Harness Money

Do not let your emotions dictate how much money you put away each day, week, month, year. Automate those savings.

It is not always going to be easy. There was a time when I was living paycheck to paycheck and I could not afford to more than $5 into the bank. I needed the rest to pay my rent, food and gas to get to work.

The path to becoming wealthy is time.

Walmart was not built in a day, Amazon was not built in a day. Neither will your savings. It takes time.

1. It starts with your income. You need income in order to have savings.

Get a job. Or create a job.

Now is the time. It has never been easier to find work for money.

Get a job and then work on increasing your skills and salary.

Your savings is the difference between how much you earn and how much you spend. Increasing your earnings is the best way to increase your savings.

2. Open a checking account

Your checking account is where your paycheck will land. You will pay for all of your bills: rent, home, internet, phone, netflix. It will all come out of your checking account.

Make sure you set up autopay for all of your bills. You do not want to get hit with late fees. They cost you money and they hurt your credit.

If you have credit cards. Credit cards should be paid off monthly via your checking account.

3. Open a high yield savings account

“High-yield” is relative. That could 1%. It really just means that you are getting some type of reward for keeping your money with a banking institution. Online banks like Ally and Alliant Credit Union generally have higher interest rates than traditional big banks. Keep in mind, your interest rate will change as the US Federal Reserve changes the interest rate.

4. Set up an automatic withdraw from your checking account to your savings account

Think about percentage of income. Every week/month have a certain amount of money withdrawn from your checking and put into your savings account.

The minimum amount from your paycheck that should go into savings/investments is 20% after tax. You can definitely do more, but do not less. This is money for a rainy day. This will set you up for your long term goals or purchasing property or retiring in the long run.

5. Multiple savings account

If you are anything like me, you have multiple savings goals. House, car, travel, healthcare. I have big dreams. I want to accomplish a lot of different things.

Creating sinking funds for each of your goals is a good idea. That way you can pull money from each savings account when the time is right.

Get Specific. Set a goal number for each savings account. When you hit one goal start work on another.

Automate your system for each goal you create.

The faster you automate your money system the more money you will create over time.