Putting money aside and saving them can be a very challengeable task if you just get by. In a case that you are out of funds the second you get the paycheck, saving money is becoming the last thing in your mind. However, the good thing is, you can always find out the chance of saving, no matter how tight your budget is or how little you bring in. You can start as small as you wish and watch your saving grow from the smart start.
1. Sign up for 401(k) or 403(b) plan.
If your company has the 401(k) or 403(b) plan, please sign up for them. You can invest by taking one percent of your salary into the plan. The money you put in the plan can lower the taxable income and withholding, and since it’s only 1 percent, the difference on the net pay seems negligible. If you are comfortable with the saving, you can decide to raise the contribution percentage gradually in the future to save even more.
2. Split the paycheck into saving and checking accounts.
You can split the direct deposit paycheck into two parts, a saving account that comes with no minimum balance and a normal checking account for daily expenses. In the beginning, you can start to send $10 from each paycheck to the saving account and force yourself live just by the money in the checking account. No matter how tight your budget is, you may not miss that $10.
3. Review the bank statement carefully.
By doing this, you will be able to check if there are fees that you can get rid of. For example, some money wasters like the ATM fees. You can consider to adjust your schedule to make better use of the ATM from your bank, or simply switch to another bank with wider coverage of the charge free ATMs.
4. Track and record your expenses.
Bring a notepad with you or keep all the receipts to track and record your expenses from a morning coffee to lunch with colleagues. In order to know better of your spending habit, you need to continuously do this for at least a month. After the tracking and thinking, you may find easy ways of saving just by making your own coffee at home, packing lunch with you or anything that comes up in your mind. Eventually, you may save up to thousands of dollars per year.
5. Disconnect the unnecessary services.
Some part of your monthly bills can come from non-essential services such as cable television, unlimited data plan for cellphone and so on. Carefully review the monthly bills and find out such items. Disconnecting such services or changing the premium services to basic packages can cut you’re the cost substantially.
*Image source: http://www.efficientlifeskills.com/4-super-easy-and-painless-ways-to-start-saving-more-money-right-now/
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