I have never been very good saving money. I had a tiny little silver piggy bank when I was a kid and as soon as a few coins were clinking around in there, enough for gum or some stickers, I would jimmy the stopper in the bottom open and shake them out into my palm.
As an adult I became good at saving money here and there, finding bargains and using coupons, but I never actually "saved" the money I saved, I would just spend it on something else.
So now I am challenging myself to save in 2 ways. I am saving $10 a month into a generic "rainy day" fund and I am saving my extra money and gym reward money for the express purpose of going on vacation.
I am considering a couple different types of accounts to do this. For the general savings I am going to investigate linking a standard savings account to my checking account so I can just transfer the savings every couple weeks.
For the vacation fund I am looking for something with a little higher interest rate. I also want something I cannot access easily as I do not want to be tempted to spend this money on yarn or highlights or pie. I am going to start by doing what every 36 year old woman does, asking my parents... (pathetic I know, but they have a vacation account which I envy and want to emulate).
I still have a little piggy bank in my desk where I put my change, I try hard not to spend it on stickers and gum.
there is nothing wrong with rewarding yourself with stickers or gum...I have been known to do quite often myself...extra bonus neither are very fattening. :)
ReplyDeleteHey there! I'm terrible at saving also... that said I have 2 ideas. One is an online account. I actually used to have one with ING http://home.ingdirect.com/ and they (online accounts) came up on some morning show or magazine article lately on how to save money and the benefit of these are that they often pay higher interest and they are harder to take money out of for impulse buys. And both these are true from my experience with ING and they also might have incentives for joining (like putting $25 bucks or more right in your account when you start). The other idea I have and is what I currently do is a Christmas club or vacation club account with a credit union. Not sure why regular banks don't do this. And this may be what your parents do. Money automatically comes out of my paycheck each period and in Oct I get a check plus the interest. The vacation one I think comes in May. You can't touch it until it's due which is awesome. You can definitely save easily and painlessly this way for a trip. Hope this helps!
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