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?

The following guest post is brought to you by USwitch for Business.

Saving money in business is extremely important in the current climate. One area in which costs can run away is business electricity usage. For any business electricity costs can be astronomical. Comparing the latest deals online can help make sure your business is getting the best deals available. As well as being affected by the economic climate and the prices being charged, wastefulness can be rife and surprisingly easy to cut down on.

Just walking around a business premises with your eyes environmentally open can show a long list of potential savings. More often than not it is the seemingly obviously avoidable things which cost the most money. Lighting is a huge burden on businesses, whether an office, manufacturing or retail outlet. Simply turning out the lights when leaving a room can save a small fortune. Many companies seek to save even more by introducing movement sensitive lighting that will automatically switch itself off or replacing normal light bulbs with energy saving ones.

Office equipment is a huge drain on energy resources. Company policies should dictate that all machinery is turned off when not in use. That does not mean simply putting machines on standby overnight. Even when a machine is in standby mode it is still using electricity. Machines should be physically turned off and unplugged from the wall. Not only will this save energy, it will also protect equipment from any unexpected power surge or lightning strike. All those weekends and bank holidays can add up to a whole lot of wasted energy from equipment left on standby. By properly managing your business electricity money can be saved.

Take notice of your office and surroundings. If everyone is wearing thin clothing and short sleeves, could it be that your premises are overly warm? Heating bills can be vast and energy and therefore money can be saved by simply turning down the thermostat. No-one wants customers or employees to be uncomfortable, but the likelihood is they will not notice if the thermostat is turned down by a degree.

By keeping your eyes open online, you can sometimes have access to exclusive deals that can reduce business electricity costs significantly. They will also offer help and advice throughout the process. Business managers can be reluctant to switch providers believing it will be time consuming and difficult. However by researching the market you can find some really great deals.

Of course energy saving and consciousness must be realistic. Setting unrealizable targets will not achieve anything. Of course there is good publicity for any company to be had from being environmentally aware, so saving money on business energy can have more than just a financial advantage.

I’ve had one hectic week. Starting the new semester off running has definitely thrown me for a loop. Being the over-achiever that I am, I selected the accelerated program to finish up in December instead of May. In my defense, I’ll save one semester of tuition by punishing myself over the next few months at a savings of about $4,000. Oh, the things I do to save a buck (or 4,000 of them).

But what this means for me over the next 14 weeks (I’m counting down by weeks; down 2, 14 more to go!) is that I’ll be in over-drive mode. My weekly schedule is as follows:

• Wake up at 5:30am (I am NOT a morning person, BTW)
• Ride my bike over to Starbucks for my coffee (I know, I know, I am so addicted!) At least the bike ride wakes me up (and I kind of like riding in the dark – don’t worry I have lights).
• Shower by 6 am
• Check emails, blog for 30 minutes
• Ride my bike to school at 7:10am
• Home by 4:00pm (except Tues. and Wed. when I have evening classes until 6pm)
• Write copious amounts of lesson plans and papers supporting my teaching methods
• Squeeze in some blogging if I can
• Eat dinner
• Maybe a movie if I’m lucky
• Bed by 9:30pm
• Start again the next day

But, committing to the fast-track program means I’m going to save money. This is really important to me considering that the career I chose, education, isn’t a high-paying one. Jobs are also few and far between at the moment, but there is some expectation that within the next few years jobs will become more available.

Also, finishing up mid-year could be more advantageous for me when it comes to a job search. Positions do open up mid-year due to unexpected leaves of absence, retirement, or student increase, and this could put me in a good position. In the end, timing and networking will play a big part. Securing a position before summer will help me pay off the remainder of my student loans faster.

Now I just have to hang in there until December. A big thanks to those who have been volunteering guest posts. I really appreciate them!

What extreme measures have you taken to save a buck or two?

I’ve been working on reducing my electricity bills this year and I’m proud to say I’ve slashed them in half. Prior to moving back into an apartment, we were paying about $180 per month on electricity alone. Some of that was due to living in an inefficient rental house with drafty windows and half the house wired onto one breaker. Yet, some of that expense was due to my own behavior. Behavior that cost me quite a bit of money.

Here’s what I knew I had to change to save some bucks:

• My home office. We have two desk tops, one lap top, one netbook, one external share drive, one battery backup, and two printers. That’s a lot of plugged-in gear.
• Home temperature. We finally have central air and very good insulation, this isn’t so much my behavior as just making a better choice.

Keeping the computers on all night long was thought to be better for them. Mr. LH always assumed that is helped them retain their memory, or something to that effect. Having them hooked up to our battery pack showed us that they were energy suckers that were draining our bank accounts. Now every night we turn off the computers. We’ve also gotten into the habit of keeping the printers and laptop off until we need to use them. No point in wasting energy for things that aren’t being used.

For five years we lived in a rental house without central air. Most of the year, it wasn’t a problem. However, during July and August when a high of 90′s to 100-degree day hit, we’d swelter even though our window unit would run at maximum capacity. Lacking any insulation, the window unit only cooled about 5 feet of the room it was in. Choosing to move to a newer apartment with central air and really good insulation has resolved this problem. Not only do we not need to run our air very often, we can set the thermostat to 79 degrees and stay quite cool. Purchasing a sun shade for our west-facing patio has also helped tremendously. It’s one of the reasons we can set the thermostat so high, yet remain so cool.

Reducing our monthly electric bill from $180 to $90 has only inspired me to keep on finding ways to conserve electricity.

What do you do to save on monthly utility bills?

Just the other day I pondered whether eating out would save me money instead of buying groceries and cooking at home for just two people. The comments I received were a mixed bag; many comments from single people or couples without kids agreed that maybe eating out could be more cost effective. A few mentioned freezing the excess self-prepared food and eating it later, but that takes time and planning something; I haven’t had a lot of lately (oh, and did I mention I don’t cook?)

But if I could save money eating out, which would be more cost effective: eating at a sit-down restaurant or a quasi-fast food joint that offers healthy meal options?

My husband and I wondered this ourselves as we sat down at Chili’s the other night. Chili’s is a chain restaurant that’s definitely middle of the road when it comes to its menu and quality of food choices. It’s not fancy by any means and markets itself as a bar/restaurant. We normally sit in the bar for dinner since it’s much quicker than being seated in the “family” section. Sharing a meal and ordering water as our beverage (because who wants to pay over $2 bucks for a soda?!) our bill came to a little over $12.00. But then we realized we needed to leave a tip! As a former waitress during my college years, I can’t scurry out of a sit-down venue without leaving a decent tip. Per person our meal cost $7.50 per person, not too bad.

Getting out of there for under $16.00 was still a great deal, but right across the street was The Habit, a quasi-fast food joint that offers some similar meal options; mainly burgers/chicken sandwiches and fries. Guess what we ate at Chili’s? We shared a chicken sandwich and fries! We had an epiphany as we were adding the tip onto our Chili’s bill; We could have eaten a similar item at The Habit for less and wouldn’t have had to leave a tip. Does this make us cheap or frugal thinking this way?

Of course McDonald’s would have been even cheaper, but the quality of menu items isn’t comparable to Chili’s or The Habit in my opinion. Next time we decide on a delicious burger and fries, I think we’ll head to The Habit, but not before remembering to bring our own drink! (or settle for water).

How do you save money eating out? Do you drink water or bring your own drink to save a buck or two? Am I a cheap b@st@rd or what?