Automate Your Savings
Setting up automatic transfers from your checking account to your savings account can help you to save money without even thinking about it.
When you automate your savings, you can set a specific amount or percentage of your income to be transferred to your savings account on a regular basis, such as monthly or bi-weekly. This way, you won't have to remember to transfer the money yourself, and you'll be less likely to spend it.
Automating your savings can also help you to reach your financial goals faster. For example, if you're saving for a down payment on a home or a vacation, setting up automatic transfers can help you to reach your goal without having to make a conscious effort to save each month.
To get started, contact your bank or financial institution and ask about setting up automatic transfers. You can also explore apps and online services that can help you to automate your savings and investments.
If your employer already uses direct deposit, you should be able to go through the company’s payroll department to make changes to how your money is deposited into your accounts.
If you’d prefer to simply set up automated transfers to your savings account without making changes to your direct deposit, that will work fine as well. It may even be beneficial to do it this way since you would likely have more control as far as how much you would like to automatically transfer and can adjust the amount or the percentage accordingly, based on your current financial situation.
For example, you may want to start out with a smaller amount to transfer to your savings to dip your toes in the water and see how it goes. Once you discover that you can save more of your income with an automated process, you may choose to save a little more to see how that goes, and so on and so forth.
Before you know it, you will find that saving isn’t as difficult as you thought it might be, plus you don’t have to remember to do it if it’s automated.
By automating your savings, you can make saving money a habit and more easily achieve your financial goals that are related to saving part of your income.