How to Save Your Money

Less than 1% of people in the U.S. put any money into savings. Here are a few tips to help you out.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A Job
• The Ability to Make Money
• A Savings or Money Market Account
• A Goal

1. Start with a goal. You won't be able to save money until you have what you want to save money for. The goal can be as small as a new pair of shoes, or as large as a down payment for a house or early retirement. Once you have that goal in your head you can start to work toward it.
2. Set up a savings or money market account for your goal. I think it is helpful to have different accounts for different goals. I have a savings account for retirement, another for my new car and another for travel. Many online money market accounts let you set up different categories within a single account. Money market accounts like ING, Virtual Bank or HSBC have higher interest rates than most bank savings accounts. Search for the highest interest rate you can get and don't worry about moving your money around to get the highest rate.
3. Give yourself an incentive or play some money/mind games. I imagine that if I don't put X amount into savings each month that Guido, a rather large and evil mobster will come after me. Can you treat yourself to a coffee or dinner if you puts such and such into your account each month? How about any "extra" income like Ebay sales going directly into savings? Make it fun and before you know it, you will have a nice chunk of money.

Tips & Warnings

• Think of your savings as "saving your life". When you have savings, you are not subject to the type of debt problems as most of the country.
• Use the online calculators at cnn.money.com to find out how much money you will have after a certain amount of time.