Are you the type of person who is a savvy money manager?Or, are you normally struggling to scrape by till your next paycheck? If you are still living paycheck to paycheck then now is the time to grab control of your financial situation, plan your spending and save money via a savings account.

You don’t know if difficult financial times lay ahead so it is smart thinking to open a high yield account. This is a secure way of saving money in a bank, with the added bonus of earning a particular percentage of interest for the amount that you will deposit.

Saving Money 101: How to Create a Spending Diary, Keep Tabs of Your Spending & Get a Head Start with Your Savings

There is nothing unusual about taking $100 or so from an ATM and then wondering where it’s all gone when you check your wallet the next day.

This normally happens when your not keeping a good track on your spending patterns. This is not a good practice at all, especially if you seriously wish to start saving money by actually adding funds to that savings account which you opened a year or so ago.

So what’s the best way that you can use to get a head start with saving money? You can do it the old-fashioned way: by creating a spending diary, keeping track of your spending habits and adding money to your savings account so that you can start saving money.

Basically, the spending diary will allow you to monitor the ins and outs of your finances and keep track of your savings account and saving money habits. Going back to the example mentioned earlier – if you did take out $100 from your savings account through an ATM machine, you will see where that amount actually went.

After withdrawing the money, write down on your spending diary which items you bought with that $100. Did you spend it to buy coffee or a magazine on your way to work? Did you use it to buy food? Or did you suddenly have an ‘attack’ on your conscience and you actually put that amount towards your savings account?

If you’d rather not use cash then try a debit card such as Visa debit and then cross check your spending via your online banking.

Once you have developed the habit of writing down on your spending diary the ins and outs of your finances, you will be able to see which aspects of your spending you can actually cut back on. If you see that you’re spending too much on eating breakfast outside of the house on your way to work, you may want to pack a hearty sandwich for yourself. Better yet, wake up earlier and enjoy the financial and health benefits of eating a nutritious breakfast at home.
Once you stop wasting money on items you don’t require you will find your savings can start to build at a rate faster than you expected. By doing this you can classify which purchases are wasting money, which are valuable and which can be done once in a while.

In addition, your savings account will be given a boost because the money that you will be able to save from the unnecessary purchases can go towards saving money instead. It might be a bit tedious and difficult at first to keep a spending diary. It might seem like a hassle at first to keep a record or your spending but once you get used to it you will find it easy and enjoy watching your savings grow.

Article by Richard Greenwood who runs a number of sites to help consumers compare credit cards and other banking products and then make an application online.

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