The 2012 Annual National Survey Assessing Household Savings found some startling statistics – that less than 67% of US households spend less than they earn and that only 42% have a savings plan with specific goals!
Are you and your family part of those dismal statistics? If so, wouldn’t you like to change your financial situation?
Last week on Sacramento and Company, I talked with host, Mellisa Paul about saving money - why it’s so important and ways to make it fun and easy on ourselves and our children!
**I’ll post the replay link to the segment here as soon as it is made available**
Making Savings Easy
No matter what our savings goals are, we can make it super easy on ourselves by making our savings automatic! The most simple way to do this is to set up automatic deductions through your bank into one or more savings accounts. When you don’t see the money come into your main checking account, you will often forget about it being there making your savings safe in your savings account! Of course, you can always go into your savings account and transfer the money and spend it, but it is less likely that you will do that after it has been automatically withdrawn. :-) This simple method can be used to save for a car, Christmas, a vacation, a new TV, and more. What will you start saving for today?
How to Teach the Value of Savings to Children
Teaching financial concepts to children is best done in alignment with their learning style. For a few years now, we had only been using a spreadsheet to show my youngest son how to track his money into the categories of: Sharing, Investing, Saving and Spending (SISS).
The problem was it wasn’t really working. He would burn through his money so quickly and we couldn’t figure out how to break him of the habit.
Finally, at Christmas I decided to make things more tangible for him and helped him turn containers from his stocking loot into “4 Jars” for splitting his money into. For the last two months he has split his money up every week and has set aside nearly $15 in each of the 4 jars. That’s quite a bit of money for a Little Man who used to buy a Little Cesar’s pizza every time he had $6.45 in his account. He’s spent a bit of money on candy grams for a couple of friends and almost has enough in his Spend Jar to buy a new game for the Xbox Kinect he saved for and purchased several months ago. Making the financial education match his learning style of visual/kinesthetic has really paid off.
How are you teaching your children about money?
How to Make Saving Money FUN
It’s never been very effective to save money for the sake of saving or to simply “pay of debt”. Our brains just don’t seem to be wired that way. If you know you need to save money in your family budget so that you can get out from under a mountain of debt, why not make it more fun by saving a portion of that money to fund a fun vacation or a purchase you really want. At the same time the automatic deduction comes out to pay the debt, you have another automatic deduction take out to fund your dream as well. Every day when you wake up, see yourself on your vacation. Cut pictures out of the destination and post them in places you will see them. When you lay in bed at night take yourself on your vacation in your mind, make it so real that you can touch, taste, and feel like you are already there! Could you get excited about taking that vacation and paying for it with CASH all while getting your financial situation in shape?
Come back next week and I’ll share with you a BUNCH of ways you can potentially save $100 in just one week!! 
Great tips here Sarah! Could you tell me how he allocates the “Investing” portion. Does he have a Money Market account or similar product that he transfers his money into on a regular basis? Also, how is he allowed to spend the “Sharing” money?
Stephanie, because his Investing jar is still growing we are researching the options for this. The plan is to open a ROTH in his name so that he can contribute regularly to that. As far as his SHARING money, we discuss the benefits of the different charities he is interested in and then talk about which ones are most important to him and let him decide. He gives 10% to the church in the form of a tithe and then the rest is donated when he feels moved to give.
One way to make savings even more visual would be to get clear plastic jars and punch slits in the lids (with a nail). Jars like Smuckers jam are perfect. Then since the jars are clear, he can see the $$ accumulate every time he puts money in.
What a great idea Debbie! I likes to open his jars every week and count is money! It’s been super fun for him!