a few holes on your wall? Instead of calling your handyman, cut out the ruined sections and replace them. Youtube has the answer to almost everything.
Retire Early the Smart Way
You don’t have to work for years until retirement. With simple adjustments to your life, we’ve shown you 5 ways to get you closer to early retirement by saving more money each week. Every week you put aside more money, compound interest will affect that cash and increase its value over time.
You can start by monitoring your shopping list. Are you buying non-essentials and going for brand names? It’s time to stick to your budget.
Also, if your other house bills are unnecessarily high, being frugal can help you retire early. Monitor your phone and internet bills.
On top of that, learn some DIY skills that will help you save more.
Early retirement isn’t an elusive dream, it’s achievable, and you can do it.
