Implementing simple financial habits now can mean saving big down the road. Often, those small moves take just a few minutes.
While these moves won’t help you build long-term wealth as effectively as other methods — such as investing in the stock market — they may be able to help you build up an emergency fund or use a few extra dollars for debt payments each month. Here are two money habits you can use to earn a little extra cash that you can put towards both long- and short- term goals, from vacation to buying a home to retiring.
1. Buy discounted gift cards
If you’re going out to eat, buying a new pair of shoes or seeing a movie, you’d probably like to pay less than the advertised price. With discounted gift cards, you can.
Sites like CardCash, wholesale retailers like Costco and Sam’s Club and more often sell gift cards for less money than is on the gift card itself. For example, at Costco at the time of writing, members can buy a pack of four $25 Domino’s gift cards ($100 total) for $69.99, a $50 gift card to Cinemark Theaters for $39.99 and two $50 gift cards to Dave & Busters ($100 total) for $79.99.
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You can also filter gift cards by categories to ensure the right ones appear for your next purchase. Some discount gift card sites also have a section where you can see gift cards that are discounted by a certain amount, such as 10% to 20% of their value.
You won’t save a life-changing amount of money with one discounted gift card, but the savings can add up over time, especially if you’re using them to make purchases you’d have to make otherwise.
The key is to only buy a discounted gift card if you regularly do business with the company. Buying a discounted gift card for a fast food restaurant chain that you never visit won’t do much good. Make sure you truly need what the card can provide instead of buying it just for the sake of scoring a deal.
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2. Do a monthly subscription audit
Another way to save money that should take just a few minutes is to conduct an audit to ensure you aren’t wasting money on unnecessary subscriptions, like for a streaming platform you never watch.
Make it a habit once a month to look at your credit card statement for subscriptions that you forgot about. Reviewing your credit card statements can also make you question the value of subscriptions that you occasionally use and look for a more affordable alternative.
For instance, maybe you pay for the premium subscription for a food delivery app when you could downgrade to the free version and still get many of the services you need.
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