My savings tools

[peterj]

I have a money box which i put regular savings in plus extra coins that i accumulate. What is your savingst tool? I could yes have this in a account that gives me money for having it in their account but for how little they pay me i am tempeted to use the money since i have such easy access.

[Broken Arrow]

That's great!

It's part of the reason why I like to keep my budget updated. Because, it works in a similar fashion, except it tallies up the extras from all my accounts.

[olga1311]

Everytime I use my Debit Card in the store I ask for a small amount of cashback ( usually $5). I put the cashback in my "special" deposit envelope and at the end of the week or two weeks deposit the monies into savings. Since I budget I will enter the amount I actually spent plus the cashback as "amount spent" into my YNAB. Works well for me as it enables me to save extra $150 a month.

[pikey412]

When I get home at the end of the day, I remove all the $1 bills from my wallet and save them in an envelope. It normally adds up to $300-$400 at the end of the year.

[xpirtdesign]

great stuff! good to see people saving some cash but why dont you guys try to invest that couple hundred dollars in stock because when the money just sits in your room it loses value and its better to gain a little than to keep losing

[olga1311]

Are you talking about individual stocks? If so I think its way too risky and any person I ever knew was playing individual stocks lost money in the long run. The 200-400 a month I save goes to my high interest online savings account (ING). I have money invested in IRA and 401K and when I save a bit more I will invest into mutual funds.

[sk24iam]

Every year I open a 12month 0% APR credit card and put all of my expenses on it every month. I pay the minimum every month. I then use the money I would be using to pay the card in full each month to open CD's. At the end of the one year cycle I pay the balance in full and close the card and then open a new 0% apr card.

I'm only able to do this because I have excellent credit and I am granted a rather high credit line every year. Essentially you are investing up to what your credit line is, I usually make at least $200 per year from this. I keep my first credit cards from years ago open to maintain my credit score but rarely ever use them.

[sandyandry]

I always save 10% of my saving, I try to get control over my financial transactions- track every dollar earned and dollar spent. Earlier I was using local spreadsheet, but a friend of mine suggested me to try Budget software. Its a easy way to tab your penny and categorize your expenses in different headers. With this, you can easily know where your expenses have gone.

[olga1311]

I love YNAB pro. Even though it costs $50 I have never regretted to have bought it. Its a great tool that really helped me stay on budget. I tried using mint.com and wasn't very impressed.

[Alex_Adviser]

I have two different savings account which I use extensively for saving money. Though I dont want to disturb my savings at all but when some urgency come I use one of the two accounts to fulfill the urgency whereas the other remains untouched.

I put 5% of my earnings towards the savings that I dont use and is kept aside as long term savings where on the fluctuating one I put around 10% of my earnings.

The trick is working very fine for me and I have saved a lot up till today.

[creditcardchaser]

Why not just set up an online savings account at emigrantdirect.com or ingdirect.com or wherever you like and then just set it up to automatically take out X dollars every month from your checking account? That way it comes out automatically without you having to even think about it and it earns interest.