Who finds it hard to save? Who struggles to make ends meet, let alone have a regular amount to put into saving? Who believes there will be nothing left over at the end of the week to save anyway? Well if you aren’t disciplined with your money, you probably answered yes to all of these questions.
If you are lacking the discipline or motivation to regularly set an amount of money aside for savings considering an alternative. Why don’t you save what you save?
This sounds a little funny doesn’t it? But hey, let us look at this carefully.
We are all keen for a bargain. I am sure you love to tell your friends you bought a new this and managed to save $x off the full price. Or keen to show the girls the 2nd hand dress you picked up at a bargain sale for $x, but if you had purchased it new it would have cost you $y. So make the most of what you save by putting the money aside as savings. So this is a new challenge for you isn’t it!
1. Start a Savings Book
- A great way to get motivated is to write down in a book what you buy and what you manage to save. This is likely to motivate you to continue to look for bargains and to stop paying full price for things.
- Keep the book in handy place that you can grab easily. This might be leaving it in the glove box of your car, in your handbag, in your drawer at work or on the kitchen table.
- Tally up your savings at the end of each day / week / month. You might be surprised how quickly you can build up some extra money by just being careful with what you spend your money on.
2. Have a piggy bank / savings jar at home
- To save what you save, you need to have somewhere that you can quickly stash the money you have saved. This might be using a piggy bank or savings jar, just as our parents used to do.
- The piggy bank / savings jar is a temporary storage facility until such a time as you can get to the bank / building society to deposit your savings into your savings account.
- Ensure you aren’t going to be tempted to raid your piggy bank / savings jar, so keep it out of sight and away from temptation.
- Put a day and time in your diary each week to take your savings to your bank / building society so you can deposit your savings and keep it safe from harm and temptation.
3. Open a savings account
- Have an account specifically designed for the purpose of savings.
- Set yourself a challenge to never withdraw from this account until you have reached your savings goals and are ready to buy what you set out to achieve.
- Try and earn some interest on your savings account. This will help your funds grow a lot quicker.
- If your savings account is an online account then you will probably find you can manually do transfers to this account via the internet banking or phone banking system. You would need to pay your cash saved into another bank account and then manually transfer the funds from the other bank account to your online savings account.
4. Save little and often
- Don’t be afraid to save a dollar or two. It will all add up in the end.
- The trick is to get into the habit of saving so $5, $10 or even $20 are great amounts to start off with. If you put these amounts into your account often enough they will soon build up so they are $100, $200 and even $500.
- So if you have saved a few dollars here or there on what you have spent for the day, put that amount of money aside in your piggy bank / savings jar. Do the same the next time you shop and before you know it, the amount you have ready to deposit into your savings account will be building up.
5. Dream of the future
- To stick at a new habit, you need to have a reason. The best reason to save is to have a dream for the future.
- What is it that you have always wanted but never thought you could?
- Imagine you had $100, $200, $500, $1,000, $2,000, $5,000! How does it feel to have that money and what would you do with it – keep it for an emergency, have a trip away, keep it for retirement, buy something new, pay for the children’s education, pay down your debts?