Going to college with enough money to fund living expenses, bills, and full or part of tuition is a big deal.

The student immediately becomes part of an elite group that doesn’t have to worry about how they are going to make rent, bills, and tuition or how they are going to afford the textbooks that the professor just recommended.

If you are a parent, affording your child this level of financial independence when they get to college is totally possible. You have to start early, though, and aggressively put money away towards your kids’ education.

Luckily for you, there are several ways an average person can save money today. While the money saved off each strategy might seem small in a month, the cumulative effect over the years is tremendous.

Here are some of the things you should stop wasting your money on if you want to save money fast for your kid’s college years:

Cable, Netflix, and Other Entertainment Subscriptions You Don’t Need

You can only watch so much TV or online series in a day. Subscribing to several entertainment services when your savings account is depleted is counterproductive. You should be spending most of your time working to make money not watching TV shows.

If you can’t live without video streaming and TV, limit yourself to one subscription service and cancel the rest. Further, make sure that people in your household don’t have different subscriptions for the same service. That’s a total waste of money. You all can use one account.

Brand Name Clothes

If you already don’t know, no one really cares what brand of clothes you wear. The people who judge others based on the brands they wear are not worth having in your life anyway. As long as you look good, you should be okay.

Actually, looking good is a lot more about fabric quality, color coordination and how your clothes fit than brand. You can achieve great results with a lot less money than you think. Browse through some fashion blogs to get inspiration on how to best put fashion pieces together.

Impulse Purchases of Bottled Water, Energy Drinks, and Soda

You may think that the $1.50 you spend on drinks here and there throughout the day isn’t much. You couldn’t be more wrong.

If you spend just $4.50 a day buying drinks, you are gobbling up $135 every month without even noticing it. If you choose to carry water from home instead and save that $4.50 a day, you’ll have an extra $1,620 at the end of the year. $1,620 can buy a lot of textbooks and help your kid avoid bad credit card debt while in college.

Unnecessary Fees: ATM Fees, Late Fees, & Cancellation Fees

Do you really need to spend that $4.57 to withdraw money from an out of network ATM? That’s an unnecessary expense you don’t need to incur.

If personal finance were tennis, incurring these fees would qualify as unforced errors. You are willingly putting them on yourself and reducing the amount of cash you have available to fund things that matter such as college tuition. Rising above your current position to attain financial independence and finally financial freedom should be viewed as a game. In a competitive game, you don’t want to willingly concede any advantage you have.

Eating Out Often

Eating at home can save both your health and finances. Apart from the pleasure you get from eating at a nice restaurant, there isn’t any practical utility you can derive from eating out if you are not financially independent. The cost of eating out will be significantly higher than the cost of buying groceries and cooking at home. It is okay, though, to go out once in a while to treat yourself.

Expedited Shipping

For most of the things you’ll buy online, it really doesn’t matter much if they are delivered in 24 hours or 2 days.

If you do a lot of online shopping, you can save a lot by opting for standard shipping or having the products shipped to a common pickup location near you. Some companies just offer expedited shipping as a way to make money off the service of shipping. Resist the urge to pay for expedited shipping when a product arriving a day or two later won’t affect your life in any way.

Endeavors That Make You Think Small

Doing something like scouring the web for an hour straight looking for a $5 deal is a total waste of time. In the same amount of time, if you applied your skills to making money, you can make a lot more money. Wasting hours looking for cheap deals online or offline makes you think small about money and perpetuates the kind of thinking that may ensure you never attain financial freedom for the rest of your life.

Ideally, you should be focused on spending time to generate revenue. If you can generate $25 in an hour, there is absolutely no reason to spend the same amount of time walking around town looking for a $10 discount. Know how much your time is worth and direct your energy and focus to more profitable endeavors.

If you aren’t financially independent yet, you should be actively looking for ways to dig yourself out of whatever financial holes you’ve gotten yourself into. There are lots of small purchases the average person makes every now and then that add up to a significant chunk of money at the end of the month or year. You should try to limit these unnecessary expenses as much as possible. Keep these tips in mind and you will save a lot more money quickly.

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June 26, 2018