We all know we should save, but where’s the incentive? Is it on your ‘too difficult’ list? What if I was to persuade you that saving can be easier than you think? The challenge is we live in a world where you aren’t encouraged to save. Quite the opposite; you’re more likely to be encouraged to get credit and ‘have it now and pay for it later’ than to save. There are times when credit (i.e. borrowing money) is a reasonable option – after all, how many people do you know who saved up for their house before they bought it? Very few people save for a car or a holiday these days. So why bother saving at all? Once again it’s down to mindset. You know deep down you should save. We hear expressions about putting something away for a rainy day and appreciate the concept but not the action. Mind you, where I live it rains every other day!
I’ve been through three phases in my life when it comes to saving. When I was very young my parents encouraged me to save; even if it was just a little bit of money after a birthday or Christmas going into my building society account. I was never allowed to get my hands on the account book. When I started work aged 16 in 1983, I was given the book and was amazed to see that I had saved £1280 in the first 16 years of my life!
The chances are high that you are reading this and thinking: ‘What’s the big deal, £1280 isn’t a lot of money.’ But I managed to buy a car before my 17th birthday and learnt to drive in my own motor. I can’t tell you how good it felt to drive my own car in my driving test! By the time I was 22, I had spent all the money and some. I’d bought my first house and I would now spend everything I earned (and more). In the back of my mind I knew one day I could start saving again. The point was I didn’t. I didn’t have the discipline and without the discipline I would never save.
I was lucky though; two years later I married ‘a saver’ and she helped me to get back into the habit and opened some ‘savings accounts’. Even though we were only just married and needed money for all sorts of things we still saved. We saved for holidays, we saved for cars, we saved for home improvements and after a few short years we realised an interesting thing. Even though we knew people who had similar incomes to ourselves, who often got things ‘faster’, we were now very comfortable. I was going to write ‘very lucky’ there but the more I look at how we set out to create our lifestyle, the decisions we made and the effort it took, I realise less and less is down to luck.
Becoming a saver is a long-term plan. It’s not just about what you are saving for, it’s about the feeling of having saved – it’s amazing. And once you do it a couple of times it becomes a mindset. Don’t think you have to earn more to be able to keep and save more money.
Here are 20 ideas to help you save:
All these ideas will help you get started and the little bits do add up. But let me give you this final challenge. What if you saved a lot? What if you decided to save 20, 30 or even 50% of your income? It would be a challenge but the bigger the effort the bigger the reward.
If you have debts, start to save before you have paid all your debt off. This may seem crazy and financially you will pay more but it will get you into a saving mindset, which is so important.