With the first quarter of 2014 safely stashed away, how can you build and improve your financial habits going forward? Perhaps you’d like to work on the way that you spend and save your money?

The fun with making and saving money is that you can be creative and monopolise on really simple ideas that would work well for you. You don’t have to simply rely on your job for your income, you can explore other areas – even if it’s only a couple of hundred a month!

In my usual dose of fresh saving tips, there’s one here today that might actually make you some money!

Do you have an extra bedroom that’s not being used? Rent it out. In many homes, if times were tough, they could rent out an entire basement or a garden cottage. Are you near a university? If so – your home could be in high demand for a student looking for accommodation. If you found the right person, this could bring in a lot of extra money and you’d be saving on your bond repayments.

Basically, just make a giant progress bar that starts with the amount of debt you have and ends with zero. Each time you pay down a little bit, fill in a little more of that progress bar. Keep this reminder in a place where you’ll see it often, and keep filling it in regularly. It keeps your eyes on the prize and leads you straight to debt freedom.

Do you have a pile of unread magazines sitting around your house? Likely, it’s the result of a subscription that you’re not reading. Not only should you not renew that magazine, you should give their subscription department a call and try to cancel for a refund – sometimes, they’ll give you the prorated amount back.

Eating a healthy breakfast fills you up with energy for the day and also decreases your desire to eat a big lunch in the middle of the day. Not only that, breakfast can be very healthy, quick, and inexpensive. A bowl of oatmeal in the morning is often the one thing that keeps me from running out to eat an expensive lunch later in the day – and it keeps me peppy and full of energy for the entire morning instead of in a coffee-laced daze.

Also, if you’re having a mid-morning meeting at a coffee shop, you’re less likely to pay for a breakfast…

Most neighbourhoods have an army of young children out and about. Because of that, there are a lot of parents out there who are quite willing to swap babysitting nights, saving you the money of hiring one for an evening out. A few families even take this to incredible extremes. Try to find another set of parents or two that you trust, and swap nights of babysitting with them. That way, you’ll get occasional evenings free without the cost of a babysitter, saving you some scratch.

Make saving fun and get creative with the way that you spend and enjoy your money!