Five Ways to Increase Your Savings

Almost everyone feels the need to save more money. The volatile economy and general uncertainty of today has given us all pause to consider whether or not we have enough money saved, and if not how to get to that point.Saving money can be difficult. After all, most of live on relatively tight budgets already. However, there are few things we can do that will help increase our savings balances quite a bit. Five of the best ways to help boost your savings are:

Differentiate Needs from Wants

Many of us have a tendency to lump our needs and our wants into one category. As a result, we spend more and save less. It is important to realize that we don’t have to get everything we want. We can occasionally put off an immediate want in order to help grow our savings. There are absolute essentials for which we must pay. There are luxury items and small “gifts to ourselves” that we can skip. It is important to remember the difference and to act accordingly. Cutting down on small discretionary expenses is like putting money in the bank!

Pay Bills on Time

Paying our bills on time is one of the great hidden ways to save money. When we pay late, we often end up paying penalties and fees we could have otherwise been using to build up our savings. It’s a good idea to get into the habit of paying every bill on time. Not only will this provide some more income to funnel toward savings, it will also help to improve our credit scores.

Save Gifts

From time to time, we may occasionally receive cash gifts or bonuses. Most of us tend to immediately find something upon which to spend them. Instead, we should be making sure we bank at least a significant percentage of these gifts immediately. We can use gifts to feed our savings instead of squandering them on “wants” when we should be focusing on needs, anyway.

Save Tax Refunds

When we are lucky enough to get by without owing Uncle Sam extra tax dollars, we should make an effort not to go right out spend our refund check. At least a significant portion of the return should be directed toward savings before any of the rest of it is used for another purchase. As the saying goes, one should always pay themselves first—and that means feeding one’s savings.

Use Direct Deposit

By having paychecks deposited directly into our account, we can establish an automatic deposit into savings on each and every payday. We simple designate how much of each directly deposited check should be routed to savings. The bank takes care of the rest and our savings balances grow without any additional effort on our parts.

By pursuing simple little hints like these, we can improve our savings balance considerably. These are the kinds of simple-to-implement yet easy-to-forget strategies that really can, when aggregated, have a big impact on our savings.

These tips should remind us that our financial lives are really not just all about the big happenings. Instead, our financial lives are comprised of thousands upon thousands of small transactions and expenses. By addressing some of these with a mindset of financial improvement we can find ways to make the seemingly mundane put a little more money in our pockets.