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Five Ways to Make Saving Money More Fun

I wanted to write about how to make saving fun, because the more fun something is the more you do it. Here are five ways to make saving more fun, and keep in mind that some of it might require help from your parents. Having the whole family in on the project makes it harder to not stick to the goals.

 

1.       Set targets and celebrate progress. If you have $100 in your bank account, maybe a realistic target is to get to $150. Getting there feels good, but what feels even better is to set the target and then treat yourself when you reach it. So when you get to $150, you can buy yourself a $5 reward and you’ll still have $145, which is almost as good. Then set the next goal for $200 and you’ll have $195 saved. Soon the $5 rewards will be a much smaller percentage of the overall savings.

2.       Save more than what you need. If you want to buy something that costs $20, tell yourself it actually costs $40. Then once you have saved $40, go buy the thing and you’ll still have $20 leftover in your bank account! If you think it’s too hard to trick yourself, this is one place parents can help: you can ask them to exaggerate the costs of things you want…and you’ll never know what they really cost.

3.       The occasional parent surprise. One thing that makes saving fun for me is knowing that sometimes my parents will buy what I was saving for without asking me to reimburse them for it. It’s a nice surprise when this happens, and it only works as a savings strategy because they don’t do it all the time. I never know which item they’ll surprise me with (once it was an iPhone).

4.       Learn to invest. Saving money isn’t just about making a bigger bank account balance. You can take some of your savings and have your parents buy some stock or mutual funds with it. Then you can watch the market go up and down, and knowing it’s actually your money makes it much more interesting and less of an artificial concept. Only do this if you are willing to possibly lose a little of your savings as a lesson, and if you are patient.

5.       Think about the big picture. I like how saving money reminds me I won’t always have to rely on my parents to get the things I want. It’s a good feeling to know I can grow up and be an independent person and make my own choices without asking someone else for money.

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