A clever way to build your savings account is to pretend you never had some of your money in the first place. Use these painless strategies to increase your cash stash.
Take your savings wherever you find them, even if they aren’t in the bank. “You can definitely start with the change in the middle console of your car,” said Sheldon Crow, branch manager at Bellco Credit Union in Arvada, Colorado. “If it works for you, that is a savings account.” Guys who toss their pocket change each night into a jar or drawer may be astonished at how much they’ve piled up in quarters and dimes. Do you have gift cards lingering in your wallet, a pile of tips you haven’t bothered to deposit, store credit, a cash-back account you’re ignoring, or a reloadable charge card you forgot you reloaded? Maybe you let your PayPal or Venmo account balance increase whenever you sell something on eBay or a friend pays you back for a night out. Honor your cash-stashing habits as creative ways to save money, whatever they are. Check out these habits of people who are great at saving money.
Based in Denver, Lisa Greim specializes in clear and readable copy about business and workplace, consumer finance, home and garden, and travel. As a content marketer, she has crafted brand stories for payment processor CSG Systems, Colorado School of Mines, the Denver Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, JE Dunn Construction, and Emerald Fields, a Colorado cannabis dispensary chain.
Her B2B experience includes covering workplace strategies for B the Change, technology for the Rocky Mountain News, mutual funds for Institutional Investor Newsletters, commercial real estate for the San Francisco Business Times, and retail for CBS Marketwatch and Natural Foods Merchandiser. On the B2C side, she has written for Parenting, Brides, PCWorld, ShopSmart (Consumers Union), The Denver Post, and many more.