How To Kickstart Your Savings

Having trouble getting your savings started? We’ve all been there. Some of us are still there. It can be hard mentally to get into the savings habit.

One of the biggest problems is people thinking they don’t make enough to save anything at all. After paying bills, buying food and just living life there’s nothing left over. That must mean there isn’t enough money to save, right?

You’ve got to get over that. If we’re honest with ourselves we know that we waste more money than we admit. If you don’t plan your finances it’s easy for certain items to eat your whole paycheck. For me it’s fast food and snacks.

Cutting back on that waste can be the building blocks for your savings account. I’m not telling you to cut out all luxuries and deprive yourself completely. I’m not even telling you to create a budget if you don’t already have one. There are painless ways to get your savings up and running.

If saving money doesn’t come naturally to you, then automate it

Put your savings on “set it and forget it” mode. Set up your direct deposit at work to deposit a chunk of your income into a separate bank account. That money goes to savings before you see it so you won’t even miss it.

That saves you the effort of doing it manually. This way you won’t have to depend on willpower and discipline to get the job done.

Willpower and discipline are great but you and I know how hard it is to maintain focus.

Use the One percent rule

You’ve got to save at least 10% of your income if you want to be serious. That can be a big jump if you’re currently at zero. I know what you’re thinking:

Didn’t you say use the ONE percent rule?!?

Trying to jump from zero to 10% is probably a recipe for disaster for most people so you have to ease into it.

You don’t want to go crazy and then find out that you can’t handle putting away 10% right off the bat. You’ve got to do something.

Start with 1% of your income.

Seriously.

That sounds like a ridiculously small amount to put into a bank account. You might think that you might as well put that “chump change” in a shoebox.

(Hey, respect the shoebox.)

1% is better than zero. It all adds up even if that means you’re only stashing $5 at a time. It’s better than nothing.

Just remember, you’re trying to get your savings kickstarted. Just get the ball rolling.

What will happen is you’ll get used to living off the other 99% and you won’t even miss those savings.

Then the next month you increase it to 2%. Keep raising the amount by 1% each month.

As you make these small increases you’ll adjust your spending naturally. You’ll find that your lifestyle will hardly be affected by the changes.

This improves your chances of sticking to your savings plan. For a long time I thought these ideas were silly so I didn’t do them. I figured I would just discipline myself to manually save money but was never consistent.

Using these methods work. They definitely work for me and they’ll work for you too.

If you ever start to feel any discomfort then you’ll find ways to get your income up.

Get moving

Set up your direct deposit at work. Start with just 1% of your paycheck the first month. Increase your savings by 1% each month so you can gradually get used to saving money.

Then watch the dollars pile up.

Simple. The sooner you get started the better.