11 Easy Ways to Save $50 per month
Budgeting and saving money isn’t a race; it is a marathon. We are in a lifetime marathon to budget and use our money wisely.
Sometimes, we realize we need just a bit extra in our budget. Whether you just want another $50 per month to put into savings or need a bigger grocery budget, there are plenty of ways to save $50 each month.
Most of these methods I have personally tried with positive results. While not all of save $50 by themselves, you should pick one or two to try. Together, most of them will save you $50 over a span of time. Mind you, some of them mean you have to wait for the following month to see the results. That’s ok; it is a marathon!
Let’s start with one of the most obvious choices:
- Cut Out Cable: If you have yet to try this, cutting cable can save you a boatload of money each year. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu are three of the most popular streaming choices. I bet you won’t even miss it! Cutting cable can save you between $50 and $100 per month, equaling a yearly savings of $600 to $1,200. Is cable really worth it?
One of the places people can easily find money is their grocery budget. Each week, we tend to buy a bit more than we logistically need, but that helps on the weeks when the budget is thinner.
Ways to Save $50 per Month
- Go Meatless Once a Week: I’m a total meat and potatoes type girl, but I understand that meat costs money. Ground beef can cost up to $6 per pound, depending on your location and source. Ground turkey typically is close to $4 per pound. I’m not saying go crazy with some vegan meal, requiring you to buy different ingredients. Instead of having meat sauce with your spaghetti, eliminate the meat. Replace the ground beef in sloppy joes with lentils (the texture is the same). Depending on the cost in your area, going meatless once a week can save you between $16 and $24.
- Make Your Own Yogurt: This task can seem daunting. Is it truly possible to make your own yogurt? Absolutely! While you can use an Instant Pot, all you really need is a crockpot. The cost for your first batch will be the cost of a gallon of milk and a small tub of plain yogurt, for the starter. Now, you are ready to make yogurt! Flavor it with fruit, honey, maple syrup or jam. We eat a lot of yogurt, so this equals a savings of $40 per month!
- Buy in Bulk: I am a believer in buying bulk. We love Costco. Take a good look at what your family eats on a regular basis. Make sure you know the price per unit (ounces or pounds, for example) of the item you typically buy at your store. Then, go to Costco or Sam’s Club. Remember, you have to be able to use all of the food or it is a waste of money. However, there are plenty of deals for everyone. We purchase 3 pounds of lunchmeat for $10. The same price at the store would equal $18 to $20. It is a small savings on ONE ITEM. Shopping in bulk easily saves us $30 to $50 per month.
- Start a Small Garden: If you’ve never gardened, it can seem intimidating, but it really isn’t! Pick three or four of your favorite veggies, and set out to grow them. Learn how to preserve! For the last five years, our family preserved all of our tomato based products (sauces, diced tomatoes, soups) from the tomatoes we grew. It is an estimated savings of $200, and it can be even higher the more you grow.
The way we live our life costs money. While you don’t need to make HUGE changes to save $50, pairing a few of these together will increase your budget in a big way! Of course, you may live a frugal life already and these may not apply to you.
- Buy a Reusable Coffee Cup: There is no reason to purchase coffee while you are out if you know you will buy it anyway. A spur of the moment cup is one thing; a planned purchase is just silly. A reusable cup costs around $5 and lasts a lifetime. If you purchase 3 cups of coffee at $2 each per week, that is $6 a week, $24 a month and $288 a year. I know you can find other ways to spend that money.
- Hang Clothes to Dry: I once did an experiment. I line dried every single thing in the summer to see if it would reduce my extremely high electric budget. Can you imagine my shock when my bill was $50 lower than the previous year and month? I nearly fell out of my seat. Not only does hanging clothes help to preserve your clothes for years to come reducing your clothing budget, it also decreases your electric bill. For most people, one load of drying costs $.75. That doesn’t seem expensive until you are drying 15 to 20 loads a week!
- Eat Out Only Once Per Month: I would tell you not to eat out at all, but I know that doesn’t work for our family. We love to treat ourselves and eat out, or even order in. We set a budget when we go out and make sure we don’t go over. Going out only once will save you between $50 to $150 a month, depending on how often you eat out!
- Adopt a Use It Up Attitude: Attitude is half of the battle, and one of the best ways you can save money is to change your attitude. Don’t plan to go buy things unless absolutely necessary. What do you have around you that you can use to solve your issue? It takes ingenuity and creativity, but it is worth the savings. Estimating the savings for a use it up attitude is hard, but I can say we easily save $20 to $40 a month just by being creative and smart. The first choice should NOT be to run to the store.
- Buy Memberships: Fun is important, but you want to save as much money as possible. I am a huge believer in buying memberships. For example, find out if a local lake has a membership. Ours is $130 per year. We would pay $15 to enter and swim each time, but we can go more than once a week. It pays for itself after 8 visits. Do you love the zoo? Buy a membership and pack a lunch! You can save over $100 a year by using memberships. Our lake membership saves us $45 a month after the first 8 visits.
- Reusable Products: We mentioned using a reusable cup, but all reusable products save money after a few uses. Paper towels cost around $5 each payday, so $10 a month. That leads to $120 a year in paper towels. Two packs of kitchen towels costs $8. No comparison! Cloth diapers saved us over $700. That is a serious savings. Do you love k-cups? You can spend $16 a month on k-cups or buy a reusable one for $5. Do you see the trend? Reusable products can save you over $30 a month.
Saving money is about changing a habit or lifestyle. You need to think about your personal family and spending. One or two of these things could easily save you more than $50.
What is your favorite way to save money? Let me know in the comments!
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Great article! There are so many ways to save money every month! We shop at Costco for some things which I find to be way cheaper there and then the grocery store for other items that we don’t use as much. I’ve also cut out cable and my family barely misses it.
Great ideas for saving. And though saving a little bit may not seem like much, it really does add up quickly!
My best tip is to stay home. Make your home a place where the family loves to be, and stay there more often to enjoy it and each other. If you’re not out and about, it’s harder to make those last minute impulse buys.
Great ideas! Yogurt is expensive, I didn’t even know you could easily make your own! 🙈 thanks for sharing!
Great ideas. We have multiple reusable coffee mugs. Not only is it cheaper but you can make sure you like the flavor. I also like the meatless idea. I too am a meat and potatoes girl but I am sure I can find ways to eliminate it once a week.
So many good ideas here. I think cutting down the eating out (and ordering in will help). I’ve also been on a quest to make more vegetarian dishes too – sometimes hard with kids, but I’m testing recipes 🙂
Love your money saving tips! We cut cable out years ago and never looked back since. Amazon Video and Hulu are more than enough for the little time we actually spend watching TV. One thing we also try to do to avoid eating out too often is to suggest a picnic at the park or walking downtown to catch up with friends instead of going sit at a restaurant. Saves us so much money and also allows us to spend more time outdoors!
Some practical and doable things on this list!
Sometimes, we miss the most obvious ways to cut costs and save money. These are some wonderful tips for “Found Money.” Thanks for such practical help!
Definitely some good ideas here. Sometimes it’s just taking note of where you spend your money and then seeing how you can change that!
-Lauren
My husband and I recently started making a spreadsheet of our expenditures and categorizing them. Eye opening!
These are great ideas! My family needs to work on the eating out one; we’ve slipped into that habit more this summer during our travels. I love the garden one too!
It’s so easy to want to go out to eat. We compensate for that during the summer by planning to hit up our favorite ice cream place after dinner once a week or so. 🙂
These are great tips! My favorite is bulk shopping. You save so much money when you do it this way! (plus you save trips to the store)
Yes! And, with 4 Kids, I don’t like too many trips. It’s such a hassle
Yes! We started hanging our clothes to dry only recently. In the summer we hang them on a line outside and that’s my favorite because they just smell the best after being out in the warm summer air 🙂
I love that sun drying is a natural bleacher too. It gets out stains well.
We stopped paying for cable a long time ago, and only recently started using Netflix. I like the one on attitude–that’s definitely a biggie!
My favorite way to save is bulk shopping, shopping sales, and freezing the extra meat (my diet doesn’t support meatless challenges). I also just got a Kindle for Amazon Prime Day to start transitioning to eBooks instead of physical copies, which I love, but can’t justify the space they take up.
Check out Hoopla. It’s an app that a lot of libraries use and you can rent so many ebooks per month. Our library lets us rent 20 ebooks per month per card. It’s awesome!!
These tips are amazing. We really cut back on our eating out/carry out and couldn’t believe the impact it had. The little stuff can really add up though.
It is the little stuff. Take a few trips to get coffee and the next thing you know, you spent over $50. I always told my husband that and he thought he was spending just a little bit until he saw how the little stuff adds up fast.
I had no idea you could just make your own yogurt! That will easily save $50/month at my house!
Making your yogurt is so easy. You can do it in the crockpot or instant pot! It does take about 12 hours, but 95% of that time is hands-off time for you and letting it cool.