Where Life, Love and Insanity All Come Together

Saving money is always hard.  That's why you have to have a plan.  It never fails that circumstances threaten to beat up your bank account...  in fact, maybe you haven't even begun to save.  The saying "pay your self first" doesn't always apply when you need to put food on the table.  The good news is, there are always ways to make a few extra dollars, but if you need motivation to keep it saved, here are some motivational tools and great incentives to save instead of spend:

• Look at your bank's financial calculators and play around with them.  Most banks have them available online for a variety of things, including savings calculators, mortgage payoffs, and credit card payoffs.  If you don't have a bank account right now, just look up any local bank online or go to bankrate.com and check out their tools.  When you see how much money you can save by making simple adjustments, it's a great motivator.
• See how much earlier your mortgage gets paid off —  if you contribute just $100/month extra to your payment.  Did you know that a 30 year, $200,000 loan at 6.5% would get paid off almost 5 years early?  Not to mention the fact that you will pay about $55,000 less in interest.  Yikes!
• Set a Savings Goal.  How long do you have until retirement? It's never too early or too late to start.  Do you have 10, 20, 30... 40 years to save?  Decide how much savings you will want to have when you retire.  Use your financial calculators to play with the numbers.
• Talk to a Financial Planner.  This doesn't have to be right away, but once you have been disciplined enough to start and stick to your plan for at least six months, it doesn't hurt to make an appointment.  Just sticking your money in a bank to sit at a low interest rate won't get you as far as some creative diversification.  For smaller budgets, ask about programs like "share builder", which allows you to buy stock in very small amounts at a time.
• Look for extra income.  You can find extra jobs in more places than you think.  You can take surveys online, have a garage sale, do freelance writing or other side jobs in your field.  There are opportunities everywhere.

If you make a plan, stick to it, and use the calculators to help visualize your eventual success. saving can become a fairly easy task to accomplish.  Take your saving seriously, you will thank yourself later!