Many people believe that keeping money aside is not exciting or enjoyable. I hope you’re not one of them, but if you are, that’s alright. I’m here to teach you how to have a good time while saving money.
Many people go through the process of paying off debt and saving for some kind of financial goal, and they’re simply getting tired of it. It’s the same thing month after month. It has become monotonous and strenuous, and they don’t have the motivation anymore to follow this through.
Saving money has a lot of upsides, and making it fun would make you want to do it more often. If you’re learning to enjoy saving money, it will help you save more money and get ahead in the game. It’s all about having the right perspective to reach and fulfill the most important aspects of saving money.
How To Make Saving Money FunÂ
#1: Make It A Game
If you want to make saving money fun, let’s make it a game. You can create a game around your financial goals to keep yourself motivated.
Things that you can do include:
- Create a budget and challenge yourself to stay below that you can do this for every major spending category, like groceries, gas, or utilities.
- Challenge yourself to get as much healthy food at the grocery store for $30.
- Challenge a friend or your partner: who can organize the best night out, spending a minimal amount of money.
- Give yourself a no-spend challenge.
Get creative! It will feel more fun if you are looking at saving money to be creative.
#2: Make Your Goals Real
Making your goals real is crucial when you’re motivated and want to make saving money fun.
Making your goals real can be done in several ways:
- Create a sheet that represents your financial goal. For example, if you want to pay off a $100,000 mortgage, you can picture a house and section it into 100 pieces. Every time that you move closer to your goal, you color a piece in.
- Write your goal down on a piece of paper and bring it everywhere you go. If you put it in your wallet, you will be reminded before you make a big purchase: Is this what I want to spend my money on? How will this affect my goal outcome?
- Making a vision board is what really helped me to know what I’m saving for. If you put your vision board somewhere, you see it every day. It will keep reminding and motivating you. You can also create a digital vision board on Pinterest or put it on your desktop.
- Starting a blog – blogging helped me tremendously when I wanted to go off track on my financial goals. I am producing an expense statement every month, which keeps me accountable throughout the month.
#3: Organize A No Spend Challenge
Give yourself a no-spend challenge. Go without spending any money for a few days, a week, or even a month! Again, this is a great way to let your creative side come out: when you have to get going for the week with what you already have, you would have to come up with some creative solutions.
You can do a challenge where you don’t buy any clothes for a year, no gas for a week. You don’t eat out, and so on.
I love no spend challenges, and I’ve participated in a monthly no spend challenge. For one month, I didn’t spend any money, except for utilities and groceries. Also, the grocery bill we were challenged to cut in half. It was challenging for sure, but I think a lot of the habits stuck, and I still use them today.
A no spending challenge might help you to:
- Learn how to prevent impulsive spending
- Get motivated on your way to saving more money
- Declutter and get rid of the things you don’t use
- Realize where your spending problems lie
#4: Have Frugal Fun
The last step to truly making saving money fun is learning how to make frugal fun. We all have spent a little too much money on our entertainment budget, that’s okay.
From today on, I want to challenge you to make frugality fun. You can do many things to have fun each month without spending too much money on it.
A few ideas for frugal fun:
- Go for a walk
- Go for a swim
- Check out free things to do in your city (free festivals, free museums, free concerts)
- Treat yourself
- Go camping
- Go for a bike ride
- Take advantage of happy hours
- Take a bath
- Read your favorite book
#5: Start A Side Hustle
Look for a side hustle that will fit your schedule. Earning extra money means more money into your savings. More money into your savings means one step further into realizing your financial goals.
You may check out Fiverr or Flexjobs when looking for your side gigs.
There are so many choices if you want to earn extra bucks. If you are into social media, you may try vlogging and snapchatting. Or, if you are a stay-at-home mom, you may check phone actress jobs or virtual assistant jobs. If you are into online selling, you may try retail arbitrage of flipping things for profit.
One more thing, if you have any ideas that you think may help a certain brand, you can sell your ideas to invention companies. It’s perfect if you are a very creative and imaginative person.
Remember that there are so many things that you can do to earn extra money. You just need to know what you can do and choose which best fits your interest and goals.
#6: Know Your Net Worth
Knowing your net worth is the biggest motivator to save money. Seeing how your net worth increases over time is such a fun and inspiring measurement. It really shows how far you have come. It also indicates if the actions that you have taken have resulted in a positive change for your overall financial health.
Knowing and tracking your net worth will help you understand if you are on the right track to your financial goals. It’s like ticking off on your checklist so that your bottom line figures are meeting your expectations.
Saving money is a lot more fun when you can actually visualize the positive impact on your net worth over time. This is all the motivation you need to save more money for yourself.
Tip: Personal Capital is a free budgeting tool that can help you with your overall finances and net worth.
#7: Give Yourself Some Rewards
Saving money can really be challenging since you don’t actually feel it physically. So, the best logical thing to do is celebrate and treat yourself once you hit some milestones in your financial journey.
Your financial plans should include targets to monitor your journey. And once you hit those targets, you should treat yourself because of this accomplishment. But do remember not to overindulge yourself. As this may defeat the purpose of saving altogether.
Celebrate small wins within your means. This will help your journey to be more exciting and fulfilling.
Conclusion – Make Saving Money Fun And Exciting
We all know saving money requires a lot of dedication, focus, and effort. Having the proper perspective should help you in your cause to fulfill your financial journey.
The end justifies the means. This is true. But it does not necessarily mean that you cannot have fun once in a while. Don’t overcomplicate stuff and enjoy the ride! Having fun makes saving money more exciting and fulfilling.
There are so many things you can do to make saving money fun. If you’re in a savings rut and want to challenge yourself again, this should help you get back on track!
What is your favorite way to make saving money more fun?
Founder of Spark Nomad, Radical FIRE, Journalist
- Expertise: Personal finance and travel content
- Education: Bachelor of Economics at Radboud University, Master in Finance at Radboud University, Minor in Economics at Chapman University.
- Over 200 articles, essays, and short stories published across the web.
Experience: Marjolein Dilven is a journalist and founder of Spark Nomad, a travel platform, and Radical FIRE, a personal finance platform. Marjolein has a finance and economics background with a master’s in Finance. She has quit her job to travel the world, documenting her travels on Spark Nomad to help people plan their travels. Marjolein Dilven has written for publications like MSN, Associated Press, CNBC, Town News syndicate, and more.