The Best Ways To Save Money – 4 Strategies

Do you believe that saving money is one of the hardest things to do?

If you answered ‘yes’ then by the end of this article you will discover that saving is really not that hard, for as long as you are prepared to make a few changes in the way you handle money.

But before you get started, you need to ask yourself if any part of you is holding you back from saving.

One of the inner blocks that make the processes of saving money seem so difficult is the practice of associating saving with pain. Saving is often erroneously perceived as a painful sacrifice that takes too long to pay off.

In this article we will look at four of the best ways to save money, most of which you can start using right away.

1.   Save as you earn

If you lack the financial discipline to save money once you’ve got your hands it, you can open up a savings account and permit your bank to automatically deduct a specific amount of money from your checking account each time you get paid.

This money is then automatically transferred to your savings account without your intervention. As a result, you do not have any direct access to the money from when you earn it to when you save it.

For this strategy to work, you have to avoid the temptation of withdrawing money from your savings account once it has already been transferred there.

The longer you resist the temptation to withdraw your savings, the sooner you will realize that saving really is possible if the reason to do so is strong enough.

2.  Create a personal budget

Creating a personal budget will allow you to deliberately allocate money to your savings based on your income and your living expenses.

In this way you will be able to reasonably predict how much money you can accumulate in savings, and how long it should take you to meet your financial targets.

The sooner you get into the habit of saving money, the easier it will become for you to start investing for the long-term.

Once you get the hang of it, you will find yourself getting more pleasure out of saving than spending.

3.   Make loan repayments to yourself

This is mainly applicable if you have just repaid a loan. There is no doubt that while you were servicing the loan, you were able to survive without the installment amounts that were automatically deducted from you.

You can continue to ‘pay’ a similar installment amount to your savings account and act as though you are still servicing the loan.

Again this requires a considerable level of self-discipline because of the temptation to get into more debt following an ‘increase’ in your disposable income.

For this strategy to work, you have to make sure that your ‘loan repayments’ to yourself are made to a separate account so that you can actually monitor the build-up of your savings fund.

4.  Be clear on your savings targets

Saving is usually the starting point to building up an investment fund. Most people find it difficult to save money because they are not clear as to why they are putting money aside.

You have to have a specific and measurable target in mind for your savings program to make sense and you have to put a time frame for its achievement.

Once you have decided what your savings targets are, you will find yourself tracking your progress. This will motivate you to save even more to meet your objectives.

Attitude plays a very big role in setting and achieving your goals including meeting your savings targets. You therefore need to have the right attitude from the onset that is aligned to the belief that you can do it.

Saving requires high levels of self-discipline and unwavering determination. It helps to have an accountability partner to encourage you when you get started.

Nevertheless, irrespective of how much money you earn, it is always possible to save money.