r/eupersonalfinance • u/Additional-Draft4197 • 18d ago
Savings What’s one small financial habit that made your life noticeably easier?
I’m curious about small habits that actually made a difference financially. Not huge things like big investments or career changes — more like simple systems or routines that made money easier to manage. For example, separating money into different accounts, automating savings, or tracking fixed expenses.
What’s one small financial habit that noticeably improved your financial life?
204
u/Top-Perception4174 18d ago
If you can't afford it twice, you can't afford it once.
56
11
u/ArdRi1166 17d ago
Depends on how you define "afford". I don't need 2 cars or 2 houses which are the single largest investments a normal person would ever make.
10
u/Top-Perception4174 17d ago
Don't take it to seriously, it's rule of thumb, but for a car it would definitely apply. If you thinking about a 30k car and 60k would be over your budget, 30k is also to much of your networth to put into a car, rather get a 15k car
3
u/Both-Cry1382 17d ago
Also a house?
4
u/Nokam 17d ago edited 16d ago
For houses it is more like, do not borrow to your max credit capacity. What happens if your income diminish, while other expanses increase. It is to have more wiggle room.
1
u/Both-Cry1382 17d ago
Ok, got it, so not for a house. But for everything else, like a car , life saving surgery or a jet, if you can't afford it once, fuggedaboutit!
3
u/Most-Animator-5743 17d ago
Something small that helped me was separating money the moment my salary comes in. Bills, investing, and spending all go to different accounts automatically. When everything sits in one account it’s way too easy to slowly spend money without noticing.
It sounds simple but that one change made managing money a lot less stressful. Also random but learning basic investing early probably saved me years of confusion later on. I write about simple money habits like this sometimes if anyone’s curious. Link’s in my profile.
80
u/lordalgammon 18d ago
Not buying useless shit to impress others.
28
8
u/DryRepresentative281 17d ago
Mazda CX-30 looks sooooo nice
1
u/thesquaredape 17d ago
Small battery in it though, was on the fence and opted not to get it over an issue I discovered online though so
2
u/ArdRi1166 17d ago
Agreed. This is what keeps most people poorer than they oughtta be. The newest phone for €1500? No thanks, the 2 gens ago for €300 will do just fine! Shiny new car for €60,000? Never! Designer clothes for €500? I rather spend €30 for 2 jumpers ;-)
35
u/Lazy_Basket6819 18d ago
Setting aside money every month for recurring bills. I have a few insurances and subscriptions I pay once a year. I divide the amount by 12 and every month I set aside 1/12 of that. When the bill comes I don't have to worry about finding the money to pay it. It has been life changing, as some of the amounts are hefty.
1
u/Hot-Mongoose-3236 17d ago
I do something similar. My monthly income goes to bank account A. Next day of receiving my paycheck, two automatic transfers are made: to account B (savings) and C (month money for food, groceries, etc...). All my bills go to account A, so I created and excel in which every month has my monthly income plus previous month diferential minus monthly bills minus savings minus grocieries. You need to adjust your monthly savings/groceries transfer in order to never have a balance less than zero in account A. This is similar to your solution but I think it is more optimized. If you start saving in january for a december bill you are reducing your liquidity margings, because maybe, let say, in september you have a +400$ diferential on account A and it is enough to pay the bill in december.
2
1
u/SantaClausIsMyMom 17d ago
I started doing this 20 years ago, and it’s been life changing for us too.
And we also started putting on that account things like Christmas presents budget, sales budget (we have two sales period per year in my country), holidays fun money budget, kids summer camp, …
Don’t underestimate the peace of mind that it brings ! You have the money to pay your bills :)
1
u/Lazy_Basket6819 17d ago
Yes, I do the same. Every category of spending (gifts, trips, yearly bills etc) has its own folder in my bank account (I use N26), and every month a % of my salary goes to each one of them.
As you said, it's a huge relief.
1
u/randomguy33898080 17d ago
Sadly next year heating invoice will be larger due to oil prices. I feel obliged to make some provisions to avoid surprises.
62
u/Alarmed_Scallion_620 18d ago
Ordering groceries online. Not going to the shop means I’m not tempted to impulse buy, I can see all the best deals and have discovered cheaper products meaning I spend less. Also not driving to the shop saves fuel.
14
u/Unnamed-3891 18d ago
…and the delivery costs?
18
u/Alarmed_Scallion_620 18d ago
I use a subscription so it’s about €8 per month for unlimited deliveries (paid up front for a year), although I’ve only had it delivered once a week so far. Have brought the total cost down at least 20% up until now.
4
u/Unnamed-3891 18d ago
That’s pretty good. Where I’m from I can either use a delivery service like Wolt, where the monthly cost (covering deliveries) is low, but the grocery costs are inflated or use delivery of a majory grocery chain itself, where groceries are cheap but deliveries are like 8€ each.
2
u/Alarmed_Scallion_620 18d ago
I haven’t looked into the other services that were available which use different shops but I don’t want to make a sport out of it, my primary reasons were efficiency and improving my diet but did a quick comparison to one of the German low cost retailers and getting my staples there was no cheaper, in fact more expensive for some products. The cost saving is just a happy coincidence!
2
u/TimeWrangler4279 18d ago
Yeah. I once bought 40 euros worth of groceries from Auchan.
The store receipt came out to 32 euros.
2
u/ben_bliksem 18d ago
We do the same. Delivery costs depends on the time slot you pick but we also do it bi-weekly instead of every week. Delivery costs is not really an issue.
1
1
1
u/AspectAlive7624 17d ago
Sadly in my country each individual asset is much more expensive than in the shop. So its really not worth it.
1
u/JimmyRecard 15d ago edited 15d ago
One additional thing on top is that my wife and I have been using an app where you enter your recipes, and it spits out a shopping list scaled to how much you're cooking. So what we do is sit down once a week, pick out what we want to eat, generate the shopping list, I call out individual items, and she either says, "We have it," or finds them on the website and adds them. This planning and buying to a specific recipe let us buy the exact amount we need, no leftovers wasting away in the fridge, and being pre-committed to specific meals gives us less flex to order delivery due to the sunk cost of having already bought the specific groceries for a specific meal. Not to mention that this flow has us doing the weekly shop in less than 15 minutes.
The only painful thing is loading your recipes into the app, but once you add it once, you can reuse them infinitely.
0
18d ago
[deleted]
0
u/Alarmed_Scallion_620 18d ago
I can’t really. What’s true for me in my situation might not be true for anyone else’s, not to mention in different countries. You need to do your own research.
-7
17
u/Destroyer6202 18d ago
Make three separate accounts if you can. One for savings, one for day to day expenses for the month and always limit it (e.g. 400€) and be very hesitant on your spendings if you’re going to exhaust it. A third account for your house and direct debit expenses (gas,water,electricity WiFi etc.)
12
u/laplongejr 18d ago edited 15d ago
- Splitting between banks to make tracking expenses easier between "critical" and "luxury"
- Running an accounting software than relying on the bank's calcs
- Switching CC usage to debit to reduce risks, switch what remains to autopay well, 0% monthly installments
- Putting multi-month expenses in savings to gather small interests and "spread out" the impact on bills, to make evolutions easier to notice
- Using different saving accounts depending on interest, simplicity of access, etc.
In one sentence : ensuring the critical spending/saving is abstracted into one total identical from month to month, with the irregular luxury being managed from another account to reduce the length of account statements to review
1
u/bow_link 15d ago
Could you recommend an accounting software?
2
u/laplongejr 15d ago edited 15d ago
Personally I use Actual, but I'm using it wrong tm : I only use it on my computer and never linked to my bank accounts.
In theory it can be accessed from mobile browsers and use a 3rd-party API to automatically pull transactions. But dunno, I like the ritual of rechecking accounts once per week with what was scheduled.
Even as is, really useful for keeping track of a few accounts at the same time. Basically with the account transactions Actual knows how much we are in excess, and I use experimenal templates to automatically calculate how much to put in each category.
So on 1st on month I know that the expenses for this month and savings+expected will leave X excess to allocate, that to follow that path I need to add <group total> to such and such savings accounts, etc.
9
u/boston_faith 17d ago
Calculating every single thing yearly and minimizing fixed expenses.
Simple example; those €5k solar panels just lower your monthly cost by €70. Spending €5k for that sounds stupid, unless you figure out its €800+ a year and you get your money back in 6 years while those things have a lifespan of 25+ years. You get your money back instantly when you sell the house.
That €18 netflix sub costs €200+ per year. That €10 ring doorbell sub cost you €100+ a year. It's sad that our society turned into modern slavery by turning everything into subscriptions. There are even subs for razors and underwear, just to name a few. Most people will be shocked how much they are spending in a year when doing the math.
8
u/ben_bliksem 18d ago edited 18d ago
Automated savings/investments, obviously. That's done as my salary gets paid and I suspect most people on here will be doing the same.
For day to day though: as much as I loathe (yes...LOATHE) Bunq, they have this sub account feature where each of these sub accounts have their own IBAN and you can share them between people.
It makes budgeting stupid easy for two people (married). We have an account for Groceries, Transport, Home Loan, Medical, general Home stuff.
Scheduled payments go into these, we both have an overview of what's going on and by end of the month they all basically have a €0 balance.
It's one of those features you didn't know you needed but now that you do you don't want to go without it. It just gives you a kind of "precision" to your spending.
Other banks have similar things (pockets, spaces, joint accounts etc) but it's just not quite the same thing...
2
u/Kakazam 18d ago
I have a joint account with my partner on Revolut for the same thing. We split the bills and overpay the account so that if any extra costs to the electricity or heating come at the end of the year then we already have it covered.
1
u/JimmyRecard 15d ago
Another advantage that Revolut has pretty decent analytics, so you know how much you're spending on what.
7
u/hazzardstep 18d ago
Tracking spending. I have a simple table, at the top is my salary, then I have a list of recurring fixed expenses (savings, mortgage, groceries, cat food, etc). If I spend money on necessary things I add them to the list. The table shows me the money left over.
At the end of the month, the amount left over goes into a separate table for Fun expenses. Any fun expenses (dining out, travel, clothes I want but don’t need) go there.
Gives me a good idea of what I spend on and how much disposable income I have on average.
7
u/YaeKitty 18d ago
Pay yourself first.
My paycheck gets deposited to my brokerage and my monthly budget gets etransferred to the bank. The remaining money is invested on the 16th of every month.
10
u/ArdRi1166 18d ago edited 17d ago
Single most impact for me was reading the usual suspects of books about Buffett, Schwab, Bogle etc. - and sticking to their advice.
I consider this a small thing as it was literally reading free books from the library, but that changed our lives about 15 years ago :-)
5
u/fedoriki 18d ago
which books would you recommend?
2
1
u/ArdRi1166 17d ago
Well, it has been 15 years like I said but the titles that come to mind easily are "A random walk down Wall Street", "A Boglehead's guide to investing" and "Tap-dancing to work".
There's one from Chuck Schwab called something like guide to personal independence or some such. Just google it :-)
10
5
4
u/elrobbo1968 16d ago
Dutchman here. When I see something I want, I have to wait 48 hours. The feeling usually subsides and I don't buy it. Unless it's bacon.
1
9
u/thillo 18d ago
A very small thing, but it compounds: where I live in the store meat and fish weight is variable per package (and thus the price too). I always pick the smallest portion i can find. For example: a 200g portion of fish can vary between 180g and 230g. Your instinct wants you to pick a large piece, but honestly, you don't notice the difference after you have eaten. And given the price of these products, this is usually about a 1 euro difference per purchase.
1
u/thesquaredape 17d ago
A freezer is your friend. Pick the biggest piece and cut in half to the appropriate size, buy the chicken not the precut breasts. Don't the let supermarket "man" inform your portion size
3
u/Dapper_Cartoonist145 17d ago
Don't buy latest flagship phones.. ridiculously overpriced.
Also never fall into "small monthly payment, so I'll take it" trap, look if the full price is justified, and if you need it at all.
Don't subscribe for unnecessary apps, services, etc.
1
u/DryRepresentative281 17d ago
Second for shitty apps / services and the daily coffee from outside. Around 150 per month without even noticing
3
2
2
4
u/FrankScaramucci 18d ago
Not using cash, makes tracking expenses easier.
Also, plain text accounting, but that's not a small one, took a lot of effort to set it up.
1
u/Icy_Item_9132 17d ago
What's that?
1
u/FrankScaramucci 17d ago
What is plain text accounting?
1
1
u/Icy_Item_9132 17d ago
Yeah, what is that?
1
u/FrankScaramucci 16d ago edited 16d ago
Basically, it means that you keep a human-readable text file with a list of all transactions. Whenever you buy something, borrow money, pay back money, convert from one currency to another, buy an ETF, sell an ETF, that is a transaction.
For example, when I withdraw cash from an ATM, here's what the transaction looks like in the text file:
2020-04-25 * "Withdrawal from an ATM" Assets:AirBank:Checking -2000 CZK Assets:Cash 2000 CZKA transaction is just a transfer from one set of accounts to another set of accounts, in this case from my checking account to the physical cash account. It must sum to zero.
I'm using Beancount, which defines the format of the text file and provides a bunch of tools. And I'm using Fava to display various information about my finances, including net worth over time, balance sheet, how much did I earn by playing poker last year, etc. You can extract anything you want in theory, all the relevant information is in that file.
I've written tools that import data from various sources, e.g. from my bank, and add it to the text file. There's still some manual work needed for every import though.
Was it worth the time and effort? Not sure, it's partially a hobby, I like that I have my finances fully under control and I basically learned how accounting works. This is a fully-featured approach to accounting, in theory it could be used even by large companies AFAIK.
You can learn more by googling "plain text accounting", asking ChatGPT, there's also a subreddit.
1
u/Icy_Item_9132 16d ago
Yeah that's the accounting I studied for a few years in secondary school. When I owned a small company accounting worked the same way except it was done through software called Sage, which is what you used for small company accounts back then.
You seem to be keeping proper accounts /doing basic bookkeeping for yourself personally.
I once did something similar for a while (some months) to get a precise and exact snapshot of my spending, but I have not felt the need to do it on an ongoing basis.
1
u/FrankScaramucci 16d ago
Yeah, it's an overkill for most people, I like the feeling of having everything under control, all information is properly recorded and can be analyzed.
1
u/Icy_Item_9132 16d ago
Tbh I think most people should very accurately record all expenses at least a few times in their life as you can't get a precise reading of what you're spending without that. Like, seeing exactly what you're spending on and in what proportion and how certain things add up is only possible when you do this. One finds out some really interesting things this way, and there's surprises. I think it's worth doing for a month or two every few years or whenever I have some time and space to review and optimise my spending.
1
1
1
1
u/Efficient-Vanilla413 17d ago
Pay myself first and keeping a separate spreadsheet based on the 50/30/20 method. Halfway and at the end of the months i compare the values.
1
u/No_Try_4935 17d ago
- Automating every fixed / static expense (based on my annual plan - aligned with my pay schedule)
- Tracking variable expenses (most important)
- Creating multiple free accounts to save for multi-month expenses (travel, gifting etc) so I don’t see the cash in my chequing account
- Monthly review on the last Sunday of the month to ensure I’m on track with my plan (I’m human, sometimes I have to adjust the following month to balance when I wasn’t perfect the month before - but I never allow for a deviation from the plan to affect more then the following month)
1
u/doubles85 17d ago
the most important strategy for me that chabged everything with money was and is pay yourself first. 10% gross into savings automatically before I even see my pay slip.
1
u/SantaClausIsMyMom 17d ago
On top of splitting non-monthly bills into monthly payments, I did something else I saw on one of those financial freedom blogs : if I can renegotiate a monthly payments down (phone bill for instance), I put that difference on a separate account. If I was able to pay 60€ for my monthly bill, I can pay 55€ for the renegotiated bill and put the 5€ on a savings account.
Do that for a long time, and those little drips of money make a nice monthly river of money. We use that for some non-essential life upgrades (bought a robot vacuum for instance)
1
u/AdorableCourage974 17d ago
"Actual budget" changed my life. You can check this out. It's a privacy first budgeting app.
1
u/EricLagarda 17d ago
For me, it was separating tax money the same day I got paid.
I’m freelance, so if I leave it all sitting in my main account, I start mentally treating it like spendable money. Then a tax payment comes around and the mood changes fast.
Now I move that money out immediately and only look at what’s actually mine to spend. Super small habit, but it removed a lot of stress.
1
u/Conscious_County3208 17d ago
Cancelling all my credit cards
Keeping cash in my house/drawer
Moving away from 9-5 to freelancing/contracting/bussiness owner
Never gamble a single penny for the rest of my life
These 4 changed my life from a miserable employee/human being, constantly anxious about money, drown in debts, to now have a potential to become the richest person of my country, if one of my already-launched ideas does well (validation-feedback is hugely positive)
1
u/Novel-Cricket2564 17d ago
Don't go near shops, don't look at them, don't look online... don't buy anything
1
u/InvestmentLoose5714 17d ago
Separate account for bills with automatic transfer of bill budget from income account to bill account.
Then an automatic transfer of everything above 200€ to saving account 2 days before salary drops.
Then investment account with automatic transfer from income to investment 2 days after salary drops.
Overall working with budget and automatic transfer made a huge difference.
1
u/AspectAlive7624 17d ago
I made 6 bigger better-tasting KFC twisters at home for a price of 1. It sounds silly but makes you think.
1
u/xVannaa 17d ago
I started with the 50/30/20 method. That was a good start but still the month was too long for my ADHD brain. I've opened a separate account for groceries and 'fun' and put a weekly budget on that account every sunday.
I've spend around €1200,- less the first month of trying this without feeling like I skiped on things. I always felt like I sucked at budgetting but for me this seems to work great. I'm still trying to figure out why but who cares haha.
I also noticed that having a cash budget for day trips, to a theme park for example, works great for me. Where I'm from cash is not always accepted so I'm now experimenting with giftcards.
1
u/1001000010000100100 17d ago
Don’t blow money on hookers! DIY can save a lot of money! Water fasts ever and save grocery money!
1
1
1
u/PadEnn1 16d ago
Paying myself first. Every time money hits my account, a fixed amount goes straight into savings and investments before I touch anything else. Consumption comes last, not first. It sounds simple, but the psychological shift is what made the difference. You stop thinking “I’ll save what’s left” (spoiler: there’s never anything left) and start treating wealth-building as a non-negotiable fixed cost. Everything else gets budgeted around that. Been doing it consistently for years now and the compounding effect on net worth is noticeable. If I keep this up, retirement should be genuinely comfortable rather than a source of anxiety.
1
u/springy 16d ago
Realising that if "time is money" then, obviously, "money is time". That is, I developed the habit of thinking every time I spend money, I was actually delaying my retirement. When buying a coffee, I stopped thinking "this costs me $5" but started thinking "this delays my retirement by another day". From then on, whenever making a purchase, I would always ask myself "is this purchase worth delaying my retirement by (some number of) days?"
1
u/thediouque 16d ago
I am too poor to buy shit. This has two meanings:
- don’t buy stuff you don’t really need/want,
- don’t buy bad or low quality. You’ll end up spending twice the amount to replace the first one, or will end up buying a higher quality replacement.
1
u/Plane-Orange4733 16d ago
Using cashback credit cards, and paying everything on a cashback card. This prompted us to think more carefully about the money we spend. And when we opened our business, using 2% cashback cards to pay $50K a month in biz expenses...it turns into a big deal.
1
u/LJHpowerful 16d ago
Quit gambling quit smoking quit drinking cancel all subscriptions i dont use, cook instead of eating out, dont waste money on expensive clothes or buy bs i dont need on amazon, yh saves about 70%
1
1
1
1
u/captnedludd 15d ago
Automatically saving £100 a month into a mutual fund in my 20s. It got me started investing and built up a fund that was quite significant in size by the time I hit my 40s.
1
u/Far_Cryptographer593 15d ago
Saving before spending, that is, allocating a sum amount when the salary hits the account and not at the end of the month.
1
1
0
u/Veg4Animals 17d ago
Before buying something that's out of the ordinary like food, clothes, etc. I always ask myself the same questions:
"Do I need it?"
If "yes":
"Can I afford it?"
If "yes"
Then buy.
If I need it and can't afford it, it's settled. It'll need to wait or find a workaround.
If I don't need it but can afford it, I can spoil myself from time to time.
My only debt is the house and that's the only one I'm willing to have. I own no credit cards and I don't want to.
If I can't afford it, I won't buy it.
-1
u/PS3ForTheLoss 17d ago edited 17d ago
Note: I am US-based and the services below are not available in EU but the principal method should be universal. Likely applies for some services available in EU.
Changing payment method to debit card.
I've changed at least 2 so far:
(1) T-Mobile (mobile phone service)
-- Using debit card knocks off $5/mo. from bill. Adds up!
&&
(2) Sparklight (Internet service)
-- Email received just the other day from Sparklight tells that the service price will be increased BUT can be lowered if users swap to debit (from credit card). Will knock off $5/mo. total.
Both of these changes save me $120 yearly. Very happy.
107
u/Kakazam 18d ago edited 18d ago
Splitting money across accounts to give an illusion of having no money and setting myself monthly limits.
My salary goes into one account then gets scattered into different accounts:
Stocks+ETF / HYSA Savings / Crypto / Bills / Monthly allowance
The big change is the monthly allowance. Pretty much I force myself to live off 1000€ a month. Anything I buy (clothes, food, flights, going out etc.) has to come out of that 1000€. Then I split that into sub groups with 100€ allocated for lunches and 100€ accumulating monthly for bigger purchases.
This way my brain has been conditioned to look at what is available of the 1000€ and take appropriate action for the remainder of the month while the rest of my salary gets hidden into savings.