Getting married has a very HIGH cost! Too high for us to pay for all at once, that’s for sure. We have decided to save money over the year until our wedding!
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We are saving money in a few different ways, and I wanted to share them with you! Please note that I do provide exact amounts for some of the categories. I am not ashamed of showing off our money saved!
Note: The following can be used to save for any event, not just a wedding!
Where are we saving our money?
Before we get into how we are saving money, I wanted to tell you where we are keeping our money.
Savings Account
We signed up for a High Yield Savings account through Synchrony Bank. The main reason we chose this bank account was the high APY percentage. It gives us a 1.55% APY as compared to the 0.01 to 0.10% we get with other banks (it is super important for us to get additional interest with our savings account). There is also no minimum balance required for this account, and we didn’t need a significant initial deposit like in some other accounts.
You do not have to sign up for this account; there are other great accounts out there as well. Here are a few comparison lists from NerdWallet and Magnify Money. My suggestion is to pick the best account for you and your family! Don’t just pick something because someone else did.
Update: As of 9/25/2020, we no longer have this savings account, we only use the goals in our Simple account (below).
Simple Account Goal
We use Simple for our main bank accounts. It’s an online bank, but its super SIMPLE to use (get it, lol). We have our own accounts, but we also have a joint account together. You receive actual Visa debit cards for each of the accounts you have, and you use them just like you would a regular debit card.
Within each account, you can create what are called Goals. These are similar to Budgeting/Cash Envelopes, Digital Envelopes if you will. They are typically meant for automatic savings, but we just pause them and add the money to them when we want to. You can create a Goal for anything you want and have money automatically get put into it in a variety of ways.
We created a Goal that we called Wedding in our Joint Account. As I mentioned above, we paused it so that we can just add the money to the account whenever we want. This allows us to pick and choose how much we want to save each day/week/month.
We then transfer the money right into the Goal, and it removes it from the amount of money we have to spend (Safe-To-Spend), so we don’t accidentally use it.
Update: As of 5/8/2021, Simple no longer exists. We are now using Zeta Joint Cards as our bank, which is very similar to Simple, so you can do the same thing as mentioned above. If you would like to sign up for Zeta, you can do so with my link and set up a direct deposit, so we can each earn a $25 bonus!
When we are trying to figure out how much we have saved so far towards our wedding, we combine the amounts from both the Savings Account and the Goal to determine the exact amount.
How are we saving our money?
Now that you know where we are saving our money, here is how we are saving our money.
Direct Deposit
We have a total of about $150 that we put into the savings from each paycheck. I have a $50 direct deposit from each of my checks that goes right into the Synchrony account and he transfers $100 from each check into the Simple Goal from each paycheck. This gives us about a total of $300 a month saved just from our paychecks alone. That will be a total of $3900 saved towards our wedding ($300 x 13 [months]) from just our paychecks.
Transferring
Another way that we can save money is by transferring money either into the Savings Account or the Goal ourselves. The way we determine what we need to transfer is pretty easy.
If we want to buy something that we don’t need (come on, who else does this besides me?), we don’t buy it and just transfer the amount of money that we would have spent on that item into the account/goal. We are also trying not to take many/any vacations this year, so the money we would have spent on the hotel/rental car/activities/etc. goes right into the savings (maybe not all at once, but it does go into the savings eventually).
Extra Money
You may receive additional money for many different reasons. These can range from Birthdays and Christmas to Bonuses at work and even your Tax Return. Whenever we get extra money for any reason, we put it right into the savings (sometimes we only put half if we are short on cash at the time lol).
Side Jobs
You can make some extra money by doing some side jobs as well. This can be as simple as babysitting for your neighbor or as hard as creating your own business. You can even drive for Uber/Lyft or become a Postmates Delivery Driver.
One of the ways that we make some additional money is that Tim delivers for Postmates. It’s so simple; you receive a notification in your app that tells you an order was placed. It then gives you directions to the establishment to pick up the order. Some orders are already put in, and you just have to pick them up, and the rest you have to order yourselves. Once you receive the order, you then receive directions to the location of the person who ordered the food and you deliver it to them. Easy peasy!
He receives a delivery fee as well as Tips (via the app). Payouts are processed 4-7 business days after completing a delivery. So if you do ten deliveries in one day, we will get paid for all 10 of those deliveries at once within the 4-7 business day span.
Update: Tim is no longer a Postmates Driver. He stopped driving for them a little while before the wedding.
There are other types of side jobs/businesses that you can do to save money for your Wedding (or anything in general). Just take a look online to see what you can do with your skillset.
Sell Your Stuff
One of the other ways we are able to save money is by selling some of the stuff we have. I have been selling some of my clothes that I don’t wear anymore (I gained weight and no longer fit them) to Plato’s Closet and occasionally on Poshmark.
We also sold some old electronics that we were not using anymore (they still worked). All of that extra money went right into our savings for the wedding.
You can sell your items too! You can have a garage/yard sale, sell your clothes on Poshmark or at Plato’s Closet, or even sell things on eBay!
Receive $5 credit on Poshmark by putting my username (kaciestar) into the referral code box when you register!
** Update 4/1/2018 **
Part Time Jobs
I wanted to update you all and let you know that my fiance got a part time job. This is a great opportunity for us to add more money to our savings for the Wedding!
The part time job is really going to help us save for the wedding and also be able to pay off our debts in the long run! He still works his main job, and this is just a second job for him to do on certain days throughout the week!
We are extremely excited for him to have this second job and be able to have more money coming in!
Ibotta
We have been using Ibotta for a few years now. This app is a rebate app that you can use when you go shopping for everyday items such as food, household items, and more! You just go into the app and see what rebates are available, purchase the items and scan the receipt. You then receive the rebate back into your Ibotta app, which you can use to get gift cards or send to your bank account via Paypal or Venmo.
Once we got engaged, we decided to use this money towards our wedding instead. Every time we are going shopping, we check the app for items we are already going to be purchasing. We then save the offer and scan the receipt once we finish our shopping. The money is then saved into our account for us to withdraw at a later time. We are going to keep this in our app until we are ready to withdraw it and add it to our savings!
Use my referral code, elyyhuc, and you can get a $10 welcome bonus. You can sign up here.
Dosh
Dosh is another rebate app. You can get cash back for doing things that you already do, such as shopping, dining out, traveling and booking hotels! This app works by adding a card to your account (you receive $5 for the first card you add and $1 for each additional card) and using that card to make the purchases. Then the app will automatically give you the cash back based on the purchase.
You also receive $10 for every friend that you refer (that also adds their card and makes a qualifying purchase). Every so often, they run promotions where you can receive $15 for every person that you refer! How awesome is that?!
I have already made $96 with this app, in just referrals alone! I have already transferred that to my PayPal account to put into my Savings account towards the wedding. Every little bit counts, you know!
Sign up with my link here to get started. Add your card for your first $10, and start referring your friends and getting cash back!
Ebates
I’m sure everyone knows about Ebates by now, but just in case you don’t, it is a website that you can use when you go Online Shopping! It helps you receive cash back (similar to Dosh) for items you purchase online. I use this mainly for Amazon, but you can also use it for Groupon, Target, Sephora, and so many more places online! When you sign into the website, you will see a list of every store that you can shop at.
The way that this site works is that you go there first and then click on the store you want to shop at. It will then open up a “shopping trip” via Ebates, but you will be shopping directly on the actual website (for instance Amazon).
Once Ebates has a chance to verify that your purchase can receive cashback, you will receive an email letting you know if the purchase was eligible or not. If the item was eligible, they will add the difference to your Cash Back Balance.
You can receive the funds either via PayPal or what they call a Big Fat Check (an actual check that they mail to you). We just transfer them into PayPal because it makes it easier to transfer to our Wedding Fund account.
Sign up with my link here, and receive $10 back after your first purchase!
All of these saving methods have helped us save tons of money for our wedding! We never thought that we would be able to afford our wedding at all! If we can do it, so can you.
I hope these options help you with saving money for your own wedding (or other event) as well. Feel free to let us know what you do to save money! I would love to hear how you did it!
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