A key to motivating oneself during times of hardship is to set tiny rewards for working toward goals. Another wise idea for motivation is to always have something in mind – the positive end result – while making progress toward a goal. One way to do this financially is to budget a savings account.
By budgeting, people normally mean balancing spending so that there is as much or more money coming in than leaving. For this kind of budget, however, we are going to use a familiar denomination: percentages.
Take a moment now to write down any financial outcomes sought. They may include placing a substantial down-payment on a home, funding a semester of college for either oneself or a child, or saving up enough money to retire one year early.
Next, we will assign a value to each ending. My personal long-term savings goals are for my own and my partner’s retirement, buying my first home (with some furniture), and having a child (diapers are expensive, after all). My short-term savings goals are for an emergency fund of $1,000, a new pot and pan set, and a KitchenAid.
Anybody versed in personal finance knows about Dave Ramsey’s snowball method of debt repayment. We will use a similar method to gain momentum in meeting savings goals. Short-term goals will receive a hefty priority – say, 50% for me. The short-term goals are broken up as follows:
- Emergency fund – 50%
- New pots and pans – 30%
- KitchenAid – 20%
That means 25% of my total savings will be dedicated to building an emergency fund.
Long-term goals are broken down similarly:
- First home purchase – 80%
- My retirement – 5%
- Pete’s retirement – 10% (His retirement age is closer than mine)
- Children – 5%
The exact amounts may need to be tweaked if I decide something in particular is more important.
As for keeping track of everything, you may choose to go the difficult route and open up separate savings accounts for each individual budget, or you may choose the easy (and easy to screw up, if you’re not careful) method of using an Excel spreadsheet. I, personally, use the latter choice.
How do you budget your savings? Do you just have one account that you contribute to because you feel you should?
