I remember when I first started looking into improving my finances and I would read articles save $1,000. How?
Well, I'm going to actually tell you how to start saving on a tight income.
The one thing I want you to keep in mind is that if you stay focused your account will grow overtime.
Before you start saving, the one thing I want you to do before you start saving is find an online savings account. Why online? Because having easy access to your savings can easily become a withdrawal from your savings on a bad day. So if it takes 1-3 days to receive the money your account you will think about it twice before you take the money out. There are a few places you can look that will help you make a decision on which account you want to open.
You should also create a budget. You can't comfortably save money if you don't know where your money is going. You don't want to save money just to withdraw it from your account next week because you need it to pay a bill.
With all of these tips, you can have the money direct deposit to your savings from your job or you can have the funds automatically transferred to your savings on payday.
Save a percentage of your income. This amount does not have to be large. You can start small and increase over time and when I say start small you can start at 1% of your monthly net income and increase the amount overtime. You might be thinking that 1% is not a lot but if you're not saving at all, it's more than you're currently saving. Also 1% is just a starting point, if you want to start with an higher percentage you can, starting with 1% is help get use to saving.
So for example if your monthly take home pay is $1500. You would multiply $1500 by .01. Which will give you $15 a month and you know I do everything by paycheck so if you're paid bi-weekly or semi-monthly (15th and the end of the month) $7.50 a month, and if you're paid weekly $3.75 a week.
Save one hour of your pay every pay period. One hour!?!?! Yep, one hour. Depending on how you're paid, you may have to calculate this amount.
Take your gross pay on payday and divide it by 80 hours, which should show your hourly pay if you don't know already.
If you're paid semi-monthly, divide you gross pay on you paystub by 86.77 hours.
If paid weekly, divide your gross pay by 40 hours.
Now these numbers are based based on a full-time employee. If you're not full-time and do not know how much you're paid hourly divide the number of hours worked that pay period (your pay stub should show the number of hours worked) by your gross pay.
Save every $5 bill you receive. This is called the $5 challenge. It has been very popular on social media for a while. I have seen people who have been able to save a lot of money with the challenge but the one thing I want you keep in mind is that this is active savings. The other options above are set it and forget it (except when you are increasing the amount you're saving).
So you would have to be conscious of saving your five dollar bills once you receive change. This option will also be difficult if you don't use cash often but I still think it is a good idea and to make it easier you could just save all of your change after you break a $20.
The other thing I want you to keep in mind is where you will save your money. Put it somewhere where you have to work hard to get it out, I've seen people put their $5 bills in a shoe box but I like the idea of a jar with a small opening. The opening should be small enough to put money in but takes a little work to get it out.
If you start one of these methods today you will build a savings cushion in no time.
Which method are you going going to try?
