America Saves Week
America Saves Week
This week is “America Saves Week”, February 25-March 1st! This is an opportunity for Denmark State Bank to help promote good savings behavior and remind consumers of the importance of saving, and assessing your own saving status. The secret to saving money is to make it an emotional priority. Everyone should have a plan to save money! Whether you are saving to get out of debt, saving for an emergency, saving for your first home purchase or saving for a vacation, having a savings can provide peace of mind and decrease stress in your life. The stress of too much debt can affect your family life, work performance and other areas of your life.
A savings account can help pay for unexpected expenses or help save for a big purchase. One good rule of thumb to follow, is to have 3 to 6 months of living expenses in an “Emergency Fund”.
Here are some tips to help you save money:
*Save your loose change – saving the change in your pocket, even $0.75 a day would help you save over $270 in a year.
*Take the amount the item costs and divide it into your hourly wage. If it’s a $50 pair of shoes and you make $10 an hour, ask yourself, are those shoes really worth five long hours of work? It helps keep things in perspective.
*Aim for short-term savings goals, such as setting aside $20 a week or month rather than long term savings goals, such as $200 over a year. People save more successfully when they keep the short-term goal in sight.
*Assess your communications costs. As Internet and wireless use grows, many consumers are overpaying for unneeded communications capacity. For example, if you have a cell phone and two phone lines — one for your computer — consider receiving personal calls on your cell phone so you can give up one of the phone lines.
*Give up premium cable channels or better yet, cable all together. It’s a lot cheaper to rent one movie a week than watch one on premium cable channels that may cost more than $500 a year.
*Shop around for auto and homeowners’ insurance: Before renewing your existing policies each year, check out the rates of competing companies (see the website of your state insurance department). Their annual premiums may well be several hundred dollars lower.
*Reduce credit card debt by $1,000. That $1,000 debt reduction will probably save you $150-200 a year and much more if you’re paying penalty rates of 20-30%.
A couple of websites with some very helpful information are: www.americasavesweek.org and www.daveramsey.com
Denmark State Bank can help you save with our new Every Single Day Savings. When you open an Every Single Day Savings with your new What We Do For U Reward checking, the interest and ATM fee refunds you can earn on your checking are automatically transferred to your savings account to help you save. Free automatic transfers set up through our free online banking help you save even more! By transferring on your payday, you have less of a chance of spending your money on purchases you don’t need, and help yourself save it for a large future purchase or for your next vacation!
Denmark State Bank
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