Imagine being able to easily save as much money as you would like, each and every week. Well, you can by following a simple trick. The “trick” is called Pay Yourself First. Paying yourself first simply means putting yourself ahead of anyone else.

The wrong way to save

Usually when people save they put away anything that is left over after they pay all their bills and other necessities and wants. While this is a common occurrence, it is totally the wrong thing to do!

Change your mindset

You need to be treating the money you want to save just as you would any other payment. Or better yet, just like your mortgage. Would you miss a mortgage payment? Very doubtful. So too you shouldn’t miss a payment to yourself.

Be realistic

The trick here is to make sure you are realistic about how much you can save. Obviously, you cannot save $1,000 per week when your income is only $800, and you still need to meet your other financial obligations.

Having said that however, you also need to start saving. Simply choose a dollar figure (even if it’s $10 per week– you can always give yourself a raise later) and start saving it.

How to make sure it happens

When paying yourself first, you need to make sure you do pay yourself each and every week (or whenever you get paid), so I recommend setting up a regular transfer on internet or mobile banking.

Set this up to transfer out of your account the day after you get paid. That way you will never see the money and will never miss it. I would also recommend hiding this savings account so you cannot see and access the account easily.

Quick summary

All you need to do is to include the amount you want to save into your budget as a non-negotiable payment (to yourself). And then make it happen by “setting and forgetting” the payment via internet banking.

Increase your savings

You can then start looking at increasing this payment to yourself by cutting costs in other places and moving that money into your savings. Do this easily by just increasing the automatic transfers into your savings account.

There you have it – a dead simple way to make sure you start saving today.

I would love to know your thoughts on this. Would this help you save?