How To Save Money Fast – 32 Tips From Finance & Business Experts

Avoid tax penalties and late fees. Self employed individuals are generally required to file an annual tax return and pay estimated taxes quarterly. Make sure you set up quarterly estimated tax payments, so you won’t get stuck with a big tax bill at the end of the year. Late payment of taxes can result in high penalties and fees, so you definitely want to avoid that extra and easily avoidable expense for your business. QuickBooks accounting software will help you calculate and set reminders for quarterly tax payments.

Leverage your marketing dollars off others. What I mean by this is to partner with companies who also want to reach the same audience and co-sponsor any media buys. By handling this ourselves, we were able to put together large campaigns with very little outlay of cash.

As a partner and financial specialist, my recommendation is: stop using corporate funds for personal expenses. Most every small business owner makes this mistake. Business owners need to pay themselves a proper salary, and then, never spend what’s left in the business for anything personal. My experience is an immediate savings.

4. Get a Free Business Checking Account and High-Yield Savings Account

Jeff White, Real Estate & Small Business Writer, Fit Small Business

Nearly all business checking accounts charge fees for things like wire transfers and if you exceed certainly monthly cash deposit limits. But, many, also charge a monthly fee if you don’t maintain a certain minimum balance, often $2,500-$5,000. But, there are “free” business checking accounts that don’t have any monthly minimum.

If you are looking for a free business checking account, Capital One’s Spark Business Checking is a good option. It has no monthly minimums, no monthly transaction limits, and has some of the lowest wire fees in the industry. And, while you’re at it, set up your high yield savings account and earn 1% on your idle capital.

A great tip for small businesses is to operate as many remote processes as possible. If it is possible to operate totally online and without a physical office, do so. The growth of cooperative offices has now made it possible for businesses to share office space at a fraction of the cost, and use the office only when it is needed. Team communication tools like Trello, Google Hangouts and Slack, has made it easy to manage a remote staff, and completely eliminate the need for a large office.

Operating a digital business is much less costly than running a physical retail space or office — the more you can digitize your business, the more savings you will realize.

At Fit Small Business, we work with employees all over the globe. Even though we employ remote staff, the quality of work and team camaraderie remain high.

Some businesses, especially small businesses, are in the position to save a lot of money by bartering their services with other small businesses. While cash is king, many other small businesses also have needs that they cannot afford. A web design company, for instance, can save marketing dollars by bartering services with a marketing agency that has a need for web design. By creating beneficial relationships with the right partners, businesses can quickly begin saving money and eliminating hefty expenses, while helping another small business solve their own challenges.

We all turn to family and friends for help from time to time, but when it comes to making financial decisions about a small business, speaking with knowledgeable, third-party resources can be the best bet. Not only do bank employees possess a wealth of information and experience that family and friends may not have when it comes to managing a business and saving, but they are also emotionally neutral and can give objective advice or guidance that those close to an entrepreneur may not be able to provide.

Forging professional relationships with bank employees can be especially helpful when you want to save money on a business loan.

Approach all new features and product changes with this methodology: spend 50% of the time on marketing and the rest on product development. This approach allows small businesses to rapidly test and validate their newest ideas/features before investing a lot of capital into the implementation of that feature. This lean practice allows small businesses to quickly discard ideas that will not move the needle for them and saves them time and money in the process.

My best advice for a money-saving method for small businesses is to use the “gig” economy to get specialized tasks done instead of hiring full-time employees for all roles. The “gig” economy is simply freelance workers providing a specific task/service on a temporary basis. They can complete tasks ranging from web development to recruiting to data entry and everything in between. Using this method has saved my company tens of thousands of dollars over the last five years because our resources have been put towards paying freelancers for one-off tasks instead of paying a salary for an employee. Additionally, I believe a small business can get better quality work done by using the gig economy. The work is done by someone who does that task exclusively instead of an employee that you are asking to do something that he or she may not be qualified to do.

Start with organic growth techniques and referral growth techniques and become profitable before you start spending any money on ads. Small businesses can attract customers online and through referrals, without spending on advertising until they have business and cash flow built up already. Start by building a website and taking steps to help it rank highly in the search engines.

How to save money fast? Go paperless. With the tech age we’re living in, there are no shortage of resources at our disposal. By transitioning to paperless systems (think Google Drive, Slack, and Trello) for communications and project management, you’re not only cutting costs, but you’re also taking the next step towards running an eco-friendly business.

Keeping my numbers in line while traveling is essential, so one of my favorite ways to save cash for small businesses is “living like a local” on business trips. Eat where the locals eat, and shop where the locals shop while on business travel. During travel, we often pay for convenience, but funds should be preserved so you can continue to run your operation. A 5-star dining experience every night of business travel when you’re footing your own bill is not worth the sacrifices you’ll make in other areas of your business. Once you’re able to identify where the locals are sourcing their goods and services from, you’ll be able to re-evaluate your business trip travel budget based on the true cost of goods. Grab a cereal bar for breakfast, and get to hustlin’.

Once a quarter, we do a quick self-audit to identify services we use and cut out the ones we don’t need. This has saved us thousands per month. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s easy for unused services to rack up on auto-pay. If we haven’t used a service in 90 days, we cancel it. We also re-evaluate the services we do use, considering cheaper alternatives or renegotiating our existing contracts.

Once you eliminate unused services, negotiate lower prices on the recurring services you do use. Start by creating a list of recurring expenses. Break those expenses down per month, per year, and per 5 years. Take those expenses and negotiate to get those expenses reduced. Don’t stop until the expenses are reduced, or until they tell you to get lost. It’s amazing how just asking for a reduction works well to save tons of cash almost instantly. Reducing spending on recurring bills will instantly pump up cash flow, and over a long period of time, it can turn into large chunks of cash that would have been dumped into these expenses.

Often times, interns will be more eager to learn and more motivated to succeed. The only downside present is dealing with the liability and the learning curve of taking on younger, less experienced workers. However, with the right selection and training, the upside significantly outweighs any potential downside.

Often times, internships are not compensated monetarily. If they are, it is typically on a significantly discounted wage. The incentive for interns is that they are provided with a great opportunity to work in advanced environments to prove themselves, gain experience, and even earn college credits. For the employer, they receive a younger employee that may outperform others, at a discounted price.

Instead of outsourcing a company’s marketing and public relations functions or hiring someone to do it full or part-time in-house, C-level executives can simply get some training or self-educate themselves. Neither marketing nor PR is brain surgery. They both simply require planning and someone to pull the trigger, and you can see results in about two weeks.

Independent marketing and PR consultants charge anywhere from $75-$250/hour, and agencies are in the $5k-$10k/month range. By internalizing these job functions, you save money on expenditures and reap significant return on investment in terms of generating publicity and attracting customers.

We exhibit at a lot of events and conferences. Warehousing and shipping our booths and merchandise through a vendor required serious coordination, trust, and a huge budget.

We brought everything in-house and transformed a dull office room into a functional walk-in tradeshow exhibit. Not only are we saving thousands on shipping and storage, but it also looks great and boosts morale. Rather than stressing over logistics, attendees are excited to pick and choose, tailoring the experience to the audience.

How to save money fast: run an expense audit and identify leaks in the expenses that could be used for savings. Common areas of waste in small business can include printing costs, communication costs, underutilized subscriptions, energy costs, and waste management.

After that, identify and execute a quick cash promotion to revive cash flow. Sometimes, it is easier and faster to create more income than to find savings, so once gaps are identified in the first stage, the second step of creating a cash influx may be required depending on why the business is in a state of needing savings.

One way small businesses can save money is by shopping around for suppliers. You can often drive down their prices by getting several quotes. This includes legal services, accounting, storage, shipping, rent, and just about anything else you can think of. You would be surprised what you can negotiate. In my experience, most vendors and suppliers are flexible with their pricing if they know you are looking for a long-term relationship and not just a one-off deal.

Switch to annual subscriptions for goods and services that you rely on frequently. Most service providers and even publications offer discounts when you pay for a year in advance. If there are subscriptions that you and your staff can’t do without, consider switching to an annual subscription Of course, this means you have to have cash on hand to front the fees, but over a year, you’ll save. Even sites like Amazon offer savings for subscription purchases.

Partnering with a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) will save you money, enhance your cash flow, and streamline your business operations, thereby increasing efficiency and allowing business owners to solely focus on profit generating areas of their business. A PEO pools together thousands of companies and creates economies of scale and buying power, and thereby lowering the cost of employee health insurance, workers compensation insurance, and other HR-related services. In addition, the PEO will ease the HR burden on the business owner.

Find out which PEO we recommend.

First, start from a budget of zero. Second, go through each line item and question whether the expense is necessary. Is it moving the organization forward? Is it necessary for to fulfill the product or service? Third, if it is, are there any competitive solutions that are better, faster, or cheaper given that the expense is justified?

Developing the habit of starting from zero and justifying every line item yearly or when necessary will result in overall lower spend and healthier decision making.

Treat your savings like an expense item. Rent is $X, Staff is $X, Marketing is $X, Savings is $X. That way, at the end of each month, you’ve made it a point to deliberately save as opposed to just seeing what’s left over. By making it a set amount that you have to hit each month, you’re more likely to reach your target than if you treat savings like an afterthought.

One simple money saving method is having a good business credit card that offers great benefits. There are so many cash back cards or point systems that can really help your business. If you start to charge as many things as possible on a cash back card, you are not only saving money by not outlaying cash all the time, but you can also earn cash back!

We are in a global economy in which we can rely on smart educated people across the globe. Many businesses have defined processes that can be repetitive or time-consuming. With business process outsourcing (BPO) you can reduce cost on almost any defined tasks. This can help lower your payroll expenses and increase your business automation, saving you both, time and money.

Focus heavily on ROI. When you put money and/or time into something, you need to make sure it’s worth it to you and your business. Small business owners have a lot to do and pay for, especially in the beginning stages of their business, so you really need to measure your efforts.

A lot of what goes into running a small business, especially in the beginning stages, is establishing a reliable cash flow that will, in turn, allow you to properly re-invest into the business. In the absence of that reliable cash flow, the only other option a small business owner has is reducing the overhead costs by as much as is reasonably possible. If you can get away with building your brand by way of an online presence before investing in a brick and mortar space or office, do just that. Save the cost of monthly rents and utilities, and capitalize on the opportunity to build a buying audience for your business through a website (it can be inexpensive and easy to build a website). Your marketing and advertising budget might not be large enough to get a billboard on the side of the freeway, but a few promoted posts across your social media platform to a targeted audience may very well prove to be more effective anyway.

Utilize the entire tax code to save money on your taxes. Many business owners have outgrown their accountant. They may even realize it, but are reluctant to make a change. I would suggest looking for opportunities in tax credits, tax losses, and strategies that expedite depreciation schedules on their business real estate. The small business owner should redirect those tax savings to increase marketing of their business. Increasing revenue is always the way out of tight times in business.

The simplest tip to save money quickly is to save 1% of every dollar that comes in the door. If you make a deposit in your operating account for $1,000, you make a deposit in your savings account for $10. You can use the other $990 and probably won’t miss the $10,but it adds up over time.

Small businesses can save money quickly by cultivating relationships with local, aligned non-profit or issue advocacy groups. Then, create ads that celebrate the work of the non-profit as well as the small business which supports that group. The non-profit/advocacy group will then amplify the ad to its network to significantly expand the range of the ad and exposure for the small business.

Non-profits and advocacy groups are easy to partner with when small businesses explore their values and seek the natural fits that reflect aligned values.

The best and fairest way to keep salary costs down is to be generous with equity to round out your employees’ compensation packages. I can’t compete with a high performing public company like Facebook or Salesforce on salary, but they can’t compete with me in my ability to award employees ownership in the business. This has the added benefit of aligning employees with the long-term success of the business.

If you don’t want to offer equity, you can also offer other benefits in lieu of higher salaries.

As a small business owner, remember that you can deduct your auto expenses if you use your car for business. The IRS allows you to calculate the deduction by either taking your actual costs and deducting the percentage used for your business, or by taking a deduction of 54.5 cents per mile. While you’ll have to keep track of either your expenses or your miles, doing so can lead to significant savings.

Retain the great folks on your team. This sometimes doesn’t feel like a money saver, because it means you have to invest more in your people – compensation, benefits, and perks. But it’s worth it because the time and money spent hiring and training new team members can be overwhelming. When we lose someone great in the warehouse, the domino effect is immediate and pretty fair reaching. We look back on those months and can see how much money went out the door, and that is before considering the effects on team culture and energy!