On this edition of Stretching Your Dollar, Bobbi Rebell, author of "Launching Financial Grownups: Live Your Richest Life by Helping Your (Almost) Adult Kids Become Everyday Money Smart," gives some tips on how to save a little extra each week. 

<div class="block">On this edition of Stretching Your Dollar, Bobbi Rebell, author of<i> Launching Financial Grownups: Live Your Richest Life by Helping Your (Almost) Adult Kids Become Everyday Money Smart, </i>gives some tips on how to save a little extra each week. </div>
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Wake Up With Cheddar

Stretching Your Dollar: How to Save an Extra $50 a Week

Welcome back to wake up with chatter everybody. It's time for stretching your dollar, our daily segment all about consumer finance. And if you want to build your savings, starting with saving just $50 a week, that could have a huge impact. Joining us with some easy to adopt advice on how to do. Just that is Bobby Rell certified financial planner, author of launching Financial Grown Ups and host of the podcast, Wellness for Financial Grown Ups. Bobby. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Of course. So first tell us the top three ways you see consumers wasting money. Yeah. Ok. Well, first of all, literally wasting food because we all get that, you know, they present so well, you know, at those markets that we love and we load up the fridge and then we go out with friends, right? And then it's all sitting there. So definitely be mindful of your plans in the next few days or whatever it may be with your perishable food and keep the oldest stuff at the front and the newest stuff at the back. It's almost like you're your own grocery store by doing. Oh, absolutely. You also want to watch your subscription because we tend to add, we see like for example, the streaming services, we see a new show we wanna see and then we add and we add and we add same thing with all the different apps and stuff. So go through on your phone and just do a check. What apps do I have? Am I actually using them with streaming services? They will take you back usually at a lower price. So don't be afraid to cut back. You can even downgrade a lot of them. So and finally, I want to mention gift cards because this is a huge thing. Even credits when you buy something and they put it on a gift card, make sure you have a system to keep track whatever it may be. It can be an envelope, it can be taking pictures if you take pictures and you have all the numbers, that's all you need, right? And if you know you're gonna, you're not gonna use it, sell it and sell it for money. Yeah, people forget about those gift cards all the time and those companies bank on you forget about those all the time. So how can saving even just $50 a week eventually just grow to more something just small like that. Yeah, it is real money. I mean, the stats prove it. I mean, we have high inflation but even if you got a 6% return after 20 years, you're looking at more than $50,000. So these savings really do add up and 50 bucks is really not all that painful for many of us. Sometimes that would be as simple as cutting out the morning coffees on our way or having a reusable cup and doing the coffee beforehand, which I know is so cliche. But exactly. So how do you approach trimming those expenses? You mentioned maybe cutting coffee out in the morning? Exactly. You also want to take a look at where you're, where you're spending is you want to be negotiating everything that you can, right? So think about where your money is actually going. Don't do it all at once. You want to create a system, you want to be aspirational, but also realistic in where you cut back. Think about the things that are most important to you keep those. But things that maybe as you go through tracking, I didn't really care that much about this. I didn't really need to have that extra snack and really think about cutting back on those things and also enlisting an accountability partner. This is my number one tip for so many different things that goes across all of my money, wellness, um, engagement things. Because if you have somebody else who's a partner in this, they're going to keep you on track. It can be a spouse, a partner, a trusted friend and even a professional, but get someone else involved. Absolutely. Because the communication is key on all of that and knowing where all your money is going is very important. Our thanks as always to Bobby Rell, author of launching financial grown ups and also the CEO of financial wellness strategies. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me.