Minting Nickels

Building up a savings account can be an incredibly boring thing to do. First of all, it typically takes a long time, and second, you’ll earn practically no interest on a regular savings account. There is nothing exciting about the entire process.

We all know that we should have a beefy savings account, but few of us do, mainly because it’s way more fun to spend it. So how can we ignore all that cool stuff we can buy and build a savings account (like a Clydesdale Bank savings account) instead?

Sell Some Stuff

Since it normally takes months or years to build up a respectable savings account most times, it can be incredibly easy to get distracted during that process and buy some senseless items. Instead of building your savings up so slowly, it’s best to build it up as fast as possible with less distractions from the media!

This is why I typically tell people to sell a bunch of stuff to build up their savings account initially. If you walk down into your basement, I bet you could find 5 or 6 items that are very sellable and that you haven’t even used in the last year. It’s time to put these up for sale and start that savings account!

Hide Your Money

No, I’m not talking about stuffing your money under the mattress or into random books within your library. I just want to make sure that your money isn’t super easy to take out of the account! Many people don’t even separate their savings into an official savings account.

They just keep it lumped in with their checking account. This makes it way too easy to access. Just one swipe of that debit card and poof, your money is spent! It is much wiser to separate your savings and put it in an entirely separate account.

An online savings account is a great option since your money is still liquid, but it often can’t be accessed immediately for a spur of the moment purchase. Keep your savings accessible, but just not too accessible.

Set Goals

Most people are very goal oriented. Think about your job. If there were no incentive to get your work done, would you be working as hard? Probably not. You work hard because you have goals to hit, and if you hit those goals, then you’ll be rewarded in some way.

You should set up the same process with your savings goals. Let’s say you have an overall goal to save $10,000. That is a pretty lofty goal. But, in order to keep yourself on track, it might be a good idea to reward yourself at each $1,000 interval.

For instance, at the one thousand dollar mark, perhaps you’ve agreed that you would buy yourself a new baseball cap. Then, at the next one, you’ll buy yourself a baseball jersey.

Not only will these be great breaks in your extreme saving, they’ll also be milestones that will remind you of your success in saving! You’ll soon be excited about the next thing, which means that you’ll get to $3,000 faster than expected.

You’ve likely heard of Super Couponers who can buy $500 worth of groceries for less than $20 by buying what’s on sale and using multiple coupons.  While it’s impressive to see how little they spend out of pocket, what’s not so impressive is how many hours they have to spend searching for coupons and matching them with the sales.

Besides, have you seen their carts?  They’re usually filled with almost all processed foods.

If you value both your time and health, Super Couponing may not be the right way to go.  Still, most of us spend more than we would like on groceries, especially now that prices are being affected by last year’s drought.

One way to save and still eat healthy food is to grow your own garden.  Best of all?  Gardening takes a lot less time than chasing deals and coupons.  However, too often people don’t garden because they don’t have room, or they think it takes too much time or is too complicated.

I Don’t Have Room to Garden

I hear you.  We rent a house in the suburbs, and the last thing our landlord wants is for us to dig up the yard and plant a garden.  If you live in a condo or townhouse or live in a large city, you may not have room to garden either.  Still, there are solutions.

Container Garden.  If you have a balcony, why not try container gardening?  If there’s nothing you like better in the summer than a salad with fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, why not grow those vegetables on your balcony?  Tomato plants can grow in a large pot with a tomato cage, and you can also grow cucumbers this way and teach them to climb a tomato cage.  Our enterprising neighbors planted cucumber plants at the edge of their yard, and the plants grew up their chain link fence.

Join a Community Garden.  Cities around the United States offer community garden plots.  For a nominal fee, you plant in a square foot garden at the community garden.  We did this last year and grew an amazing amount of food in such a small space.  Our grocery bill in the summer was much lower thanks to our garden.

Have an Herb Garden.  At the least, you can plant small containers of herbs like basil, oregano and parsley and grow them in your kitchen.  Herbs are expensive, so just growing a few of these will save you money off your grocery bill.

Gardening Takes Too Much Time

Undoubtedly, if you have a large garden that will be able to provide your family with all of their vegetable needs for the summer season or longer, you will spend quite a bit of time tending to the garden.

However, smaller gardens require surprisingly little time.  For our 4′ x 8′ square foot garden I spent about 2 hours a week tending to it.  I wouldn’t have had to spend that much time if we hadn’t had the drought.  I had to water much more frequently than normal.  Container gardens will take even less time.

Gardening is Too Complicated

Think of gardening as a hobby.  Just like any other sport or hobby, you’ll get better at it the longer you do it.

The first year you garden, don’t expect impressive results.  Just garden for the experience, and you’ll be rewarded with fresh produce.

The next year, you’ll know a little bit more and have a better yield.  Each year that you garden your yield should be better and better.

Don’t forget to ask other experienced gardeners or to check out books from the library.  One book I found especially helpful was Gardening for Geeks by Christy Wilhelmi.  The Internet is also a great place to learn more.  There are even gardening forums where you can ask other gardeners questions.

During World War II, “20 million Victory Gardens were planted.  Fruit and vegetables harvested in these homes and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables” (Living History Farm).  The people who planted these gardens were just everyday Americans who wanted to make a difference–and they did.

Americans are a long way from our agricultural roots now, but you can still make a difference in your own personal bottom line by planting a garden where ever you are able to.

Do you garden?  If so, how much do you save on groceries?

If a mortgage undoubtedly is most people’s biggest lifetime material investment, cars probably are the second most important. Not only does their upfront cost represent a lot of money, but their maintenance and their daily use both generate very high fees too.

Therefore, trying to save every little buck you can when it comes to using your car is a good habit to integrate since it can add up a fairly big amount of money in the long run.

Here are three ways your car probably is costing you too much money; cutting down on those useless expenses could be highly profitable!

1. Gasoline wastes

With gasoline reaching skyrocketing prices, one of the main areas where your car currently is costing you way too much money is energy input. You are probably thinking: “But wait a second: the very purpose of owning a car is to go from point A to point B and to just do that, I can’t avoid filling up the tank with gas.

So why then is he talking about cutting down on gasoline?” Of course, filling up the gas tank is inevitable, especially if you do not live within walking distance of the services you have to use on a daily basis. However, changing your driving habits to avoid useless gasoline wastes is possible and can yield interesting results!

Accelerating quickly and braking abruptly are among the first behaviours to change: according to Fuel Economy, those habits can reduce your gas mileage by 33% at highway speeds and by 5% around town. Limiting those behaviours could help you save the equivalent of between $0.18 and $1.19 per gallon!

Same thing with idling: 10 minutes of idling every day augments your yearly gas consumption by 5%! Turning off the engine when your car is not moving could save you close to $150 every year (assuming you spend $50 per week on gas). Keeping an eye on tire pressure can also prove to be very profitable: according to Acura, low tire pressure could be increase fuel consumption by 4%.

2. Insurance

Many people think that there is very little they can do to reduce their insurance premium apart from taking the time to do some shopping before they sign a contract. Well, this is not completely true.

For instance, choosing your next car model following certain criteria could lower your premium: avoiding cars that are statistically very involved in crashes or that are among the most coveted by thieves, going for cars with security devices or even going for a hybrid car could all lead to significantly lower monthly insurance payments.

Requesting a higher deductible could also by profitable in the long run, especially if you do not drive in accident-prone areas. Merging your insurance, auto and life insurances with the same company (when possible) can also have an impact on your bills.

3. Parking

Paying for your car, paying for the gas, paying for the insurance, paying for the maintenance, paying for your license… That’s what you need to pay just to get in your car and go somewhere! And once you get to your final destination, you often have to pay another fee for your parking spot! Even when your car is still, you have to pay for it!

It may appear difficult to cut down on parking tickets, but it is feasible in two different ways: one of them is to accept parking further than right in front of the place you need to go to.

In effect, parking meters are often used where traffic is dense in order to avoid letting people park their car for hours along busy, commercial streets, for instance. Parking a few blocks away from those busy streets often rhymes with free parking spaces (and with a short walk, which can only be beneficial for your health!).

Another way to avoid paying pointlessly for parking spaces is to split the fees: if you go shopping with a friend, for instance, try to have either of the two picking the other person up instead of both bringing your own car downtown.

Of course, you would be even thriftier if you were to bike downtown or to use public transportation… but these possibilities unfortunately do not exist everywhere. This is why is it important for people who absolutely cannot do without their car to change their habits in order to cut down their car expenses.

About the author:

Alexandre Duval is a blogger for Standard Life, a company offering saving solutions including conventional annuities.