Saving money sounds horribly dull and dreary but surprisingly there are ways to make saving money much more fun and these fun ways to save money are super important because they make saving money sustainable month in, month out.
And that’s good news right now as loads of us need to save money fast but then stick to a tight budget in these very uncertain times where we don’t know what the future will bring.
After an unbelievably hard year, we are also all in serious need right now of some more fun in our lives, so I’ve got for you here very simple tips on how to make saving money fun that will help put a smile on your face whilst keeping your spending under control.
Sadly, many of us do need to cut spending drastically at the moment and that does involve hard decisions and big sacrifices but these simple fun ways to save money help us approach life a bit differently and recognise that a much simpler, cheaper lifestyle can actually be very joyful.
I really do hope these tips on how to make saving money fun help you in these hard times. Do let me know your thoughts and how you get on.
For more ideas do read my other tips on how to live frugally. You’ll find everything from frugal food tips to advice on how to cut spending drastically plus frugal life skills and eco friendly tips on how to cut waste.
8 Fun Ways To Save Money
The eight fun ways to save money I’ve got for you here can between them save you thousands a year. But they do more than that because they get us asking big questions about what really brings us joy in our life and those questions can transform everything and unlock enormous savings.
The tips are very specific – so they are easy to action – but if any of them don’t work exactly for you, try and identify something similar that asks the same questions but would work in your life.
1. Sail Around On A Scooter
Sailing around on a scooter is great fun : when you get in the flow of it, it’s like some fabulous combo of yoga and skiing, it truly is.
And it’s fast, so you can cover a couple of miles in 20 minutes, which will save you money on public transport or those planet-poisoning short cart journeys.
I have a micro classic which you can buy new for less than £150. If you’re taking public transport every day to work, you can be quids in within a month. And scooters are a fantastic fun way to get out and enjoy the park with kids or friends at the weekend.
Scooters are also great toning exercise for our legs, butt and tummy so they make fitness and fun a real part of our every day life rather than something we have to add on by going to the gym after an over busy day.
Putting every day transport and enjoyable exercise back together again – whether scooting, cycling or walking – is such a simple thing to do but it can save us thousands a year and help us get fitter and help our environment.
2. Start A Tiny Garden
Growing food, flowers and herbs can be unbelievably joyful and there’s loads of science now to show it’s great for our mental health whilst saving us money. But if we haven’t a clue what we’re doing & get too ambitious it can easily become a not at all fun way to waste money!!!
The big secret is to start tiny.
Lavish your love on just a few blagged pots of blagged mint cuttings or spinach seeds or daffodil bulbs or even vegetable scraps and delight in watching them grow. Small scale it’s fun for the whole family and doesn’t become one of those crazy-parent-projects from which our kids quite rightly run.
Just a few pots of quick growing vegetables – that will grow on a balcony or by a front door – can keep you in free fresh greens for months and one pot of well watered mint will keep you in money saving headache-relieving, stomach easing tea all summer long.
Once you’ve enjoyed your first harvest it will become easier and easier to grow more money saving food. To get started check out these tips on growing vegetables for beginners on a budget.
Going forward the great power of this simple tip is that it shows us we can all easily save money by being just a bit more self sufficient without having to dig up the garden & start a homestead!!
3. Grow A Bumper Crop Of Raspberries
Getting up early on a gorgeously sunny morning to gorge on your own bumper crop of raspberries fresh from the garden is an idyllic way to start the day. And it can be free …
So forget that sad little pot of scrappy strawberries you fight the slugs and snails for and grow raspberries. They’re super easy to grow from free cuttings – ask around in autumn and early spring when local gardeners are pruning – and you can grow raspberries in a very small space to enjoy a money saving bumper harvest.
I am by no means a great gardener – I’m not even good!! – but with very little effort we grow enough raspberries in a small London garden to fill our freezer for free. We’re still eating them now at the end of January. That’s quite some money saved on scrumptious fresh fruit.
Harvesting our own raspberries – or blueberries or apples or plums – on our own little bit of land won’t save us enormous amounts of money but it does connect us to the passing of the seasons and this again has been shown to be incredibly powerful for the mental wellbeing we all need to draw on when times are tough. It gives us confidence in our ability to do things for ourselves.
4. Pick Your Own Free Elderberries
Even if we can’t enjoy a big harvest in our own garden there is a huge free, money saving harvest out there that most of us ignore every year.
And that is all the delicious wild summer berries and autumn fruits that grow in the hedgerows and woodlands.
My family are still enjoying in January the elderberries we foraged for free at the end of the summer. These immune system boosting babies are scrumptiously yummy in smoothies and juices and crumbles and pies.
And it’s not just elderberries. We are able to cram the cupboards with jars of sloe jam and pack the freezer with bags of delicious damsons and blackberries we haven’t paid a penny for.
Everyone from littlies to grandparents joins our hedgerow harvest in August and September and we spend hours outdoors together with family and friends making memories.
I honestly think it’s my happiest time of the year.
And those gloriously fun family days out really do save my family hundreds and hundreds of pounds a year on immune boosting fresh fruit.
So this year find out where you can forage easily where you live and from July through October get some dates in your diary for money saving family fun. It’s a wonderfully joyful way to start discovering the abundance of nature.
5. Enjoy Am Dram
Now we’ve done harvesting, it’s time for some Am Dram!!
You what? How did we get from free elderberries to amateur dramatics?
Well the thing is, we all spend a load of money on leisure and entertainment. But going out to a show – especially here in London – is unbelievably expensive.
Luckily for my family, London is also full of amateur theatre companies and loads of them are great. Now of course they don’t have the fancy sets of London’s West End but they have something else which is very special.
Am dram shows are brimful of all the joy that comes from doing something for the pure pleasure of it rather than being paid. They are a wonderful reminder that we as communities can make our own entertainment and need not hand over all our hard earned cash to far off media moguls.
So check out what’s on near you and enjoy the fun of a money saving show close enough to whizz to on your scooter. You might actually be inspired to get involved …
And that’s free and fun too!!
6. Organise A Film Festival
And with the wonders of modern technology we can actually go one step further in organising our own free entertainment as a community by putting on a local film festival competition.
In my little bit of London we have a 48 hour film challenge every year in which families and friends make movies on our phones in 48 hours.
It gets everyone out and about making fun as a community for free. And some of the entries – like this one I love – are hilarious …
Of course it doesn’t have to be film festival.
The point is it reminds us we don’t have to send money out of our communities to buy in entertainment. We can have enormous fun for free doing crazy stuff together. And these annual rituals bring our communities together and help us stick together and look out for one another.
That’s never been more important.
So even if you’re not up for organising something yourself, do find out what you can get involved in your community for free. It’s a lot more fun than haggling over cable subscriptions …
7. Become A Local Nerd
It’s amazing how many money saving ways we can find to have fun in our own area once we start looking for entertainment locally rather than assuming we have to buy it in or spend a fortune going on days out and trips.
As a new single mother with a young child I just couldn’t the crazy prices for London’s tourist attractions but once I started looking I discovered there were loads of brilliant free things to do in London.
So this year become a total local nerd and write yourself a big bucket list of all the fun things you can do for free in your area.
8. Go Wild
And as part of your bucket list make sure you’ve got loads of brilliant outdoor spaces when you can really go a bit wild.
So many of us have been locked down for long periods of the last year and we truly need to get outside properly and let off steam. So find out about every park and lake and forest and beach you can get to easily near you and prep yourself some ready-to-go super cheap days out for when the sun shines and we can finally get outside and start living again.
There are so many fun outdoor activities for kids – and for big kids!!! – we can enjoy with almost no preparation for free. So get outside and enjoy …
And there you go, eight simple tips that show you how to make saving money fun but also get you asking big questions about why we spend our money the way we do and what really brings us joy in our life.
I really hope these tips help you have some fun saving money. Please do share them if you found them helpful.
And for more ideas on how to live frugally do check out my other posts:
- Simple Frugal Life Skills
- Debt Free Living Ideas
- Extremely Frugal Food Tips
- Easy Ways To Save Money
- 101 Things To Stop Buying
And if you’re a Pinterest fan, do follow my thriving frugally board. It’s cram full of more tips on cutting spending, budgeting, paying off debt and enjoying a frugal life.
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