HOW TO SAVE IN THIS ECONOMY

With bills and more bills piling up, most Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck. For most of us, mostly college graduates, we have accumulated tons of debt from various sources (i.e. college, cars, credit cards, shopping, etc). The opportunity to save or even the thought to save money should always be in the back of our minds. No matter the amount of money that you, the average American, is taking in from each paycheck; we should pay a set amount of our net salary towards a new bill called "Pay Yourself First".

This strategy takes a monumental amount of will power and discipline to continually perform from paycheck to paycheck as we are bombarded with temptations to spend our fruits of labor on things we do not need. We are living in a society where we would rather spend our money on materialistic things to keep up with the Jones'. What I've discovered over the years, through trial and error, is that it's best to setup with your employer a way of depositing a set amount of monies to a separate savings account each time you are paid. The key to this is that it's done automatically without you having to do any work with transferring monies.

 Now some of you may say, well I will still be able to access the money and withdraw it if I am tempted. A strategy that I've used is after open a savings account with a bank and upon receiving the debit card, I will cut it up to prevent myself from withdrawing the money. You basically want to implore a "set it and forget it" situation with this account. You will be surprised after you have "forgotten" all about this account, how much money you will accumulate over time.

The trick to all of this is to NEVER withdraw the money WHATSOEVER!  I don't care if your Momma with no health insurance needs a new hip.  Alright, maybe we can make exceptions BUT for no other reasons will you withdraw that money to spend.  After you've accumulated a few thousand (i.e. $5,000 ), I would create a Certificate of Deposit (CD) account and tie up the money for a long period of time (60 month CD) to grow some interest.  The higher the amount in that CD account, the higher the payout in interest you will gain.