Finding yourself with hardly anything left in your bank account with a whole week to go until payday can be a horrible experience. You can’t magic money out of nowhere, and you can’t make payday come any quicker.

In really pushed situations, when a vital expense simply can’t wait until the end of the month, some people turn to one of the many payday loans options available on the market. This may be a suitable short-term solution, but ideally you will be looking to avoid having to take out a loan in the first place. It takes a bit of clever budgeting and time scouting out the best prices for everything, as well as a little more willpower, but making your wages last between paydays is possible. You can do it!

Here are some useful tips to help you have more money come payday:

• Create a budget. You have next to no chance of making your wages last until next payday without a budget. Starting with your monthly pay, take off your essential expenses such as bills, rent and food costs. Whatever is left is the money you need to be very careful with, allocating it only to other essential expenses.

• Spend in cash, not on card. Buying things with plastic makes it so easy to lose track of the amounts, whereas a dwindling pile of cash makes it very real how much you have left to spend for the whole month. Don’t take the whole month’s cash out at once, but take out the amount you’ve budgeted for the week and try to make it last that long.

• Make small changes to spending. Once you start looking for them, you’ll discover lots of ways you can cut back on those small expenses. For example, making your own lunches rather than buying sandwiches or taking a cheaper if less convenient form of transport (i.e. a train that drops you off 10 minutes’ walk away rather than the bus that takes you straight there).

• Never go to the supermarket without a shopping list. Shops and supermarkets are full of multi-buy temptations, which is why you should never shop without a list. Stick to the list and carefully compare prices (look for cost per 100g or cost per 1kg to find the cheapest prices.)

• Switch energy tariffs. You could be paying far too much for your energy, and this could be draining your finances between paydays. It’s now easier than ever to compare tariffs and switch to a new provider. Nothing about the energy supply changes, only the supplier who sends you your bills.

• Make use of cashback, vouchers and rewards schemes. Buying anything online? Take a look on a cashback site to see if you could make a saving – even a 2% cashback rate can make a difference. You can also complete surveys to get rewards such as Nectar points which you can put towards groceries, and use voucher codes to save money on online purchases.

• Boost your income. If you can’t reduce your spending any further, why not to try to increase your income? You can sell unwanted clutter online or at car boot sales, take on freelance work if you have a particular skill (i.e. dress-making and clothing repairs, ironing, writing or dog walking) or ask your boss for a raise if you feel you’ve earned one.