Yahoo Finance 5 money-saving hacks to help you beat the cost of living
Smash your money goals and beat the rising cost of living with these handy hacks.
TikTok is truly the app that keeps on giving. Where else can you discover the best way to clean the grime off your oven rack, master a dance routine, devour the drama from someone’s wedding, and get tips on saving money?
When it comes to the latter, TikTokers have an endless trove of tips to help you save your coins. Here are the five best hacks that might help you smash your money goals, and beat the rising cost of living, in 2024.
1. The 3x rule
TikToker @moneywithmak explained the 3x rule as something that she used when she was “getting serious” about her finances. The rule states that if you can’t afford to buy something three times over, you don’t buy it.
That means if you want to buy $200 sneakers, you have to have $600 in your account before you can make the decision to purchase. This one’s handy for impulse shoppers.
2. 100 envelope challenge to save $5,050
Cash stuffing has had a resurgence on social media. But, instead of organising your money into envelopes for your budget, the 100 envelope challenge sees you saving up a total of $5,050 by saving different amounts of cash into 100 different envelopes.
The premise is that you take 100 envelopes and number them 1 through to 100, and save the amount on the envelope inside – for example in the envelope marked 1, you save $1. In the envelope marked 10, you save $10, etc. Once you fill each of the envelopes, you’ll have $5,050 saved.
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3. Before you buy, imagine someone has offered you cash
Aussie TikToker @lovechloejane described this money-saving hack as “offensively simple”, adding, “It’s wild how well this works”.
When she wants to buy something, she stops and imagines someone has come along and offered her the exact value of that item in cash. “If you need the [item], or you really want it, that’s what you pick, but if you don’t, you go for the cash,” she said.
4. Choose which days you’ll spend
@kevinplayerone on TikTok recommends utilising your calendar to help manage your money behaviour. Kevin’s calendar-highlighting hack has you assigning different days to different money rules to help you save more effectively.
You can highlight certain days as ‘no-spend days’, or other days as ‘no lunch out’ or ‘no-coffee days’. This method can be handy if you feel budgeting is monotonous or restrictive because you can still allow yourself days to spend on the things you enjoy, while still benefiting from sending some extra cash to savings.
5. Percentage budgets
Organising your money by percentages can help you get a top-level view of how your money is allocated between wants, needs and savings. A popular split is the 50/30/20 budget, which sees you spend 50 per cent of your income on needs, 30 per cent on wants and 20 per cent on savings.
However, TikToker @joyeeyang0 explains that she prefers the 60/30/10 budget. This method sends 60 per cent to necessities (handy for high-cost-of-living cities), 30 per cent to “debts or investments” and 10 per cent to wants.
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