Have you thought about the amount of money you’d like to save before the holidays roll around again? Or maybe for your emergency fund or a vacation? It doesn’t matter what your savings goal is, the number might seem a bit overwhelming. Attempting to determine where a few thousand extra dollars might appear can be tough. It can be easier when you break it down and find ways for you to save a bit at a time. Here are a few to get you started.

With Your Car

A car is a great thing to have, but it can also be expensive when you consider things like gas, insurance, maintenance, and repairs. You can save money on these things though. When it comes to gas, try using apps like GasBuddy that can show you where the cheapest gas near you is. You can save money on insurance when you get quotes from an online car insurance provider or two and make sure that you’re only paying for the coverage you need.

Coffee and Groceries

How much do you have in the budget for food and coffee? The chances are good that you might spend at least $5 – $10 each week at the local coffee shop. While that might not seem like much, over the course of a year at $10 each week, that’s $520…for coffee. Now, consider how much it would cost to make it at home.

When it comes to groceries, it can help to make a weekly written menu and then make your grocery list from that. Be sure to clip coupons, pay in cash so you don’t end up with interest for it on your credit cards, and only buy what’s on your list. The chances are good that your food budget doesn’t need to be as large as it is.

Save Online

Think about all of the money you spend online. There are browser add-ons like Ebates and BeFrugal that can get you cash back on your purchases. They’ll send you a check or pay you through PayPal each quarter for the things you’ve bought online. There’s another program named Paribus that scans your emails for any online purchases and when it finds lower prices, it will get you a refund for you for the difference. Also, if you’re an Amazon Prime customer, it can get you a refund when your orders arrive late.

Automatically Invest

Have you heard of Acorns? This is an app that allows you to make an investment – anything as little as $5 – a week, and even by rounding up your purchases to the nearest dollar. They then take that money and invests it for you. You can save as little or as much as you like, and this can really add up over the course of a year. This app is fully customizable so that you can set your own pace with saving and investing.

Some of these you’ve probably heard of and done but hopefully, you’ve found at least one that can help you on your saving journey.  

 

A lot of people are afraid of credit cards. There are countless horror stories of people getting way over their heads in debt by mismanaging them. But it doesn’t have to be this way. These are some tips for managing your credit cards in the best possible way.

 

Pay Off Your Balance Every Month

Credit cards are not free money. Too many people make the mistake of thinking that they can get by with just paying their minimum balance each month. While this is technically true, it’s going to end up hurting you in the long run. You’re paying a high interest rate on your credit card balances. If you don’t consistently pay these down, you’ll end up owing a lot more than the cost of your original purchase. As noted by Experian, it’s a myth that leaving a small balance on your card each month can boost your credit score. This does nothing to help your credit and will just cost you in interest payments.

 

Use Them to Pay for Essential Purchases, Not Impulses

It’s easy to use your credit card to pay for things. All you need to do is swipe it, and boom; you’re done. The problem with this is that it encourages unnecessary spending with consumers. Credit cards a great payment method for things that you’ll need to spend money on regardless—such as utilities or insurance payments. This is because you’ll get rewards for using your credit card. But you can quickly get into trouble if you start using your cards for things that are more impulsive than necessary.

 

Don’t Skip Payments

Skipping your credit card payments isn’t going to help you. This will only make your financial situation worse if you’re in a bind. It’s better to make a minimum payment on a card than to skip altogether.

A few things will happen when you miss a credit card payment. You’ll likely be responsible for a late fee, as well as extra interest. Doing this can also put a ding in your credit score. It’s a good idea to set up an automatic payment method for your credit card. This will ensure that you’re at least making the minimum payment each month, which will help you avoid the issues associated with missing payments.

 

Get Help If You Need It

It’s not uncommon for people to lose control of their credit cards. Such easy access to credit is sometimes too much to handle for consumers—especially people who are new to managing their personal finances. It’s a good idea to seek help if you find yourself in trouble with your credit cards. Working with a debt negotiation or settlement company is one of the best options for fixing your credit card debt. Freedom Debt Relief is one of the most respected names in this field. They’ve helped countless people regain control of their financial situation by working with lenders. Check out Freedom Debt Relief reviews to see what happy consumers are saying about their experiences.

 

Don’t Use Too Much of Your Credit Limit

Using a credit card is a great way to build your credit—assuming you do it responsibly. However, even if you’re paying down your balance each month, it can be detrimental to your credit if you use too much of your spending limit. This is called credit utilization, or how much you actually use of your available credit each month. Most experts say you shouldn’t go above 30 percent of your total available credit.

 

Look for the Best Possible Rewards

Rewards are one of the most important aspects to consider when shopping around for credit cards. Cash back is going to be useful to all people. However, you should also look for cards that provide specific benefits for things you’re going to spend money on anyway. People who do a lot of travelling might want to get a card that provides high rewards for airline miles. No matter what it is, try to maximize your rewards by looking around for the best cards.

Credit cards can be super beneficial, or highly detrimental, to your life depending on how you use them. Staying on top of your debt, and not spending above your means, will allow you to reap the most rewards from your credit cards.

 

Innovative Finance ISAs, or IFISAs for short, were introduced in 2016 to allow people to invest their Individual Savings Account money with FCA-regulated and approved peer-to-peer lending companies.

It simply means that in addition to sheltering your savings from taxes by keeping them in cash or investing in stocks and shares, you can now also grow your peer-to-peer earnings tax free. This is great news because interest rates are pretty low on cash ISAs, and the more returns you earn, the more sense it makes to avoid taxation (legally, of course).

For the 2018/2019 tax year, the ISA allowance is £20,000, and you can decide how you want to use it, if part cash, part stocks, part IFISA, all cash, etc. Any combination is possible as long as the sum of all your ISAs contributions for the year does not exceed your allowance. You cannot rollover your allowance from one year to the other, so if you don’t use it, you lose it.

Because Cash ISAs often have an attractive first year offer, then revert to a low interest rate, it also makes sense to review the ISAs you have from previous years, and transfer them to another provider to get a better rate. Be careful, you cannot withdraw the money yourself, you need to talk to your new provider and have them execute the transfer, or you would lose your tax free benefit.

Just ISA is one of the companies offering Innovative Finance ISAs and their focus is on litigation funding, to help people with their litigation fees. They offer an interest rate of 8% p.a., and you need to invest a minimum of £2,000, with no upper limit, if you wish to transfer old ISA funds.

Compared to the best cash ISA offers hovering around 2% interest, that can make quite the difference over the long term, especially since all returns are tax free.

If you invest £10,000 at 2% for 10 years, you will have £12,189 at the end of term.

If you invest £10,000 at 8% for 10 years, you will have more than doubled your money, with £21,589 in the bank, assuming you reinvested the proceeds year after year.

The slightest difference in interest rate, compounded over a long period of time, can have a great impact on your finances. Plus, £11,589 tax free is £4,635 you wouldn’t have to hand over to the taxman if you are in the 40% tax band.

Now with greater returns obviously comes greater risks, so if you plan on investing in Stock and Shares ISAs or IFISAs, make sure you can afford said risks. Do not invest money you may need to access shortly. Educate yourself and understand all the implications before you start investing. Balance your portfolio with some low risk investments, and a cash cushion in case of a money emergency.

Since you can’t access your ISA money unless you lose the allowance, earmark these savings for retirement or another long term goal. It makes more sense to invest your ISA money into higher return vehicles, but if you have not used your allowance by the end of the tax year, you can still put some of your cash into an easy access ISA to save a little extra thanks to tax-free interest.

Money and personal finance are very personal, so get informed and do what is best for your particular situation and where you are in life.

In an ideal world, you can generate infinite leads and conversions for little to no cost. This, unfortunately, isn’t quite the way things work in reality. But don’t give up. There are still many things business owners can do to get more sales in a way that won’t dramatically increase spending.

Here are nine affordable ways to boost your ecommerce business.

#1 Use Content & SEO

Content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are two perfect examples of how you can get more people visiting your online store in a cost-effective way. These things require some time and effort, but can be accomplished with no capital investment if you take care of them yourself. Creating relevant, engaging content will draw more potential customers to your site. Keywords and metadata will help you rank better in organic search results, which is key to getting new customers from search engines and online users.

#2 Run Viral Promotions

Executing a creative, well-made viral promotion is one of the best ways to quickly generate leads without spending a ton of money. You’re essentially only putting up the capital to give away an item. The actual marketing aspect will be done for free by people sharing your contest with their connections. Make sure you have a plan before running a promotion like this, as you’ll want to get people to sign up for your email lists or follow your social media channels in exchange for entry.

#3 Upgrade Your Ecommerce Platform

What is an ecommerce website in today’s world without stunning, professional-grade templates, mobile compatibility, fast load times, and easy customizations? Not worth your time or money, that’s for sure. Fortunately, there are affordable options out there for entrepreneurs looking to upgrade their ecommerce platform. Take a look around to see what providers make the most sense for your needs and budget.

#4 Give Customers a Reason to Follow Your Social Media

Social media is one of the best ways to keep in contact with your top customers. But not all social media strategies are the same. Simply making posts isn’t going to cut it when other brands are doing things to drive deeper engagement. Creating high-quality social media that actually provides value to consumers costs you nothing but is extremely important to boosting customer loyalty.

#5 Retarget Abandoned Carts

It’s estimated that $4 trillion was abandoned in online shopping carts just in 2017. That far exceeds the total amount of merchandise actually purchased through ecommerce channels in the U.S. Recover some of those abandonments by retargeting consumers with email and ads.

#6 Get More Out of Your Loyal Customers

It’s typically more cost-effective to spend time focusing on your existing customers than trying to get new ones. Customer acquisition cost is one of the most troubling metrics for many ecommerce stores. Additionally, building loyalty through rewards programs and other measures will get people who already appreciate your brand to like it even more.

#7 Use Better Photos

Images are essential to a beautiful and engaging ecommerce website. You aren’t going to sell many goods if all your photos are unappealing to consumers. Think about resolution, as well as composition and size of your photos. However, you don’t want to go overboard with using too large of image files. This can slow down your website, which will lead to higher abandonment rates.

#8 Cross-Sell

Cross-selling products is one of the best ways to boost your bottom line without having to spend more money. The process is basically just offering consumers other suggested items they might also want based on their searches. Businesses that do a good job cross-selling are motivating customers to spend more money, just by pointing them in the direction of other products they might like.

#9 Streamline Your Checkout

Along with high shipping costs, a convoluted checkout process is one of the top reasons for people abandoning their online carts. You can lower the incidence of this by making your e-store’s checkout process quick and easy. The fewer hoops people have to jump through, the more likely it is that they’ll actually complete a purchase.

Every entrepreneur should be looking for affordable ways to generate more business. These are some of the most effective methods for boosting your ecommerce conversions, without draining your cash reserves.