$100,000 Saved at 25: How to Save Money & Spend Nothing

1. Car hacking

I try to buy five to nine-year-old cars. This is generally the sweet spot where there's enough depreciation, but also, it's not so old that you'll have a lot of repairs. 

2. Cheap phones

I always had Google Pixels, which were a couple of hundred bucks. They work great. Having cheap phones in the past has saved me thousands of dollars. 

3. Not shopping sales

I realized that you can go broke saving money and that even if something was $100 and is now $50, that's still $50 more than not buying it if it's not something you need. 

For the last couple of years, I've tried not to buy anything unless I need it.

4. Side Hustles 

A couple of years ago, I had to have a side hustle to save money. I was frugal with the money from my main job; I would also take everything I made from my side hustles and put it directly into savings.  

5. Cut out drinking

I realized that drinking didn't add anything to my life. It's expensive, especially when you go to a restaurant; it doubles the price of going out. While it might be a little extreme, you have to do extreme things to get extreme results. 

6. Renting out extra space

Over the past three years, we have moved three times. Each time was to a multifamily where we lived in one unit and rented the other ones out. 

This allowed us to have tenants cover our mortgage, taxes, and insurance; in essence, we live for free. 

7. Being lazy

I would rather cook dinner at home than go out to dinner and have to work for an extra 2 hours to pay for that dinner. Having that mindset that if I can lower a lot of my expenses, I will have to work less has helped me in many different areas. 

I don't want to work harder than I have to to buy stuff I don't need to impress people I don't even care about. 

8. Lazy cooking

Food is the third biggest category in most people's budgets. We try to cook in batches, so we only have to cook three times a week and have leftovers to freeze. It makes meal planning a lot easier. 

9. Taking free money 

Over the past few years, I've made about $5,000, taking free money when people offer it.

The first way is signing up for credit cards that offer huge bonuses if you hit their minimum spend within the first three months. If you do that a couple of times a year, you can make a few thousand dollars signing up for these credit cards. 

The second way is signing up for bank accounts. Different banks will offer you anywhere from $100 to $400 to sign up for their checking or savings accounts and set up direct deposits. Over the past four years, I've made almost $2,000 just signing up for bank accounts. 

10. Using stuff until it breaks

Most people won't use their things until they break. They want to upgrade to shinier, newer things. They want the latest clothing and shoes.

We decided to stop doing this a couple of years ago, saving us a lot of money. 

11. Limiting subscriptions

Some subscriptions add a lot of value, but most don't, or there's a cheaper way to use them. With Netflix, Audible, HBO, and Spotify, we split them with friends and family, or we'll sign up for a 30-day free trial or pay for it for one month.

12. Asking if I would rather have the cash

Look at something and ask, would I rather have the cash? You also have to look at the cost per use. If I buy something that's $100, and I only use it twice, I'm paying $50 every time I use it, so make sure if you're spending money on something, you're getting your use out of it. 

13. Using a shopping list

If you shop without a list, you buy a bunch of crap you don't need. I also try to make sure that I never grocery shop hungry because that's just asking to buy more stuff than you need. 

14. The 72 rule

I'm trying to make sure that with any big purchase or even small purchase, especially when it's online, I don't buy it immediately. 

I put it in the shopping cart and leave it there for 72 hours or, at a very minimum, 24 hours because 90% of the time, you don't need that thing. 

15. Avoided debt

We avoided debt at all costs besides our multi-family home, and that debt makes us money every single month. Besides that, with cars, with anything we buy, we avoid any type of consumer debt. 

16. Saving on big purchases

When we bought our multi-family home, we got $10,000 back towards closing costs. That saved us $10,000 cash, and we put it on the loan. We buy dented and dinged appliances so that we can get them for about 75% off. Anything else we can do on those big purchases to save money saves us thousands of dollars annually.

17. Only drinking water and coffee

I used to drink energy drinks and Mountain Dew and Frappuccinos all the time, and I realized that not only is it sugary, nasty junk. I cut that out. If that saves me $4 a day, that's $1,460 a year that I'm saving just from drinking things that are good for me.

18. Not needing to spend money to have fun

We discovered we could have fun for pretty much free. When we travel, we do it extremely cheaply, staying with credit card points at cheaper places that are still really nice. 

When we're home, we can hang out with friends, play sports, go outside, or read books. 

19. Cutting my hair

I either learned how to cut hair myself, or we have friends and family who do it. It has saved us hundreds and probably thousands of dollars over the past five years. 

$100,000 saved at 25

Are you working towards a savings goal? My first goal was to save $100,000, which I've achieved. Share how you're working towards your goals in the comments below.