MoneyRates.com Can Help Even Procrastinators Build Savings

Building Your Savings Rate: Motivation for Procrastinators

Procrastinators have good intentions but never seem to find enough time to follow through on them. In personal finance, though, procrastination can really cost you. If you are a procrastinator, this might get your attention: what if someone offered you more than $8,000 for 4 hours of work, as long as you got it done today?

Does that kind of money sound worthwhile? This is what you could gain from taking steps to improve your savings rate by shopping for the best savings account interest rates on MoneyRates.com.

It's not as hard as it sounds. This article will walk you through it, and in the end you'll find it could be worth the equivalent of $2,000 an hour--or more, if you're really good at it.

Earning $2,000 an Hour

There are just three steps to this:

1. Review your budget to increase the amount you save in a year.
2. Shop MoneyRates.com for the best savings account interest rates.
3. Open a savings account and watch the money grow.

Say you found you could set aside $5,000 from a year's budget. It sounds high, but it's possible. Here's where overcoming procrastination today really pays off: compound that $5,000 over 25 years at one of the higher interest rates on MoneyRates.com, and it will be worth over $8,000. Remember, that's just one year's worth of savings. That $8,000 represents an additional $3,000 or more that you wouldn't have if you had spent the money today. Keep this up every year--or find ways to boost your savings rate even further--and you will build up a healthy addition to your retirement nest egg.

Boosting Your Savings Rate

So how do you go about it? To make it easier and save you some time, the following is a laundry list of money-saving ideas. Simply jot down the ones that apply to you and add up how much each might mean on an annual basis.

• Refinance your mortgage.
• Carpool or take mass transit to work.
• Bring lunches to work.
• Upgrade the insulation in your house.
• Stop smoking. If you don't smoke, pick a habit, whether it's drinking, snacking, or shopping, and try to cut down.
• Knock your cable TV service down a tier or two.
• Practice portion control at meal times--it's good for the waistline and the wallet.
• Live with your wardrobe a little longer, or buy used. Young people think vintage clothing is kind of funky--don't you want to feel young again?
• Perform triage on your credit cards. Pay down and retire the ones with the highest interest rates.

There's no magic to the figure of $5,000, but it is well within the realm of possibility for people who have not yet imposed any type of budget discipline and savings program. As Ben Franklin famously said, a penny saved is a penny earned.

You could turn those savings into more than $8,000 for retirement with about 4 hours' worth of effort. Figure 2 hours for budgeting--selecting the money-saving ideas that apply to you and tallying up what they are worth in a year. Add in an hour to find competitive bank rates on MoneyRates.com and research your finalists, and another hour to open an account. All in all, that comes to about $2,000 an hour--enough to quell the procrastinator in you.

Source:
Jennifer Mulrean • 7 radical ways to save money • MSN Money Central: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P36019.asp

 

Showing 0 comments | Add your comment