Personal Finance - Increasing Your Savings and Making Your Wallet Feel Better Each Month
Economic hardships force us to make difficult choices, and during these times when there are more job losses, and few new job openings, people are forced to make tough decisions. Although, a lot of economists are seeing a slow recovery possibly by the year end, it nonetheless won't help most people as they will feel the pinch in their wallets every month for a while to come.
There are a few ways once can ease cash crunch, one would be to have a higher paying job or increase in wages. Obviously, at this point that sounds like a cruel joke, as you wouldn't be reading this article if you were about to have a salary hike. Besides having a salary hike, reducing unnecessary spending can save you a few hundred if not even a thousand for some people.
Grocery Shopping
Some grocery shops for example have discounts on a particular day, and one would save considerably if they were to buy at that store on that particular day. For example, the store I shop for groceries has deep discounts on Wednesday, and are much cheaper than buying at Wal-Mart. This is limited to vegetables, fruits, and related products.
Increase Your Savings - Increase Savings Guide
Gas Consumption
Using your car effectively can also reduce your consumption of gas. For example driving around 55-60 MPH instead of 75 plus on freeways can add significant amount of savings in terms of less gas being consumed. Also a lot of people just seem to race the moment a red light turns to green, that seems unnecessary and also consumes more gas, instead a steady increase in drive would save you gas. Car pooling is also a good way of saving money, as more people would mean less gas costs to each person. Although people like having their own times and flexibility of doing things, car pooling can save significant amount of money over time.
Increase Savings - Credit Card Bills
Paying off your credit card debt is also a good way to save extra money each month. A lot of consumers have too many credit cards, and on top of that only pay minimum required payments. This in no way helps the consumer, as for the most part they are paying interest and little if any the principal payment. The result of that is that consumers end up having huge credit cards bills, with large interest payments, and little chance of paying off the principal loan immediately. I personally pay 10-15% payment in addition to the interest each month, this way, I can see myself paying off my entire credit card loan, and not get swamped with huge interest payment bills each month. It would also be a good idea to have no more than 3 credit cards, as too many credit cards and their usage equals too many payments to track, and increase the possibility of missed payments, even though electronic payment options are now readily available. Keep track of all the credit cards and whether they have been paid or not, are always a mess to manage.
Increase Savings - Traditional Phones
Other general ways you could save on money include dining out less, putting expensive trips on hold for a while, or going to other cheaper vacation alternatives, switching from high speed cable to DSL, or a fixed line phone to no home phone at all or a VOIP phone like Vonage.
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