Automatic Savings

Perhaps you or your spouse get direct deposit on pay day.  Perhaps you're already set up with online banking as talked about here in one of my previous posts.  Did you know that with online banking you can set it up to automatically transfer money into your savings account on payday?! Assuming of course that you 1) have a savings account with the same bank 2) have direct deposit 3) use online banking and 4) the online banking program offers such a function (which many do by the way).

This works so nicely because you budget for it, it's automatic, and it's money you don't miss.  It doesn't somehow become part of your spending budget and is there for emergencies when you've blown your budget for whatever reason (like I did this month with three unexpected medical expenses).  Hey life happens, that's why we have an emergency savings and why automatic transfer into savings is a great idea.  If you can't set it up to transfer automatically or you're uncomfortable with the idea you can set manual do this transfer on payday.