There are many ways you can trim your spending and live a happy and cheap life. To be financially stable, you need to save more money and spend less money. Limiting your expenses can help you in many ways like you can pay your debt quickly, you can invest more money and more. So you should try to limit your expenses so that you are not forced to take debts at the end of the month and you do not have to go for more than one job to live a happy life.
Now let’s about some of the ideas that could help you to trim your spending,

1 Track Your Spending

You cannot trim your expenses if you do not know where you are spending them. So the first thing you need to do is that you have to track your expenses for a month. By this you would be able to know where you are spending your money and from where you can cut off some expenses. You can do this on a simple piece of paper or could take help from online portals like Google Sheets or apps. But you must make sure you write down every dollar you spend. After that, you need to classify your expenses in to different types such as Food expenses, utility expenses, insurance expenses, cellphone expenses etc. By this you will be able to know in which category you are spending the most money.

2 Free Cellphone Service

Now-a-days one of the important section of the budget is the cellphone service. It may take a hundred of dollars for a cell phone service. But you do not have to worry about that because I have some free alternatives for your cell phone packages. When you will switch to a prepaid cellphone plan, you will be able to save a lot money every month. You will get more data by paying less amount in the prepaid plan.

A company named as FreedomPop gives you 500 MB of data, 500 minutes of talk time and 500 texts for free. You heard it right, you can get this all for free. However if you need more data or minutes then you will have to pay for it. Another popular alternative is Republic Wireless and with this company you can get unlimited talk time and texts for only $15. Although you won’t get any data in this amount but if you need so then you can get it in an extra $5.
If you want to upgrade or replace you smartphone, do not hurry to buy a new one but try to buy a used one in a good condition. Sites like Craigslist, Gazelle and eBay can help you to find a good one for yourself.

3 Spend less on your Rent

In our budget, one of the biggest cost is of the rent we pay for our house. So if you want to live cheaply you need to find some ways that will help you to save money on them. One of them is to live with friends and family. This will help you to split up the rent expense and you will be able to pay less and save more. Another way to save money on rent is to rent your bedroom, couch, free room or basement on Airbnb. By becoming an Airbnb host you can earn a good amount of money every month that you can pay for your rent. By this simple trick you will be spending less from your regular income.

4 Find the Cheapest Insurance Provider

One of the mistakes we do is that we do not consult and look for a better insurance option when we shop for insurance and end up in buying an insurance that is hard to pay. So this might be the case with you, as you could be paying more to your car insurance company or to your home insurance. Whether the case is, you can still save money on it. Gabi insurance company helps people to get quotes from a number of companies for auto and home insurance and you can then buy the cheapest that you need. According to a source, Gabi helps it users to save more than $800 a year. You can easily get a lower rate here and one of the reason to use Gabi is that it is absolutely free. You will not pay for any consultation.

5 Cancel your Cable TV Subscription

One of the most common trimming to save money is to cancel your cable TV subscription. You do not need to pay a big amount of money every month to your cable TV service provider. There are many cheap alternatives for cable TV that could be used. You can still have a source of entertainment for a much cheaper price.
There are many alternatives for cable TV and one of the cheapest is Sling TV. For only $20, you can have access to a limited number of channels like ESPN, AMC and Disney. Another cheap alternative for cable TV is Hulu with Live TV and it costs only $39.99 a month on Hulu with Live TV. There are certain more options available too and you can have a cheap alternative to cable TV as low as $8 per month.

6 Saving from your Car

If you do not use your car on regular intervals, then instead of parking it in the garage you should make them a source of income. You can rent out your free car at Turo, by this you will be able to add up some income and you can then pay for your car debt or insurance from the income from the car. With Turo, you do not have to worry about your car because Turo provides 24 hours road side assistance and a liability coverage of $1 Million.
On the other hand, if you are an owner of more than one car, then you should sell your others cars that are not in need. With the passage of time the value of car goes down and it cannot be the same as it was in the past. So instead of filling up your garage sell your those cars that are not in use.

7 Save Your Bonus and Pay Raise

One of the common mistakes that people do is that they increase their spending whenever they get a bonus or a pay raise. This is very dangerous for your savings habits and it can lure to spend more money. So if you want to live cheaply, whenever you get a pay raise or bonus, save that money. Suppose you earn a $100 in a week and you get a pay raise of $20 a week so instead of spending your $20. Use that money to pay your debt or if you are not in debt, put that money in to saving or investing accounts. By using the right banks you can increase the amount of money you earn on your deposits. So look for the bank with the highest interest rates, you can find many on the internet.

8 Use Money Saving Apps

One of the methods to save more money is to use the online money saving portals. There are a number of online apps and websites that help you to get coupons and use them digitally. Some of the apps pay you cashback and you can also avail a number of offers. By using these apps you can use a hundred of dollars on grocery and other expenses. You can use apps like Rakuten, Ibotta and Honey.

9 Buy Used Items

You do not need to buy brand new items all the time and you save a lot of money by buying used items. One of the best place to find used items in good condition is Craigslist. Although there are other sites like LetGo and Facebook Marketplace. You can buy things like furniture, vehicles, household items etc on these sites. People usually sell these things with a much lower price than of a new one.

So these were some of the simple and legit ideas that will help you to live cheaply and keep your costs low. These methods are very simple and all you need is a firm determination to follow these. Once you start spending less you will be able to save more money and you can reach your financial goal in a short time. Do comment in the comment section below and also share your experience of saving money from these ideas.

The post 9 Legit Ideas to Live Cheaply and Keep the Costs Low first appeared on FreebieRush.