Get Rich By Saving Every $5 Bill
There's a woman who saves every $5 bill she gets, blogs Get Rich Slowly. She's been doing so for three years and has saved $12,000.
JD at Get Rich Slowly also shares his wife's personal money saving trick:
For several years, Kris has been rounding every transaction up to the next dollar in her checkbook. If she spends $49.74 at the grocery store, she enters this in her checkbook as $50. If she spends $33.13 on gas, she enters it as $34. As a result, she saves an average of 50 cents every time she performs a transaction. In 2-1/2 years, Kris saved an extra $500 using this method. That's enough to treat herself to something nice.
There are many different tricks people use to save money -- from the very low-tech "saving change in a jar" to the bit more sophisticated "automatic payroll deduction." The key seems to be in finding something that works for the specific individual -- something he can stick with over the long haul. As long as the saver remains committed to the trick, almost any method seems destined to succeed.
Do you have any unusual ways you trick yourself into saving money?
Turning $5 into Thousands [Get Rich Slowly]
(Photo: bethography)
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Comments:
The rounding up is basically out for since I mostly use only credit/debit and don't write down my transactions. Although I do collect change in a jar and its usually about $50 when I cash it, several times a year.
The $5 bill thing sounds interesting...but perhaps a kind of catch-22 since some ATMs spits 5's for amounts not divisible by $20 haha.
re: rounding up.... clarify for me then how you balance your checkbook if you are using quicken for instance? do you go back and re-enter every amount to the cent once you get your bank statement?
@Youthier:
By far the easiest way to "get rich" is to actually think about what luxuries you buy and eliminate them.
What I tend to do is buy as little as possible, put as much of it as possible on a credit card, and then pay off as much as possible every pay day. I suppose that's more of a debt reduction strategy than a "get rich" strategy, but it'd turn into the latter after I'm debt free.
@Youthier: I'm right there with you. If I saved every $5 bill I came across in a year, I'd have about $15 stashed away.
Better for me to have an automatic stock saving plan that sucks the money out of my savings account monthly (before I see it.) I've stashed away $1100 in my HEI DRIP in one year.
I got the round up auto savings thing on my bank debit card. But saving every $5 bill you get? At the rate I come across a $5 bill, about twice a year, I'd get no where fast.
BofA may suck, their Keep the Change thing (works just like the round up to the dollar lady) has stuck probably $500 in my savings in the time i've been using it.
This is what I started doing a few months ago. It's helped immensely. My payroll is direct deposited into my checking account. The day it hits, $100.00 gets pushed over to a separate savings account, not linked to the checking account.
I expect to save $2600.00 per year with this and since its in a totally different account with no debit/atm card, I rarely ever think about it. Thats the biggest trick. To put the money somewhere, where you dont really notice it and cant get to it instantly.
Good Luck Savers!
@Youthier:
I have direct deposit of my paycheck at WaMu. i set it up so that every time i get paid, $25 is automatically transferred into a savings account. I made sure to tell them NOT to link this account to my debit card. this way, i could only access the money during bank hours. I just started last week and ive already saved $75 Woo Hoo indeed!
@krispykrink: So do I. It's actually worked great. If nothing else, it has acted as an emergency overdraft fund a few times in the past. I've got a little saved in there now that I'm finally planning on upgrading to the blackberry my workload so desperately demands. The free slider Samsung just doesn't cut it haha.
I have a bank account and a credit union account. I used to have a car loan through the credit union account and I would put a portion of my paycheck, more than enough to pay the car loan, into the credit union account and the rest in my bank account. I paid off my car about 4 months ago but I didn't change the direct deposit, I've saved up almost $2000 so far because of it.
The wife and I started the automatic paycheck deduction scheme when we were planning our wedding. Totally works.
Saving every $5 bill sounds very interesting - I think I will have my friend do that.
I bet he could have a few thousand dollars by the end of the year.
Of course he is a cashier at a store and they will probable fire him for always pocketing the $5 bills....... so maybe not the best idea for him now that I think about it.
@wattznext: See, when I do things like this, I overdraft and end up paying the bank $30 in fees at the end of the month. I seriously hope that legislation is approved that lets you set up your account to deny debit transactions when your card is low. Libertarians, don't get angry at me. This is all consumer choice, and I lack consumer choice in terms of my bank as Wachovia is the only bank I can reach from my college campus, and they charge $4 fees to anyone who doesn't bank with them at the ATM.
No, great minds think for themselves!
Heh. Keep the comments coming, I'm getting some great ideas here!
@TVarmy: Just to clarify, I mean that I am upset about overdraft "protection" fees rather than a legitimate overdraft. $30 is a lot to me. I want overdraft protection that actually protects me from spending more than I expected to.
I pay myself to be healthy. Win/win ^^
Everytime I eat healthy for a day (no sidetracking, eating a gallon of ice cream, etc), I get a dollar. Every time I exercise for at least 1/2 hour, I get a dollar (I mark this all down in a day planner to keep track). I have the potential, then, to make 2 dollars a day, or 14 dollars per week. Helluva lot better than most savings accounts :) When I was at a suck job, it was 50 cents instead of a dollar, but the point being, it motivates me for two things - I can either sock the money away for a big event (a weekend getaway is my drive right now), save long term, or use it for a weekly/monthly splurge, AND I'm being healthier for it.
ya the keep the change at BOA is great they even match you a certain percent.
I like doing this with my account at HSBC. Their site requires so many different logins and passwords (some of which they provide) that I cannot remember how to login sometimes. Which is great, since its a place where money gets deposited frequently and I can't easily withdraw it for some frivolous item to buy.
Automatic payroll deduction. I make about $300 per week, I take out $50 for long term savings, and $50 for fun, the rest is used for rent, food, gas, etc. So my fun fund (ing direct) has like $2600 at the end of the year for me to blow on anything I want without feeling guilty. But I usually do and put it in the Roth or a CD. And that doesn't include the 20% retirement pretax.
(1) Max out my 401k, don't miss money I don't get.
(2) Direct deposit of my pay check.
(3) Pay myself first - auto transfer to savings 5% of pay into ING account.
(4) Pay myself second, third, fourth - auto transfer to savings for various goals including IRA, nused car, vacation/travel, new furniture, etc. All sits in ING accounts.
(5) Don't use credit cards (although I have one for travel purposes) and I save a lot of money by giving myself and my husband an allowance. All other money gets used either for bills (but we have no debt except our mortgage) or for savings (see #4). I spend a lot less money since I've limited myself and my husband to a set amount, once it gone we stop spending and wait for the next pay check (we do have an emergency fund if we get into a jam along with all the other savings accounts we have).
Come September, I'll be completely credit card debt free, and I intend to stay that way. At that point, the money that was going to pay off the debt(about $300 a month) can go into savings. That way, I'll still be living off the same amount of money as per usual.
There was a good article in Vanguards monthly brochure about a couple that retired and had like 4 million between them both. And they said they didn't scrimp on anything, they traveled on vacations every year.
Whatever works for you. Best plan to financial bliss is to:
1. take school seriously
2. get decent job
3. live below means
Obviously not as easy as it sounds, especially since the majority of 16 year olds can't understand the correlation between Sophomore Trigonometry and their bank account at age 40. Hell, most (I said most) 16 year olds can't think beyond the weekend. And since we were all 16 at one point...
How do you POSSIBLY balance your checkbook or bank statement with this "trick". This would only work if you never balance, and never look at a statement. That kind of person probably does not visit this web site.
I find it best to just pay myself first. Every time I get paid, I transfer some amount of money into my savings. I find that I usually spend what I have, so pulling that out first just gives me less to spend.
I really need help getting my savings in line too so I'm looking forward to hearing what all of you do.
Sometimes when I think of what I've got overall I think I'm doing ok. But whenever (like this month) I dip into my ING savings I realize I'm not doing a very good job of actually "saving".
Every month $140 goes in to my defered comp. $60 into my HSA. $50 into my share builder. $100 into my ING account and $100 into my savings account at my credit union. I'll usually also put anything left in my checking account at the end of the month into my ING account.
The problem I seem to run into any more is that once I get to that end of the month, there isn't much left over. If there is its inevitably money I transfered from my ING account because I thought I might run short in checking that month. So while the intrest I lose that way may be negligable, if its not in the ING account its not making interest.
Obviously my real problem is more of spending one if I'm always transfering money out of savings but I'll be damned if I can figure out where I'm blowing it. For a long time it was going to pay off debt (cc and student loans). At the time I figured that would be extra money that I could save at the end of the month but now with the student loans gone and majority of CC paid off I'm obviously spending that money too... which isn't good.
The best thing we did (other than not carrying CC debt or doing the auto savings transfer) was to live below our means. When I got a new job with a 15% pay increase, we kept our budget at what I was making at my old job.
We would start seeing surpluses sitting in our checking account so we'd use that money for home improvement, vacations, emergencies or just dump it in our savings account. That way, we are curtailing our spending on things we really don't need and saving money without even missing it.
My bank (Nat'l City) does an auto withdraw from checking to savings, every month.
I have it setup to take $50/mo and drop it into a special account, my "fun money" account. If I don't have the money there to buy something outside of budget, then it doesn't get bought that month. Keeps my overspending at bay.
"Keep the Change" is one of the few things i like about being with BoA
Seems like a cool idea, but I operate mostly on my debit card now. I put a portion of my paycheck into savings right after I get paid, and if there was any money leftover from the last paycheck that goes into savings too. The last part needs some work, but the rest of the process is proving to be pretty effective.
@wattznext: @sonicanatidae: Rather than using your own account, Set up an auto-deduction from your account to an ING. It's more than likely a higher interest rate, and with the delay it takes to transfer money back(1-2 days), it removes the temptation to run and get a withdrawl. Plus, they usually run a promotion where if you have three or more auto-deductions a month (I take $30 a week out of my checking, so I usually have 4 and sometimes 5 a month), you get enetered in a contest to win a prize. Either way, you win.
I'm going to come off as a Debbie Downer, but you know how I save money?
I don't spend it.
But what I'm actually looking to set up now is an automatic deposit into my brokerage account, into either index funds (which track the overall market or industries) or no-load mutual funds. A couple advantages to doing this are that the money is not easily accessible without trading out of the position (so not easily spent) and the long term 'interest' is far better and taxed less than it would be in a bank account.
One way I found has worked for many people is to literally give themselves an "allowance" -- an ironclad, preset amount for everything they want to buy. (Toys, gadgets, eating out, etc.) Everything else is transferred or deposited into savings accounts and CDs. (Some *has* to be in savings or money market for emergencies.)
1. Estimate the amount you usually spend on everything for the whole year. (Most people can come up with an approximate figure that's pretty accurate for an entire year...) If it's beyond your actual earnings, try to set a number that's less than what you make....
2. Divide that by the number of paychecks you get. That's your allowance.
3. Give yourself that much to spend every pay period. No, it's not "use it or lose it" -- make it so the amount can "roll-over" -- that's how you bought "expensive" items when you had an allowance as a kid, right?
The idea there is -- you can do impulse spending and not exceed your yearly budget, since everything you need is already covered.
So now we know who that one lady is who still holds up the line at the grocery store while she pays with a check and enters the (pseudo)amount in her checkbook.
@backbroken: No NBA team. Are you implying you need to be rich to save that amount of money? I gross 24K per year and I have nearly $50K in long term savings. Once I graduate college I am going to be socking away $5k per month. It's possible. I don't and never plan on having a credit card, I have invested all of my tax returns since I started getting them, oh and a big thing, I am not having kids unless I can afford them. The people I mentioned didn't have kids so that probably was a factor. Everyone can save, it's the amount of sacrafice you are willing to take.
@basket548:
Any good funds I should look into? I put 20% of my pretax with Vanguard but I think it's like 100% short term reserves, they keep on telling me I need to diversify.
Don't spend your change. Plain and simple. Any time you spend cash, keep the change in your pocket, and when you get home, put it in a "change jar". It's not as easy as it used to be now that everyone is using CCs, but in 6mo, I wound up with $470 in fun money.
I did this with $1 bills. I only collected them for 1 year and when it came time to count them, I brought them to the bank. It was a pain in the ass even using the bill counter and it was around $800.
It would have been better with $5 bills I guess.
I used to collect change in an old gallon water jug. We now have a 5 gallon glass water bottle that we drop change into. We got the idea from my in-laws. They filled theirs a little over halfway and then bought a computer.
@snowburnt: I did the exact same thing! So when my dog needs surgery, I'll have enough money saved there to cover it.
@cubensis:
Honestly, as someone who works in finance and sees how people beat the market, it's simply impossible to do without either a) incredible amounts of luck or b) incredible amounts of technology.
Hence, my typical recommendation for anyone 30 and below is simply to put it all into SPY (it's a index fund that tracks the S&P 500, which is essentially the American economy).
Otherwise, just look at low or no-fee mutual funds if you want to do a sector play. As it's not something I do specifically, I don't want to give bad advice by naming any particular fund.
psh... When I was but a wee kid, I read in a magazine about saving .50 everyday for a couple of years. That does lead to the 12 grand by adulthood or something.
When money gets tight, I only allow myself one ATM visit per week and I don't use the credit cards. I'd allow myself 60-80 dollars to do whatever I wanted, but that included buying groceries. At the end of the week, all unused money would go into the piggy bank.
My best money saving technique was my "Disney money" box. Basically an old shoe box that I'd put any cash I had so that I could one day go to Disney World. And that seemed to work.
Does ING sponsor commenters?
One of the happiest days I have had was the day I gladly closed my ING account. 1) they do not even try to compete with the online rates of other (legitimate) banks and tend to be among the lowest rates out there, and 2) The 8 levels of security were maddening, particularly for an account where you could only transfer between the ING account and the linked account. I am glad I need to enter an account number and click out a password on a screen keyboard (ensuring that you must memorize their password instead of using a password filler) then identify a picture. I hated them so very much.
When I buy my first home, I'm looking to spend about $2K per month on my mortgage+insurance+taxes.
My monthly rent is currently $600 (my girlfriend pays the other $600)
So, I have been conditioning myself to be a homeowner by depositing $1400 into my ING account every month, the same day I pay my $600 rent.
By doing this for the last 2 years, I have programmed myself to know what type of lifestyle I can lead while paying a mortgage when I do decide to buy.
The only problem is that I've almost literally gotten addicted to saving and I don't know how the hell i'm going to deal with not making these deposits once I do have a mortgage.
$12,000 = rich?
get even richer by saving every $100 dollar bill,... sorry I had to say it.
I'm interested to hear from commenters because those both sound like interesting ideas but I no longer use cash or a checkbook.