How to save money from daily activities?

With the instability of our economy recently, everyone is trying hard to trim a few bulks from their daily activities. After all, saving some is better than none. Hence, here we come the top 5 simple but essential ways for you to refer on how to save money from daily activities.

1. Have an expense app for record purpose

Set aside the amount of money that you would need to meet your commitments at the beginning of each month. Your commitment can include utility or phone bills, rental, transport fees, car loan, own saving amount or even, the amount of money that you would bank in to your parents' account. Deducting out all these from your monthly net salary would give you the amount of money that you can spend on food, entertainment, shopping, etc for the month. Next, divide it by the number of days of the month to get an indication of how much you can spend per day. You can then use one of your phone app to help you track your daily expenses. Recording down the expenses using phone could track your expenditures with least effort. Tracking your daily expenses also means you can then have an analysis on what kind of expenses you spend most. Most importantly, you know how much you should spend particularly when it is closer to the end of the month in order to not spend more than what you have left. 

[Tip 1] I personally found that "Pocket Expense Personal Finance" phone app is so far the best app that I would recommend to track your daily expenses in an easy way. In case you might forget to record down your expenses , this app can actually remind you by sending notification daily. 

2. Before buying something, ask yourself 

Consumers are always intrigued by the sales advertisement. Without any doubt, sales advertisements are often a tempting one that sometimes you just can't control yourself. However, asking yourself a question before doing the purchase might help you make a true decision. Ask yourself this question "Yes, this is cheap. But, do I really need this? Or I am still good without having it?" before buying. This can avoid the extra spending that you make when you think the product is worth buying in terms of price but in fact you don't really need it.

3. Wait for discount before buying

This is more applicable to buying those luxuries or less urgent stuffs. Lets take an example of you thinking to purchase some formal clothes for your work. This task is a to-do-task yet less urgent that you can still wear your existing clothes for next few weeks. Hence, why not you just wait until there is discount for the clothes? Discount on clothing is usually great and you do save quite a bit especially when you are thinking to buy a few. Same idea goes to your other purchases say your weekly groceries. Try to be loyal to a certain groceries shop by signing up as their member in order to get better discount and faster services.

4. Own two bank accounts

Owning two bank accounts would help you save quite a bit and it could build up to be a noticeable amount of money after a while. How? Treat one of your bank accounts as the saving money account, i.e. transfer the monthly saving amount to this bank account for saving purpose. In other words, do not spend this money in the account unless for emergency. Meanwhile, the other account would be just for your normal expenditure use. This step can clear your way between spending and saving, and thus successfully saved your money from daily activities.

5. Use public transport to work

This might be hard for someone who stays quite far from public transport. However, if you are one of them, you might consider to park your car beside the nearest train station to avoid congestion. In this way, although you have to spend some on your public transport fees, you have saved a lot from your petrol. Using public transport to work can then save your money compared to driving to office every day.

[Tip 2] If your public transport fee for LRT/Monorail has exceeded RM100 per month, then you might want to purchase the one-month unlimited call to set your monthly public transport fees to be at a fixed amount every month.

Hope the information helps and wish you have fun reading and learn them today.