February 23 - 28 marks America Saves Week. Given this, we thought we’d dedicate some time to discuss how you can start to think more about savings – one of the cornerstones of building a sound foundation for your personal finances. Here are just a few tips to help get you started:
- Establish Goals – Contributing to savings can take many forms throughout the course of your life – but its importance is unwavering. No matter what stage you find yourself in, setting goals and creating a plan for how you will achieve them can be critical for having enough to buy that new car, purchase your first home, and pay your child’s college tuition.
- Set up Automatic Savings – Make saving easy for yourself! When you set up automatic deposits with each paycheck, before you know it, you won’t even notice that small contribution you make to your savings account every payday, and over time, those contributions will add up to form a nice little nest egg.
- Think Ahead – From meal planning on a weekly basis to budgeting for and starting early when it comes to holiday shopping, thinking and planning ahead versus making last-minute purchases is guaranteed to save you money in the long run. When it comes down to it, taking a short amount of time out of your week to plan ahead can have some lasting, impacting results for your finances.
- Diversify Your Savings – Start with a basic savings account to build a habit, but as you get older and additional savings vehicles open up, consider signing up for that 401k at work or establishing a Health Savings Account (HSA) to contribute to other saving goals like retirement funds and health-related expenses. A little thing called compound interest makes a little become a lot over time.