If you’re like me then you just love seeing your savings account and retirement accounts grow. It is such a great feeling to watch it increase month after month. I love the peace of mind a happy savings account gives me. After our little one was born he was put into the NICU for a few days since he was losing too much weight. Then afterwards we had to do physical therapy every week for 3 months. I wasn’t that nervous to see our insurance bills come in. We have insurance, but we knew we still had to pay any deductibles and co-pays. Now, it was still a lot of money to payout. But it could have been a lot worse if we didn’t have our savings built up.
I’m not going to lie, it took some time to get the account back to where it needed to be, but I’m happy to say we’re there. J and I buckled down to boost our savings. There’s a few reasons you want to build your savings:
Prepare for the unexpected.
Peace of mind.
Tool to help cut your spending.
I’m sharing a few ways to quickly boost your savings account balance.
When you think about starting a savings account or working on getting to a certain threshold (I recommend starting with $1,000) then it can get overwhelming. I find that when people get overwhelmed they tend to shut down. If you shut down then you will probably procrastinate and never actually start saving. I like to break bigger goals down into smaller, more manageable ones.
I’ve come up with some quick ways to start building your savings account.
They don’t take but a few minutes to set up and can really make a different in your money goals.
Establish an automatic transfer.
Okay, this seems like an easy answer, but so many people don’t utilize it. Most banks (like almost all of them) allow you to setup an automatic, recurring transfer between accounts. So, go in and set one up. Create it to happen on your actual payday so as soon as money goes in, it goes right back out. I recommend the minimum amount to be 10% of your take home pay; however, you should really push yourself to do more until you reach that $1,000 balance.
See if your employer can split your paycheck.
If you would prefer to never have the money hit your account, then see what your employer can do. A lot of employers are opting for automatic deposits on payday. Which makes it so much easier for you! The last few employers I had allowed me to split my paycheck between two accounts. I could specify either a dollar amount or percentage split between the two accounts. This way that money will never, ever hit your checking account.
Put back 10% of each paycheck.
A great way to save more money is budget for at least 10% of each paycheck goes into your savings account. Even if you don’t have a way to do automatic transfer, you should still be putting back 10%. Now if you want an extra boost to your savings account, then increase that amount.
Treat it like an expense.
Putting money away for a rainy day should be treated like an expense on your budget. I’ve talked about this before, but you should pay yourself first. That means to put money back in your savings. Treat savings as an expense that must be taken care of ASAP each and every month.
Break it up into weekly payments.
To make it seem less like a burden, you should break your monthly savings amount into weekly chunks. It helps take the pressure of a large transfer and makes the amounts much more manageable.
If you have any other quick ways to boost your savings, please feel free to share them below. I’m always looking for handy money tips.
similar to the one I have. This one is great because it has a strap to seal the lid when traveling. 
