How to Find Extra Money Within Your Budget

If you have been living paycheck to paycheck and trying so hard to save or to get ahead on your bills, you have come to the right place.

Today, I am sharing a few strategies that will help you get out of this vicious cycle and find yourself with some extra money at the end of the month.

Whether you are trying to get out of debt or just make things a little bit easier on yourself financially, let’s talk about the easy things to do in order to get a month ahead on your bills.

For many years, I lived paycheck to paycheck like many people. I had a large family with six children and I struggled for many years trying to make ends meet. I wish I would have known some of the things that I know now.

Since then, we managed to pay off a 13-year bank loan on our business in six and a half years, and here is how we did it.

1. Payday promises

One of the main reasons that I see that we get ourselves into a bind is we make payday promises. When people come to us wanting money, for example for an office gift or an activity to do together, we say we can do it on payday.

All these promises add up, and come payday, our check is already gone. So next time you find yourself saying “I can do it on payday”, realize that you are spending money before you even have it, and think again.

2. Extra paycheck

If you get paid every other week, you will have two months in which you get an extra third paycheck.

Many times people will go out and spend that extra paycheck on something that they have been wanting. Instead, put that towards the bills of the next month if you are all caught up until now.

Moreover, those extra checks do not have insurance taken out of them because you have already paid your insurance from the two normal checks that you get that month, giving you some extra wiggle room in addition to the extra check.

2. Set up your bill payments

Sit down and list all of your bills: when they are due, their total amounts, your monthly obligation. Many times we can contact people and get a different due date set.

If you get paid every other week, divide those bills up into paydays and try to get them equal if they are currently not. Resetting those due dates can make the whole process so much more convenient and stable.

3. Reduce your payments

At one point our electric bill was $175 a month, and now it is only $65, which is almost three times lower. There are so many simple ways to drive down your electric bill. The money you save, which in our case was an extra $110 per month, you can use towards other things.

4. Plan your meals around what you have

Look at your stockpile. See if you have any extra food and then plan out simple meals that you can make around that, with minimal additional purchases.

A lot of times we will have some weird things in our cabinets that we have had there for a while, but if we put a list together and think of meals we can make out of that, we can cut that grocery bill and help ourselves get ahead on our bills.

5. Eliminate items that you would normally buy

There are plenty of things we buy regularly without questioning them too much, but they are so easy to make at home.

Ranch seasoning costs around $1.69-1.79 at Walmart, and it is so simple to make from scratch instead with ingredients you already have sitting on your shelf.

Cinnamon sugar and chili and taco seasoning are also great examples. If you are still buying canned beans, dried beans are so much cheaper and they save you a lot of steps.

All you have to do is open your bag, put them in a pot, cover them with water, let them sit overnight, add all of your other ingredients, and then cook them the way that you would normally cook your chili. Moreover, dried beans are almost completely interchangeable.

You can use almost any beans in your chili, such as Navy beans instead of pinto beans, as it is the seasoning that makes the difference.

Make sure to go over all the foods you buy pre-packaged and think if you can make the same thing yourself.

Once you start saving the extra couple dollars here and there on such things, put them towards your bills for the next month.

6. Be consistent

If you have covered the bill for the following month, start on the one after. What will fail us every time is if we can get a month ahead on a bill and then we realize we have extra money as the bill is already paid and spend it on something else.

So tackle those main, normal, monthly bills that you have and get a month, two or however many you can ahead. Take care of your credit card payments ahead of time and your mortgage. It is so easy to do it online. Not only will it reduce the principal, but also the interest, saving you tons of money.

In addition, paying ahead helps you if you get sick, if there is a death in your family, if you wreck your car. So many things can distract us from getting things paid by the due date and get us late fees.

Once you get one or two of those late fees, interest starts growing on those or you need to have your water turned back on, and at that point it is hard to get back on top of that. Being a month ahead can help us avoid those situations.

Finding money in your budget

I hope this has been helpful to you and you now have a rough idea of where to start getting ahead on your bills. Let me know what strategies you use to do this in the comments.

Next, check out these 7 Ways I Save Money on Household Expenses & Groceries.