Saving money doesn’t come naturally to me; I have to work hard at it. According to the US Department of Commerce the national personal savings rate is about 6% which is an improvement considering it dipped below 0% in 2001. However, I think most people would agree with me when I say Americans need some strategies to bump their savings rate up because we can do better than 6%! Since I know saving money isn’t easy, I’ve concocted some mind bending tricks to make me save more of my money.

Pocket those Percentages.

One way I’ve been able to stash some extra cash is to set aside a percentage of my income. Using percents makes it easier for me to feel like I’m accomplishing my savings goal, especially since I live on a fluctuating income. I set aside 10%  percent from every source of income I receive and apply it towards savings. I auto debit the amount from my pay check making it easy for me to not count it as “income.” For all other sources of income, I automatically move 10% of the total check to my savings account.

If I had a set amount, I’m not sure I’d be able to meet it every month and I’d become discouraged. Percentages work no matter what my income might be in any given month.

Don’t Spend the Lincoln’s (or Benjamin’s, or Jeffersons, etc.)

I came across this tip on another website (of course I don’t remember which one!) that used a mind trick to save some extra cash; select a bill of choice and make a commitment to NOT spend it. I rarely have cash on hand, however, my goal is to save every Lincoln I come across. Five bucks here and there will eventually add up. After three to six months, my goal is to deposit the total into my savings account. This might motivate me to use cash more often. Of course the objective here is to increase your savings account, so place the cash where you can forget about it for a while!

Save those Gifts

Birthday’s, anniversaries, and even holidays are great ways to boost your savings. Deposit cash gifts into your savings account and turn gift cards into cash by cashing them out, or selling them. If the gift card is from a place you normally shop, save them for future use and stash the cash value in your savings account. If you don’t feel comfortable turning a gift into cash, tell family and friends that you’re working hard to ramp up your savings and would prefer gifts that help accomplish that goal.

Find Motivation

Another great way to get motivated to save more money is by using an online company that offer rewards for saving such as SaveUp. SaveUp wants to make saving money fun and offers daily give-aways to help motivate their members. Setting up an account earns you points that you use to “play” a game for a prize. Prizes include cash, bills paid, cars, shopping sprees, and many other options. Just a warning: SaveUp is a little addicting.

Do you use mind tricks to save more money?

Mint.com

I’ve known about Mint.com for quite a while now, but I never thought I needed it because I use Quickbooks. I’m also the person responsible for all the finances in our family as well; I create annual budgets, pay the bills, and keep track of our online accounts, so I really didn’t think I needed this to keep track of our finances. Yet, after speaking with a close family member who was clueless on their family’s finances (and frightened about what might happen in the future), I realized my significant other (SO) needed to be kept in the loop.

I don’t intend to relinquish my obsession, I mean responsibility, with our finances, but I realize it’s important for him to know what bills we (I mean “I”) pay, when they’re due, and how to pay them. I’d hate for something to happen to me and my SO to be completely clueless as to what to do next. So, I signed up for Mint.com – for his sake. With Mint.com it’s a “read-only” kind of site, but it gives him access to all of the accounts we’re responsible for paying and our financial information.

What I Like About Mint

• Easy to set up. It was fairly easy to set up my account. I had to gather all of my financial information that I wanted to keep track of, but the site made it easy to find the correct financial institutions. (However, with Mint.com, you need to have online accounts with your financial vendors).
• Emails me reminders about bills that are due. It also lists them on my “home page” for accounts that I’ve added.
• Records transactions. It lists the debits and credits for all the accounts I’ve set up.  Having this in one place makes it easy for my SO to see where we’re spending money.
• Updates balances each time I login. This gives me an up to the hour (some institutions update faster than others) balance.

But I’m Not Keen On…

• The budget section. For my own use, I thought I’d set up the budget section to cross-check against my Quickbooks and make sure I’m tracking my income and expenses properly. However, Mint.com automatically categorizes debits and credits willy-nilly. Maybe I’m not using it correctly, but I had to go through some of my recent transactions and re-categorize them. It also doesn’t take into consideration income from one month and expenses from another. My budget states I’m over by quite a bit, but the income came in last month and the expense went out this month. I’m sure this will clear itself up eventually, but in the meantime it’s irritating.
• Double transaction entries. Since I’ve been using my credit card for daily purchases, it’s seeing them twice; once when the purchase is pending and again once it goes through. This completely messes up the budget portion of my account. It shows I’m way over my budgeted amount for certain categories.

I’m sure once I get a handle on the budget section and categorize my “uncategorized” transactions, I’ll appreciate the budget part of Mint.com a lot more. Hopefully, the double transactions will resolve themselves. However, now my SO has access to our financial information – and it’s in one place for him to easily access.

Do you use Mint.com? Is there one person in your family responsible for the finances, or do you share responsibility?

We recently purchased a large ticket item that we’ve been putting off for quite a few years – a TV. Yet, after tons of research and lots of searching for the best sales price, we finally bit the bullet and purchased our flat-screen TV. At the first of the year, we were pretty sure it was as low as it was going to go and made the purchase. We had two vendors to choose from: a well-known store or an online vendor. We selected the well-known store since it was local so that we didn’t have to worry about shipping costs or damage during shipping. The well-known store also offered a 60-day price match; if we found the TV for a lower price within 60-days that they could confirm, they’d refund us the difference. Small mom-and-pop vendors can’t offer this kind of deal, but larger, well-known stores can and do offer this deal.

One week later, we were running errands and decided to pop into Fry’s Electronics, which usually has great prices on TV’s. Just for the heck of it, we price shopped our exact TV and lo and behold it was $200 less than what we had purchased it for just 7 days earlier. We had the sales assistant print out the price and ran it over to the store where we had made our purchase. Within 15 minutes they had verified the price match and refunded the $200 plus sales tax.

Now, you may be wondering, “Why didn’t you just buy it from Fry’s to begin with?” Fry’s hadn’t dropped the price until the weekend we price matched our purchase  and there was no way of knowing they would price it for $200 less than our first vendor choice.

We still have 45 days left to find our TV for less. I don’t know if that will happen, as I’m pretty sure we’ve now gotten it at the bargain-basement price, but having this option available to me makes me feel like we are smart shoppers. Big ticket items on sale that offer price matches are great deals!

Have you purchased an item with a price match and took them up on the offer?

One of the goals for this year was to get our car paid off in full. Towards end of last year, we realized we were so close to having our car paid off that if we could squeeze out a few extra payments over a 6-month period, we could potentially save a few hundred dollars in interest. Paying off the car early would also help us boost our savings account since we’d have an extra $322 a month left over that was originally set aside for car payments but could soon be applied towards our saving account instead.

I’m glad to say that we’re $378 shy of meeting our goal and will be completely car-loan-free by February 10th. Yahoo!

How did we do it? Last October, our stocks just weren’t doing so great. We didn’t have a ton of money invested, but what money we did have either wasn’t making much or was beginning to decline in value. Instead of watching them languish in the topsy-turvy market, we decided to cash them out after a slight gain and apply a hefty amount towards our car loan.

The amount we applied towards the car was equal to almost 5 car payments – that’s a big chunk paid off the loan. I was able to also apply an extra $500 payment last November (close to one and a half car payments). Then again, at the end of December, we realized we had some money in savings that we could apply towards our car and still have a comfortable amount left over for emergencies. That equated to the equivalent of 3 car payments.  Since I was still auto-debited each month for our car payments, the extra payments we made were on top of our scheduled payments.

Instead of having the car paid off in November of this year, we’ll have it paid off in February – 9 months early! If I stay dedicated to my savings plan, I should be able to increase my savings by almost $3,000 by applying the car payment amount towards savings each month. I’m also saving approximately $200 in interest off the car loan as well. I should soon see my savings bar grow!

Having a financial plan and seeing it work is a terrific feeling, especially so early in the year.

How are your plans and long-term goals going?

I’ve never been one to pack a million suitcases to take on a one-week trip. Instead, I try to limit my luggage to one checked-on piece and maybe one carry-on. However, since most airlines now charge for checked on luggage, I’ve had to get creative with my packing. In my pursuit to save anywhere from $25 or more, or the cost of checking on luggage with major airlines, I’ve figured out a solution for cutting the cost of flying: Take a backpack!

One thing I’ve realized during my traveling is the less you have to carry in your hands, the better and a backpack is a perfect solution. Carrying a backpack on your back down a tight airplane aisle is much easier and faster than wriggling a smallish carry-on down the aisle. Does a backpack work for every trip? Of course not. But it will work for many trips, especially if you plan accordingly:

• Travel to tropical regions - the warmer the climate, the less bulky clothes you have to pack.
• Travel during the spring and summer season – again, warmer temps mean less bulky clothing.

Most backpacks expand more than you think. For example, my $40 backpack that I use for my books, work and school was a great option for me when I traveled to New York this past May. I took a couple of pairs of pants, a few shirts, a sweater, a light-weight windbreaker (it can get cool in New York in May), and a pair of slip-on shoes. I was able to squeeze it all into my backpack.

Backpacks expand more than you think.

I even packed my toiletries in the front, small pocket using Zip Lock baggies and small containers. I kept my toiletries to a minimum since most hotels provide hair dryers, small shampoo and conditioner bottles, and a few other things you might not want to take with you – and friends and family can share if you’re staying with them instead.

Small, clear baggies work great and get you through security.

A few tips for using a backpack in lieu of any other luggage:

• Wear your most bulky clothing that you’ll be taking on your plane ride, including heavier shoes. Smaller items fit more easily into your backpack.
• For women, you can still take your purse. I was able to fit a couple of items in my purse once my backpack became over loaded.
• Make sure your backpack can fit under the seat in front of you for standard class travelers. The benefit of a backpack is it’s easier to take than a small carry-on and will fit in front of your legs so you don’t have to fight for a space in the overhead compartment. You also won’t have to wait to grab your bag when you depart the plane.

This summer, I’m attending my sister’s wedding. I plan to take my backpack and that’s it. However, my husband and I will need access to our nice clothes; a dress, a suit and dress shoes. These items won’t fit in our backpacks and will become horribly wrinkled if I try to stuff them in. Solution: We’re shipping our “nice” clothes ahead of time to the hotel. Using UPS or FedEx and shipping a garment-sized box (flat and mid-length) will cost just less (about $5.00 less) than checking one piece of luggage. And, there’s less chance of the suitcase getting lost since we can track the shipment with a tracking number!

Summary of benefits of taking a backpack on a trip:

• No checked luggage fee.
• Reduced possibility of luggage getting lost.
• No wait time at the carousel after leaving the plane. Just grab your backpack and go!
• Hands-free bag. You can actually hold on to your kid, your coffee, or your partner without loosing your grip on one or the other.

As far as I’m concerned, backpacks are the best invention since sliced-bread.

How do you travel – light or heavy? Would a backpack work for some of your trips?