Hello! If you are new here, welcome to my post detailing the ways you can learn how to save 50% or more of your income. I suggest that you read my welcome page (which lists my most popular and helpful posts) and my latest monthly blogging/online income report.
Before I started blogging, I thought a good percentage to save each month was anywhere from 10% to 20%. I have even read an article where a “finance expert” recommended 5% for retirement savings because they said it was good enough.
Now that I look back on those figures, that is just not nearly enough.
However, that’s what many news articles will tell you. They will tell you that anywhere from 5% to 20% is all you really need. That might work for some, but that’s just not good enough for me.
Recently, I was talking to someone who told me that they save around 85% of their after-tax income each month. I thought that was absolutely insane, but I was a little jealous.
This person goes a little to the extreme in order to save this crazy amount of money each month, but they are happy and that’s all that matters, right?
Right now, we save around 60% of our income. That amount could be a little bit higher but we recently had our wedding (and shoveled a lot of our money towards that), we have been traveling more (we have bought a fair amount of camping and hiking equipment in the past 2 months), and a lot of my business income each month goes towards taxes.
Saving a decent percentage of your income each month can mean that you can reach your financial goals quicker. I was able to pay off my $40,000 student loan debt because of my savings habit!
Here are different ways to save 50% or more of your income:
Make more money so that you can save half your income each month.
Making more money can really help you reach an income percentage goal of over 50%. This is because there is usually only so much money you can save, but the amount of money you can make is endless.
You could work a part-time job, a full-time job, multiple jobs, start a business, freelance, and so on. You could also search for passive income and bring in more money with minimal effort.
There are so many things you can do out there to try to make more money.
Some side gigs you may be interested in may include:
- Blogging is how I make a living and just a few years ago I never thought it would be possible. I made over $150,000 last year by blogging and will make more than that in 2015. You can create your own blog here with my easy-to-use tutorial. You can start your blog for as low as $2.95 per month plus you get a free domain if you sign-up through my tutorial.
- Becoming a virtual assistant.
- Survey companies I recommend include Survey Junkie, Pinecone Research, Opinion Outpost, Prize Rebel, and Harris Poll Online. They’re free to join and free to use! You get paid to answer surveys and to test products. It’s best to sign up for as many as you can as that way you can receive the most surveys and make the most money.
- Become an Uber or Lyft driver – Spending your spare time by driving others around can be a great money maker. Read more about this in my post – How To Become An Uber Or Lyft Driver.
- Swagbucks is something I don’t use as much, but I do occasionally earn Amazon gift cards with very little work. Swagbucks is just like using Google to do your online searches, except you get rewarded “Swagbucks” for the things you do through their website. Then, when you have enough Swagbucks, you can redeem them for cash, gift cards, and more. You’ll receive a free $5 bonus just for signing up today!
- InboxDollars is an online rewards website I recommend. You can earn cash by taking surveys, playing games, shopping online, searching the web, redeeming grocery coupons, and more. Also, by signing up through my link, you will receive $5.00 for free just for signing up!
Related articles on how to save 50% of your income:
- 75+ Ways To Make Extra Money
- Ways To Make An Extra $1,000 A Month
- How To Start A WordPress Blog On Bluehost
- So You Want to Be a Freelance Writer?
- How To Make Money Blogging
- 6 Ways To Be More Frugal and Save Thousands
Lower your budget so that you can save half your income each month.
Okay, one of the reasons for why I am able to save so much money each month is because of the amount of money I make. I am not going to try to hide that.
However, just because you make less money does not mean that you can’t save money as well.
The person who I mentioned above who saves 85% of their income makes around $3,000 a month. Yes, so that means they spend $450 a month. I know this isn’t possible for everyone, but if this person can cut their budget then I’m sure others can save more than 20% of their income.
There are many different expenses that you can probably cut out of your budget or at least lower. Just because you are lowering your budget doesn’t mean that you are going to hate life.
Some expenses you can lower or ways to save money include the below. Like I said, everything isn’t for everyone, but even a small change can help you out.
- Lower your cell phone bill. Instead of paying the $150 or more that you spend on your cell phone bill, there are companies out there like Republic Wireless that offer cell phone service starting at $5. YES, I SAID $5! If you use my Republic Wireless affiliate link, you can change your life and start saving thousands of dollars a year on your cell phone service. I created a full review on Republic Wireless as well if you are interested in hearing more. I’ve been using them for over a year and they are great.
- ATM fees. Why do people do this to themselves?
- TV. Cut your cable, satellite, etc. Even go as far to go without Netflix or Hulu. Buy a digital antenna and enjoy free TV – this is what we do!
- Sign up for a website like Ebates where you can earn CASH BACK for just spending like how you normally would online. The service is free too! Plus, when you sign up through my link, you also receive a free $10 gift card bonus to Macys, Walmart, Target, or Kohls!
- Restaurant spending. Start eating at home more! Become an amazing at-home chef and make your family love your new found skills 🙂
- Bring your lunch to work. When I had my day job, I always brought my lunch. This was to save money, but also because I hated wasting most of my lunch hour driving somewhere to get food.
- Cut your travel budget. There are plenty of ways to travel on a budget. One way is to start earning credit card rewards.
- Use a programmable thermostat so that you can heat and cool your home efficiently and more affordably.
- Pay bills on time. The goal here is to try to avoid any late fees.
- Shop around for insurance. This includes health insurance, car insurance, life insurance, home insurance and so on. Insurance pricing can vary significantly from one company to the next. When we were shopping for car insurance last, we found that our old company wanted something like $205 to insure one car for one month, whereas the new company we have now charges $50 a month for the same exact coverage. INSANE!
- Save money on food. I recently joined $5 Meal Plan in order to help me eat at home more and cut my food spending. It’s only $5 a month (the first four weeks are free too) and you get meal plans sent straight to you along with the exact shopping list you need in order to create the meals. Each meal costs around $2 per person or less. This allows you to save time because you won’t have to meal plan anymore, and it will save you money as well!
- Fuel savings. Combine your car trips, drive more efficiently, get a fuel efficient car, etc.
- Trade in your car for a cheaper one. For us, we are car people. Cars are one of our splurges. However, if you only have a nice car to keep up with the Joneses, then you might want to get rid of it and get something that makes more sense.
- Live in a cheaper home. I’m not saying you need to go live in a box, but if you live in a McMansion then you may want to think about a smaller home. This way you can save money on utility bills and your mortgage payment.
- Learn to have more frugal fun. We don’t spend anywhere near the same amount of money on entertainment as we used to. There are plenty of ways to have frugal fun.
- DIY certain projects. I recently did a post about DIY wedding ideas and whether they were worth it or not. Read it! 🙂
- I highly recommend that you check out Personal Capital (a free service) if you are interested in gaining control of your financial situation. Personal Capital is very similar to Mint.com, but 100 times better as it allows you to gain control of your investment and retirement accounts, whereas Mint.com does not. Personal Capital allows you to aggregate your financial accounts so that you can easily see your financial situation, your cash flow, detailed graphs, and more. You can connect accounts such as your mortgage, bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts, and more, and it is FREE.
I spend less money than I used to and I am happier than ever.
Are you trying to save 50% or more of your income? Why or why not? What is your savings rate right now? What are you doing to reach your goal of saving more of your income?
Leave a Reply
Wow, 75% saved while earning $3000pm sounds tough, I know I definitely couldn’t be that frugal. But like you say that sort of thing isn’t for everyone. Although it’s always interesting to hear these people’s stories.
Before I went on maternity leave we were saving 30-40% of our income although expenses that arose ate into that and diminished our savings drastically. Now that I’m at home with the little one we’re down to about 15-20% depending on the month and the account is slowly building back up. Once our income returns to normal levels and hopefully continues to grow we would like to aim for 50% savings rate.
Yeah, I definitely couldn’t be that frugal. It would be vey hard for us!
Haha luckily I don’t care about NHL 🙂
Wow good job on putting so much towards your debt!
Yeah I made the mistake of having an extra large emergency fund when I still had student loans. I ended up nearly liquidating that putting it towards my student loans.
We recently had our youngest child start public school full time, so we have been able to bump up our savings to about 43%. I need to go back through the budget again to find a few more things we can cut. I’d like to get to 50%.
43% is pretty close. I think you’ll be able to get to 50% easily 🙂
As someone who save 80%+ of my income, it takes a lot of patience. Knowing the big payoff comes when you are financially independent.
Wow good job on saving over 80%!
We have a large family so its important to us to pay cash whenever possible and not amass debt. We bought our home as a fixer upper with cash 5 years ago and have been working on it while living on it since. We only buy vehicles used, and after we save for them in order to avoid loans. We do not have cable, however we do use netflix and hulu. We do not use smartphones because we can pay $50 a month for both my line and my husbands line and thats unlimited talk and text. We use coupons and only eat out three nights a month. We garden to help supplement our food source. When people see that we have ten kids, they often think “how do you do it!?” We only buy what we can afford, save for what we need and I always get the best deals on items we think we need/want. I think a lot of people *think they need more than they really do. When you simplify and save for what you want, instead of impulse buying I think that makes a world of difference!
Wow it sounds like you are doing awesome Heather! Good job! 🙂
85 ’til FI! That’s my mantra! JK but yeah somewhere around there is where I’ll stay.
🙂
Thank you for sharing us this idea:)
Thanks!
Making more money is my goal! I have certainly reached the threshold of cutting down my budget, and am making good progress on my high student debt. In order to save more, I definitely need to earn more! Finding a good side job right now is a major goal of mine, while developing my website. It’s slow-moving but I just need to learn the ropes. Your website is such a good resources for that! Thanks for all the insight you offer 🙂
Thank you Joanne. Good luck with making more money. I think you’ll get there 🙂
What a great post! I love the enthusiasm from the comments–it’s rare to find people who value great saving habits. We are days away from being debt-free (except the mortgage) and we save about 10-15% each month. Once the debt is gone, saving at least 25-30% of our income would be amazing.
Wow congrats on being just days away! Good job.
My wife and I are on pace to save 50% of our income this year. We are doing it by both increasing our incomes and watching how we spend our money. We sat down and looked over our big expenses – cell phones, insurance, etc and tackled them first. After we were able to save some money there, we looked over smaller expenses and cut some there too. At the end of the day, it all comes down to how bad you want it.
Yes, it’s definitely all about how bad you want it!
These are all great goals, but I am in a position at the moment where I can barely save 10%, even by living frugally. In order to start saving more, the situation will have to change drastically. We are moving forward toward that, but have a long long way to go. Never say never, though.
Yes, never say never. Everything takes time. I hope you get to where you want to be soon. 🙂
I am not currently saving much…def. not close to 50% I chose to become a stay at home mom when we had my daughter 2 years ago and living off of one income when we really can’t afford to be makes it impossible to save. We don’t however have any debt and we are excellent with budgeting, just not enough to save. I will be heading back to work soon and hope to put most of my money into saving since we know it is possible to live off one income, just not comfortable. My savings rate is literally zero 🙁 We have untouched credit cards for emergencies, but again this should change soon!! I WILL reach my goal once I go back to work!
Sounds like you have a plan Erin. I hope you increase your savings rate – I’m sure you will be able to!
Including the workplace pension, I save about 60% of my income which is funneled into mortgage over-payments and index funds. Here in the UK they also spout the “Save 5% for retirement” link which too many people blindly follow. I wish more people would wake up and realise that they dont NEED to be working till 70!
Yes, I wish more people realized that they don’t need to work until 70. Also, it’s not possible for many people to work until that age!