How I saved over $535 in 2 Weeks with Easy Life Hacks

Recently I challenged myself to see how I saved money in a two week period. It felt like there was a whole other world of apps and tricks. I wanted to learn about what I did not know. The result is I’m writing about how I saved over $535 in two weeks with easy life hacks. It has generated a lot of conversations with my friends and I wanted to put up one post so anyone who wishes can see what I tried.

Those of you following us for a while know we love to travel. One of our more popular posts: How Much our 2 Month USA Road Trip Cost seemed to go hand in hand. The more we can save $1 here and there, the more it will add up! Not only do we put that towards travel, but also towards long-term wealth gains which I hope for everyone to aim towards financial security.

On that note, it was so fun to do this challenge. I must tell you right away, some of the links are affiliate links, which means if you do decide to sign up through our links we get a small percentage back, yet there is no cost difference to you. I try to sign up through the links of the people I learned these tricks from. It’s one of the easiest ways to thank creators and thank you so much if you do sign up with one of our links. With that…

Here’s How I saved over $535 with Simple Life Hacks:

Rakuten – $30.58

This was one of my biggest bonuses. I timed it just right with a few purchases, like H&R Block, and was quickly able to accumulate rewards. There are a few options with how to use Rakuten. I allowed it to access my Chrome browser and it automatically finds coupons and deals from lots of stores. I just had to purchase a new tire and got an additional 1% back on that (plus my normal credit card rewards too.) Already, with no fuss, I automatically got a deposit of $30.58 sent to my paypal. This will automatically happen every time I hit the payment threshold. If you use our Rakuten link,  you will get at least a $10 sign-up bonus too. Or use my friend’s link who gets a shout-out for turning me onto many of these savings tricks – even tho I ignored her urging to do so for years. Ah!? Why did I do that!?

Your Local Grocery Store App – $30

$30 minimum saved in two weeks. Oh.My.Gosh. If you are not using the app for whatever grocery store you shop at, you could be missing out on big savings. Currently, I shop most at Shaws and Hannafords. I did not realize how quickly the points accumulate with their rewards program and all the digital coupons and special offers I could use. I frequently get $5 off coupons and free items just for using the app. This one was the hardest to quantify, but I did use a $20 off coupon for trying online ordering, plus several $5 off coupons and other regular savings as well. I lowballed my estimate at $30. 

Fetch Rewards – $7.25

Another program I had no idea about! You can earn at least a few cents back on almost every receipt. When you first sign up, they will offer you higher values for the receipts and then take them down. If you use our link you will get an additional 2000 points! I got up to over $7.25 really quickly. There will be random products on offer that if you were planning on buying anyway you can earn additional points for. Fetch is so easy it’s like, why not and you get a little earnings every single time.

Picking up Cans – $44.55

We live in a state with a bottle redemption. Most of our beer and soda cans we pay $0.05 cents deposit when we purchase the beverages and when we return them we get the $0.05 cents back. Liquor bottles are usually $0.15. So many people litter their cans or can’t be bothered to return them. Spring is a good time to do this because a lot of cans get buried under the snow and accumulate all winter. Most days Chris and I went walking and picked up cans. We started out with grocery bags, then went to kitchen sized garbage bags then we realized we needed to walk with large sized contractor bags. Walking the roadsides, we picked up all the cans and recycling. 

Massive quantities were attained and we made well over $100 (holy crap!). The picture you see above – we accumulated that amount over and over again. I only accounted for $44.55 for what we collected in the two week period. It did take a lot of time to wash them. They get so dirty from the road so I would have to hose them all off and make sure the insides were clean. I had the time to do this, so I am glad to keep all this volume from otherwise just being picked up as trash.

WeBull – $12.88

Claimed 2 free stocks by signing up for WeBull. If you want to sign up, deposit $100 you can also get two free stocks. Mine have a starting value of $12.88, but you know what, that is $12.88 I didn’t have before. And who knows what it might grow too. If you use the link above, you also will get two free starter stocks.

Amazon – $10.00

Took advantage of an offer to start using their photo storage and got $10. Every so often Amazon has special offerings like downloading their app and then getting $5 in credit. I get the credit and then delete the app if I don’t want it. Keep an eye out for offerings like try Prime free for 30 days or see if you like the movies they have on offer with their free 30 day trial.

Insurance Wellness Incentive – $200

Take advantage of any healthy wellness programs your health insurance might offer. If you have really good insurance or really bad insurance, make sure you look and see if they have any healthy rewards type of incentives. I took some health surveys, watched a nutrition video and did some other tasks that promote healthy living and in the course of about 1 hour I made back $200. So umm..$200/hr…I’ll take it! There are more activities further down the line I can look into as well. Don’t overlook this area.

Ibotta – $31.17

This is another savings app I had no idea prior to starting on this mission to see how I saved this money. I have already gotten over $31.17 just by shopping and buying the same products I normally do. Don’t buy items you otherwise wouldn’t normally. Just shop like you would and here and there $0.25 and $1 will add up. There is an additional bonus if you sign up with our referral link.

Credit Card Bonus – $200

Signed up for $200 credit card bonus. If you are someone that ALWAYS pays your credit card in full every billing cycle, signing up for credit card bonuses could be an easy way to make a couple of hundred extra bucks every year. Some people get super involved with this. I think a lot of average, busy working people think it’s too much work, get overwhelmed and believe they could never manage all that. You don’t have to be the world’s best credit card hacker to make a couple of hundred bucks.

When I’m able to, I sign up for a card with a bonus I know I can meet (like spend $1000 in three months). I put a google notification on my calendar to make sure I am on track to get my bonus. Once I met the threshold I put another notification on my google calendar a month or two out reminding to check, make sure I got the bonus, cancel the card and then look for the next offer. Even once a year is still $200 bucks.

Total Saved/Earned in Two Weeks:

$535.26!!!

Here is the breakdown of how I saved the numbers above:

$30.58 Rakuken + $30 Shaws App + $7.25 Fetch + $44.55 Cans + $12.88 Webull + $10 Amazon + $200 Health + $200 Credit Card = $535.26

WoW!

So. With all these things, I can’t emphasize enough, don’t go crazy and buy things or do things you wouldn’t normally do. How I saved the money was not by buying something just because there was a random offer. Don’t sign up for a credit card if you do not pay in full every.single.month. You should never pay a penny towards a credit card and if you do, stay away. If something doesn’t speak to you, don’t pursue it. Don’t like one of these features, don’t use it.

I have been thinking about trying to pursue this two-week how I saved the money challenge for a while. I was all in and loved it. This was so much fun! It got me talking to some of my friends who were doing this already (and ah-hem – a little bit mad at them they didn’t tell me about it sooner!)

For me, this experiment showed the age-old adage that often when one goes about to learn about something they didn’t know before, a whole new world can open up. These are some of the fun rabbit holes to go down, I think. 

Keep Learning!

One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is the pursuit of lifelong learning. 

I can confidently say I am a good saver. What I learned in this experiment was there were a lot of ways other people had figured out to save money that I wasn’t aware of. So many people knew tricks I didn’t and I was grateful they had shared their knowledge.

This got me so excited as I started talking to my friends about what I was learning. I wanted to write this post up to share with you all so if anything here is something you’d like to pursue and learn more about it, here it is. All the tips above I personally have found useful and plan to continue using them. 

Is there more I am missing? Do you have other money-saving tips, apps, or programs I don’t know about yet? Please share so we can all benefit along our journies to financial independence. I want to know!

Thank you so much for reading. In the words of my dad, “Be good, think about what you’re doing and use your head.“

Seems fitting advice to leave off with!