Stop me if you’ve heard this, “I wish I could save more money”.
I’m right there with ya. I need to save more, and I imagine most millennials need to as well.
Saving money can be a challenge at first, but it’s certainly not impossible. In fact, once you start seeing your savings going up its starts to get addicting. You start watching your accounts grow and suddenly after months of good saving habits you find yourself with excess money.
I definitely didn’t start out with strong money saving habits. Living in D.C. where the food is good and the times are plenty, it’s not easy to save. So I’ve created a list of 5 habits that personally helped me build my savings account.
1. Track Your Money
The best way to start saving money is to learn exactly how much is going in and coming out. I know it sounds simple but its the best place to start.
Use a handy app like: Mint or Personal Capital
Create and excel spread sheet: One of the easiest ways to manually track each expense for the month. Or use Tiller, an app that automatically populates your expenses and builds spread sheets for you
Or go old school and use pen and paper: It’s 2019 folks, pen and paper is easy to use, but hard to automate.
2. It’s Budget Time
I’ve talked about this before. Creating your own budget is the best starting point once you have a good understanding of your income and expenses.
Being able to see your cash go in and out each week/month helps you make better money saving decisions.
Often one of the hardest and most boring steps in your saving future, budgeting will tell you if you have that extra $10 for some millennial approved avocado toast at that fancy new coffee shop.
3. Build That Egg
Let me hit you with a situation. It’s the end of the month and you’re about 4 days away from getting paid. Oh no! You find yourself on the end of a random medical expense that you thought insurance was going to cover! You don’t have the cash so you have to whip out your credit card to cover the cost.
Not a fun situation to be in, and one I’ve personally been on the other side off.
That’s why its so important to build that nest egg or rainy day fund. Start taking a small amount from your paychecks to pad your savings until you hit your goal. I like to have $1000 in my savings account just in case something unforeseen happens.
4. Meal Prep. Seriously.
Yes really. Meal prep. Save yourself time and money with an already created list of groceries you need going into the week. I’ve found ways to spend $5 at whole foods just by taking some time on Sunday to plan my meals.
Sitting down to think about what you want to eat this weeks lets you visualize what food you need and where the potential over lap is, look through your fridge to see what you can incorporate, waste not want not.
5. Treat Yo’ Self
You read that right. Spending money on yourself will keep you sane. Being frugal for the month is not easy for everyone. I definitely start feeling an itch to spend money on something for myself after a month of conscious saving.
Think of it as a treat because you saved so well. Take some money from your paycheck (after you take out for your savings account) and set it aside for the end of the month. Doing so will help you build a good habit of only spending what you haven’t saved, and making the purchase worth wile to you.
After-all everyone deserves to treat yo’ self.