So, a couple of weeks ago when our van’s air conditioner went out on our first day of vacation, I was met by a brief sense of total panic until I heard the words, “Covered by warranty.” Thank God! But, it made me think. What if there was an emergency? Would we have the money we needed to make it through the situation?
Now, I believe in a very providential God who knows our needs before we do, but aside from a mighty move of His hand, we would be stuck.
How could we be prepared? Is there anything we can do now to place us in a more secure position to face unexpected problems? A savings account is an obvious answer but like 80% of Americans, we live paycheck to paycheck. Here are some of the creative ideas I have discovered that might help us (and you) to squirrel away from cash for a very rainy day:
1) Save big at the store? Tuck away the difference between what you would have paid and what you did pay for your Emergency Fund.
2) Never spend a $5 bill. Consider all $5 bills to be Emergency Fund property.
3) Likewise, never spend spare change. Roll it up, cash it in, and tuck it away.
4) Clean out your house and have a yard sale or place your valuables on Ebay.
5) Give your Emergency Fund an allowance each week when you give money to your children. It can be small but it needs to be something.
6) Make it a habit to put 20% to 50% of your tax refunds into your Emergency Fund.
7) Unexpected blessing? Stamp it for the Emergency Fund.
8) Set aside any cash left in your grocery envelope at the end of the month.
9) Start a special checking account where each purchase is rounded up with the difference being placed in a savings account.
10) __________________________ (Fill in your creative ideas here!)
I want to know what you think. What creative ways can you save money? Leave your ideas in the comments and be entered in a GIVEAWAY for a one-year subscription to All You Magazine. You can start a new subscription or use it to renew your current subscription. The winner will be chosen by Random.org on Monday, July 5th at 11:59 PM (CST) and will be announced in next week’s Tuesday Topics.
One comment per day, please.
Cut out a starbucks/coffee run 1-2 times a week. Put that $5-$10 into an emergency fund. By the end of the year you could have saved a few hundred dollars by doing this!
Always have a grocery list when you go to the store and stick to it unless you see a really good bargain and then stock up. It’s the impulse purchases that push that total up.
We have a savings account at a credit union that is clear accross the other side of town from where we live. $25.00 goes in each week. Since it is not impossible for us to simple make a quick trip to the credit union the money stays put till we need it.
Make a deposit into your emergency fund equal to the amount you save in coupons each week or month. Doing this helps you establish two good couponing habits: a) keeping track of $$ saved and b) reigning in impulsive use of coupons. For an even bigger contribution to the fund, include the amount you save on haircuts, dining, dry cleaning, etc. On the other hand if you’re strapped for cash and can’t afford to do either of these, rebates can be used to jump start a small emergency fund.
we start a christmas account at the bank every year start one for Emergencies, start two christmas account but, use one for emergency only
Instead of renting movies/video games at rental places like Blockbuster or Hollywood go to the library. They have a great selection of movies as well as a small selection of video games in the kids area at most of the local public libraries. The movies are $1 for 7 days and I think the games are too. Renting a movie at the video store is about $4 and a game is about $10 and normally that is only for 3-5 days. Put the money you saved by renting from the library into your emergency account. This is what we’ve started this summer. The kids LOVE renting movies but the library is much cheaper on my wallet than the video store and I’m putting back about $3 per movie that we check out from the library into an emergency account. Checked out 5 movies yesterday for only $5. (Saved about $15 or more by going to the library to rent instead of going to the video store.)
For birthdays/Christmas for kids you can buy toys at target when they clearance them at the end of the seasons. Put the money you save into an emergency acct. You can buy preowned video games at places like GameStop and put your savings in the bank for emergencies as well.
I monogram items for friends and the money I make doing that gets put aside! It may only be $10-15 some months but closer to the holidays it jumps to close to $75-100!