I do enjoy saving and making money. Especially if it's low/no effort on my part. Below is a list of 5 things I recently did to help myself either save or make money that felt so extremely easy that I regret not doing them years earlier! Let me know you…  | By peppervalentine on June 23, 2024 | I do enjoy saving and making money. Especially if it's low/no effort on my part. Below is a list of 5 things I recently did to help myself either save or make money that felt so extremely easy that I regret not doing them years earlier! Let me know your thoughts and if you have any other ideas that belong on this list! - Move to a high-interest rate Savings/Checking account.
- I feel really stupid for not taking action here many years ago. I was minding my own business and depositing my money into checking/savings accounts with 0.1% interest. I had been doing this my entire adult life and I never bothered to double-check this. I did notice getting around $1-2 every month in interest, and thought I was doing pretty good. I was blissfully unaware.
- Then earlier this year I took a look at what other accounts were available at my bank and I found that they had checking/savings accounts at 4.1% interest instead. With no fees associated. So I moved everything over into one of those higher-interest accounts. And immediately I started getting around $20-30 every month in interest. I know it doesn't seem like alot of money each month, but over the course of a year, it can be an extra few hundred dollars that I didn't have before.
- Changing accounts has made me approximately $200-300 a year.
- Unsubscribe and Cancel
- I also took a look at my subscriptions. I didn't have alot to begin with so this review didn't take very long. One subscription was an annual yoga subscription and that one was easy to cancel because I knew I wasn't going to use it. The other subscription I ended was Amazon Prime. I realized that I wasn't watching their streaming service, and I also realized that I really didn't need super-speedy delivery all the time. I could wait 3-4 days for an online order.
- One thing I learned after I cancelled my Prime subscription was that they offer free trials. Since I cancelled, there has been a couple of rare occasions where I did want that next-day delivery after all, and I was able to activate the free trial to do that. You just have to remember to cancel that free trial or they will automatically charge you for it on it's end-date. I've been very pleased not having this Prime subscription anymore.
- Cancelling my subscriptions have saved me approximately $200 a year.
- Sign-up for a Credit Card with Cash Rewards and No Fees
- You only get ahead with this option if you plan to pay-off this credit card every month and not let any interest get charged. Because once you start getting charged interest, you will probably pay more in interest than you will gain with the cash rewards. So be aware that this option will not benefit everyone.
- I did some research and I found a Wells Fargo credit card with no annual fee or transaction fee and no minimum spends (this is important!) that also gives 2% cash-back on purchases. You can get the cash-back via account transfer, ATM, or gift cards, so very flexible. Just be sure that you read all the terms and conditions to ensure that you don't get surprised with any gotchas. Some accounts will charge you extra for each transaction or for not spending enough each month, so definitely read the fine print before doing this option.
- I knew that my daughter was going to need braces so I saved enough money to pay for the braces, but I charged the cost of the braces to this credit card, and then I paid-off this credit card immediately with the money I had already saved for it. And now.... I have $140 sitting in this account as cash-back that I can spend somewhere else. This is now my plan for any big purchases I make in the future such as travel or concert tickets.
- Sign-up for Affiliate Marketing
- I've just started to dabble my toes in this option where you provide a link on your website, and whenever someone makes a purchase using that link, then you receive a commission of some sort. Now admittedly, I'm not very good at this (not yet), but I'm intrigued enough to keep learning more.
- I was fortunate enough to be able to sign-up and get accepted as an Amazon Affiliate. The two most difficult parts about this acceptance was that your website needed to be self-hosted, AND, you needed 3 unique sales within a 3 month period, and it couldn't be a friend/family because Amazon is able to tell somehow and they won't count it towards your acceptance goal.
- I'm not making alot of money (yet) doing this. It's maybe $1-2 dollars a month at this point. And that's not a typo - it's literally only $1 or $2 a month. Some months are $0. I'm thinking that I'm not utilizing it to potential, or I'm not reaching the scale needed where this would be worth it. But I'm still exploring and seeing what other capabilities or best-practices I can employ here. And there may be other Affiliate programs I can join where I can be more successful.
- See the next option (#5) for a good example of how the Amazon Affiliate program would look on a website.
- Decrease Services by Reviewing Bills Carefully
- I did this with my cellular service provider where I carefully reviewed my bill and found that I was paying $20 per month for cellular service on an iPad. I determined that I did not need cellular service on this iPad (wi-fi is perfectly fine) and I reduced that service and my monthly bill decreased by $20 per month. So easy!
- I also did this with my cable/internet service. My provider offers both cable and internet and I reviewed my bill carefully and found that I was paying a ridiculous amount of money every month for cable TV. The combined cable/internet package was costing me $350 per month. Most of that cost was due to having to pay PER device and we have an obnoxious number of televisions in our home. So I cancelled the cable portion of the service and now I have a $62 per month internet bill. I felt that price was fair for internet at home.
- I subscribed to Hulu's Live TV package and now I pay $85 per month including taxes. I'm only missing 1 channel that I had previously watched frequently, and I do miss it occasionally, but that one channel isn't worth the ridiculously high monthly bill. There are other streaming services out there, but Hulu is the one I went with.
- Cancelling my cable TV service and adding the Streaming TV service is still saving me approximately $200 per year.
- Not all of my televisions at home are Smart TVs that automatically connect to the internet for streaming services however. So I did have to make a few one-time purchases of a streaming remote control such as the Amazon Fire Stick or Roku to enable them. The good news is that they do not require subscriptions, and you only pay once. They do require an account - but my free Amazon account (I do not have the Prime membership anymore, if you recall) works perfectly with the Fire Stick. These remotes are very affordable too, you can check them out using the links below. My first new bill had enough savings to cover the costs of all the remotes I needed.
- Affiliate:
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