3 Tips to Help You Fall in Love With Saving Money

Which strategy is right for you?

There isn't really a way around it: Saving money is crucial to meeting your long-term goals. But knowing that doesn't necessarily make your job any easier. Even if you have the best of intentions, it's easy to get off track.

If you've dumped your savings strategy time and time again, the following three tips might be just the thing you need to finally make a long-term commitment.

1. Create rewards for yourself

Saving involves delayed gratification, and the longer you have to wait to reap your reward, the more difficult it can be to stick with it. So why not set up smaller rewards along the way?

These don't have to be related to spending money. For example, if your goal was to have $1,000 in your savings account, you could reward yourself by preparing a favorite dessert or doing a fun activity with friends every time you get $100 closer to your goal.

You decide which rewards will motivate you the most. Then, map out the milestones along the way when you'll earn them. If you need help sticking to your plan, enlist a friend to help you track your progress and celebrate your wins with you.

2. Create a savings challenge

If little rewards aren't enough for you, a savings challenge might work better. There are a lot of these, so you can choose the one that best fits your budget and goals. For example, you could spend a month not buying anything other than essentials or you could try to save $2,023 in 2023.

Gamifying your savings like this can give you additional motivation to keep going. Research from Commonwealth found that gamifying savings led users to save 25% more frequently than those who didn't use this approach.

This is another strategy you could bring a partner into if you wanted to. If you're saving on your own, you could share your progress updates with them. Or you could compete in a head-to-head challenge to see which of you could save more over a set period of time.

3. Try a budgeting app

Budgeting used to require some sort of spreadsheet and a lot of math, but apps can now do a lot of the work for you. You can link them to your bank account and use them to track your spending across various categories. This can give you valuable insights into where your money is going each month and where you may want to cut back.

Some budgeting apps even come with useful savings tools, like the ability to round up every purchase to the nearest dollar. They automatically deposit the change into your bank account so you save a little with every purchase.

It can take some time to find a savings strategy that works for you, and that's OK. You might try one of the tips above to find out it's not a good fit. Don't let that discourage you. Try a few approaches until you find your perfect match.