5 Major Ways to Save Money During a Recession – Family and FI (2024)

Right now, recent events have made people around the world question if a recession is coming. And quite frankly, no one knows for sure. But what we do know, is that you should always be prepared for a recession. That’s why we want to share with you 5 ways to save money during a recession.

Now we want you to know that these are ways that we save money in our everyday lives, not just during tough times. However, saving money is especially important now, so that’s why we thought it was important to share these ideas now.

How to save money during a recession

Number 1. Reduce spending to only necessities.

During a recession scare, you should not be spending money on unnecessary purchases. Hold off on buying the latest tech, clothes, and other unneeded items.

You should also cancel any upcoming trips that will cost you money and any events like birthday parties and festivals that will cost you money.

Number 2. Get Organized

One thing we recently did was organize all of our cupboards and our food pantry. By organizing the food and other items in your house, you find out what you have on hand. This will eliminate duplicate purchases and save you money.

As you can see here, I re-purposed some old boxes we had to help keep even the smaller items organized.

Getting organized will not only save you money but will save you time and help keep you from feeling overwhelmed.

Number 3. Save money on things you do have to buy

There’s only so much money that you can avoid spending. When you do have to spend money, it’s important to get the expense as cheap as possible. There are a few ways we do this.

First, you’ll want to make sure you are shopping at discount box stores for groceries and buying generic labels. This will significantly reduce your grocery costs.

Another thing you can do is ask for discounts. Common discounts are student, military, police/ems/fire, and senior discounts. If you fit within these categories, you should always ask if the company will offer you a discount.

As far as gas goes, you should be using the Get Upside app. This app allows you to get cashback on your gas purchases by uploading your receipt. We’ll add the link in the description.

Speaking of cashback, you should also be using the Ibotta and Rakuten apps. These apps allow you to get cashback on your everyday purchases. Ibotta also has a ton of digital coupons that you can use too.

We use these apps religiously.

Another way to save money is to keep your receipts. When you keep your receipts you have an away to get your money back if you have an issue with something you buy. Many people don’t know but you can actually return food to some places.

We once bought a nasty $10 bag of coconut flour that we knew we weren’t going to use. So we ended up taking it back to the store and got a full refund, no questions asked.

We recommend you use an app like “FetchRewards” to store your receipts. You can access all of them digitally and even get rewarded for uploading receipts.

Number 4. Make Use of Credit Cards

Now, we love credit cards. But that’s because we use credit cards responsibly. If you use credit cards, you should be able to pay the balance off in full every month.

If you use credit cards responsibly, you can save a lot of money by taking advantage of their benefits.

Depending on the type of card you have, you can get automatic cash back on purchases. You can also sign up for new credit cards and take advantage of signup bonuses.

Using credit cards have become one of our favorite ways to save money. Let me give you an example. At the time of writing this post, we needed to have about $4,000 worth of home repairs completed. We decided to take out a Chase Ink Business credit card which had an 80,000 point signup bonus after you spend 5,000 in the first 3 months.

Due to the global pandemic, some of these offers have changed, however, we like the Chase Ink Business and Chase Business Cash, and Chase Sapphire cards.

We put our repair costs on that card and used only that card until we hit the $5,000 minimum spend. Once we did, we qualified to get $850 cashback. That’s a lot of money that we saved.

This credit card has a $99 annual fee, which is fine because it saved us $850. But if we decide not to keep the card next year, we can either cancel it or downgrade it to a card without an annual fee.

Of course, downgrading is the much better option because that will increase your length of credit history, which helps your credit score.

Read, 11 Practical Ways to Meet Your Credit Card Spend Minimum Requirement to find out how you can reach this requirement without overspending.

Number 5. Automate Your Bills

Last but not least, you should set up auto-pay on all of your bills. By setting up auto-pay you will avoid late fees. Late fees are the absolute worst way to waste money.

Also, we actually suggest adjusting the due date of your bills so that all your bills come out on the same day. This makes it easier to know when all of your bills are due.

Now we want you to know that these are ways that we save money in our everyday lives, not just during tough times. However, saving money to be able to pay down debt, invest, or put into your emergency fund is especially important now, so that’s why we thought it was important to make this video.

So let’s review the 5 ways you can save money.

First, you want to reduce your expenses to only what is needed. Second, organize items so that you know exactly what you have.

Third, Get as many discounts as possible. Fourth, take advantage of credit cards and pay them off every month. And fifth, automate your bills so you avoid late fees.

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