Having a budget is absolutely critical to having a successful financial life. It’s one of the few pillars that your personal finance should stand upon, and without it, your financial life will be wobbly at best. Budgets do a lot of things for you, such as creating a guide for your spending habits, giving you a way to work toward goals, making sure your priorities are in check, and giving you something to be accountable to when it comes to money. Here are some ideas when it comes to saving that will help make your budget work better.

Use direct deposit. Most new direct deposit arrangements allow you to divvy up the funds that are deposited in between several accounts. So now whenever a paycheck comes in, you can put some of it in checking, some of it in savings, some of it in your IRA, and some of it on your credit card. This way the money is saved automatically, and the opportunity for you to spend it “just this once” gets just a bit harder. It is much easier to save money if you never noticed it was gone in the first place, so if you are undisciplined, this might be a good option for you, because the bank can do the disciplining for you!

Use the envelope method. This is one of the oldest methods of having a budget which is taught by many different financial experts. In the envelope system you create different categories, such as rent, groceries and gasoline, and create one envelope for each category. At the beginning of the month, you put the amount of money you want to spend in each category in its corresponding envelope, and take money out of them when you want to make a purchase. This way you will never spend more money than you have on each category

Make withdrawing savings inconvenient. When people choose a bank, the number one reason they do it is because of the ease of access. A bank with an ATM at every corner is nice, but that makes it a lot easier to withdraw money. Maybe if you put your savings into a bank that takes a bit of work to get to, you’ll be less inclined to take money out of it, which will help your savings plans

Use your change to your advantage. Everyone probably collects a few dollars in loose change a week, it’s often more of an inconvenience than anything. I suggest that you grab a jar, and put whatever change you have at the end of the day in it, and let it build over time. After a year or so you’ll have a few hundred dollars in it, and you’ll be able to use that to help achieve one of your financial goals.



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