A lot of people set new goals for the new year. But what about Money-Saving Goals? Do you have any?
I would LOVE to hear what you are trying to work on this year. So leave a comment below. Hopefully, I can do some upcoming posts on popular money-saving goals and how to accomplish them! 🙂
Stacey
Would love to save money for a trip. What are some tips? I want to save secretly and give as a gift to my spouse and children for christmas in 12 months
Raygan
First, you need to decide how much that surprise trip will cost so that you can know how much money you will need to save each month in order to accomplish it. And honestly, if you are flying, you’l want to book your flights a couple of months in advance to get seats together and good prices so you’ll need to take that into consideration as well for your budget.
One quick money saving tip, find something you can live without (or limit), like going to Starbucks or out to dinner. For a family of 4, if you cut out just one dinner out a week, you can save $20 or more just from that one dinner…over a month’s time it will save you $80+!!!
Amy
I’m not sure where you live (obviously) but if you are flying on your vacation, sign up for emails from Airlines. Frontier specifically often offers anywhere from 10-20% off so keep your eye on the flight you want and when you see a promo code you’ll know just how good of a deal it really is.
leeanne
I would recommed to anyone ‘saving’ for anything to open up a ROTH IRA. You put into it ‘after tax’ so when you withdrawl, there are no taxes. You can withdrawl your contributions at any time, just not your interest earning until retirment age. You can put up to $5500 a year into it. Do it via a payroll deduction and have it happen automatically. I swear you will not miss that $50 a paycheck (we also put any raise we get, even if it’s just a few bucks a paycheck – over the years, it has now gotten to the maximum contribution every year that I don’t even miss because we were always living on the old amount). If you get paid 2x a month, that is $1200 at the end of the year that you can use and your interest is much better than a regular savings account. Another thing we do is put EVERYTHING we can on a credit card that gives us travel $. We have the Discover Escape which has been discontinued but Capital One has been advertising something similar. After about a year of regular use (paying it off every month of course), we have about $1300-$1400 in travel credit each year. That has been our flight money for our yearly vacation the last few years and it is so nice. You do have to be careful to budget carefully so you can pay off your balance each month though and dont end up paying fees or interest.
Ty
This is a good idea but not everyone can contribute to a Roth IRA directly per its tax rules. Check with a CPA or tax advisor before doing this route as it depends on your income.
leeanne
True – and I apologize for not giving that disclaimer. I live in Utah as do a lot of the readers here and the max income thresholds for a Roth IRA for this state are like 200K for a married couple. That’s not a huge percentage of the population 🙂
Amy
Thank you! I think IRA’s, 401k’s, etc are too often over looked when they are something of THE most important ways to save and plan for the future!
leeanne
p.s. you asked about our goals – sorry – my goal is to open up another Roth IRA (you can have one for your husband and one for your wife) and start contributing to that each paycheck in addition to our 401K’s and pensions we will have at retirement. I am seriously terrified for our generation and their retirements. You can NEVER make back the money lost in your 20’s and 30’s if you’re not saving for retirement now.
Christine
We budget, budget, budget. We put a slight spin on Dave Ramsey’s budgeting technique: instead of budgeting on what we think our income will be for the next month, with possible extra income if we make more than expected, we “waited” one month, if you will. For example, any income we earn between January 1 and January 31 will be used to budget for February. That way we know exactly how much we have and can budget down to the penny. The first month we did this was rough because we had to live for 2 months off of 1 month’s worth of income plus some savings, but it has made budgeting precise and easy for us.
Goal: Hoping to put more into savings this year by saving on our groceries and household items.
Kathy
I am trying to increase our cash-flow this year. We are working on getting a different house and renting out our current one. We already have one rental which is going good. Long term goal is to keep adding rentals to have as our retirement plan. and beyond to take care of our disabled boys after we pass away.
Crystal
I want to save more; especially put more into our retirement plans. Also, I am looking for a new budgeting program. Anyone have one they really like? Right now I just input all our spending/earnings into a excel spreadsheet, but I’d love to use something that would make keeping track of all that a little easier. Recommendations?
Kassi Johnson
Try mint.com. It’s free.
leeanne
Mint.com is good – I am trying YNAB.com this year – and so far I like it too!
Teresa
I’m trying this weekly saving plan, week 1 of year, save $1, wk #2 $2 and so on….at the end you will have $1378.00! Also, in my checkbook, although I don’t write as many checks as before, but if I write a check for $32.18, I log it as $33.00 and subtract the $33.00 from balance, doesn’t save a lot, but comes in handy!
Mary Johnson
That’s a great idea I’m going to start that ASAP
Amy
I would really like to save more into retirement. I could use some tips for budgeting for that. I find that retirment tends to sit on the back burner and we end up focusing more on all of our other bills.
leeanne
Amy – see my note above. I find that if you rely on your own ‘discipline’ or if you wait to see if you have anything left at the end of the month, you will never save. It needs to come out automatically at the time you get paid and needs to go somewhere else. At least I am not disciplined enough to do it on my own because there is always something more pressing or more fun to do with the money. 🙂
Mary Johnson
Saving money is defiantly number one on out New Years resolutions. I remember seeing an article a year or so ago written by a man. He broke down the % you should put aside for necessities, savings, fun and so on. It was all about how to create a budget and live with in your means. I can not find it for the life of me.
Jennifer
I think it’s the book “The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”. My husband has talked about that break down system for money and budget and we are hoping to put it into action!
Amanda
We are saving for a down payment on a house! I would also like to set aside some mula for a Dland trip! Who knows about the 2nd one though……..
Jennifer
We are trying to save for a down payment on a house as well! We were almost there 2 years ago, and then the husband got laid off. 8 months of unemployment means the savings is gone (although, thank heavens we had it, it saved our bacon) so now we’re starting back up again.
Michele
Saving money for things like natural disaters and emergencies. Should we keep that kind of savings in a bank account, under a mattress, in a 72-hour kit? How much do we need? That would be so helpful.
Jamie
My goal is to learn how to save boat loads of money from insurance health insurance which is very very costly it is like leasing a car.
Janice K
We have accumulated a MASSIVE debt, due to many unfortunate reasons. Our goal is to start the process of becoming dept free within three years, with the exception of our mortgage. We are already very frugal and coupon heavily, but we are still struggling. We plan to increase income through LOTS of overtime and I need to find some ways to earn extra money while being home with our kids. I already care for other children, take surveys, sell items online and use Swagbucks.
Kammie
I loved reading the above suggestions! For long term investment and savings we are using Aviva that we purchased from an independent agent. It is for life insurance and future savings. It is automatically deducted so we don’t miss it and it is already planned into our budget. I am going to try and live off a one months income for two months for a challenge!! We have also used Quicken to track our expenses and a lot of businesses use Quick Books. Quicken was nice because you could input all the categories and if you needed to reference an item later it was easy to find. Now I am also using an Excel Spreadsheet but have a tab at the end for the yearly summary because some months are lop-sided with a one time payment for taxes or insurance. I do save the monthly amount that the insurance or taxes would cost me so I have the money to actually pay the bill when it is due. We also got a Sinclair gas card that automatically gives us .10 off a gallon which isn’t a lot but it saves some money because my husband commutes 30 minutes each way to work. I also make most meals from scratch rather than a box. I love breakfast, so I make double batches of waffles, pancakes, muffins (triple batches because they are also a great after school snack!), and cinnamon rolls and freeze them. Buying in bulk also saves money but takes time to sort. Planning in all areas of your life also saves a ton of money!!!